Since our denomination is not explicitly Reform (statement of faith was always very neutral), I never connected the Mars Hill Church in Seattle with the weird Presbyterian or Dutch Churches (Christian Reformed, Dutch Reformed, etc., etc.). I started hearing about Mars Hill Church, later learned it was in Seattle way back in the early 2000s. It was sort of a buzz in the back ground, and I certainly never noticed who the pastor was.
Fast forward to the last little while. Our church adopted the new statement of faith our denomination drew up. It was billed to the elders as "an improvement over the old statement", if that was it's intent then the "improvements" were to push it more towards Calvinism. I had only been aware of Calvinism through my English Lit and History classes at University. We were assigned a novel that was written to mock 17th Century Calvinism in Scotland and the creep through England (think Puritans). I knew little of Calvinism (attending Baptist based and Alliance churches, I somehow missed this theology). The story was of a Scotsman full of religious zeal and conviction who becomes an evangelist, then as his life continues, becomes a very evil person indeed. But, it really doesn't matter because he is one of the "elect" (saved by God). Since he is the "elect" he is guaranteed a place in Heaven, so on earth he goes on a sin bender, and becomes a more and more evil person - but no problem, he was predestined to Heaven.
As a Christian, I was always a little wary of attacks on the Churches. It wasn't that I didn't agree with pointing out issues, just that "real" Christians were often poorly represented in both English Lit (sometimes) and University in general (often). I liked the first few chapters - he seemed like a good Christian. I really had no idea what would happen next. I usually had many, many novels on the go (since I had more than a few classes assigning novel studies). It was the predestination that chilled me. Remember, I had no idea what the outcome of this story was going to be. It started out nicely, but became darker and darker. I learned through class lectures, while reading it, that this was a movement that would sweep through Scotland and down into England (or was in England, or something). This was the root of the Puritan revolution, so it was important for us to understand what was happening in England at this time.
It was the idea that someone felt they were secure in their salvation - to the point of sinning wherever and however they pleased that struck me as silly. This wasn't Christian. At least not anything I recognized as Christian. Those silly Reformers, I thought. And that was that. I learned that Scottish Presbyterians and Dutch Protestants were the remnants of those old conflicts (of course, being Europe, whenever a group got powerful and took over a government, lots of killing had to occur (at least that is what my history classes liked to point out). American Puritans had one up on the regular political killing, they did witch trials - so profs needed to point this out to everyone, since slagging all religion seems to be a bit of an essential at some universities. In this case I was on the prof's side - this wasn't what Jesus came and died for! And I left it at that.
Since our church adopted the new statement of faith, I ended up, years later, having to dust this old History topic off the shelf again. I knew our pastor liked John Piper. I wouldn't have noticed much, but their were clips all over YouTube of this guy questioning everyone else. You know, CS Lewis, NT Wright. Apparently they weren't real evangelicals. I was concerned. First, in Anglicanism, there are both evangelicals and traditionalists (as well as Liberals, Charismatics, etc.) - going to university and attending IVCF (largely run by Anglicans in at my school) showed me how diverse Anglicanism was. Any pastor who couldn't see that C.S. Lewis was a believer was seriously flawed in my mind. What on earth was this guy's problem.
Then our church began to grow - burst at the seems with young adults would be a better description. Like all churches do when they grow, they began to talk about a church expansion. Fine again. They wanted to have one church and many campuses. They were looking into other churches who had done this - a local Pentecostal church, a church in the city and that Mars Hill church in Seattle. It was then that I looked up some YouTube videos of the pastor at Mars Hill. His name is Mark Driscoll and he had these crazy videos about the evil of: A woman working and a man staying home. Yes, you read that correctly. In his church (Mars Hill) a man who stayed home while his wife went to work would be called in for church discipline. I cracked up. What a friggn' idiot. There are a lot of things that you may want to call people on, but employment arrangements? Way to make a mountain out of nothing. Now, there are some versus in the N.T. dealing with men who don't provide for their families, but this was specifically a question about a woman who wanted to work and a man willing to stay home.
http://youtu.be/1WPVxndUcHQ
And our church checked this place out???!!!!
