The question is asking what is the appropriate response for any evangelical Christian to the false teaching of alleged evangelical Christians. N. T. Wright is offered as the exemplary false teacher. John Piper is offered as a typical evangelical in response to Wright’s false teaching. The article concludes with these words:

This is the first thing Evangelicals ought to do. They ought to require that any organization to which they belong for Christian endeavor or any professing Christian theologian with whom they enter into any spiritual cooperation whatsoever give unfeigned, unqualified, dogmatic assent to every single Fundamental of the Christian (that is, “Evangelical”) faith.

If, after repeated appeals, an organization or individual refuses to do so, those who are truly Evangelical ought to withhold Christian recognition and avoid him (Rom 16.17), and for the love of the Truth and the safety of Christ’s flock, cry “wolf!” Interminable, deferential, academic fencing will not do. There’s no Scriptural paradigm for it whatsoever. Well-intentioned or not, it’s a betrayal of Christ and the gospel. [bolded words my emphasis]

This advice is exactly what ought to be done, but it is exactly what many Evangelicals will not do. Take for example

the aforementioned John Piper. Here are some of the things he says about Wright while at the same time exposing his errors in a book called The Future of Justification (Crossway, 2007).

My conviction concerning N. T. Wright is not that he is under the curse of Galatians 1:8-9. … It may be that in his own mind and heart Wright has a clear and firm grasp of the gospel of Christ and the biblical meanings of justification (15). … N. T. Wright loves the gospel and justification (17). … Wright loves the apostle Paul and reverences the Christian scriptures (27).

Minnick’s assessment of these comments?

The disconnect between Piper’s conclusions about Wright’s twisted teaching and his convictions about Wright’s loves and reverences is simply stunning. To my mind, it’s nearly incomprehensible.

Why did Piper even bother to expose Wright’s insidious errors.

Minnick makes it clear that he isn’t simply targeting Piper, but he is using this example as a negative illustration in answering the question, “What’s an evangelical to do?”

However, it seems this case is an example of what Minnick calls “interminable, deferential, academic fencing”. When will it end?

And the next question to ask is, “What’s a Fundamentalist to do?” What are we to do with the ongoing unwillingness to unequivocally condemn false teachers and apostates?

Why, we should attend their conferences, buy their books, puff them up to our young preachers, disparage their critics on the right (i.e., those wacky fundies) … right?

Right?

Wrong.

I’ll have more to come on this later. I am sure you are not surprised!

My first report is here and my most recent, and perhaps most significant report is here.

This post is going to be a bit of a hodge-podge, just a few random thoughts from my notes that I didn’t include earlier, but thought worthy of your attention.

On Secondary Separation:

Pastor Minnick answered it this way [my paraphrase]: What you have in the Bible are different classes of passages. Some tell you what to do with the unorthodox and apostate, others tell you what to do with the disobedient. The Bible doesn’t make one class secondary to the other, both are primary.

On Drawing the Line

A question was asked along these lines: ‘Where do you draw the line? Do you have conversations with a conservative evangelical, attend conferences, preach for, teach classes for, etc.?’

In other words, how close can one go in having some association without troubling one’s own conscience or breaking a scriptural principle?

The response to this was quite interesting. Pastor Minnick believes the conversation with those who are open to discussion must continue. Earlier in the discussion, he mentioned several names and contacts he had with them over the years. One of them seemed to not be thinking very deeply about any matters of separation at all, but Minnick is still hopeful that as time goes on some light may dawn. Others have seemed more open.  But it seems that pastor Minnick draws the line at having conversations. He said [again, my paraphrase]:

“I don’t attend their conferences because I don’t want to confuse those that follow me.”

He quickly added, concerning conference attendance: “but I have friends that do attend them.”

My editorial comment: Discernment is necessary in all these matters, of course. Even in the area of ‘conversations’ one must be able to quickly discern the possibility for fruitfulness. There are some who seem quite willing to talk about issues and philosophy (and some who will even verbally agree with you – the ‘yeah, you’re right’ response). But many of these are like the crowd Paul faced in Athens “We will hear thee again of this matter.” Yeah, right. Sure they will.

What would be nice to see is some deeds, not just words. By that, I mean deeds that would clearly mark a break with evangelical inclusivism. I mentioned in an earlier post one example of a conservative evangelical heading off to preach for a group that tolerates the ordination of women. It would be nice to see some of these guys saying, ‘No’ to things like that.

