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#55267 Wed Oct 10, 2018 2:44 PM
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Susan Offline OP
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Hello,
I have a good friend who has been reading a lot of online articles and listening to broadcasts by Dr. Michael Heiser. He wrote a book called The Unseen Realm which she's also reading.

He is a professor at Liberty University and Scholar-in-Residence for Logos Bible Software which a reformed pastor I know said is a good and helpful Bible Program.

I read a blog series by Dr. Heiser’s friend Ronn Johnson called the Bible’s Big Picture in on his blog. Dr. Heiser did not agree with everything his friend teaches but evidently agreed enough to let him post on his blog. Dr. Heiser later wrote his own thoughts on the atonement.

http://drmsh.com/bibles-big-story/ Ronn Johnson is a follower of NT Wright.

http://drmsh.com/random-thoughts-substitutionary-atonement/

I have found very few people online that will say anything bad about his teaching aside from James White and Ken Ham. Dr. Heiser is an “expert in Semitic Languages” so it is claimed that one cannot refute his teachings unless one has a Ph. D in his field of study.

His credentials: http://serveliterary.com/authors/dr-michael-s-heiser/

Your comments are welcome.

Susan #55268 Wed Oct 10, 2018 7:12 PM
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Okay, I actually found time to read both the articles by Ronn Johnson and Mike Heiser and will be very brief in my response.

1. Both men stand outside the Church due to their rejection of its orthodoxy, i.e., they both reject the historic and confessional doctrines as taught in Scripture.

2. Ronn Johnson mentioned his fascination with the writings/teachings of N.T. Wright, who is a known heretic of the worst kind, denying the imputed righteousness of Christ to the sinner who by the antecedent regenerating work of the Holy Spirit repents and believes upon Christ for justification.

3. Heiser denies penal substitutionary atonement as it has been understand by the Church, i.e., through Christ's death on the cross, the wrath of God for sinners was appeased. That is what Paul teaches in many passages and particularly in Romans 3:25 (see propitiation (Grk: hilaskomi/hilistarion) in most formal equivalent translations).

4. Heiser denies that the wrath of God toward sinners, i.e., God hates the sinner because he sins. God's hatred of sinners is NOT, as Heiser denies but postulates, that God is angry because sinful humans miss out on the benefits of a sinless life and thus suffer the temporal consequences of their sin.

5. Heiser holds to a universal atonement for all mankind without exception, i.e., Jesus died for everyone without exception. But then he states that it wasn't the death of Christ which redeems sinners but rather His resurrection which secures them a life of bliss.

6. Heiser denies the Omniscience of God, e.g.,

Quote
Did God select and intend the death of Jesus as a penal substitution, or did he just foreknow what would happen to Jesus on earth (not intending that he die) and then, through raising him from the dead, endorse him as a substitution? It seems to me that God foreknew humanity would suffer the loss of immortality (i.e., Eden would fail and with it, everlasting life with God). God knew this meant that death separated him from the humans he loved and wanted in his family forever.
Further, Heiser denies God's Omnipotence for if as he believes that God did not intend that Christ die, then it begs the question, Why did God allow Christ to be crucified and die on the cross? (cf. Isaiah 46:10; Acts 2:22-28).

7. Heiser denies Federal Headship, aka: Corporate Solidarity, i.e., that Adam was appointed by God to be the representative of the entire human race. When he chose to disobey God he was punished; Original Sin... guilt for transgressing the law of God and died physically, spiritually and eternally. Thus every human being that is conceived is subject to Original Sin (Roman 5:12-18), i.e., everyone is born spiritually DEAD with a corruption of nature, aka: Total Depravity, everyone dies physically, and all, but for the infinite of grace given to the elect in Christ, are subject to eternal damnation.

Quote
It cures the death problem, which is/was brought on by sin (my own view of Rom 5:12 helps here — that we are guilty before God not because of what someone else did [even Adam] but because of what we invariably and inevitably do — we sin).

Conclusion... beware of these men and all like him, which there are many now serving as pastors/elders in churches; yes, even in "Reformed" churches particularly. flee

Just three salient articles which are on The Highway website, of which myriad more could be recommended. grin

- The Great Exchange
- What's Wrong with Wright: Examining the New Perspective on Paul
- Does God Love the Sinner and Hate Only His Sin?


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Susan Offline OP
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Thanks so much, Pilgrim! I'll check out the articles.

Susan #55270 Wed Oct 10, 2018 10:32 PM
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"And justification by faith is not the only issue at stake. The next major controversy you can expect to see arising out of the community that has embraced the New Perspective on Paul is will be a debate over the issue of whether Christ’s sacrifice on the cross was actually a penal substitution. So the atonement will also become fodder for debate with those who embrace the New Perspective."

Wow, the above quote was taken from the article by Phil Johnson!

