Does Everyone who Reads, Agree?

Does everyone who reads, agree?

It is interesting (at least to me it is) to note that I have received not one challenge to my many criticisms of calvinist doctrines, especially noting the extreme teachings of new calvinism. I have accused calvinism of being a false gospel (The False Calvinist Gospel; The False Calvinist Gospel blog), of containing lies (The Big Lie of the Calvinists – Limited Atonement) of being a counterfeit Christian cult (Calvinism is a Counterfeit Christian Cult) and of having serious limitations in Biblical interpretation (Calvinism and Biblical Interpretation).

I have accused the calvinist God of creating the vast majority of mankind for the single purpose of creating most of mankind evil, then condemning them to hell for their sin which they were created to do (The Calvinist God created most of Mankind for torment in Hell), and that in spite of the calvinists claiming that their God is more sovereign (than what??), their God will only take responsibility for the small number he chooses for heaven (Calvinists deny God His Full Sovereignty).

I have demonstrated that the calvinist God ordained that mankind (through Adam) would sin, yet condemned mankind for that sin which the calvinist God ordered him to commit. In fact, I have shown that calvinists even teach that God decreed sin (Calvin, White), ordained sin (MacArthur, Piper), willed sin (Pink), authored sin (Cheung), ordered sin (Westminster Confession), and that in no way could man ever have made the decision himself that sin should enter this world (The Heresy of Calvinism Refuted Part 2).

And as if this isn’t already more than enough to demonstrate extreme heresy, I have shown that the calvinist God randomly selects a group of people to go to heaven, that it is the luck of this heavenly lotto that permits a small group of mankind to go to heaven, and that the calvinist Jesus didn’t bother dying for even one of the sins of any of the others who didn’t win a prize in the heavenly lotto. I have shown that the calvinist God (according to such as MacArthur) only uses foreknowledge to demonstrate love to the ones he has chosen, and thus the calvinist God’s foreknowledge cannot apply to most of the world – he either doesn’t want to know about them, or even cannot know anything about them by using foreknowledge! (The Heresy of Calvinism Refuted Part 1)

All of these comments so far clearly show that most calvinist beliefs are oxymoronic in that they teach one thing and mean something totally different! For instance, the calvinist God created sin and then blamed Adam for it. The calvinist God also taught that we are saved by the gospel of salvation through Christ, yet requires that we have to be regenerated by the Holy Spirit before we can believe in Jesus Christ! (The Oxymorons of Calvinist Doctrine)

A further oxymoron is that calvinists claim that calvinism is the gospel, yet cannot effectively preach the Biblical gospel to the lost until after they have been born again (they prefer the term “regenerated”). (Calvinism is the non-gospel; Calvinists born again before they are saved)

The calvinist God only loves his chosen ones with agape love, not those who are going to hell, yet commands Christians to love their enemies! It seems that Christians can be more loving than the calvinist God! And in spite of Jesus being the propitiation for the sins of the whole world (1 John 2:2), the calvinists teach that the whole world actually means only the Christians in the world! (The Big Lie of the Calvinists).

Over and over I have demonstrated, in many documents on our website, that calvinism makes so many claims that just cannot be supported from the Bible; that, in fact, calvinism cannot be considered a Christian belief. Many calvinist “teachers” attempt to teach heresies as truth, while twisting facts and using verbal gymnastics to side-step any obvious issues. For example, MacArthur misuses the Granville Sharp rule (of Greek) to try to make foreknowledge the same as the foreordaining of God (MacArthur is Wrong) and misuses Hebrew Parallelism to teach that when the same word is used twice in a verse, then they have to have different meanings (MacArthur is Wrong – Again!). Like all calvinists, MacArthur teaches that no works can save a person, yet also teaches that the calvinist Jesus died for God’s chosen people because they were special enough; of course, the rest were not chosen for heaven because they were not special enough (MacArthur teaches Works Salvation)! As well as this, MacArthur teaches that if Jesus died for all mankind, then all He could offer would be a “potential” salvation, not an “actual” salvation. He says that a potential salvation is only a half-way salvation, not an actual salvation. Does that mean that a savage tiger, a potential man-eater, is only able to half-kill you, but not actually fully kill you? Is “potential” really any less potent than “actual”? Is a potential bullet from a gun any less deadly because it is not yet actual? (Potential Vs Actual Salvation? What’s the Difference?)
By the way, MacArthur, while condemning freemasonry as evil, incongruously also praises the spiritual harvest of his freemason grand master great grandfather (Is MacArthur a freemason?).

So far, in perhaps 12 months of placing such documents online, not one person has been able to make a reasonable comment on why anything that I have written is not true. Currently this website is attracting a good number of genuine hits every day, yet seemingly not one person has been able to refute any of my statements. People are reading my documents, and apparently are either in agreement with the information, or, at least, have no significant dispute with my comments (judging from the total lack of disagreement!). However, I am certain that some of those reading would call themselves genuine calvinists (or new calvinists) yet not one has considered it reasonable or necessary to actually comment.

I realise that when calvinists are confronted with truths that they cannot refute, they are very likely to just ignore them, giving them the silent treatment! I’ve had this reaction from calvinists a few times already: that when they cannot effectively and truthfully answer what is said, they will turn away from you, and go back to their lies. Like Winston Churchill once said, “Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing has happened.” That is, they will turn away and pretend that it (the truth) never happened in the first place.

But the Bible is truth! If the calvinists stuck to what the Bible said, they wouldn’t be calvinists, though. The Jehovah’s Witnesses have their Watchtower Society, the Seventh Day Adventists have their writings of Ellen White, the Mormons have their book of Mormon, and the calvinists have Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion. Without their extra writings of enlightenment they would probably have to believe in the Bible alone. But they cannot worship their Gods without these extra revelations, and they correspondingly condemn others who don’t believe (as they do) of being somehow not spiritual, or unsaved, or unenlightened, etc.