And while these conversations might be hopeful, at some point one has to discern whether they will be profitable or not. In other words, if the conservative evangelical insists on pursuing his evangelical ways in spite of much conversation with fundamentalists and much discussion of these issues, what, then, is the point?

On the time it takes to deal with some doctrines

One final comment from our meeting. Pastor Minnick pointed out that some doctrines take time and much fine parsing to be fully explained, even in Scripture. Others can be laid out very quickly and plainly. For an example of complicated doctrine, he pointed out 1 Cor 8-10, the meat offered to idols argument. That’s three extended chapters, covering several different aspects of the question. That question wasn’t an easy one to answer. It takes time to develop it, to understand it, and to apply it.

The fundamentalist position is such a doctrine. It can’t be explained in a ‘sound bite’. A comprehensive understanding of the holiness of God, of the principles of separation sprinkled through the Scriptures, and of the explicit separation passages is required. It isn’t an easy doctrine. Since it requires time and comprehensive understanding, we shouldn’t expect changes to happen overnight. [Though we should expect changes if true understanding of the Scriptural principles are sought and embraced.]

~~~

Well, that about wraps it up. Of course I have more things to say on this subject. The wheels are always turning! (Some would say the sawdust is always burning!) I’ll be adding more of my own thoughts on these things as time goes on.

See earlier notes here.

Perhaps the most interesting question on our minds for this discussion is just what Pastor Minnick thinks can be done in cooperation with conservative evangelicals. The question was raised by Mark Dever in his recently published interview of Pastor Minnick this way:

“What would we have to do to change for you to be free to preach here?”

The same question has been discussed here and here with the majority of commenters seemingly unsatisfied with the specificity of Pastor Minnick’s answer at that time. You will see a commenter raising the question again in my last post on the subject and the question was raised both in the public discussion in Calgary and in personal conversation. The question is being framed in different ways, but essentially it is the same question. Dever’s articulation of it is as good as any.

Apparently, some are of the mind that very little prevents someone like Pastor Minnick from being free to preach at a Capitol Hill Baptist Church. Some have said that it is merely the connections with fundamentalist institutions that prevent such cooperation.

If you pause to consider what Pastor Minnick said in his careful answer to Dever in the interview, you will find that there is much more that would prevent any such cooperation at this time. Note especially the way Pastor Minnick gave his answer to the final version of Dever’s question in the interview:

Well, when you were in Greenville I think you told us that there is no liberalism left in the Convention. I don’t know enough about the Convention to know whether that’s the case or not. But what I do know is that the convention for all of these decades, um, has been conditioned by a philosophy, an approach on these things that is different than what I see the Scripture teaching so I, I would think there’s an awfully lot that would have to be done throughout the Convention to bring the leadership, the pastors, the Christian leaders, you know, up to the point where they were consistently showing that they understand the sep… the need for separatism, and, and until such time … uh, you know you would have cause I think for concern about getting too affiliated with, uh, the Convention. [my emphasis]

Note especially here these parts of the answer [as I paraphrase them]:

• Dever claims there is no liberalism left in the Convention.
• Our understanding of the Convention is that it has been conditioned by a philosophy of tolerance towards liberalism for many decades.
• For cooperation to exist with any Southern Baptist and a fundamentalist today, there would have to be a great deal of reformation throughout the Convention.

And my paraphrase of the concluding statement: without those kinds of changes, cooperation would really be hard.

In our discussion session, Pastor Minnick was able to expand on these thoughts. He reported again Dever’s assertion that there are no liberals left in the Convention. But while Dever made that assertion, he has also admitted that a large number of the membership in the Convention are unconverted, perhaps even a majority of its members (especially given the wide disparity between claimed membership and actual attendance at SBC churches). Considering those statistics, it is hard to imagine that there are no liberals in the SBC.

One area of SBC life that is especially problematic is the Cooperative Program that funds SBC missions, among other things. Given the pool from which SBC missionaries are drawn (and some recent resolutions aimed at SBC missions) it is hard to imagine that there is still not some taint of liberalism in the Convention. The Cooperative Program is a first class example of ‘cooperative’ effort fundamentalists are not comfortable to be associated with.

Another example Pastor Minnick raised as a barrier for fundamentalist cooperation with men like Dever involves relationships with a prominent evangelical who signed the ECT. Dever acknowledges that this individual’s actions are a concern, but can’t see breaking off cooperation with this individual because of all the good this fellow has done in his ministry. As fundamentalists, we acknowledge the good, but can’t cooperate because of the serious nature of the error. This is an area where there is still significant difference between Dever and fundamentalists.

In conclusion was a statement like this (my paraphrase):

We can’t give away the store just because conservative evangelicals are starting to see what the problem is.

In my own conversation with Pastor Minnick, he assured me that there remain many differences that make cooperation impossible at this time, but that he is hopeful conversations between fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals may yield some positive fruit. The differences between fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals are NOT as simple as saying that Minnick is a BJU professor, but were it not for BJU he would be free to cooperate. If there were no BJU (or Mount Calvary Baptist Church, for that matter), the significant differences still would preclude cooperation at this time.

One last thing… Pastor Minnick pointed out during our discussion session the fact that Mark Dever himself acknowledges the significant differences that still remain. A point everyone is overlooking comes early on in the Dever-Minnick interview:

Dever: I had a great visit with Mark when I first met him a few months ago. I was down in Greenville, had lunch with Mark and some other pastor friends there and I would say Mark was obviously kind, charitable, articulate, … uh, and we disagree on some things so I thought there’s a good basis for conversation [laughter] … um … we were at a table with a bunch of other ministers where we would have a lot in agreement, so your basic Christian doctrines we’re agreeing, but where we came up with differences again and again was on the matter of how we associate with other Christians, how we decide to do that. So that’s the kind of thing we want to be talking about in this interview to try to gain a better understanding of fundamentalism and especially the doctrine of separation. So for our listeners who aren’t familiar with sort of current fundamentalism, Mark, uh, I often describe myself as a fundamentalist, you’ve heard me tell a couple of stories where I do that, but I’m not a fundamentalist in the way you mean that, am I? [emphasis mine]

You see, Dever himself knows there is still a divide. Whether he ever comes to the place where he will move to the fundamentalist side of the divide remains to be seen. There are a host of changes that would have to be made.

