In my last post, we looked at six characteristics that help us to identify false teachers. In this post, we will consider what pastors and congregations are supposed to do in response to such persons who emerge in their midst. 1. Correct false teachers. The apostle Paul tells us that we ought to correct false teachers in the hope that God might change their mind about their error.
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How to identify false teachers
The apostle Paul wrote to Titus that pastors must not only preach faithfully but also “refute those who contradict” (Titus 1:9). The idea is very simple. Pastoral ministry is not merely a building up, but also a tearing down. As Paul would say elsewhere, it involves tearing down every speculation and lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God (2 Corinthians 10:5). To fail to do this is ministerial malpractice and harmful to God’s people. Given this obligation, it becomes all the more imperative to be able to identify false teachers when they emerge. Sometimes false teaching originates from outside of the church. Sometimes such teaching originates from within.…
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PBS profles “new Calvinism” and the SBC
PBS’s “Religion & Ethics Newsweekly” recently profiled New Calvinism in the Southern Baptist Convention. They focus on Sojourn Community Church here in Louisville and include interviews with Daniel Montgomery, Steve Lemke, Albert Mohler, and Adam Greenway. Watch above or read here.
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The Contributions and Revisions of N. T. Wright
Jason Byassee has written a fascinating profile of N. T. Wright for the most recent issue of Christianity Today. In it he argues that Wright has surpassed Rudolf Bultmann as the most influential biblical scholar of a generation. The article is gushing in many ways and highlights the many achievements of Wright over his long career—a career that has buttressed the historical claims of Christianity more than any scholar in recent history. Nevertheless, Byassee says that Wright’s work also offers a massive revision to traditional Protestant faith, Wright’s goal in his teaching and writing is to massively revise the way Christianity has been articulated for generations. Christian faith, for Wright,…
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Robbie George: “It’s not just Mozilla…”
Robbie George of Princeton University comments on Brendan Eich’s forced resignation from Mozilla. He writes: You can bet its not just Mozilla. Now that the bullies have Eich’s head as a trophy on their wall, they will put the heat on every other corporation and major employer. They will pressure them to refuse employment to those who decline to conform their views to the new orthodoxy. And you can also bet that it won’t end with same-sex marriage. Next, it will be support for the pro-life cause that will be treated as moral turpitude in the same way that support for marriage is treated. Do you believe in protecting unborn…
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Children with Down Syndrome can live a happy life
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The Accidental Complementarian
I really appreciate this testimonial from Jen Pollock Michel, who calls herself “The Accidental Complementarian.” Writing for Christianity Today’s Her.meneutics blog, she writes: Misunderstandings about complementarians abound. At a recent women’s conference, I heard a speaker describe her egalitarian upbringing, saying it wasn’t until college that she recognized the breadth of theological difference on this issue. “I was shocked. And to be honest, I was heartbroken. It had never occurred to me that in this day and age, so many people just like me were being sidelined,” she said. Her implication? Complementarianism was theology that should have gone the way of the dinosaurs. Like me, the closet complementarians in the…
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The New Calvinism Considered
Jeremy Walker, New Calvinism Considered: A Personal and Pastoral Assessment (EP Books, 2014). 126pp. $10.99. If you are wondering what the so-called “New Calvinism” is, Jeremy Walker has just written a short book trying to explain it. In The New Calvinism Considered: A Personal and Pastoral Assessment, Walker explains what the theological hubbub is all about. Walker identifies four characteristics of this movement. First, and most obviously, it is Calvinistic. But its Calvinism tends to be limited to soteriology as there is a good bit of diversity on other aspects of Reformed faith.
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Do complementarian gender roles result from sin?
Egalitarians often claim that gender roles are a result of the Fall of man into sin. They might agree that the husband appears to be the “head” of the wife in some biblical texts but that those texts are reflecting an imperfect situation. Male leadership in marriage is not rooted in the order of God’s good creation but in sinful human pride. For example, Rachel Held Evans has written, In the biblical narrative, hierarchy enters human relationships as part of the curse, and begins with man’s oppression of women—’your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you’ (Genesis 3:16). But with Christ, hierarchical relationships are exposed…
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A word on translation theory
I’ve been reading Dave Brunn’s stimulating book One Bible, Many Versions—a work discussing the translation philosophy of various English Bible versions. This is a fine book in many ways. It engages an old controversy with an irenic tone. But if the book does anything, it shows that there is some confusion among evangelicals about what Formal Equivalence (FE) translators are aiming to do in their work. Brunn’s book shows that all translations—including FE translations like the NASB and the ESV—resort to Dynamic Equivalence (DE). His point is that not even FE translations practice their theory consistently, and he illustrates this fact with voluminous examples.
