Feb 09, 2012
Another Elephant in the Room
Posted by Pastor Todd Murphy in | Comments (0)
Well Elephant room round two just recently took place. This caused some tremors within the Evangelical community, namely because T.D. Jakes was invited to come. For those of you who do not know who he is, he is one of the most popular health & wealth preachers today. He has an enormous following. He is also rooted in a “oneness” Pentecostal tradition. What does that mean? Oneness irejects the orthodox Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Early church heresies like this were known as “monarchianism” or “Arianism” named after Arius who first popularized the idea that Jesus was not eternal God. He was famous for the phrase “there was a time when he was not.”
James MacDonald, who is the founder/host of the Elephant room was, up until this round, a member of the council of The Gospel Coalition. Apparently the event lead up to his resignation from TGC. It seems that he was highly encouraged not to go through with this. The concerns of TGC are in my opinion completely valid. As Justin Taylor has shown, the purpose of ER1 was basically to have a conversation among evangelical pastors who shared unity in the essentials and diversity in the non-essentials. And that is the problem with Jakes. The Trinity is not a non-essential. In some blog posts before hand, MacDonald actually prejudged that Jakes was Trinitarian, but even if not, it was not that critical. This position by MacDonald changed the whole face of the game. To read the full details, see Justin Taylor’s blog on the subject. On top of all this, a race reconciliation aspect was added to the purpose of ER2 which as Vodie Bauchum has pointed out, really made it a win-win for Jakes a lose-lose for Evangelicals. If he was warmly received, his reputation and platform expanded. If not, he had the race card to play. Any way you look at it, it was poorly conceived and not well thought out by MacDonald, who at the end seemed to have his own ax to grind against “reformed” folks and TGC.
Ill Conceived
While the ER2 is not anything I would lose any sleep over (I think there is way too much anxiety and fanfare over the whole thing) I still felt it was poorly conceived and would have consequences. I have come out previously in criticism of the whole idea. (LINK HERE) I feel it is promoting clerical celebrity culture which is being pushed to new levels in a narcissistic Oprah TV show format. The selection process is Freudian, based upon the size of your ministry or church. Basically if you are a rockstar mega-church pastor, then everyone wants to know what you have to say. This is actually the opposite of how the church has historically seen things. Among the Church fathers, and Reformers, it was not the size of your ministry, but your theological and ministry fidelity to the truth that gave you the right to speak publicly. In most of the history of the Church, there was a mature and sober attitude toward authority, not a shallow and worldly one that is simply asking “what have you done?” or “how big is your...?”
Before going to this Driscoll (who would be sitting across the table from Jakes) asked prayer from all the A29 planters. I did pray for him, in spite of my personal disappointment that he would participate in something like this. To his credit, he wanted to expose Jakes. Unfortunately, when it took place it seems that not only MacDonald, but even Driscoll (believe it or not) had fallen under his winsome charismatic spell. Nothing resembling accountability or exposure would take place.
Four Big Concerns & A Man Crush
I had several concerns from the start. First the sound-bite Oprah format was not conducive to digging down on the issues deep enough. Second The Trinity was being made the center, which was an easy one for Jakes to evade. A guy like Jakes has gotten where he is precisely because he does not care about doctrine. He is driven by expedience and self promotion. Guys like him and Joel Osteen are chameleons. They mimic their surroundings to fit in and self promote. Moreover, all false teachers are like jello, the more you squeeze them theologically, the more they ooze through your fingers. Third there are many unorthodox Churches that are confessionally Trinitarian. There is a whole lot more to orthodoxy than the Trinity. Believe it or not, the Trinity was raised to too high of a status here. It is one among many things in the catholic creeds a real Church should confess. But in this case, it was made into the only water shed. If Jakes came out as being Trinitarian, then he would get a pass, and that is exactly what happened. That leads me to the fourth, that the the biggest problems for Jakes is not the Trinity, but his practical theology and preaching. If he confesses the Trinity, that means nothing if he continues preaching prosperity Gospel that denies the real Gospel of the Triune God. He is preaching a theology of glory, one that glorifies man and not the God who is three-in-one. He does not preach a theology of the cross.
