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Also See The Bible’s Very Straight Forward Statements About ‘Judging’
The Article
The August 2007 issue of Christianity Today contains an article by David Aikman entitled Attack Dogs of Christendom.. Is this how to bring grace and savor to a crumbling civilization? [Here].. in which he severely criticizes what he calls the
“self-appointed attack dogs of Christendom” who “seem determined to savage not only opponents of Christianity, but also fellow believers of whose doctrinal positions they disapprove”.
He goes on to say
“A troll through the Internet reveals websites so drenched in sarcasm and animosity that an agnostic, or a follower of another faith tradition interested in what it means to become a Christian, might be permanently disillusioned.
None of the major figures of American Protestantism in the past quarter-century have been spared from attack, from Billy Graham to Rick Warren, from Tim LaHaye to Robert Schuller. The attacks, moreover, are not reasoned or modestly couched criticism, but blasts of ire determined to discredit beyond redemption the targets of the criticism.
The angriest websites are those belonging to small, but disturbingly visible, fundamentalist Protestant groups outraged that fellow Protestants appear to be holding out a welcoming hand to Catholics or Orthodox Christians.”
He then names Ken Silva [Apprising Ministries], who allegedly called Rick Warren a "milquetoast." and Way of Life Literature
“whose website features books with titles like Billy Graham and Rome, The Pentecostal and Charismatic Movement, and Contemporary Christian Music”
The article ends with
“Yet while there is no questioning the apparent sincerity of these attack-dog ministries, there is plenty of reason to challenge their approach. Lashing out in public at fellow Christians is objectionable—especially when the Christian influence on contemporary culture today is so weakened. No attribute of civilized life seems more under attack than civility. If Christians blast each other from here to eternity with characterizations that differ little from the coarse vulgarity of cable TV, where on earth is the witness that brings grace and savor to our crumbling civilization?”
The Rebuttal
We (InPlainSite.org) have posted some extremely salient points from the Way of Life Editor’s rebuttal. [The Full Version is Here]
“Titled “Attack Dogs of Christendom,” the Christianity Today article is hypocritical, shallow and unscholarly, slanderous, biblically and historically wrong, unreasonable, prideful, fearful of strong biblical language, and evidential of CT’s own error and spiritual blindness”.
CONSIDER, FIRST, THE HYPOCRISY OF THE ARTICLE.
The hypocrisy is obvious on its very head. While Christianity Today claims that it is harmful and objectionable for Christians to issue public warnings against other Christians, they do not hesitate to issue a really nasty public warning against their fellow Christians at Apprising Ministries and Way of Life Literature. If Christianity Today issues public warnings, that is fine and helpful, but others are not allowed the same privilege. That sounds like hypocrisy to me.
THE CT ARTICLE IS ALSO BIBLICALLY AND HISTORICALLY WRONG.
To say that a preacher should not warn of error publicly (Ct writes, “Lashing out in public at fellow Christians is objectionable”) flies in the face of Scripture as well as the example of church history. Scripture commands the preacher to reprove and rebuke (2 Tim. 4:2) and to earnestly contend for the faith once delivered to the saints (Jude 3). Paul instructed Titus, “These things speak, and exhort, and rebuke with all authority. Let no man despise thee” (Titus 2:15), and we do not have to beg CT’s permission to do so. In practically every epistle Paul issued severe warnings against theological error. He warned of Hymenaeus and Alexander’s blasphemy (1 Tim. 1:19-20) and of Phygellus and Hermogenes’ apostasy (2 Tim. 1:15) and of Hymenaeus and Philetus’ profane and vain babblings (2 Tim. 2:16-17) and of Demas’ love of the world (2 Tim. 4:10) and of Alexander the coppersmith’s evil (2 Tim. 4:14) and of the Galatian heretics’ cursed gospel (Gal. 1:6-8) and of the dogs and evil workers operating at Philippi (Phil. 3:1-2) and of the false teachers “whose God is their belly” (Phil. 3:17-19). That’s some pretty strong “attack dog” language!
And the Lord Jesus Christ publicly called the Pharisees, who were respected Jewish religious leaders of that day, hypocrites, children of hell, blind guides, fools and blind, serpents, and a generation of vipers (Matthew 23).
Now, there is some real “attack dog” language for you, Christianity Today!
When we come to church history we have a continuous stream of godly but plain spoken and sharp public warnings that have been issued against error and that helped to protect God’s people from the heresies of the day. Martin Luther didn’t keep his disagreement with Rome a private matter; he nailed his scathing anti-heresy thesis to the door of the church and published it in tracts for everyone to see. William Tyndale did not keep his disagreement with the heresies of Rome and the moral compromise of the king of England a private matter. He wrote against them boldly in tracts and books that were distributed throughout the land. Charles Spurgeon didn’t keep quiet during the Downgrade Controversy in the Baptist Union. He dealt plainly with its heresies in his very public paper The Sword and the Trowel. The Fundamentalists of the early 20th century did not keep their concerns about theological liberalism a private matter. They lifted up tongue and pen boldly and in a most public manner to warn those who had an ear to hear. James Stewart, a mighty evangelist during the 1940s and 1950s, did not keep quiet about that the compromises of the gospel that were just beginning to bud in evangelical Christianity. He wrote publicly to warn of “Pot-Pourri Evangelism” and “Hollywood Evangelism.” In fact, one of CT’s own editors, Harold Lindsell, took up his pen and published a very public warning about the downgrade of the doctrine of inspiration in well-known schools, and he “belled the cat” by naming the names of the chief culprits (The Battle for the Bible, 1976; The Bible in the Balance, 1979)….