~~~

I really appreciate Pastor Minnick’s willingness to be grilled by local church pastors. There is wide interest in the Dever-Minnick interview, especially on the fundamentalist side. The wide commentary on the internet testifies to this. The intense interest of those listening in and participating in our discussion session likewise speaks to how critical this is to our movement. In fact, our moderator made an announcement to the crowd that the session might seem boring to the children and ladies and allowed them to be excused if they wished (men had to stay, bored or not). I don’t think many moved. I didn’t notice any boredom. I thought all were very attentive. This is a critical issue for our day.

I am not as optimistic about our fundamentalist future as some are. And by that, I mean the fundamentalist movement as we know it. There are many challenges facing us. How it will all turn out is uncertain.

The fundamentalist movement rests on certain theological ideals, especially our understanding of true Christian fellowship and separation. We are seeing a constant barrage against these ideals. There seems to be a curious quiet at the top of the heap of fundamentalist leaders. I hope for more forthright declarations (reasonable, rational, charitable, but forthright and clear) so that men on all sides will know exactly where we stand and who we stand with.

Publication note: This post was written about ten days ago, but I delayed publication in order to give Pastor Minnick an opportunity to review my comments. Having done that, the only alterations I have made to my original comments were to correct spelling errors and attempt to make one or two obtuse sentences a little less so (not sure on the success of that, but an attempt was made nonetheless).

The preachers you listen to influence your own preaching. … I have spent hours listening to Mark Minnick. Mark was my Pulpit Speech teacher. I have intentionally tried to imitate his methods and something of his style. As I began listening to the Trinity messages this summer though (and most of them were Chuck Phelps), I caught myself a few times in the pulpit saying things in a way that sounded to me like the way Chuck would say it. I think Chuck has a certain cadence to his preaching that is a bit unique among preachers, and I was unconsciously (or semi-consciously) picking up on that.

Chuck himself mentioned this tendency among preacher boys in one of the messages I listened to today. He said that those who sat under Tom Malone often mimicked some of his habits as did those who sat under Dr Bob Sr. Of course, I have observed this with other admired preachers as well. I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing!

But it does mean preachers need to be careful who they admire, who they listen to, and who influences them. I think that subject is probably worth another post at some point.

The influence of one preacher on another is all well and good if the admired and followed preacher is a fully faithful member of the clergy. You may pick up mannerisms – that is one thing. But much more you should pick up philosophy, methodology, zeal, and ministry patterns. And you will, if you make a study of a particular preacher or preachers.

That means you must choose your models very, very carefully. Some young men today are making extremely unwise choices in this regard.

Consider those who much admire John Piper. I have listened to one Piper sermon in its entirety. If that is a sample, his content, style and mannerisms (as far as I could discern from audio only) leave me cold. But that is just me. I am not so much concerned with style as philosophy.

