Kevin DeYoung wants to where Lutherans are. Why are they not out in the open alongside their Evangelical brethren?
Where are the speakers? Where are the leading Lutheran theologians? What’s going on in Lutheranism?
(sometimes I ask myself those same questions)
Anyway, if you’d like to go there and add your 2 cents:
click here to get to Kevin DeYoung’s blog : http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevindeyoung/
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Thanks to christianbookexpo.com, for the photo.
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Filed under: Kevin DeYoung |
The Old Adam Lives! 
Has he ever heard the White Horse and Rod Rosenbladt? What about Fighting for the Faith? What about John Warick Montgomery? What about Issues Etc What about Stephen Paulson? James Nestigen? I am not catechized in the Lutheran church and I know all of these names and have heard them on more than one occasion. M
Who?
(just kidding)
I bet 90% of the folks in our congregation haven’t heard those names (outside of Jim Nestingen who has visited us a couple of times).
I think it’s just two different worlds.
Some of his questions as in books are simply a matter of laziness. Having been baptist and then moved to reformed, I had to LOOK for reformed writings, do some good ole fashion research, they didn’t just “fall out of the sky into my lap one day”.
It’s a multiple answers and of course I echo Robin’s statement. Often times Lutherans don’t show up because at many of these conferences, of which I’ve been to many in my past, there is mingled within them worship itself and sermons. Orthodoxy doesn’t nor cannot do this. Take for example the “Together For the Gospel” that the baptist and reformed put together annual in our neck of the woods. It sounds good but its really a terrible blasphemy when all is said and done when baptist and reformed preach and worship together (this is NEVER allowed in Scripture, in principle this should be understood). He mentions the sacrament a bridge too far, well that too is part of the problem because behind that assertion is “we can get together for the gospel otherwise”. No we cannot, the sacrament IS the Gospel, said Luther, says our confessions. For a Lutheran to gather together on that premise is DENYING the very confession of the Gospel.
The undertone of his ENTIRE post is “forsake your Lutheran confession (i.e. Christianity) in order to mingle with us (i.e. a heterodoxy that calls itself Christian). He doesn’t see these things as essential, sacraments, etc…and even alludes to that a number times in his numeration list yet wants Lutherans to come. What he is really asking for is the presence of someone named a Lutheran but leave your confession that makes you Lutheran at home so that we can call you a Lutheran while you confess what we confess together.
What passes as cheerful ecumenical things in our time (e.g. Together For The Gospel) where everybody smiles, shakes hands, slaps backs and says, “at last peace, peace and unity among us” is in reality the very opposite but the judgment of God. As Luther points out God going silent when the truth of His Word is rejected under this guise, Luther says this is the worse kind of manifestation of God’s wrath (God going silent and letting them have their way) but it looks like peace and good even the title sounds good and well tickles the ear does it not “Together For The Gospel”. Yet in doing so, the baptist and reformed, have forsaken their confessions which do oppose each other (e.g. infants are NEVER baptized among the baptist), what they say their consciences are convinced that the Word of God says.
Sometimes, too, silence is itself a witness and very powerful one. We see this in Scripture and we experience it in life. When I’m really trying to get my kids attention when they are doing something they should not I don’t say a thing and slowly they begin to feel the hanging silence. A professor in a class or speaker or pastor can garner a LOT more attention from a talkative crowd by just standing still and being silent for an extended pause (this is also a speaking technique often employed called “the pause”). We see this in the book of Revelation in which before the 7 seals are about to be opened at the point of the fourth (if I recall) there is a pause of a “a half an hour” in heaven. This to garner attention that what is NOW about to be spoken is of utmost importance….then it goes not to speak of the warning of the plethora of false doctrine coming upon the world/church (the pit opened and locust coming out, etc…). So, silence can be a powerful witness.
Larry, sorry, but your post is lacking. Have you ever heard of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary? Al Mohler? Flagship seminary for the SBC. Baptist. Reformed. There’s a reason Together for the Gospel is a reformed conference. Because they teach reformed theology. Now, there are some paedobaptists and confessional baptists, but that’s not reformed soteriology, is it? I think it’s the foundational gospel they come together for. Good grief.
Sorry Jay your response and understanding of Reformed is grossly lacking and your response is proof positive of it. I’m well familiar with Southern Seminary, have many family and friends who go/went there, well know Dr. Mohler’s works, attended part of the time the church he attended, our Calvinistic SB church near Louisville, KY was well on his radar and our pastors close friends of his, his wife spoke frequently at our church, he spoke frequently at our later PCA church and well knew our pastor their a very close friend of Dr. Sprouls, I’ve seen, heard and read him MANY times.