So, here’s the challenge: can any calvinist actually demonstrate to me, by the use of the Bible alone, and without referring to Calvin or any other of their “learned teachers”, any of my writings that are not Scripturally correct? Remember that the Bible has to be consistent throughout; any inconsistency therefore has to have a lie somewhere. And, if they wish to prove that their interpretation is the only one, they will have to absolutely disprove any alternative teaching that gets in the way of their “truth”! No-one has taken up the challenge yet, probably because it’s not easy to disprove a Biblical truth! But, I’m listening!

List of all my posts on this site.

If you wish to read other documents on the heresies of calvinism, please use this link.

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The Seventh Day Adventist Connection to New Calvinism

The Seventh Day Adventist connection to new calvinism

I have documented this connection to some extent elsewhere; however, it is necessary to demonstrate the extent to which the Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) teaching on daily justification has influenced the development of new calvinism.
“Seventh Day Adventists Believe …..”
Daily Justification. All believers who are living the Spirit-filled sanctified life (Christ-possessed) have a continuing need for daily justification (Christ-bestowed). We need this because of conscious transgressions and because of errors we may commit unwillingly. Realizing the sinfulness of the human heart, David requested forgiveness for his “hidden faults” (Ps. 19:12, RSV; cf. Jer. 17:9). Speaking specifically of the sins of believers, God assures us that “if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2:1).
(https://www.sdanet.org/atissue/books/27/27-10.htm)

SDAs believe that it is necessary for them to continue to obey the Law of God in order to demonstrate that they are saved. They do not necessarily believe that the works of the Law save them; rather, they believe that if they are truly saved, then they will indeed obey the Law. Effectively it results in their obedience to the Law of God being that which saved them, because that is what they have to demonstrate in order to be considered saved. Obedience to the Law is theoretically a consequence of their salvation, yet in practice it becomes the cause! Therefore, if you sin, you may demonstrate your lack of justification and so you must repent, confess and renounce your sin in order to be restored to justification with God. The act of repentance remains the responsibility of the SDA believer, though.

The SDAs were not the only ones to perceive a need for daily or ongoing justification to maintain their salvation. Luther also taught that justification was ongoing: On no condition is sin a passing phase, but we are justified daily by the unmerited forgiveness of sins and by the justification of God’s mercy. Sin remains, then, perpetually in this life, until the hour of the last judgment comes and then at last we shall be made perfectly righteous. (Luther’s Works Vol.34, p.167.)
Daily we sin, daily we are continually justified, just as a doctor is forced to heal sickness day by day until it is cured. (Luther’s Works Vol.34, p.191.)
Of course, Luther was still very catholic in his doctrines, being an Augustinian monk, and hadn’t quite broken free of the need for daily or regular confession for justification.

Even Calvin couldn’t clearly rule out ongoing justification when he claimed that justification and sanctification couldn’t be separated. “Christ cannot be divided into parts, so the two things, justification and sanctification, which we perceive to be united together in him, are inseparable.” (Institutes Bk 3 Ch 11 Section 6)
Reformed writers such as John Murray also taught (in his document “Law and Grace”) that continuing obedience to the Law was necessary to maintain your elect status.
Puritan Anthony Burgess in 1654 wrote Thus it is here, God out of his mere grace did upon our believing put us in a state of Justification, from which favour we should fall every moment, did not God continue us therein. Hence in the Text its (unclear word) God that is continually justifying of us; ….. thus it is in our Justification, we need a constant remission, we want a perpetual imputation, because our sins and imperfections are renewed daily. (The True Doctrines of Justification Asserted & Vindicated – Anthony Burgess)

And the Gospel Coalition (of new calvinist leaders) states:
As we sin daily, so he justifies daily, and we must daily go to him for it. Justification is an ever-running fountain, and therefore we cannot look to have all the water at once.
(Quoted from puritan William Fenner, by Ray Ortlund, Renewal Ministries, www.ortlund.net, at the The Gospel Coalition National Conference, 13 April 2011. Ortlund’s website states that he is a Council member with The Gospel Coalition.)
It is reasonable to assume that the Gospel Coalition believes in both a once-off justification when born again, and an ongoing justification (by God) to maintain our righteous status before a holy God.

It was the SDA teaching of an ongoing justification process that Robert Brinsmead (an Australian who declared himself to be a Reform SDA) would take to USA with the Australian Forum around 1970. It was also in 1970 that Jay Adams, a professor at Westminster Theological Seminary (USA) wrote “Competent to Counsel”, a book that would abruptly change the direction of church counselling. And it was Jon Zens’ connection with Robert Brinsmead through Westminster Theological Seminary where he completed studies in 1972. It was at Westminster that he read Brinsmead’s Present truth magazine (which outlined Brinsmead’s views in the Australian Forum). Zens was reformed Baptist, but saw no real conflict with Present Truth which was reformed SDA.

It was Zens who was to do much of the pioneering work in the development of New Covenant Theology, which would play a major role in the development of Sonship Theology, which would, in turn, become known as new calvinism.
Zens’ groundbreaking articles in the late 1970s, “Is There a ‘Covenant of Grace’?” and “Crucial Thoughts on ‘Law’ in the New Covenant,” were highly instrumental in developing what came to be called “New Covenant Theology.”
(https://frankviola.me/jonzens/)
The Sonship movement finds its roots in the ministry of the late Dr. Jack Miller, founder of World Harvest Mission, a sending missions agency.
(Christ Covenant Presbyterian Church’s position on Sonship Theology)
(Jack Miller) served as pastor of New Life Presbyterian Church in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, and taught practical theology at Westminster Theological Seminary. Miller founded World Harvest Mission (now named Serge) and the New Life Presbyterian network of Orthodox Presbyterian churches. He was known for emphasizing the Christian’s status as a child of God, a view known as sonship theology. (Wikipedia)

However, it was Prof Jay Adams who would be the pivotal person in the development of counselling that would support this new theology at Westminster. His ground-breaking book “Competent to Counsel: Introduction to Nouthetic Counseling” came around the same time as the SDA input from Brinsmead, and the New Covenant Theology of Jon Zens. From Adams’ input came nouthetic counselling which was designed to provide counselling support for the new thinking that was developing at Westminster Seminary.