If you make a study of Piper as your ‘ideal preacher’, isn’t it likely that you might relax your Baptist distinctives as one preacher pointed out recently? Isn’t it likely that you will at least have a kinder gentler approach to worldly culture in the church? Won’t you become open to much of his philosophy?

Some may think Piper is my favorite whipping boy. [He is!] But I ask young fundamentalists … for whatever good any evangelical preacher does [and they actually are brethren, labouring in the kingdom, bringing souls to Christ... I don't deny that and in fact rejoice in that], for whatever good they do and for whatever profit their writings may be, is it wise to make them the focus of your attention and study?

Wouldn’t it be much better for young fundamentalists to make the preaching ministry of some prominent fundamentalist pastor the model of their own ministry and object of their attention and admiration? You will pick up more than mannerisms from those you admire. And, quite frankly, there are several good men from whom our young fundamentalist preachers can glean much. I have mentioned Minnick and Phelps, two fine examples. There are many others.

Oh, they don’t write, you say? Don’t they write sermons? With the internet, you can fill your soul every week with the sermons of your most admired fundamentalist preachers. The value of writing is somewhat over-rated anyway. Most of the vaunted writings men put out are just fluff anyway. Often the best part of them is the titles.

You would do better to hone your Greek and Hebrew and your exegetical skills. One of my professors told me that preachers would do better to invest in reference books than to buy the latest ‘Christian best sellers’. There is a lot of wisdom in that. Better to be a skilled handler of the word and to make the preaching ministry of a thoroughly fundamentalist pastor your model. Or maybe two or three of them!! (But really, not many more than that.)

Can it be the only preachers worthy of admiration are evangelicals? If so, then you might as well become one.

Here is the transcript, beginning at about 1:01:35 of the interview:

1:01:35 Dever: “What would we have to do to change for you to be free to preach here?”

Minnick: “Well, I want to say, one, and I’m glad there’s, you know, you asked that question so that I’d have the opportunity to say this, how very very deeply I respect you and what you’re doing here. I mean, you wouldn’t have come to Greenville and I wouldn’t be here today, I don’t think if there wasn’t, certainly on my part, a great deal of respect for you and a great deal of appreciation for what you’ve done and for what the conservative side of evangelicalism is doing. And if I could just make any appeal to anybody in that it would be one, to really resolve that controversy … [overtalk] … and which I think you have, Ok, as far as I can understand…”

Dever: “Well, it’s a, it’s a continuing matter, brother, I mean, I recently spoke at a conference…”

Minnick: “The applications are, right?”

Dever: “Yes”

Minnick: “But in principle…”

Dever: “That’s right”

Minnick: “All right, and so I guess my, when you ask, what would people have to do so that we were in common cause, it would be to see any brother who is consistently applying that to his associations, its clear that he’s not muddying the water by putting his hand outside the box now and again, because that confuses the people who look to any of us for leadership. So when, when it’s an unambiguous message that’s being given you’re saying Ok, you know, we’re … there … there’s no longer the divide between us.”

Dever: Ok, so what do we have to do to change in order for you in good conscience to be able to preach in a church like this?

Minnick: Well, I think we talked a little about this when you were in Greenville

Dever: Yup

Minnick: As I remember too and I, you know, we were agreed on this that there are … um … you go as far on the right road with any brother as you can … um … so there’s that if, if, if you’re going in the same direction, then there’s certainly biblical room for trying to go together in that direction. There’s also the issue however of the people who are looking to you for leadership and with whom you have credibility and the fact is that you don’t always have a chance to explain to everybody that you have a good name with as to why you are doing a certain thing and why you were with certain people. And a good name is rather to be chosen, you know, than a lot of things, certainly than great riches and a lot of other things as well. A speaking uh…, a good name is rather to be chosen than a speaking opportunity I would say … all right … so, when that other brother is giving the same clear signal you are and he’s public about it … um … then there’s little likelihood that you’re going to confuse the people looking to you for leadership and it frees you, that other brother free you. But until he does, until he’s really public about that, he’s kinda got you over a barrel.

Dever: Yuh, and what does being public about that consist of?

Minnick: I think just, I think one, that that is his consistent preaching and teaching, that he’s known for having settled these issues and that he’s … it’s apparent that he’s trying to consistently apply that.

Dever: And can anyone at Bob Jones that you know of on the religion faculty, let’s say on the religion side, see that being done consistently in any church that would cooperate with the Southern Baptist Convention?

