the bible as the base for decision making

Dan Phillips posts another of his infamous encouragements to dig into the Word of God and believe with all that we are that all that we need is contained therein. Well done ... except to be consistent with himself, he takes it a step too far. He misses one of the things that the Bible teaches. God speaks both directly and indirectly to His children throughout history and forevermore.

After doing a nice job of showing how God tells us to go out and make rationale decisions, he adds:

Oh, wait; I know! That was all before the Holy Spirit came. Everything would have to change after Pentecost. That's where we get all the floods and rivers of clear Scriptural doctrine that have so engrossed and captivated many of our past Pyro commenters — all that crystal-clear, explicit Biblical teaching that Biblical teaching is inadequate to produce a personal relationship with God; that such a relationship requires the normal, daily reception of extra-canonical semi-hemi-demi revelations, holy hunches, and heavenly fluttery mutterings.

Phillips ignores that many teach that personal revelation is not the norm and that God wants a mind transformed by the power of the Spirit. God wants a life that is conformed to His ways which are revealed through His written Word. A life that is living that way day in and day out and not sitting back waiting for some special revelation before acting. At the same time, this life that is transformed has learned via Scripture that God does and will speak to His sheep.

Somehow Phillips believes that if God continues to speak, than the Bible isn't sufficient. I wonder where he gets that illogical and erroneous idea given it isn't in the Bible.

He then comes up with a new one that really floored me.

That sort of mystical guidance is where we get direction for crucial personal decisions like... like... like whom to marry! We know from all popular evangelical teaching that there is just one right person for us to marry, already hand-picked by God; and if we don't marry that one right person, then we'll be haunted for all the rest of our days with the sure and certain knowledge that we are Out of the Will of God, because we have Missed God's Best for Us. And since that one person's name is not in the Bible, we have to get it by direct sorta-revelation.

I'm not sure which part of this he is negative toward. As a believer in the sovereignty of God, I would have expected him to believe that God does have a right person for us to marry. I would expect he would promote that we would use Scripture to guide us but in the end, the desire placed in our heart for the right person would be placed there by God. That to pursue another would be to follow after a desire foreign to us based on lust, personal gain, fear, whatever.

He rightly quotes 1 Co 7.39, "A wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives. But if her husband dies, she is free to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord." I wonder where Phillips believes that "will" comes from?

Because he is so locked into his point that Scripture is sufficient, he is saying Scripture plus free will formed by that Scripture - that's all. He seems to exclude that God would place this desire within a person and he almost has to because he is so bent on excluding any form of God's continuing to work in the heart of man outside of the written Word.

Sad.

Anyway, if one can weed through some of these weak arguments and false conclusions, it's a good post to read.

And, continuing with the theme, my friend Robert Ivy is back with Contra DJP 8 & 9. I have to admit that some of the Contra's are feeling a little redundant but I think it is necessary since "the other team" keeps fielding the same warn out arguments (there's nothing new under the sun). Please drop by his site. And for the lazy, see below ...

Contra DJP #8

His Article:
“Tongues” across the water: response to Adrian, Part One

His First Argument:
1. Charismatics look at the Bible like a mural (great moments of redemptive history have no significance)
2. Cessationists see the Bible as a story, with movements climaxes, opening and closing acts
3. The Bible is more like a story than a mural and the closing of the miraculous gifts is one part of the story
4. Charismatics miss this so they think the gifts are still for today

My Rebuttal:
I am aware that Adrian already responded to Dan’s, “’Tongues’ across the water: response to Adrian” series, which is why I didn’t respond to them initially. But since it seems like my audience is much smaller than I anticipated, and am therefore writing more for my own edification rather than that of a group of people, I’m going to go ahead and respond to the arguments posed in those articles as well. Moving on then.

Obviously the first problem with Dan’s argument is that he does not validate the third point with any Scripture. He has many of these overarching claims that he tries to use to validate his point, but in the end they all fail because all of his overarching theories are not based in scripture or in fact, but in something else. With that being said, I will not accept that one such “closing act” in scripture is the charismatic gifts.

However, to address what is most likely the real point of his argument: that charismatics in general just have the wrong view of scripture, he does not accomplish that either because he gives no evidence for his first statement, other than the one point that charismatics believe the miraculous gifts did not cease at the apostolic age.

I believe that in my previous “Contra DJP” posts I have addressed this error in passing, but in case it was missed let me again state it here. Charismatics believe in many such story-line events in the Bible. Even at this point in redemptive history, I think that many charismatics would agree that we are at a ‘low tide’ of sorts in terms of the gifts. Which I believe, along with many other individuals, is soon to be followed by a ‘high tide’ preceding the return of Christ. Even more to the point, charismatics do indeed believe that the supernatural gifts will have their “closing act” we just believe it will happen when the “perfect” comes (1 Cor 13:10) and when we see “face to face” (1 Cor 13:12), not when the Bible has been completed. It is not a matter of if we believe that the Bible is a story, it is a matter of when we believe those story-elements will happen.

His Second Argument:
1. Charismatics believe that the miraculous gifts are for today often because experience has informed their understanding of scripture
2. Scripture should inform our experience and not visa versa
3. Therefore Charismatics are wrong.

My Rebuttal:
Once again Dan’s foundation is good. He has a solid understanding of scripture. It’s just that he has allowed some other framework to come on his thinking and skew the construction upon this foundation. This argument is flawed in two main ways.

First, one should see that this argument is nothing more than the argument from Scripture, but without the supporting scripture. If Dan wants to say that Scripture should inform our experience and that charismatic thought is only the product of experience then he better show how Scripture would inform us to believe something different.

Second he again shows how he has no ability to see divisions among those who believe that gifts are for today. If one is “leaky canon” then they are all leaky canon, if one is immature in faith then they are all immature if faith, if one gets theology from experience then they all get theology from experience. A great variety of people can believe that signs and wonders are for today, just because some are informed by experience rather than scripture does not mean that all the charismatics are bad. I, for one, have never experienced anything supernatural, apart from conversion, and therefore only have scripture to make me think as I do.

Contra DJP #9

His Article:
“Tongues” across the water: response to Adrian, Part Two

His argument:
1. In the Bible tongues are acquired foreign languages (and are amazing)
2. In the world today, tongues are not foreign language and are lame
3. Therefore, tongues can’t be in the world today

My Rebuttal:
It is interesting to me how in his previous article of this series he says our theology cannot be formed by experience and may be informed only by the Word of God and in the very next breath he draws theology from experience when he says tongues today (experience) aren’t as amazing as what is seen in the Bible. Hence problem number one.

I repeat: for Dan to make an argument for the cessation of the miraculous spiritual gifts from his experience is impossible because he does not know every occurrence of miraculous spiritual gifts. Has Dan heard every tongue and verified that every tongue is not a foreign language? Then he cannot make this claim.

Then to address the very foundation of the argument I ought to say that tongues are not always acquired foreign languages in the Bible. Soon, I will write a few posts about what the Bible has to say about tongues. But briefly, the Bible speaks of four manifestations of the gift of tongues (1 Cor 14 and Acts 19:6). Only one of which is speaking in a foreign language. The others are very different and usually do not involve speech in a foreign language. I will not expound on that here, however, for reasons of space. But if you want to see the four manifestations, read the Bible! Therefore, people who claim to speak in tongues yet do not speak in known human languages may very well still be speaking in tongues. His argument again fails.

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