But the new nouthetic counselling movement apparently wasn’t as supportive of the developing Sonship Theology as it could have been. Jay Adams himself appears to have had strong views on the justification being a once-off event; thus his counselling methodology was going to be a problem for a theology that had taken the SDA doctrine of an ongoing or daily justification on board. If nouthetic counselling were to be an integral part of the new theology, then it had to be able to counsel for ongoing repentance and restoration by God’s grace. Nouthetic counselling allowed for God’s forgiveness, but it also assumed that God’s elect were justified once at regeneration, and that such people would demonstrate this by their puritan lifestyles. A puritan lifestyle didn’t really permit those with serious sin to continue to be declared God’s elect. If you sinned badly, you were out, off the list of elect! The nouthetic counselling of Jay Adams was therefore more suited for keeping people living within the puritan lifestyle, rather than counselling for restoration back to the puritan lifestyle if they had departed from it!

Adams didn’t actually see a problem with the name Biblical Counselling; rather, it appears that his disagreement would eventually be over its application to a doctrine of an ongoing justification for ongoing restoration.
In a 1976 book, What About Nouthetic Counseling, Adams said he actually preferred the title “biblical counseling.”
Powlison was to take over Adams position in the development of Biblical Counselling. Note that “Pastoral Practice” now becomes “Biblical Counselling”!
The next big leader in Adams’s counseling movement was David Powlison, who succeeded Adams as the editor of The Journal of Pastoral Practice and immediately renamed it The Journal of Biblical Counseling.
The new Biblical Counselling movement was then developed further by Powlison, Welch and Tripp into the Biblical Counselling in churches today.
Biblical Counsellors identify with second-generation leaders like David Powlison, Ed Welch, and Paul Tripp.
(All these quotes from https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/two-sides-of-the-counseling-coin/)

All of this (that is, Sonship theology/new calvinism) has come about as a result of the fusion of ideas at Westminster, ideas such as (a) the ongoing justification of the SDA, (b) the traditional calvinism upon which Westminster was commenced (but which same doctrine was losing popularity to the young evangelical fundamentalists), and (c) the need for a church counselling model that was supportive of the doctrines taught. In fact, new calvinist John Piper says that There would be no New Calvinism without Westminster Seminary. (https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/5-reasons-why-the-new-calvinism-is-worth-supporting/)

The fusion of these ideas initially produced nouthetic counselling which was to become Biblical Counselling, and from these counselling models developed the Sonship Theology which would then become new calvinism. It was the early development of Biblical Counselling which came first, which then required a new theology framework in which to present the new counselling model. Biblical Counselling was not greatly supportive of any theology which required living a good life (which automatically cancelled out traditional calvinism). Instead it was more supportive of a theology that catered for people who sinned regularly. Traditional calvinist theology strongly discouraged people from committing sin in the first place, and frowned upon a lifestyle that appeared to condone, even encourage sin among God’s people. But Biblical Counselling was best used to restore sinful people back to a righteous relationship with God. And, best of all, people who sinned badly didn’t have to be removed from church membership, that is, if they repented and were restored again (by God’s grace, naturally).
See New Calvinism is Biblical Counselling

The most effective theology platform for Biblical Counselling to use was therefore one that permitted God’s people to sin, yet also to repent and be restored, all by the grace of God. Such theology may not actually openly encourage people to sin – it was always accepted that proper theology should appear to discourage sin – but it should make it much easier for people to repent and be restored to fellowship in the event of them sinning.

The New Covenant Theology of Jon Zens was indeed supportive of Biblical Counselling. New Covenant Theology was refined further to become Sonship Theology, which taught that no matter how much God’s elect sinned, God’s grace would always be sufficient to overcome their sin. Basically, no matter how much you sin, you cannot ever lose your salvation if you are one of God’s elect.
Sonship Theology is an attempt to elevate grace, the assurance of salvation we have in Jesus Christ, and the intention of God to preserve Christ’s sheep so that not one is ever lost. (https://covenant-presbyterian.church/articles/from-the-pastors-desk/sonship-theology)

Sonship Theology was a perfect consequence of the development of Biblical Counselling. Sonship Theology was an effective tool for Biblical Counselling. But many calvinists were not as supportive as they could be. It just didn’t have the right image to get people’s attention. It needed a new marketing image in order to escape the obvious accusations that it was only an excuse to be able to sin without penalty from a holy God. New Covenant Theology had been seen as a development of traditional Covenant Theology; it wasn’t an alien theology but just a “new” upgraded version of the “old”. And likewise, the new marketed image of “new” calvinism (instead of Sonship Theology) was seen as an upgraded version of the “old” calvinism. And in the past 12 or so years, new calvinism has become the name of the theology that was developed to support the doctrines of Biblical Counselling in the church today. The marketing has indeed been very successful, so far.

For further related reading please go to:

New calvinism is Biblical Counselling

Biblical Counselling as an Aid to Control the Church

The New Calvinism Gospel

Biblical Counselling & New Calvinism today

The Gospel of New Calvinism

Also try these:

The False Calvinist Gospel blog

The False Calvinist Gospel

List of all my posts on this site.

If you wish to read other documents on the heresies of calvinism, please use this link.

Sermons and Messages

Please feel free to comment  Comments and contact page
Comments and replies are recorded on the Comments page.

New Calvinism is Biblical Counselling

New Calvinism is Biblical Counselling

Both new calvinism and Biblical Counselling were developed into what they are today from their combined beginnings in the 1970s at Westminster Theological Seminary (USA). One is not separate from the other; each one is an integral part of the other. From the same fusion of Seventh Day Adventist and calvinist beliefs at Westminster in the 1970s came both nouthetic counselling and Sonship Theology in the 1980s. Both were founded upon the same teachings and each one cannot exist without the other. From nouthetic counselling came Biblical Counselling and from Sonship Theology came new calvinism. And, today, new calvinism is Biblical Counselling.

