Faith for Faith

I am a blogger, and as such, when I write I do not write as one does when he writes a book–formally and systematically–but my posts are seemingly sporadic and generally reflect certain topics that are raised from day to day from diverse places. Also, when I write, sometimes I address particular audiences, e.g. teachers, leaders, Christians, etc, and attempt to make it clear which audience I am addressing in the post. However, it is most often the case that many different audiences read the posts that I write, and, despite my best efforts, certain audiences that were not intended to be addressed feel as though they were and make conclusions about the post based upon that feeling. And sometimes when I address certain audiences, I use particular terminology that would be familiar to one audience and unfamiliar to another, and oftentimes an audience which is unfamiliar with the jargon specific to another audience is engaged with it, and they react negatively toward it though it may be truth.

In this post I am going to explain some of the jargon that is used by those with theological training and attempt to bridge the gap and clarify some misunderstandings. This language is often used by those who are trained in seminaries, and, to be frank, I detest that it is this way. Personally, I am not in favor of the existence of seminaries, because they divide God’s church into priests and laypersons, and, because of this divide, there flows from it a sort of arrogance and superiority that is not healthy to the church. I believe wholeheartedly that the church, not seminaries, should be the instructor of doctrine, and it has come to the point where many who have come from seminaries do not believe doctrine is beneficial to the church and therefore do not teach it. This however is an entirely false notion, and in this post I am seeking to share the doctrines commonly labeled by theologians as “Calvinism” to all of God’s people for their understanding and edification. I have addressed certain frequently asked questions in this post, and I may add more as they come to mind or are asked of me. I pray that you will find this of benefit and will share it with others who may have similar questions. To God alone be the glory. Amen.

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Posted by D. Matthew Brown under Theology | 2 Comments »

The late, great Baptist preacher, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, said many times concerning the doctrines of free will which are commonly labeled Arminianism, that, “The doctrine of justification itself, as preached by an Arminian, is nothing but the doctrine of salvation by works.” In other words, Spurgeon believed, and quite passionately, that the gospel preached by those who hold that men have a free will that can choose Christ is nothing more than a salvation that is based upon works not upon faith in Christ alone.

Such a charge is not a light charge, for when one takes that which is the Gospel and distorts it into a salvation that is based upon human merit and law-keeping, he does not merely tarnish the Gospel, but he destroys it in its entirety. The apostles, for this reason, speak very harshly concerning those who do thus to the Gospel and admonish the church over and over throughout their letters to watch out for those who distort the Gospel in this way and to cast them out of their fellowship. And to demonstrate this great passion of the apostles for the purity of the Gospel, the apostle Paul speaking to the Galatian church regarding the Judaizers (those who sought to add the work of circumcision to the Gospel), wrote:

You [Galatians] were running well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? [i.e. The Judaizers did.] This persuasion [of the Judaizers] is not from him [i.e. God] who calls you. A little leaven leavens the whole lump [i.e. a little distortion ruins the whole Gospel]. I have confidence in the Lord that you will take no other view than mine [i.e. the Gospel that I have preached], and the one who is troubling you will bear the penalty, whoever he is. But if I, brothers, still preach circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been removed. I wish those who [Judaizers] who unsettle you would emasculate themselves! (Gal. 5:7-12).

Now, the apostle makes it very clear of how he feels about the Judaizers adding the work of circumcision to the Gospel. He says that their doing thus, first, leavens and destroys the whole Gospel, in that, second, it removes the offense of the cross of Christ thereby demonstrating that it is a false gospel, and, third, that, because of this false teaching, he wishes that they who did this to the Gospel would castrate themselves! In other words, he is saying in not so many words, “I wish that they who wish to cut off the foreskin of your flesh and by it destroy the Gospel would instead keep cutting on their own genitals and leave you and the Gospel alone.”

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Posted by D. Matthew Brown under Uncategorized | No Comments »

There is a sad reality in the existence of denominations in the church, and it is this: denominations unite people in the church under secondary doctrines of the Faith so as to make those doctrines primary to the denomination, and they take doctrines that should be primary and make them secondary for the sake of unity in the denomination. For example, the Southern Baptist denomination is a denomination that is united under the secondary doctrine of the mode of baptism (viz. immersion), and since Southern Baptists have this secondary doctrine of mode of baptism in common, it becomes to the denomination a primary doctrine. Despite this common ground on baptism, there is division within the denomination on other issues that are of primary concern to the Faith (e.g. the Gospel and its proper understanding) that however become secondary issues in the denomination because they divide the denomination. And thus you will find in these denominations capitulation of doctrines that are of first importance for the sake of preserving the denomination, for the denomination, not the Church nor righteousness, is end of doctrine and practice, and therefore every doctrine must be filtered and ranked through the denomination not through the Revelation of God.