Then, our church decided to do a theology series. The chose Driscoll's video series. I now had to look into this again. Dricoll was a Calvinist/Reformer/neo-either of those words. Those predestination believing, witch burning, death sentence handing out if you disagree with us Calvinists?! Seriously. And, now being the age of the Internet, I looked this stuff up. YUCK.
Fist, what on earth is a Calvinist?
http://calvinistcorner.com/tulip
I am not saying other groups reject everything they believe, but they insist on these five points as essentials to good Christian theology. They base a lot of this on Romans chapter 9 (more on that later). There are some Calvinists who don't go for the TULIP (five points of Calvinism).
John Hesselink in his book “On Being Reformed”:
free from all falsehood and deceit? Again, read about Junia (a woman apostle, whom a later translator tried to hide by switching her name to Junias). The NIV kept it "Junias" while the King James was using older texts (pre-1200s) and translates it "Junia" - so which text is free from deceit and what should we make of the ones that aren't?
http://christianthinktank.com/fem08.html
Anyways... to bring it back to science and The Word, the Chicago Statement denies that the inerrancy of the Bible is limited to spiritual themes, but includes the fields of history and science. The Bible is inerrant on matters of science? Well, depending on what they mean. The details, the genre, the what? How do they square this with Heliocentrism, Galileo, what God said to Job about creation (columns holding up the earth) etc.? I mean, surely the Bible is inerrant, so we need to pretend Columbus and Galileo didn't exist. That Abraham only saw 2 or 3 stars in the sky when God promised him a multitude of descendants (the light from the rest hadn't got here yet). Help! I am not sure I want to witness to people if they have to sign up for this clap trap or associate myself as a believer with that stuff.
This I know little about, however, the three neo-Calvinists I hear about in our church - Keller, Piper and Driscoll (well, in Theology courses, anyway) are all caught up in making sure everyone knows a wife should submit to her husband. Sort of silly, considering that would be a "work" and Calvinists scream that we are saved through Grace alone. Hey, on that vein, why do anything once you are saved? But I digress. One of the out-workings of this obsession with making women do all this work to maintain salvation (notice they skip the part where husbands are to submit to their wives: see here ), is...needing Genesis 2 on to be all about wives being submissive because she sinned first. I won't get into how ridiculous all this is (hint: Eve sin never passes down to us, nor, technically did Christ die for her, if we are literalists, just Adam and his offspring since Near-Eastern worldview doesn't see women as the baby-makers, just the baby-growers). The connection is between the verse where men are to leave their mother and father and join to their wife. It is found in Gen. 2:24 and Ephesians 5:31 so they see it as essential to their neo-Calvinist Theology where wives have to submit to their husbands, but all other works are completely unnecessary for salvation ( Mark Driscoll swears in his sermons, long NYT article) in contrast to Ephesians 5:4, 1 Timothy 6:20 and other verses, because he is free from works, I suppose.
My issue is; why are neo-Calvinists so hung up on wives submitting to husbands lately - is it because it drew the blue collar crowd to Mark Driscoll's church? Are the others hoping for increased numbers in their followings? What it does do is make people read Ephesians 31, then Genesis 2:24 quite literally. This, then makes one look like a heretic to point out Gen. 2 - 11 is based on ancient Mesopotamian myths, not fact. It can still be how God wanted it told, carry the same lessons, but be a Myth. However, neo-Calvinism pressures scientists and historians to chose between what they know is the case and what the church wishes was the case. And why on earth are neo-Calvinists - who believe in predestination of the elect - trying to up their numbers in their churches? Isn't that God's job only?
Fast forward to the last little while. Our church adopted the new statement of faith our denomination drew up. It was billed to the elders as "an improvement over the old statement", if that was it's intent then the "improvements" were to push it more towards Calvinism. I had only been aware of Calvinism through my English Lit and History classes at University. We were assigned a novel that was written to mock 17th Century Calvinism in Scotland and the creep through England (think Puritans). I knew little of Calvinism (attending Baptist based and Alliance churches, I somehow missed this theology). The story was of a Scotsman full of religious zeal and conviction who becomes an evangelist, then as his life continues, becomes a very evil person indeed. But, it really doesn't matter because he is one of the "elect" (saved by God). Since he is the "elect" he is guaranteed a place in Heaven, so on earth he goes on a sin bender, and becomes a more and more evil person - but no problem, he was predestined to Heaven.
