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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.
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If you wish to read other documents on the heresies of calvinism, please use this link.
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Local Fundamentalist Pastor Heresy
The day and age in which we live is rapidly defining itself as the Laodicean age (Revelation 3:14-22). The Laodicean church was a lukewarm church, neither hot (representing fervour for God) nor cold (fervour for the world). God says that He would prefer it to at least come out in the open and proclaim just exactly what it believed in, either for or against Him. But the Laodicean church couldn’t commit itself one way or the other. No doubt, like many churches today, it regularly taught one thing and practised another, or held back on any controversial teachings because they might cause conflict, rock the boat so to speak. Getting along with your fellow Christian has become so important today that even truth must be sacrificed for the sake of keeping the peace! Community overrules truth! People these days are so afraid to rock the church boat that they will put up with borderline (or worse) heresy rather than create a disagreement with another “Christian”. Of course, that’s when they actually know that what’s being taught is not the complete truth of the Bible. However, all too often they trust their pastors and teachers so much that they are seemingly reluctant to test everything they say against the truth of the Bible. And ignorance is no excuse! “What you don’t know can’t hurt you” appears to be the catch-cry of so many “Christians” today. And they’re wrong!
It is essential that each genuine Christian ascertain the truth of what he believes directly from the Bible. To this end he is encouraged to make use of the experienced teaching of pastors and mature Christians, whether personally or via media such as books and DVDs, etc. However, never should Christians accept any teachings without also assessing them against the truth of the Bible.
Acts 17:10-12 – 10 And the brethren immediately sent away Paul and Silas by night unto Berea: who coming [thither] went into the synagogue of the Jews. 11 These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so. 12 Therefore many of them believed; also of honourable women which were Greeks, and of men, not a few.
So, if you desire to see many around you believe in the truth of the Scriptures, then you must search the Scriptures daily to see if those things that you have been taught are actually true! By doing so, you may then declare yourself to be a fundamentalist believer, one who believes in the fundamental doctrines of the Bible, rightly dividing the word of truth as taught by the Bible.
But, many alleged fundamentalists are only that because they claim to be such. For instance, John MacArthur is often proclaimed to be a respected theologian and Bible teacher, therefore a fundamentalist. He has produced many books and other documents including a book called Fundamentals of the Faith which may be found in many church libraries and in the homes of many church-goers. However, MacArthur is far from being fundamentalist; in fact, his doctrines include many serious unacceptable heresies. Being a calvinist, MacArthur teaches a false gospel that is in conflict with the gospel of the Bible. Read MacArthur Teaches Works Salvation, The False Calvinist Gospel blog, The False Calvinist Gospel, Calvinism is the Non-gospel and Calvinists Born Again before they are Saved.
MacArthur claims to be a Christian, yet he has no testimony of when he was saved at the cross of Jesus. He appears to claim that he has never been lost!
PHIL: How old were you when you first recall sensing your need for Christ?
JOHN: Well I always believed the gospel. I don’t ever…I don’t ever remember a time when I didn’t believe the gospel.
(MacArthur’s Life Testimony Code 80-33)
Apparently MacArthur has been so good all his life that he’s never needed to be saved!
He claims his ministry to be the consequence of a godly heritage, yet his immediate ancestors were apparently more involved with freemasonry than Christianity. He claims that his spiritual fruit and harvest has come through from his great grandfather who was a Presbyterian minister and a Freemason Grand Master, both at the same time! Read Is MacArthur a Freemason?
MacArthur also teaches as if he is an expert scholar of Greek and Hebrew, yet he gets even basic interpretations wrong. Read MacArthur is Wrong where MacArthur misquotes a Greek rule to “prove” from Acts 2:23 that God’s foreknowledge is the same as God’s predetermined counsel. In MacArthur is Wrong – Again! MacArthur teaches that, because of Hebrew parallelism, “many” cannot mean the same as “many” if they are both used in the same verse (Romans 5:15), and that “all” cannot mean the same as “all” if they are both used in the same verse (Romans 5:18). Is MacArthur incompetent or is he a liar? Each of these documents has extra links to other calvinist documents for further reading.