Minnick: Well, when you were in Greenville I think you told us that there is no liberalism left in the Convention. I don’t know enough about the Convention to know whether that’s the case or not. But what I do know is that the convention for all of these decades, um, has been conditioned by a philosophy, an approach on these things that is different than what I see the Scripture teaching so I, I would think there’s an awfully lot that would have to be done throughout the Convention to bring the leadership, the pastors, the Christian leaders, you know, up to the point where they were consistently showing that they understand the sep… the need for separatism, and, and until such time … uh, you know you would have cause I think for concern about getting too affiliated with, uh, the Convention.

Dever: Right. Mark, our time is up…

What do you think? Towards the end, a glimmer of an answer might be emerging, in my opinion, but it seems to me that the question: What do we [conservative evangelicals] have to DO to change the division that continues to exist between us? in the main was left unanswered.

So… did he answer or didn’t he?

Frank heard about it from Andy Naselli and I see that Greg Linscott is linking to it as well over at his site. I expect this to immediately be the topic du jour in the fundamentalist blogosphere.

Why would that be? Because as Minnick points out very well in the interview: “Associations matter.”

This interview matters because associations matter. I think I understand what Pastor Minnick is trying to do in having communication with Pastor Dever, but even this low-level public association matters (though it is certainly not the same thing as sitting on a platform in a cooperative effort or appearing on the platform of Capital Hill BC, for example).

This interview, I predict will be the buzz this next week because associations matter.

But, oh, how I wish a little more had been said!

I believe Pastor Minnick did a credible job explaining the rationale of Biblical separation. I think he did a good job providing Biblical illustration of the concept from the life of Jehoshaphat and the issue between Peter and Paul recorded in Gal 2. Where he fell short was in making clear specific real world application in a way that could be readily seen and understood.

Dever gave Minnick every opportunity to do so. In fact, he pressed him to do so, asking several times, “What do we have to do for you as fundamentalists to feel free to accept an invitation to preach in our pulpit here at CHBC?” Pastor Minnick only answered this question in vague generalities, reiterating the essential theory of separation.

In fact, at one point where Dever was pressing Minnick, he started to say something like, “I was just at this conference…” Minnick was in the midst of his answer and may not have heard that reference. I think it was very significant. The interview with Minnick was done, I believe, on Feb 27. Right about at that same time Dever had been at the Acts 29 Conference in Chicago and had made his seriously flawed endorsement of that effort, as I reported elsewhere.

I think I know why Pastor Minnick was vague at this point, and that is he genuinely hopes to influence Dever and others like him to seriously look at the doctrine of separation for themselves. He didn’t want to get too close to Dever’s own associations specifically when pressed for fear of upsetting that effort. At least, that is what I think lay behind the vagueness. (I have been in correspondence with Pastor Minnick on this point and will be sending him the link to this post. I also hope to see him later on next month and will ask him personally about it if I can get a chance.)

However… if only he had felt at liberty to say something like this:

“If Open Theism is tolerated within a man’s denomination, that would be an issue demanding a public rebuke and ongoing battle, wouldn’t you agree? And if that battle was not clearly being fought, what would you say about a pastor remaining in that conference? And would you invite him to your pulpit? And would you invite him to your Together for the Gospel conference?”

For Dever, the answer to that question is “Yes” at the moment. (And I think it unlikely to change.)

Or, for example, if only something like this would have been said:

“If someone publicly opposes Billy Graham’s foolish statement on Robert Shuler’s program that basically says ‘if you’re sincere, you’ll go to heaven, even if you never heard of Christ’, and that same someone makes some noises about how he wouldn’t cooperate with the Billy Graham Crusade when it came to town [and didn't], but then goes to the Cove [Billy Graham's training institution] for a week as a special speaker and writes an article in Billy Graham’s Decision magazine… Would you invite that same someone to speak to your people and participate in your Together for the Gospel conference?”

You see, there are some real world examples that Dever needs to be confronted with.

I hope Mark Minnick will do some of this kind of personal confrontation on a one on one level with Dever. I hope that there will be a resolution of this situation soon because if there is not, the ranks of those of us who look up to Pastor Minnick as a leader will be seriously confused. Is Dever someone we should look to for leadership? Is he someone whom we will not confront about his associations with: Piper, MacArthur, Mahaney, Acts 29 and the Whiteboard Sessions, etc.? Are we simply going to let these things slide by and let our young men wonder where we stand on them?

UPDATE: Perhaps my examples above are a little too personal, a little too direct, especially in the host’s house. For another example, couldn’t Falwell’s Moral Majority have sufficed? It would fit very well with the Jehoshaphat illustration as well.