As a Christian, I was always a little wary of attacks on the Churches. It wasn't that I didn't agree with pointing out issues, just that "real" Christians were often poorly represented in both English Lit (sometimes) and University in general (often). I liked the first few chapters - he seemed like a good Christian. I really had no idea what would happen next. I usually had many, many novels on the go (since I had more than a few classes assigning novel studies). It was the predestination that chilled me. Remember, I had no idea what the outcome of this story was going to be. It started out nicely, but became darker and darker. I learned through class lectures, while reading it, that this was a movement that would sweep through Scotland and down into England (or was in England, or something). This was the root of the Puritan revolution, so it was important for us to understand what was happening in England at this time.
It was the idea that someone felt they were secure in their salvation - to the point of sinning wherever and however they pleased that struck me as silly. This wasn't Christian. At least not anything I recognized as Christian. Those silly Reformers, I thought. And that was that. I learned that Scottish Presbyterians and Dutch Protestants were the remnants of those old conflicts (of course, being Europe, whenever a group got powerful and took over a government, lots of killing had to occur (at least that is what my history classes liked to point out). American Puritans had one up on the regular political killing, they did witch trials - so profs needed to point this out to everyone, since slagging all religion seems to be a bit of an essential at some universities. In this case I was on the prof's side - this wasn't what Jesus came and died for! And I left it at that.
Since our church adopted the new statement of faith, I ended up, years later, having to dust this old History topic off the shelf again. I knew our pastor liked John Piper. I wouldn't have noticed much, but their were clips all over YouTube of this guy questioning everyone else. You know, CS Lewis, NT Wright. Apparently they weren't real evangelicals. I was concerned. First, in Anglicanism, there are both evangelicals and traditionalists (as well as Liberals, Charismatics, etc.) - going to university and attending IVCF (largely run by Anglicans in at my school) showed me how diverse Anglicanism was. Any pastor who couldn't see that C.S. Lewis was a believer was seriously flawed in my mind. What on earth was this guy's problem.
Then our church began to grow - burst at the seems with young adults would be a better description. Like all churches do when they grow, they began to talk about a church expansion. Fine again. They wanted to have one church and many campuses. They were looking into other churches who had done this - a local Pentecostal church, a church in the city and that Mars Hill church in Seattle. It was then that I looked up some YouTube videos of the pastor at Mars Hill. His name is Mark Driscoll and he had these crazy videos about the evil of: A woman working and a man staying home. Yes, you read that correctly. In his church (Mars Hill) a man who stayed home while his wife went to work would be called in for church discipline. I cracked up. What a friggn' idiot. There are a lot of things that you may want to call people on, but employment arrangements? Way to make a mountain out of nothing. Now, there are some versus in the N.T. dealing with men who don't provide for their families, but this was specifically a question about a woman who wanted to work and a man willing to stay home.
http://youtu.be/1WPVxndUcHQ
And our church checked this place out???!!!!
Then, our church decided to do a theology series. The chose Driscoll's video series. I now had to look into this again. Dricoll was a Calvinist/Reformer/neo-either of those words. Those predestination believing, witch burning, death sentence handing out if you disagree with us Calvinists?! Seriously. And, now being the age of the Internet, I looked this stuff up. YUCK.
Fist, what on earth is a Calvinist?
http://calvinistcorner.com/tulip
I am not saying other groups reject everything they believe, but they insist on these five points as essentials to good Christian theology. They base a lot of this on Romans chapter 9 (more on that later). There are some Calvinists who don't go for the TULIP (five points of Calvinism).
John Hesselink in his book “On Being Reformed”:
- All this not withstanding, we are also children of the Reformation with its recovery of certain evangelical themes: the Word alone, by grace alone, and by faith alone. More particularly, we are a part of a specific Reformation tradition known as Reformed or Presbyterian...