New calvinism is traditional calvinism with the Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) doctrine of ongoing or daily justification added. The following from SDA sources demonstrate this.
In this regard justification and judgment should be conceived as integral elements of the ongoing movement of salvation-history.
(https://www.adventistbiblicalresearch.org/materials/theology-salvation/justification-faith-and-judgment-according-works)
 “Seventh Day Adventists Believe …..”
Daily Justification. All believers who are living the Spirit-filled sanctified life (Christ-possessed) have a continuing need for daily justification (Christ-bestowed). We need this because of conscious transgressions and because of errors we may commit unwillingly. Realizing the sinfulness of the human heart, David requested forgiveness for his “hidden faults” (Ps. 19:12, RSV; cf. Jer. 17:9). Speaking specifically of the sins of believers, God assures us that “if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2:1).
(https://www.sdanet.org/atissue/books/27/27-10.htm)
Also see The Seventh Day Adventist Connection to New Calvinism

Even Luther taught that justification was ongoing: On no condition is sin a passing phase, but we are justified daily by the unmerited forgiveness of sins and by the justification of God’s mercy. Sin remains, then, perpetually in this life, until the hour of the last judgment comes and then at last we shall be made perfectly righteous. (Luther’s Works Vol.34, p.167.)
Daily we sin, daily we are continually justified, just as a doctor is forced to heal sickness day by day until it is cured. (Luther’s Works Vol.34, p.191.)

Calvin appeared to vacillate on this matter somewhat, but did say, “Christ cannot be divided into parts, so the two things, justification and sanctification, which we perceive to be united together in him, are inseparable.” (Institutes Bk 3 Ch 11 Section 6)

Traditional calvinism generally assumes a once-off justification at regeneration, and that if you fell significantly into sin, it demonstrated that you weren’t actually one of God’s elect after all. If you were one of God’s elect, then you would not have fallen into significant sin. Significant sin then meant the likelihood of being removed from a calvinist church membership as not being qualified (that is, not demonstrating that you were one of the elect).

But mega-churches don’t get built quickly (if at all!) when chronic or serious sinners have to be removed from church membership lists. Having a doctrine that permits sinners to remain in membership is a bonus, especially if you are thinking of the bottom line on the church’s bank statement! So today we have new calvinism that permits the sinner to remain as one of God’s elect, subject to God’s grace being sufficient to overcome your sin. New calvinism teaches that if God, by grace, gives you the gift of repentance, then you are one of his elect. (Of course, if you’re not one of God’s elect, then you won’t repent, according to new calvinist theology. The calvinist God’s grace will not be made available to you!) No longer is there one major sin strike and you’re out!

New calvinism (Sonship Theology) basically says that if you are one of God’s children (sons), then no matter how much you fall into sin, God will always grant you sufficient grace to repent and be restored to righteousness. (That’s why so many new calvinist churches are called Grace churches!) One of God’s elect cannot commit any sin that would cause them to lose their salvation. If God by his grace grants you repentance for your sin, then you are still considered his child. (The new calvinist God wouldn’t grant repentance to any non-elect!) No sin can ever cause you to lose your salvation! If a sin did lose you your salvation, then you weren’t one of God’s elect in the first place. This is new calvinism in a nutshell. A big danger is that it can introduce perfection in holiness teachings. That is, you can sin as much as you wish, but repenting all the time, and you remain one of God’s elect; sin cannot seperate you from a holy God!

With new calvinism you could repent and be restored back into church fellowship again, because that repentance showed that God had indeed been gracious toward you in permitting you to want to repent. If you weren’t one of God’s elect, then God wouldn’t give you any grace and therefore you wouldn’t want to repent. A lack of repentance would demonstrate the lack of God’s grace in your life and therefore you could not be accepted as one of God’s elect. Only one of God’s elect would be granted repentance by the grace of God. This is the theology of new calvinism: that you only have to repent, confess and renounce your sin and everything is OK again.

New calvinism teaches that you have to be restored daily to justification (some prefer the term “righteousness” but mean “justification”) with God (as per that SDA connection) in order to demonstrate your perseverance in the faith as God’s elect. But unlike SDA doctrine, it also teaches that the responsibility for this perseverance rests upon God, not man. If you are one of God’s elect, he will provide ongoing repentance and restoration, ensuring that your justification as one of God’s elect will not be compromised by anything you can do. So, if we sin daily, God restores us daily by giving us repentance daily. Because the new calvinist elect cannot lose his salvation no matter what sin he commits (because God’s elect are supposedly prevented by God from committing anything that would lose them their elect status) then they remain justified until the end. The new calvinist elect of God cannot lose his salvation ever, no matter what your sin. Technically he cannot ever be unjustified!

Thus, the new calvinists teach that no matter what sin you might commit, you are effectively justified from every sin on an ongoing basis; such justification maintains the righteousness of the elect before holy God. The Gospel Coalition (of new calvinist leaders) sometimes states that it believes in a once-off justification, yet the following from their 2011 National Conference states otherwise.
As we sin daily, so he justifies daily, and we must daily go to him for it. Justification is an ever-running fountain, and therefore we cannot look to have all the water at once.
(Quoted from puritan William Fenner, by Ray Ortlund, Renewal Ministries, www.ortlund.net, The Gospel Coalition National Conference, 13 April 2011. Ortlund’s website states that he is a Council member with The Gospel Coalition.)
It is reasonable to assume that the Gospel Coalition believes in both a once-off justification when born again, and an ongoing justification (by God) to maintain our righteous status before a holy God.