Many churches worldwide have taken MacArthur’s false doctrines on board, demonstrating a distinct lack of discernment in doing so. A local church, Grace West Bible Church, is a clone or franchise of MacArthur’s church, having almost identical doctrinal statements. Thus, it claims to teach the same false doctrines and heresies as MacArthur’s church, including the same false gospel. This false calvinist gospel states clearly that God has from the beginning unconditionally chosen a small group of people (the elect) to go to heaven, while also choosing the vast majority of the world’s population to go to hell. “Unconditionally” means that no-one has any say in the matter, whether they are going to heaven or (most likely) hell. For all people, it is your destiny to be chosen by God to go to either heaven or to hell! Read The Heresy of Calvinism Refuted Part 1.
In fact, MacArthur, being a calvinist, has to teach that Jesus only died for the sins of God’s chosen elect. The calvinist Jesus didn’t die for any of the sins of the vast majority of the world. Even if one of those not chosen by God wanted to be saved, the calvinist God would still reject them, because their sins were never paid for on the cross. They literally can’t be saved, ever! (Read The Big Lie of the Calvinists.) MacArthur says that it was never the intention of God to save everyone anyway! Read The False Calvinist Gospel blog and The False Calvinist Gospel. Also read The Calvinist God created most of Mankind for Torment in Hell and MacArthur Teaches Works Salvation.
Of course, God of the Bible does choose an elect group of people, the election. However, it is dependent upon Him knowing by foreknowledge who will call upon the name of the Lord to be saved (which is the true gospel of the Bible). (Which is why the calvinists cannot accept that God’s foreknowledge means His perfect knowledge of the future!)
If you want to get saved, don’t go to Grace West, for if their God doesn’t want to save you, then according to them you will remain lost, even if you wanted to be saved! In fact, they have to teach that if you prayed a prayer asking God to save you, then you are still lost, unless the calvinist God has already previously decided that he wants you on that list of elect, regardless of your goodness or evil! If you are not on that list, no prayer can, or ever will, save you! They are forced to teach that you do not choose God; God chooses you! You have no say in the matter at all! If God has chosen you to be saved, then you will be saved; nothing you can do will ever prevent you from being saved. And, if God has chosen you for hell, then you will go to hell! This is truly the Non-gospel of the calvinist. Read Calvinism is the Non-gospel.
Another local church, Living Springs Baptist, while pretending to be a fundamentalist church, claims on its website to be a like-minded sister church to Grace West Bible Church. Therefore Living Springs has, by their own admission, a false doctrine similar to Grace West, and thus they likewise teach the same heresies, including the same false gospel. Otherwise they could not be a like-minded sister church! Living Springs has used materials by calvinist Todd Friel (as advertised on the Living Springs Baptist website under Ministries/Small Groups), who teaches that if you prayed the sinners’ prayer, you are not saved and you are still going to hell. No Christian ministry should be teaching their members such heresy as Todd Friel teaches. Read The Heresy of Todd Friel.
But wait! That’s not all! Living Springs also apparently considers Gary Thomas to be a good Christian teacher. According to their website, they have been studying Thomas’ book “Sacred Marriage” which claims to be Christian. However, it quotes favourably from “Conjugal Spirituality” (by Mary Anne Oliver), a book that teaches how to use kundalini yoga and tantric sex, both involving demonism. Thomas also quotes from Friedrich Nietzsche (who teaches nihilism, and that God is dead). Gary Thomas elsewhere also advocates heresies such as contemplative and centering prayer (which is little more than crying out endless mantras to demons, a very un-Christian practice). Read Gary Thomas – New Age Teacher.
In both of these churches, it is the pastor who ultimately must take responsibility for the doctrines taught in his church. Pastors have an awesome responsibility to serve God by shepherding His flocks. This demands that they be called by God to do so, or else they will certainly fail. And if such pastors cause such heresy to be taught to their church members, then those pastors are guilty of offending those little ones of God as per Matthew 18:6 – But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and [that] he were drowned in the depth of the sea.
That is, it is better to not be a pastor than to pretend to be a pastor called by God and offend His little ones by teaching such heresies.