THE CT ARTICLE, FURTHER, IS UNREASONABLE.
If preachers are not allowed to warn of error publicly, then error is free to prosper without rebuttal. If Rome can promote Mary veneration across the Internet but we are not at liberty to refute this heresy just as publicly and in the same forum, then Mariolatry can have free reign.
If New Evangelicals can promote their doctrine and philosophy freely on the Internet, should those who oppose it not be at liberty to refute it just as publicly and in the same forums in which it is promoted, when they are convinced by the Spirit of God that it is wrong?
Understandably, the New Evangelical doesn’t like the idea of being the target of a theological warning, but Bible preachers are supposed to be in the business of proclaiming the truth rather than soothing egos….
….”THE CT ARTICLE IS ALSO FEARFUL OF STRONG BIBLICAL LANGUAGE IN PREACHING
The article makes a lot of the alleged fact that the warning ministries in question use strong language. This is one of the major points of the article, which ends with the words, “By all means criticize fellow Christians if necessary, but do so with grace.” (We will ignore the fact that this final statement contradicts what was said earlier in the article about it being objectionable to criticize fellow Christians publicly.)
CT characterizes the language of the warning ministries as ungracious, “vitriolic,” “blasts of ire,” “angry,” “intemperate,” “lashing out.” As evidence of this they quote Apprising Ministries calling Rick Warren “milquetoast” and Robert Schuller and Norman Vincent Peale “the devil’s duo” and Brian McLaren and Joel Osteen “vipers of new evangelicalism” and “whitewashed tombs.”
(InPlainsite.org Note: See articles on Robert Schuller and Norman Vincent Peale, who are worse than the devil’s duo ... if that is possible. Brian McLaren is possibly better by a hair’s breadth, as are Joel Osteen and Rick Warren.)
What Christianity Today calls ungraceful and “vitriolic,” I see as gracious and truthful and exceedingly biblical. We have already quoted some of the rough things that Jesus called the Pharisees and that Paul called the heretics of his day. Their statements were no less “vitriolic” than the things quoted above, and who is going to charge them with lack of grace?
How about Peter and John, who has been called “the apostle of love”? We haven’t quoted from them yet. Let’s see how vitriolic and intemperate and ungracious they were in their dealings with error. Peter wrote an entire chapter and a half to warn of false teachers in his second epistle, calling their teaching “damnable heresies” (2 Pet. 2:1), their ways “pernicious” (2 Pet. 2:2), their words “feigned” (2 Pet. 2:3), and their future “damnation” that “slumbereth not” (2 Pet. 2:3). He likened them to the “filthy conversation” of Sodom and Gomorrah (2 Pet. 2:6-9) and called them “presumptuous” and “self-willed” (2 Pet. 2:10). He even likened them to “natural brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed” (2 Pet. 2:12). Peter made a lot more vitriolic-sounding statements about them, too! Just read 2 Peter 2-3.
And as for John, he was no slacker when it came to rebuking false teachers. He called them antichrists and warned of the fact that “they went out from us, but they were not of us” (1 John 2:18). He called the liars (1 John 2:22) and seducers (1 John 2:26) and taught the believers to “believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God” (1 John 4:1). He further warned of the “many deceivers” that are entered into the world (2 John 7) and dogmatically said that “whosoever transgresseth, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God” (2 John 9). That means that a lot of preachers in these end times do not have God and should be publicly exposed as such. John would certainly expose them if he were here today! John even warned of Diotrephes, a puffed-up preacher (3 John 9-10).
To be consistent with its stand against “ungracious” “vitriolic” speech, CT needs to reject the Bible….
….“The CT article makes light of ministries that warn about Rick Warren, Robert Schuller, Brian McLaren, Joel Osteen, and others. For those who are informed of the very dangerous and unscriptural doctrines promoted by these men, this is plain evidence of CT’s own error and spiritual blindness.
WARREN teaches that God “won’t ask you about your … doctrinal views” (The Purpose Driven Life, p. 34), and God is “not a boss, but a brother…” (p. 79), and God “warns us over and over not to … judge each other” (p. 164). SCHULLER teaches that defining sin as rebellion against God is “shallow and insulting to the human being” (Schuller, Self-Esteem: The New Reformation, p. 65), that sin is “any act or thought that robs myself or another human being of his or her self-esteem” (Self-Esteem, p. 14) and that every human being is a child of God (Self-Esteem, p. 17). MCLAREN teaches that evangelicals should turn their backs on the old belief that the Bible is the absolute standard for truth and that doctrine is either right or wrong and should adopt a pliable, philosophical position in which “faith is more about a way of life than a system of belief, where being authentically good is more important than being doctrinally right” (from the back cover of McLaren’s “A New Kind of Christian”). OSTEEN, one of the kings of the unscriptural prosperity gospel today, was described by the St. Petersburg Times as “unrelentingly positive … nonjudgmental … no condemnation … no damnation” (“God’s Cheerleader,” St. Petersburg Times, Nov. 26, 2006).
By implying that it is wrong to warn publicly of such heresies and mocking those who issue the warnings, Christianity Today has aligned itself with heresy and has exposed its own deep theological compromise”….
..” But, then again, the magazine’s name is “Christianity Today,” and it is actually an accurate reflection of the apostasy that reigns in Christianity today.”..
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