Even the reformed writer John Murray says (in “Law and Grace”) apparently in support of an ongoing need to maintain our justification with God by persevering in holiness:
Law not only enunciates justice; it guards justice. It ensures that where there is righteousness to the full extent of its demand there will be the corresponding justification and life. ……
He (Paul) lists for us a catalogue of sins, thereby illustrating the unrighteousness which excludes from the kingdom of God—fornication, idolatry, adultery, effeminacy, sodomy, thievery, covetousness, drunkenness, reviling, extortion (I Corinthians 6:9, 10). His intent is to illustrate the character and conduct which identify those who have no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God (cf. verse 10), and he is saying in effect: ‘You believers have been washed and sanctified and justified, and you cannot play fast and loose with any wrongdoing; as heirs of the kingdom of God you must behave accordingly; you must appreciate the antithesis between the kingdom of God amid the world’. ……
It is one of the most perilous distortions of the doctrine of grace, and one that has carried with it the saddest records of moral and spiritual disaster, to assume that past privileges, however high they may be, guarantee the security of men irrespective of perseverance in faith and holiness.

So, whether you call it ongoing justification or ongoing righteousness, new calvinist teaching still comes down to the same thing: that sin should identify us as not being one of God’s elect, and therefore we should maintain our “cleanness” from sin to maintain our perceived position as one of God’s elect. New calvinism also teaches that if you are one of God’s elect, God will ensure that whenever you sin (no matter how badly), he will take responsibility for guaranteeing that your state of justification (or righteousness) is maintained (by his grace) until the end.

But how do churches actually implement this theology? It’s all very well to teach that we must repent daily so God can justify us daily, but how is this to be carried out in real practice in the church? How do we actually go to God daily for his justification? This is where Biblical Counselling comes into the picture. Biblical Counselling is the practical framework that puts the new calvinist theology into action. New calvinism (Sonship Theology) is the theoretical side of this theology, but Biblical Counselling is the actual practical application of this theology. In other words, new calvinism is Biblical Counselling, and Biblical Counselling is new calvinism. If you are a new calvinist church, you’ll need Biblical Counselling to implement your theology. If you have Biblical Counselling in action, then you are already implementing new calvinism. One implies the other; you cannot have one without the other!

Biblical Counselling assumes that you will sin, and when you do sin, you will confess it to your counsellor, who will counsel you back to restoration in the church. Catholic doctrine also teaches an ongoing need to repent and be forgiven through the confessional. If a catholic dies unjustified (because of unconfessed sin), then he can’t be justified and can’t be saved. (Purgatory is their back door to salvation!)

Both Biblical Counselling and the catholic confessional require that the church (via its representative – Biblical Counsellor or father confessor) be the adjudicator for the administering of forgiveness. It is the church in both cases that determines whether a person is sufficiently penitent to enable restoration back into the church fold again. In this way the church retains control over who may be restored (by God’s grace), and thus the church becomes the administrator of the grace of God. By this means the church may define what is acceptable via its acceptance or otherwise of a person’s repentance. And the church may also define who is and who isn’t of the elect of God, based upon their views of the person’s repentance and restoration.

The new calvinist church (through the Biblical Counsellor) therefore has some measure of control over what it is prepared to define as sin. That is, the church member toes the line according to the requirements of the church or else he is to be disciplined by the church for not conforming to Biblical Counselling recommendations. He may even be declared non-elect (effectively non-Christian!) and dismissed from church membership. In this way the theology of new calvinism may be reinforced. Biblical Counselling is effectively a means by which the church may define who is elect of God, and by which means they may reject as non-elect those who do not conform to the discipline of the church. New calvinism is Biblical Counselling and Biblical Counselling is new calvinism! Beware of this pernicious evil ever gaining a foothold in your church!

For further related reading please go to:

The Seventh Day Adventist Connection to New Calvinism

Biblical Counselling as an Aid to Control the Church

The New Calvinism Gospel

Biblical Counselling & New Calvinism today

The Gospel of new Calvinism

Also try these:

The False Calvinist Gospel blog

The False Calvinist Gospel

List of all my posts on this site.

If you wish to read other documents on the heresies of calvinism, please use this link.

Sermons and Messages

Please feel free to comment  Comments and contact page
Comments and replies are recorded on the Comments page.

Biblical Counselling as an Aid to Control the Church

Biblical Counselling as an Aid to Control the Church

This is part of a larger document called The Gospel of New Calvinism which covers both the gospel and Biblical Counselling of new calvinism today.
New calvinism is a term loosely applied to a syncretistic belief system based upon the merging of Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) beliefs and traditional calvinist beliefs. It was a Seventh Day Adventist with calvinist leanings named Robert Brinsmead who was largely responsible for kick-starting what we call new calvinism today. Brinsmead led the Australian Forum (a think tank group of people to discuss calvinist SDA beliefs). In 1970 the Australian Forum commenced to spread its reformed or calvinist SDA views, and these views were taken up by Westminster Theological Seminary (USA).  

Also, in 1970 Jay Adams of Westminster Seminary published “Competent to Counsel”, a document that would eventually lead to what we know today as the Biblical Counselling movement. But, the views of the Australian Forum were to also merge with the traditional calvinist views of Westminster Seminary to lead, firstly to Sonship Theology, which was then adapted and relabelled as new calvinism. The traditional calvinist views were to be transformed into the new calvinism of the Young, Restless and Reformed (YRR), a phrase apparently coined for new calvinists by Christianity Today in 2006.

So what are the distinctives of new calvinism? It is clear that Brinsmead (with his Australian Forum) and Jay Adams (with his new direction on counselling) both played a major part in this new calvinist belief system. New calvinism is a fusion, a merging together, of traditional calvinism and SDA beliefs. Take the traditional calvinist gospel of the unconditional election which taught that if you were one of God’s elect, you were guaranteed your salvation forever. But if you didn’t persevere in the works of righteousness, then you were not one of God’s elect and therefore you were not going to heaven, ever. That is, one major sinful strike and you’re out!