And thus, to jump to the point, you will find efforts in the Southern Baptist Convention to unite with one another within the denomination over issues such as Calvinist / Arminian understandings of the Gospel for the sake of what is being called the Great Commission Resurgence whose chief end is to get the Gospel out to the Nations. The problem with such an endeavor is that despite pious sounding mantras to “Just give the world the name of Jesus,” it neglects the very Gospel that is to be delivered to the Nations. Its practice would be tantamount to rounding up medicine and sending it to a country that is perishing from smallpox, when it is not merely medicine that the country needs, it is the particular medicine of a smallpox inoculation. Sending aspirin would not do, and neither would a measles vaccine, but they need the pure, unadulterated cure of a smallpox vaccine. Likewise, when we speak of a Great Commission Resurgence, we do not merely need to send to them the name of Jesus (for the Mormons and the Jehovah’s Witnesses are just as well-equipped to do that), but we need to send to them the pure, unadulterated Gospel that was delivered to the prophets and apostles.

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Posted by D. Matthew Brown under Theology | No Comments »

“Calvinism is not the Gospel.” I must admit that it is rather bold of me to contradict the quote of so great a man as Charles Spurgeon, especially granting that I myself unabashedly hold to what are known as the “Five Points of Calvinism.” I do profess to believe that each of those points are biblical, even that one from which many who call themselves “four-pointers” shy, viz. limited atonement–a doctrine upon which I have written quite extensively (see On Particular Redemption).

However, the reason that I am making such a statement is not so much based upon a disagreement with Spurgeon and his sympathizers, but is more of a reaction to an attitude of many that seems to have come about from it. For it is one thing to say, “Calvinism is the Gospel,” and mean by it that Calvinism is the proper understanding of what God has accomplished for men through his Son Jesus Christ, and it is another to say, “Calvinism is the Gospel,” and by that declaration attack every Christian that does not hold to Calvinism as defined by Dordt. For the former is a humble and mature assent to God’s revelation of himself in Scripture, and the latter is a proud and immature conquest to quell every non-Calvinist dissenter. The former comes from a heart-felt realization of unmerited grace received and creates in a person a heart of mercy and love, and the latter comes solely from an intellectual understanding of God’s revelation and creates in a person a heart of arrogance and disunity. The former understands the Gospel; the latter, despite theological precision, misunderstands the Gospel.

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Posted by D. Matthew Brown under Theology | 1 Comment »

I do not encounter this often in real life, but in the advent of “fake life,” of the world of blogs and Facebook, I seem to encounter this often, namely the use of strong and despicable rhetoric to propagate or tear down everything from politicians to the saving of some squirrel in the hills of eastern Mongolia. All people believe in and fight for something, and, for some reason, the internet brings out the worst of it. And this is not to say that people should not have strong convictions or that there are not causes to fight for, however, many people will say things on the internet that they would never say in real life. And for some odd reason, many of us feel as though the internet is a safe haven for us to express our passions and thoughts and that when things are said on the internet, those words somehow “do not count” or affect people. This, of course, is not true and is ridiculous, for things said anywhere, whether in person or on the internet, truly do count and truly do affect people.

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Posted by D. Matthew Brown under Theology | 5 Comments »

Having held a Reformed stance on God’s salvation of men for many years, I have witnessed time and time again (having stayed in traditional, Southern Baptist churches), how Calvinism and Calvinists cause quite a bit of stir within many churches. This stirring up of discord within churches concerning what is commonly called the Doctrines of Grace is generally multifaceted, and it is usually caused by two things–the hard doctrines of Calvinism itself placed against the doctrines of men that have crept into the church, and the Calvinist himself. While there can be little done, save by Spirit of God, with regard one’s hard heart toward the Doctrines of Grace, what is often the cause of one’s hard heart is not the doctrines themselves, but the person who bears the doctrines.