Last edited by Susan; Wed Oct 10, 2018 10:33 PM.
Susan #55271 Thu Oct 11, 2018 7:49 AM
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Also there was this relevant quote at the end of Phil Johnson's article:
"Righteousness is a much bigger concept than Tom Wright will acknowledge, and herein lies my chief complaint with his approach to theology: he has made righteousness a smaller concept than Scripture does. He makes sin a minor issue. He downplays the idea of atonement. He barely touches on the sinner’s need for forgiveness. He diminishes the doctrine of justification by declaring it a second-order doctrine. What he ends up with is a theology that is destitute of virtually all the lofty concepts that the Protestant Reformation recovered from the barrenness of Medieval theology.

Let me close with an illustration of why I think Tom Wright’s influence poses such a serious danger to sound doctrine. When I was in England last month, there was a great deal of controversy there about a new book titled The Lost Message of Jesus, by Steve Chalke. The Evangelical Alliance held a formal debate to discuss the merits and demerits of that book.

The book contains explicit denunciations of some fundamental doctrines of evangelical Christianity, including the notions of penal substitution and original sin.

Regarding the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement, Chalke writes this: “John’s gospel famously declares, ‘God loved the ... world so much that he gave his only Son’ (John 3:16). How then, have we come to believe that at the cross this God of love suddenly decides to vent His anger and wrath on his own Son?”

Chalke says, “The fact is that the cross isn’t a form of cosmic child abuse—a vengeful Father, punishing his Son for an offense he has not even committed. Understandably, both people inside and outside of the Church have found this twisted version of events morally dubious and a huge barrier to faith. Deeper than that, however, is that such a concept stands in total contradiction to the statement ‘God is love.’ If the cross is a personal act of violence perpetrated by God towards humankind but borne by his Son, then it makes a mockery of Jesus’ own teaching to love your enemies.”

Every true Christian needs to understand that the kind of atonement Steve Chalke caricatures as “cosmic child abuse” is precisely what the Bible teaches. Christ did bear our guilt, and God did punish Him for it. That—and nothing less—is what the biblical word propitiation means. That’s how God can justify sinners without compromising His own justice, according to Romans 3:26. That is also why the cross was the greatest imaginable display of God’s love to unworthy sinners.

And regarding the doctrine of original sin, Steve Chalke says this: “To see humanity as inherently evil and steeped in original sin instead of inherently made in God’s image and so bathed in original goodness, however hidden it may have become, is a serious mistake. It is this grave error that has dogged the Church in the West for centuries.”

It’s no surprise that Chalke’s book contains endorsements from Brian McLaren and Tony Campolo, the two leading advocates of every postmodern corruption of Christian doctrine.

But it may surprise you to learn that the lead endorsement on the book, at the top of the front cover, is an unqualified endorsement from the bishop of Durham, Tom Wright. Wright says this about Chalke’s book: “Steve Chalke’s new book is rooted in good scholarship, but its clear, punchy style makes it accessible to anyone and everyone. Its message is stark and exciting.”

To true evangelicals, the message of Steve Chalke’s book is anything but exciting. It’s depressing. It leaves sinners without any hope of true redemption. And it utterly corrupts the message of the Bible.

But frankly, if you embrace everything Tom Wright says, that’s what you ultimately will be driven to. There’s no room in the New Perspective—and no real need for—the classic view of the atonement as a vicarious payment of sin’s penalty. The idea of propitiation makes too much of divine wrath; the idea of penal substitution involves the imputation of my guilt to Christ; and the Reformation understanding of justification involves all of those things. Reject the historic principle of sola fide, and you’re left with every evil the Reformation rightly rejected.

I’m not a prophet or the son of a prophet, but I can see which way the wind is blowing. And it’s my conviction that the next great controversy that will arise out of the New Perspective is going to involve an assault on the doctrine of the atonement. Steve Chalke has already put that issue on the table.

That’s why I reject the New Perspective on Paul: because it’s not a new perspective at all, but a recycling and repackaging of several serious errors that have already proved their spiritual bankruptcy. May God raise up men who will take the Word of God and the problem of sin seriously, and refute this error for the heresy I am convinced it is."

Susan #55277 Mon Oct 15, 2018 10:02 PM
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Susan
As I was reading the information you had concerning "cosmic child abuse". Perhaps it is no coincidence but Emergent Church leader Brian MacLaren said that if the traditional understanding of the cross is correct, then God is guilty of cosmic child abuse.
I wonder if there is a connection between Chalk and MacLaren?

Tom

Last edited by Tom; Mon Oct 15, 2018 10:03 PM.
Tom #55292 Mon Nov 05, 2018 10:00 PM
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Susan Offline OP
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I don't know anything about the emergent church, Tom so I'm not sure if there's a connection. Sorry I didn't check this sooner!


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