However, add the SDA gospel which taught that if you fell into sin, you could choose to repent, confess and renounce your sin. In this way God would provide regular sanctification so that you could be regularly justified. Thus, you add the SDA fusion of an ongoing justification based upon an ongoing sanctification (which resulted from your ongoing repentance, confession and renouncing of sin).
This is a major tenet taught by new calvinists today, that we need an ongoing or daily justification.
As we sin daily, so he justifies daily, and we must daily go to him for it.
(Justification Vs Self-justification, The Gospel Coalition National Conference 13/04/11)

Calvinists could now sin and regain their justification and still have a guarantee of salvation at the end. And, the SDAs gained from this a guarantee of salvation which their old gospel didn’t give them.
(For further reading, see The New Calvinism Gospel post and The Gospel of New Calvinism.)

This new gospel of the new calvinists was a seller. That it wasn’t scripturally correct didn’t matter; when did being scripturally correct matter today in an age of such consumerism? (That is, you deliver the goods that the population wants, and they’ll beat a pathway to your door!) No longer did they have to, as calvinists, kick out those who sinned badly, and declaring them to be not of God’s elect. No, that was a thing of the past. Now, if a person could be convinced to repent, confess and renounce his sin, then he could remain in the church, for God would only have granted repentance to his elect. Losing members due to sinful behaviour had been a problem in the past. Not only did it lower the numbers in church (and, very importantly, the offering!) but it prevented the scandal of having sinful church members being the cause of others not coming to their church. But now even the sinners could stay (and play and pay!).

This was to form the basis of Sonship Theology, which taught that, as God’s children, Christians could sin, knowing that if they were of God’s elect, their God would always provide sufficient grace to reinstall them into fellowship. That is, if they were God’s elect, then they couldn’t do anything that would lose them their assurance of salvation.
If you can never be lost, then no sin you commit can ever change that fact. If you repented of your sin, then new calvinism taught that God had given repentance to you as a gift; thus that sin could not affect your salvation. Repentance was the evidence that God was demonstrating that his grace would overcome your sin. If you repented, it demonstrated that you were one of God’s elect. It was the lack of repentance that demonstrated that you couldn’t be one of God’s elect. Now the demonstration of your election had gone from living a puritan lifestyle to a willingness to be able to repent of and renounce any sin you committed!

But how do you administer such a loose belief system? If people may be permitted to sin, then repent, confess and renounce such sin in order to remain acceptable to their God (often for the sake of the church and its leaders!), then what’s to stop them from abusing this system? What’s to stop them from committing sin as and when they like, knowing that they’ll be still able to get up and continue running the race? What checks and balances are there in such a system? You don’t want to kick people out because a good business never kicks out its better customers. But you do need some form of control to prevent it turning into a sin free-for-all. You need “control”!

Enter Biblical Counselling! Over the centuries the catholic church has used the confessional to control its members. Originally known as nouthetic counselling, Biblical Counselling has now taken the place of the catholic confession. New calvinism theology required an ongoing repentance leading to ongoing justification, and Biblical Counselling would provide the practical means by which God’s “elect” would demonstrate their election by the repentance allegedly given to them as a gift from God.

Biblical Counsellors often encourage people to confess sins, telling them that sin is the basis for their problems, and that the removal of such sin is the first step toward solving their problems. If you have a problem, then sin is responsible somewhere, and that includes you. What sin might you have committed that could have helped cause the problem? If you have a problem with another person, for instance, what is your particular responsibility for what has happened. If your husband has been unfaithful to you, then what might you have done to lead to this happening? Perhaps if you’d been a better wife, then maybe this mightn’t have happened. Biblical Counsellors are seemingly more interested in keeping the peace in the church than they are with seeking actual truth. In fact, truth becomes a problem if it might get in the way of reconciliation!

Church leaders want their churches to be big, rich and successful. This means lots of people putting lots of money into the offering plates! Sinful behaviour and scandals aren’t helpful. Reconciliation for all is the name of the game, even if some truth has to be sacrificed for the sake of the unity of the brethren!
Of course, if these sinners had sinned against another member of that church community, then it required that those alleged victims of the sin (or crime as it would often turn out) also should forgive and forget such sin. If God had forgiven such sin, then those offended church members should be able to do no less than to also forgive and forget. The sinner was now reconciled to the new calvinist God and therefore the victims should likewise be reconciled to the sinner who had offended them – even if that sin was a crime such as child abuse or rape, wife-beating or being unfaithful to one’s spouse.

All this was usually dealt with under the heading of Biblical Counselling, in an effort to get the sinner to repent, confess and renounce his sin. And, of course, the victims were also counselled (biblically, of course!) to give up their feelings (of anger etc) that were not helping in the process of reconciliation. Biblical Counselling became a means by which the church and its leadership might try to retain control over a church which was breaking up due to the aggravated sin of some members.

But many victims of such crime became upset, when they saw the church accept the repentance and renouncing of the sin of the perpetrator. They couldn’t understand why the church was refusing to hand it over to the police, preferring to deal with it within the church body. The victims felt that the church had sided with the perpetrator at their expense, all for the sake of keeping the church “clean” from scandal. The sinner might have been “rescued” for God, but the victims were expected to deny justice to their family because it might harm the eternal security of the sinner. And it was best to keep it out of the hands of secular authorities too. The victim all too often then became the criminal, being treated as such by many churches. The anti-“whistle-blower” mentality is strong in churches that strive for success rather than the gospel. The catch-cry was the fight to maintain the unity of the church, even if it meant creating division to achieve such unity! Divisive elements could easily be persuaded to leave.

Because ongoing justification was dependent upon ongoing sanctification, and because it is to be expected that all will commit regular sin (even church members in good standing), then Biblical Counselling requires that all should be ready and willing to regularly confess sin, repenting and renouncing it. In this way all sin would hopefully be brought out into the open (and dealt with). If a Biblical Counsellor perceived (rightly or wrongly!) a problem with someone, he or she could report such confession to the church for possible disciplinary action. Such disciplinary action could lead to the one confessing a sin to be approached by the church, often in the public forum of a church members’ meeting or church service, in order to challenge that alleged “sinner’ with his or her sin, and a requirement that they deal with it. (Even if they had actually been the victim!)