For, unfortunately, is commonplace that those who are most vocally Calvinists are those who would esteem themselves to be scholars of some grade and great exegetes of the Word of God. These, at times, act as though they bear some special knowledge that others in church have missed and therefore have about them a certain air of arrogance with regard to their particular understanding of the Scriptures.

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Posted by D. Matthew Brown under Theology | 11 Comments »

It is a funny thing, and I am not sure if this is only a feature of Baptist seminaries, but it seems as though every professor must, regardless of the class, say at least once in that class that Calvin was not a Calvinist. Most of time, the professor makes the claim and nonchalantly moves on as though he had just made a statement tantamount to the sky is blue, and as if Calvinists were running about declaring that the world is flat. Therefore, since I have not ever heard from the horse’s mouth why Calvin was not a Calvinist, I have had to assume that they who claimed thus meant one of two things:

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Posted by D. Matthew Brown under Theology | 5 Comments »

A common question is often raised, often in hostile dialogues, “If one believes in a God who has determined beforehand the destination of souls, why would one ever evangelize or do missions?” When that question is raised, I, more often than not, hear an inadequate or just plain bad response given instead of a proper response. Usually the answers are given by some poor, young soul who has not given much thought to the matter and does not want to get burned at the stake for the denying the present validity of the Great Commission, thus he says something like, “God has commanded us to do missions. We do not know who the elect souls are. Christ will not return until the Gospel has reached the ends of the Earth, etc.” All of these are true statements, but none of them are a proper answer to why we as Christians are to be about the work of evangelism and missions.

However, contrary to the popular belief that those who hold to a more Reformed view of theology are less apt and motivated to preach the Gospel and to reach the Nations than those who are not, I believe that the opposite is true, namely that those who are truly Reformed in their theology are better equipped both doctrinally and historically to be about the work of the Great Commission. Therefore, I hope that this post will not only adequately answer the question, “Why do Calvinists do missions?” but will also demonstrate that those who are genuinely Calvinists cannot help but “to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of [Christ's] name among the Nations” (Rom. 1:5).

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Posted by D. Matthew Brown under Theology | 2 Comments »

This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth (1Tim. 2:3, 4).

As promised, I am continuing my survey of texts that supposedly contradict the doctrines taught in Romans 8-11, et al. Several weeks ago, we dealt with the texts of John 3:16 and 2 Peter 3:9 and how those classic texts supposedly portray God as a God who is, respectively, desperately in love with the world and is wringing his hands at the thought that any person on this planet should have to perish. We demonstrated through these texts’ context and through biblical theology that this is not the God that is portrayed in these verses, but instead we find a God who is quite the opposite.

Despite this clarity in context, we must realize that we live in a reader response society and among Christians who use the Bible as a reference book rather than the meat upon which they feast daily. Thus we find not Christians who read the Scriptures through and thoroughly in its own context, but we find Christians who google, “Why Calvinism is evil,” and find a website of some other person who also only uses his Bible as reference book and then compiled a list of verses and spouted the infamous lie that Calvinists do not believe in evangelism and missions, despite the fact that the greatest preachers and evangelists (e.g. George Whitefield, C. H. Spurgeon, etc.), the leaders of great revivals (e.g. Jonathan Edwards), and the one who is called the father of modern missions–William Carey–were all Calvinists.

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Posted by D. Matthew Brown under Theology | 8 Comments »

My blog here at blog.xpistou.com is fairly young, and I find it somewhat funny that my blog writing days were resurrected while our Friday Night Bible Study group was going through Romans 8 and is presently in Romans 9. I have since been fairly committed to writing on what I have been teaching through in Bible study, and I can imagine that there are some readers who do not know me (maybe even some who do) who are saying, “There is another one of those Calvinists who cannot get their heads out of Romans 9.” This is certainly not true of me and my writings, but I do not feel the need to convince anyone otherwise at this point.

That said, we had an excellent discussion last night in our Bible study on Romans 9:14-18. Of the ten or so people that we had, we found that we were pretty much of one accord with regards to the doctrine of this text, and we briefly discussed how we each arrived to such conclusions in different ways. What we found is, though we came to our present commonality at different times, that most of us came to our present convictions in a similar progression. I would think that this progression is similar in most who have come to the same conclusions about God’s sovereignty over the destiny of souls.

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Posted by D. Matthew Brown under Fridy Night Bible Study | 5 Comments »