Needless to say, my concerns were roundly affirmed. You can read the full transcript here. I am grieved to say that not only Macdonald, but also Driscoll came off as practically fawning over him, repetitively saying what a humble man he was for coming there to submit to questioning, albeit questioning my one of my younger kids could have gotten a pass on. It seems Jesus’ words to be “wise as serpents” was altogether forgotten here. No Jakes, a professional wordsmith, was plopped into a cozy conversation with a bunch of pastors, not theologians who would excise him with razor sharp questions. I appreciate Driscoll’s passion for theology. He takes it real seriously and I respect that. But lets just face it, he is not Kevin VanHoozer, Michael Horton, D.A. Carson, or Bruce Ware either. If the selection process was built on theological qualifications rather than the insipid criteria of church size and public persona, this would have looked a lot different.
What We Confess is Never the Biggest Issue
As I said above, Jakes got a pass because he gave lip service to the Trinity. But like I also pointed out, He has never cared about theology, other than for how it serves his agenda. As he wants to broaden his fan base and become more mainstream, Oneness is holding him back. It is to his advantage to move to a Trinitarian sort of stance. But notice he still did not condemn modalism (the doctrine that God masquerades in three different ways and is not three distinct persons). The Elephant Room just handed him the opportunity plus a dollop of the right hand of fellowship from all these guys.
Most importantly, the real issues with Jakes were not dealt with. The real problem with Jakes is his practical theology. Is the prosperity Gospel making disciples who are willfully taking up their cross and bearing it? No! It is a false Gospel and a realized eschatology. It is teaching people that by calling on the name of Jesus, you can have all the best this world has to offer. It does not point to the cross, but it points to the aggrandizement of self. It is the opposite of John’s words in 1John 2:15, “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” It is Jakes, practical theology that we need to most be worried about. He is not a man of the Church who is rightly administering the doctrine of the apostles, the fellowship of the saints, the sacraments, and the prayers (Acts 2:42). On this point, he gets “F’s” across the board. None of this was remotely touched in ER2. Jakes got a pass. MacDonald and Driscoll get “F’s” from me.
Finally, Jakes exemplified behavior characteristic of false teachers and heretics throughout the history of the Church. Like Marcion and Valentinus before him he kept appealing to getting along and not judging each other. Those who are pedaling false teaching always aim to portray themselves as the “nicer guy.” Moreover their strategy is to paint those who contend for right doctrine as rigid, unbending and hateful pinheads. Jakes navigated these waters with precision. When you get to the end, MacDonald opens up to the rest of the panel of participants to get a 60 second word from each. In every case, the words were positive. In almost every case, the participants were nearly mimicking Jakes’ rhetoric of “lets all just love each other and get along” in an almost hypnotic fashion.
Admonishing as a Brother
In sum I would chalk this up as a minor loss. Driscoll and MacDonald got themselves in way over their heads and totally underestimated who they were dealing with. But I do say minor loss. I think the outcome was surely to Jake’s advantage, rather than the testimony of the Gospel. But any such minor success in error is certainly temporary. Christ is building his Church, and so such things are just speed bumps along the way. There are some practical things for us to then keep in mind with folks like Jakes. First of all we do not know their true eternal destiny, and we should not pretend to. It is not for us to pontificate about whether they are going to heaven or hell because only those things are known to God himself (Deut. 29:29). We need to always maintain a humble posture even to the worst. But that does not mean we do not lovingly hold them accountable. The problem with ER2 was not that they failed to uphold orthodoxy or get to the real issues. The big mistake was their failure to really love Jakes. Notice how Paul tells us to deal with the doctrinally errant.
2Th. 3:14 If anyone does not obey what we say in this letter, take note of that person, and have nothing to do with him, that he may be ashamed. 15 Do not regard him as an enemy, but warn him as a brother.
Having nothing to do with him does not mean to have no conversation with him at all, but to not allow him into the regular fellowship of the Church. It is to protect the Church. But Paul also specifically commands to not treat that person as an enemy, but to warn/admonish them as a brother. This means that enough contact is maintained to show that he is loved. Thus Paul forbids us from an arrogant attitude, but also commands the Church to take a stand. That is what went wrong here in the ER2. Jakes was received as if he were not erring, and then not admonished as a brother. If these men would like to have fellowship with Jakes, then it should be based upon real repentance, Jim Baker type repentance. He had a circus show ministry like Jakes at one point, and God grabbed a hold of him. What Jakes needs is a firm loving admonishment that will lead him to walk away from his ministry charade in tears like Jm baker saying “I was wrong.”
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