Yet another pastor of a supposedly fundamentalist church in our area has allegedly chosen to use Paul Tripp study materials. If this is true, he has shown a distinct lack of discernment. Paul Tripp, a calvinist, focuses upon what he would call Biblical Counselling, yet much of his teachings are far from Biblical. He teaches that when we become Christians we are infected with a terrible disease called identity amnesia. What’s worse, we don’t even know we have this disease until a friendly neighbourhood “Biblical Counsellor” comes along to tell us all about it and to be “healed” by this counsellor. It sounds far too much like snake-oil salesmanship to me! That is, you need to sell your snake-oil medicine, but no-one wants it, so you persuade them that they are actually sick and have need of your snake-oil. Consequently they buy it, thinking they’re now going to be healed of a sickness which they most likely don’t have, never had, or doesn’t even exist at all! These so-called Biblical Counsellors of the Paul Tripp type create the problem that they then try to “cure” for you! This creation of a problem in order to solve it is called the Hegelian Dialectic. Read Paul Trip – Heretic or Tare?
This same church now advertises Biblical Counselling as one of its ministries, which is quite interesting considering that Paul Tripp material is used extensively by Biblical Counselling Australia (BCA) – see https://www.biblicalcounselling.org.au/training-in-biblical-counselling/ where workbooks and DVDs produced by Tim Lane and Paul Tripp are advertised as part of their “biblical counselling” training. The four directors of BCA (as noted on their website) have all done courses through CCEF (Christian Counseling & Education Foundation) which is closely affiliated with Westminster Theological Seminary (USA) which is (and has been for many years) a training and resource centre for calvinism and reformed theology. Much of today’s aggressive marketing of “New Calvinism” (embraced by such as Piper, MacArthur, Mohler, Keller) has been initiated at Westminster Theological Seminary, including what is widely known today as “Biblical Counselling” (although much of its teachings are far from Biblical!). Biblical Counselling was for many years known as nouthetic counselling which was originally developed by Prof Jay Adams of Westminster Seminary through the writing of his book “Competent to Counsel” in 1970. Nouthetic counselling was developed further into Biblical Counselling by David Powlison along with others such as Tim Lane and Paul Tripp. For further information, please read Biblical Counselling & new calvinism today.
If this local supposedly fundamentalist church is using BCA materials to support its Biblical Counselling ministry, then such a ministry is based upon the corrupt calvinist (reformed) teachings of Westminster Theological Seminary. Such a counselling ministry cannot be acceptable to the God of the Bible, for calvinism itself is a doctrine without an effective gospel for mankind’s sin. Although, if they have chosen to use Paul Tripp materials in the past, then they would probably see no problem with continuing to use Tripp’s heresies under the pretense of calling it “Biblical” Counselling. And the use of Paul Tripp (and related) materials can only lead a church into apostasy.
I am told that when this supposedly fundamentalist pastor was challenged (in the past) regarding the use of Paul Tripp materials, he allegedly said that he took the material on the recommendation of another church pastor. This might be so, perhaps, although it does seem possible that it could have arisen from studies in Biblical Counselling. Of course, a genuine pastor should be very wary of following up the recommendations of another without firstly testing all things. He has a responsibility to shepherd his flock, which will always overrule making agreements with pastors of other churches!
However, the truth remains: that if he has taught heresy through the use of Tripp’s materials, whether or not on the advice of another pastor, he has offended those little ones of God. And, could the alleged “another pastor” be a friendly neighbourhood calvinist pastor who cannot see any conflict between his own calvinist heresies and Tripp’s false teaching, consequently recommending Paul Tripp to other local pastors? In any case, any pastor who cannot discern danger (such as Tripp’s heresies) for his church members should reassess his calling to be pastor. And God will hold all pastors responsible for their leadership of their flocks, and not for how well they get along with other pastors of other churches! For information on Paul Tripp, read Paul Tripp – Heretic or Tare? and The Gospel of New Calvinism.
And finally, it’s ironic that just a generation ago, fundamentalists were quite rightly condemnatory of the heresies taught via the Revised Standard Version of the Bible (RSV), yet today they use a revised version of the RSV in many supposedly fundamentalist churches. And what is that version called? Well, just to throw fundamentalists off the scent, they have renamed this version the English Standard Version (ESV).
The English Standard Version (ESV) is an English translation of the Christian Bible. It is a revision of the 1971 edition of the Revised Standard Version (Wikipedia)
With this name change and the backing of the calvinists (who had a significant input into the ESV), that which was rightly despised has now become highly desirable! Funny how views can change if you’re not doing your homework properly, isn’t it!
List of all my posts on this site.
If you wish to read other documents on the heresies of calvinism, please use this link.
Please feel free to comment Comments and contact page
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