Public naming and shaming is a part of the discipline of many new calvinist churches. Many also have discipline agreement documents that prospective members are required to sign before they may be permitted to join. Biblical Counselling can be used as a means of control of church members, especially in new calvinist churches such as C J Mahaney’s Sovereign Grace Ministries (which has also been extensively exposed as having child abuse problems within its ranks with alleged evidences of cover-up by church leaders – see https://www.washingtonian.com/2016/02/14/the-sex-abuse-scandal-that-devastated-a-suburban-megachurch-sovereign-grace-ministries/).
The confidentiality of the confessional has also been used to attempt control in new calvinist churches – see https://wonderingeagle.wordpress.com/2015/09/19/has-god-foreordained-an-alleged-child-sex-abuse-cover-up-in-sovereign-grace-ministrieschurches-is-that-why-cj-mahaney-is-so-sacred/ to see how C J Mahaney of Sovereign Grace Ministries tried to blackmail one of his members.

It is good that a church should be able to counsel its members and good also that such counselling be Biblical. However, counsellors accredited with Biblical Counselling Australia (as most accredited church counsellors in Australia are today) are neither Biblical, nor good counsellors. And if you feel you have the need of a Biblical Counsellor, be very careful what you say, for what you say may be taken down as evidence and used against you. (Except that they don’t have to read you your “rights” before they start the interrogation!)

In conclusion, when looking for a suitable church to attend, try to avoid those who advertise Biblical Counselling, as it is all too often a euphemism for overly strict discipline and control of its members. And don’t sign a discipline agreement before joining a church. Church discipline is certainly a necessary part of a Christian’s life; all of us must be accountable to someone somewhere for our actions. But when counselling is used for the purposes of establishing authority, rather than helping the person, it becomes a controlling whip in the hands of the church. Control without compassion is a dictatorship.

See also

Biblical Counselling & new calvinism today

The New Calvinism Gospel blog

The Gospel of new Calvinism

List of all my posts on this site.

If you wish to read other documents on the heresies of calvinism, please use this link.

Sermons and Messages

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Comments and replies are recorded on the Comments page.

The New Calvinism Gospel

The New Calvinism Gospel

New calvinism is different from traditional calvinism, and, in particular, that includes its gospel. New calvinism is becoming, or is already, the dominant viewpoint of calvinism today. But few people realise that it was founded upon a fusion of Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) and calvinist beliefs, and that a Seventh Day Adventist with calvinist leanings named Robert Brinsmead was largely responsible for kick-starting what we call new calvinism today.

The Australian Forum was a group of people (led by Brinsmead) which, in 1970 commenced to spread its reformed or calvinist SDA views. These views were taken up by Westminster Theological Seminary (USA). The views of the Australian Forum were to merge with the traditional calvinist views of Westminster Seminary to lead, firstly to Sonship Theology, which was then adapted and relabelled as new calvinism.

This document is part of a larger document which covers both the gospel of new calvinism and Biblical Counselling (which was required for the control of the far looser framework of new calvinism). The complete document may be read here: The Gospel of New Calvinism. Also see Biblical Counselling as an Aid to Control the Church.

So what is new calvinism? Basically it’s a fusion of traditional calvinism and Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) beliefs.
Let’s look at two scenarios.
(a) Scenario 1: You are a traditional calvinist.
This gospel is based upon the unconditional election by God of a special group of people who will go to heaven. If God didn’t choose you to go to heaven, then you will go to hell. You don’t make a decision to be saved; God will make that decision. You don’t choose God; he chooses you. If you are one of God’s elect (that is, he chooses you to go to heaven), then you will demonstrate this by living a puritan lifestyle, showing by your works that you are one of God’s elect. In fact, if you are one of God’s elect, God will ensure that you will stay good until the end; you cannot lose your salvation. Of course, if you are not one of God’s elect (that is, you are the non-elect), then you will be incapable of any sustained works of righteousness; you will not be enabled to persevere until the end.

The advantage of the calvinist gospel is clearly only on the side of those who are chosen by God; the non-elect have no real advantages at all, other than being allowed to live for a few years before being tormented in hell for eternity! However, if you are one of God’s chosen ones, then you cannot miss out on heaven ever. God has said you will go to heaven, and to heaven you will go! The gospel of the traditional calvinist is out of your hands. You will either believe or not believe depending upon what God has chosen for you to believe. Nothing anyone can do can possibly alter this.

(b) Scenario 2: You are a traditional Seventh Day Adventist (SDA).
Your gospel is based upon the continued upholding of the works of the Law of God. Despite the SDA claims that they are saved by Christ at the cross, they also teach that you could lose your salvation if you break the Laws of God. Obedience to the Law of God may overrule all other beliefs. So, while this gospel on the surface appears to be Christian (and some may actually believe so), ultimately it is obedience to the Laws of God which will define them as either saved or not saved. The SDA must obey the works of the Law of God until the end. If he breaks a law, then he must repent, confess and get himself back on track for salvation. If he refuses to repent, confess and get right with God, then he may be considered to have lost his salvation (or to have never been saved in the first place). If he were truly saved, he would do those works of the Law of God, and get right with God when he breaks them. In many ways their gospel is very much like the calvinist gospel: if you persevere to the end, you will be saved.

In SDA theology, if you fall into sin, it is your responsibility to help yourself get back on track and righteous for God. It is your responsibility to make sure you repent, confess and renounce your sin in order to regain righteousness with God. You have to reapply the gospel of reconciliation to your life each time you fall, in order to be sanctified and thus justified in the sight of God. The SDA gospel requires ongoing justification based upon ongoing sanctification in order to be saved at the end.

The advantage of the SDA gospel, however, is that you are permitted to decide to clean up your act; this is not dependent upon God deciding whether you are one of his elect or not. If you repent and confess your sin, then you may begin the process of healing and ultimate acceptance by God (that is, justified).