Okay, most Protestants can agree with this. Our final authority is the Word and we are saved by Grace. But then there is a lot of wiggle room with The Word. The Bible, written over thousands of years and many languages, is hardly an easy book to agree on. If it were, there wouldn't be so many denominations of Christianity. From the time Christianity was legalized in the Roman Empire, there have been splits (Easter Orthodox vs. Roman Catholicism). The Protestant movement has been split a million times over. Every group thinks they have the best Theology, Doctrine and or Statement of Faith. But these neo-reformers sure seem hung up on "inerrancy of scripture". I mean no mistakes while coping or translating? Really? Want to explain Junia (LOL, and off topic)?
Statement/Article 12 is the real mess.
WE AFFIRM that Scripture in its entirety is inerrant, being free from all falsehood, fraud, or deceit.
WE DENY that Biblical infallibility and inerrancy are limited to spiritual, religious, or redemptive themes, exclusive of assertions in the fields of history and science. We further deny that scientific hypotheses about earth history may properly be used to overturn the teaching of Scripture on creation and the flood.
free from all falsehood and deceit? Again, read about Junia (a woman apostle, whom a later translator tried to hide by switching her name to Junias). The NIV kept it "Junias" while the King James was using older texts (pre-1200s) and translates it "Junia" - so which text is free from deceit and what should we make of the ones that aren't?
http://christianthinktank.com/fem08.html
Anyways... to bring it back to science and The Word, the Chicago Statement denies that the inerrancy of the Bible is limited to spiritual themes, but includes the fields of history and science. The Bible is inerrant on matters of science? Well, depending on what they mean. The details, the genre, the what? How do they square this with Heliocentrism, Galileo, what God said to Job about creation (columns holding up the earth) etc.? I mean, surely the Bible is inerrant, so we need to pretend Columbus and Galileo didn't exist. That Abraham only saw 2 or 3 stars in the sky when God promised him a multitude of descendants (the light from the rest hadn't got here yet). Help! I am not sure I want to witness to people if they have to sign up for this clap trap or associate myself as a believer with that stuff.
This I know little about, however, the three neo-Calvinists I hear about in our church - Keller, Piper and Driscoll (well, in Theology courses, anyway) are all caught up in making sure everyone knows a wife should submit to her husband. Sort of silly, considering that would be a "work" and Calvinists scream that we are saved through Grace alone. Hey, on that vein, why do anything once you are saved? But I digress. One of the out-workings of this obsession with making women do all this work to maintain salvation (notice they skip the part where husbands are to submit to their wives: see here ), is...needing Genesis 2 on to be all about wives being submissive because she sinned first. I won't get into how ridiculous all this is (hint: Eve sin never passes down to us, nor, technically did Christ die for her, if we are literalists, just Adam and his offspring since Near-Eastern worldview doesn't see women as the baby-makers, just the baby-growers). The connection is between the verse where men are to leave their mother and father and join to their wife. It is found in Gen. 2:24 and Ephesians 5:31 so they see it as essential to their neo-Calvinist Theology where wives have to submit to their husbands, but all other works are completely unnecessary for salvation ( Mark Driscoll swears in his sermons, long NYT article) in contrast to Ephesians 5:4, 1 Timothy 6:20 and other verses, because he is free from works, I suppose.
My issue is; why are neo-Calvinists so hung up on wives submitting to husbands lately - is it because it drew the blue collar crowd to Mark Driscoll's church? Are the others hoping for increased numbers in their followings? What it does do is make people read Ephesians 31, then Genesis 2:24 quite literally. This, then makes one look like a heretic to point out Gen. 2 - 11 is based on ancient Mesopotamian myths, not fact. It can still be how God wanted it told, carry the same lessons, but be a Myth. However, neo-Calvinism pressures scientists and historians to chose between what they know is the case and what the church wishes was the case. And why on earth are neo-Calvinists - who believe in predestination of the elect - trying to up their numbers in their churches? Isn't that God's job only?