You grossly assume this modern “reformed ecumenical trend” for historic Reformed confessions. That’s the point, Reformed have given up their confessions for the most part and have allowed memorial meal, believers baptist into their camp something the Reformed confessions ubiquitously reject (including the WCF). Numerous Reformed folks have attempted to clarify this but do not receive much hearing. A point Reformed theologian and scholar Richard Muller well makes in a short essay entitled “How Many Points?” Muller points out why those like for example John MacArthur, et. ali. are not Reformed even though they pretend to hold to “five points” (the TULIP) of Dort, nor are they even Calvinist in any meaningful, historical or confessional sense of those terms. His main points are that one cannot be Reformed or Calvinistic and NOT hold to infant baptism, or other variants but rather the system is a whole of Confession. (I’m not speaking in the sense of the way Lutherans see the term Reformed in the larger context, i.e. Arminians and Calvinist are in this sense Reformed).
The gathering, together for the Gospel is a complete amalgamation of utter heterodoxy which is not only NOT supported in Scripture but ubiquitously condemned and it is the Christians duty to remove one’s self from it. Even in principle the Reformed if they be serious about Scripture would have to say this. This is why Calvin, the man, would have NEVER gone for such with those who denied the sacrament to infants nor teamed up for worship with the baptist of his day or ours. Calvin would have NEVER given his pulpit over to Spurgeon or any baptist, Calvin well understood unity in confession and in particular on the sacraments (even if he was wrong he understood the principle in Scripture is written everywhere). Baptist are not Reformed according to ALL reformed confessions (WCF, Dort, Heidelberg, Belgic), most of the Puritans (including Owen) whom the Baptist think they like considered baptist spiritual child abusers for not baptizing and denying the sacrament to their children.
There can be no “foundational Gospel” to come together upon if the sacraments be defined differently. The view on the sacraments ALWAYS effects soteriology, one can only ignorantly divorce this. One cannot have one group say the Gospel is Christ dying for you and it comes “pro me” for you in the means of Grace, which is in fact the Gospel, GOOD NEWS TO AND FOR YOU IN PARTICULAR, while half of the crowd understands that they may or may not be elect, some damned to perdition, half saying John 3:16 (a Gospel passage) means “world” literally while the other half say it only means the elect, half saying Christ died for all men without exception, half saying only the elect and the reprobate He did not, half saying “you need to make a decision for Christ” (decidedly anti-gospel); half saying and agreeing with scripture, “the PROMISE is to you AND your children…” (Gospel), while half are saying adding words, “it means SPIRITUAL children” (implied needing to make an adult decision = adding to the Gospel); half saying with Christ that it is ADULTS that must become as infants and little children, to Whom the kingdom belongs, or they will NEVER enter the Kingdom of heaven, i.e. that infants in particular picture the receptors of the Gospel and what the Gospel IS, while the other half against Christ’s words say, “no you must look more and become like an adult in order to decide to “get saved””. Half saying their children can say the Lord’s Pray with confidence saying “OUR FATHER” being baptized AS Christians, while the other half, the baptist, say of the children via their doctrine that they are simply unwashed heathens who cannot even say the Lord’s Prayer in truth being unbaptized not saved Christians. You cannot worship together with half the crowd saying that the LS is where the Holy Spirit takes the believer up into heaven spiritually to spiritually eat and drink of the body and blood of Christ, while the other half says, “No its just a sign and symbol to remember, a toast to Jesus, no more.” Much less could a Lutheran who condemns those, by their confession of faith as antichristic, who confesses, teaches and believes that they are going up to receive in their very mouths the flesh and blood of the Son of God given into death in particular for the forgiveness of THEIR sins (pro/for me) and that they are about to receive for real in real time and space the forgiveness of their sins (worship by definition).
You cannot have a mingled group in which one part says the Gospel is not given in baptism but that its merely a sign of an inward change or reality; another says it’s a sign but not the thing signified and yet another that says it is God actually baptizing in which one is actually and really forgiven of their sins having been just washed in the name of God whereby salvation is conferred, forgiveness of sins, where the name of God IS IS forgiveness and salvation. Because ALL of this links to what the Gospel is and is not and as such there really is no “foundational gospel they come together for” but rather a superficial façade in which they willfully remain ignorant of the fact that they DO NOT believe the same Gospel at some reduced level. How the sacraments are viewed carries over into what actually IS the Gospel and what it is not and this is utterly inescapable.
Such as “Together For The Gospel” is a religious meeting for sure, but a Christian gathering for worship it is not. In fact its pagan. And every confession written down, if it is TRULY a confession held to in principle confesses “this is the faith” and “that is not”. The WCF does not equal the LBCF, the HCF does not equal the SB F &M and Augsburg certainly does not equal any of those and in fact in principle condemns them as false.
thank for the post. I am going to appear now regularly to have him no longer need to ask where the Lutherans are.
And I will point out where his teachings differ from Lutheran ones till he can answer his own question! Politely of course, and with his full permission me being his guest.
It’s just a funny question for him to ask, considering the LCMS alone outnumbers the PCA, OPC, URC, CRC, RCA, and ARP all put together! The John Calvin club may certainly make more noise, but that certainly does not mean that they have more influence.