In calvinist theology, if you fall into sin, God will cause you to be made right again, although if you were truly one of God’s elect, the calvinist God would prevent you from significant sin anyway. The downside of the calvinist gospel is that it only covers your spiritual health needs if you are one of God’s elect. If you are not one of God’s elect, then you will get no help at all. The decision about getting better or not is not in your hands; it’s not your responsibility. However, if you are one of God’s elect, then your healing process will be total and complete; you need do nothing; indeed, you can do nothing for yourself!

So why not merge the best of these two gospels! If the calvinist God has chosen you, then you will be looked after totally until the end. Of course, you must be chosen in order to get this, and live a puritan lifestyle as a consequence. However, if you fall away seriously (that is, stop living a puritan lifestyle), then you may no longer be considered as one of the elect, even if you should repent and confess your sin. You may be deemed to have received a temporary faith as defined by Calvin, never receiving true saving faith in the first place (Calvin’s Institutes Bk 3 Ch 2 Section 11). The calvinist gospel generally doesn’t permit coming back from serious sin.

But SDAs, while not having such an ironclad assurance of salvation at the end, are allowed to choose to repent and confess their sin, after which, if they renounced that sin completely, they are then justified and consequently permitted to resume their relationship with their God. There is no guaranteed salvation at the end, but they are allowed to get back on the horse after they have fallen off! Falling from grace doesn’t necessarily end their hope of salvation, which it might for the traditional calvinist.

So imagine having a syncretistic belief that allows the calvinist guarantee of salvation at the end, and the SDA guarantee that if they fall they could get back into the running again. Enter the new calvinist belief! Such a belief still guarantees assurance of salvation at the end, plus the option of being able to get back into the running if the wheels fall off the cart during the race. All the calvinist has to do is to add on the option of being able to repent, confess and renounce their sins (no matter how large or serious), and they have a winner indeed! Thus the new calvinist also takes on board the SDA teaching that an ongoing justification is dependent upon an ongoing sanctification. No longer are you justified once at the new birth; now you have an ongoing justification (by God, of course) based upon an ongoing sanctification.

The new calvinist could sin and their God would still accept them. This was so much more appealing to the world today which wanted to have both their sin and God’s salvation! No longer did they have to, as calvinists, kick out those who sinned badly, declaring them to be not of God’s elect. No, that was a thing of the past. Now, if a person could be convinced to repent, confess and renounce his sin, then he could remain in the church, for God would only have granted repentance to his elect. Losing members due to sinful behaviour had been a problem in the past. Not only did it lower the numbers in church (and, very importantly, the offering!) but it prevented the scandal of having sinful church members being the cause of others not coming to their church. But now even the sinners could stay (and play and pay!).

This was to form the basis of Sonship Theology, which taught that, as God’s children, Christians could sin, knowing that if they were of God’s elect, their God would always provide sufficient grace to reinstall them into fellowship. That is, if they were God’s elect, then they couldn’t do anything that would lose them their assurance of salvation. If you can never be lost, then no sin you commit can ever change that fact. And Sonship Theology became new calvinism.

The new calvinist gospel was no longer strictly based upon the unconditional election, even though they claimed that this calvinist doctrine was still true. In reality the new calvinist gospel was now based upon your ability to repent, confess and renounce your sin. A bad fall from grace wasn’t the end of your salvation now. You could choose to repent and regain that “grace” from which you had fallen. Effectively the gospel had changed from simply being one of God’s unconditional elect, to the choosing by God’s people to repent again.

New calvinism aggressively pushes its beliefs, usually to those who are already in a church situation. (They rarely evangelise the truly lost!) They believe that they have a mandate to bring their brand of the truth to all the church, in particularly to the fundamentalists. Al Mohler would like to remind us that new calvinism is the only good religion on the block!
Al Mohler: ‘Where else are they going to go? If you’re a theological minded, deeply convictional young evangelical, if you’re committed to the gospel and want to see the nations rejoice in the name of Christ, if you want to see gospel built and structured committed churches, your theology is just going end up basically being Reformed, basically something like this new Calvinism, or you’re going to have to invent some label for what is basically going to be the same thing, there just are not options out there,
(https://www.newcalvinist.com/albert-mohler-and-hip-hop-culture/)

New calvinists will claim that their “truth” is best, their God is more sovereign, they are more Scriptural, and that calvinism is the gospel, yet they will not come out into the open with such beliefs unless they believe they have sufficient support among their church group to do so. If indeed their beliefs are as good as they claim, then why are they rarely up front and open with their beliefs except to those who have some sympathies already. They will often work with small groups in a church, or disciple individuals, winning them over, only announcing to the general church membership where they stand when they consider they have sufficient support to do so.

When a church gets a new pastor, they should find out about the real beliefs of that man before they appoint him to be their pastor. Far too many calvinist pastors (especially new calvinist pastors) do not reveal their calvinist or new calvinist beliefs until after they have established themselves in their position. But, once they get sufficient support from the members, they will then aggressively seek to win over the rest, or accept the resignations of those who will not bow down to new calvinist beliefs. As long as they get their church, they are usually happy to see the troublemakers leave (that is, those who disagree with them).

New calvinism is a false religion designed to keep the church masses happy (if deluded). It has determined what the world likes today, and has offered it to the fundamentalist religious world. Many genuine Christians have been taken in by its rhetoric and false promises (which are delivered so confidently and so forcefully that it is hard to refute without proper facts at their disposal). It is what the people have asked for, and so they are satisfied with its performance. But new calvinism is a cult of satan and only by testing all things (as we are commanded in 1 Thessalonians 5:21) may Christians truly determine the dangers that lie within. Be vigilant! Be aware! Or else be enslaved!

For further reading please see Biblical Counselling as an Aid to Control the Church, and The Gospel of New Calvinism.

List of all my posts on this site.

If you wish to read other documents on the heresies of calvinism, please use this link.

Sermons and Messages

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Comments and replies are recorded on the Comments page.