Welcome to a new gospel – welcome to the Social Justice gospel!
It’s difficult for someone like me to find new ways of expressing what I’ve stated many times before. Despite lack of qualification, something as important as the nature of the gospel needs to be continuously defended because it is being constantly attacked by The Enemy.
I’m passionate about this subject because of my past. To this day I vividly recall the relief and joy of the moment when I walked out of the Melbourne Theosophical Society, knowing that God’s revealed Word was faithful and true. I’ve never looked back.
It’s important to reiterate that my journey into the New Age wilderness began with unanswered questions about evolution and doubts about Scripture. It was also fueled by books I found in a Christian bookstore. These professing Christian writers neglected Scripture and gospel basics. Their focus was on personal development. And I was hooked.
Times have changed.
The new focus is Social Justice. A 2012 Aquila Report critical discussion of Tim Keller’s book “Generous Justice” is instructive:
…Keller goes further, comingling the concept of unmerited salvation by Grace, with the idea that “[i]f you are not just, you’ve not truly been justified by faith.” (Emphasis mine)
The SJ ball is rolling and gaining some speed.
Many Christian leaders are now marrying SJ issues to an extra-biblical gospel. Race is creeping into discussions about salvation. The title of a new book published by InterVarsity Press is Can “White” People Be Saved? While the book affirms they can be, the blurb adds:
But what about the reality of white normativity? This idea and way of being in the world has been parasitically joined to Christianity, and this is the ground of many of our problems today. It is time to redouble the efforts of the church and its institutions to muster well-informed, gospel-based initiatives to fight racialized injustice and overcome the heresy of whiteness.
Such a provocative title is revealing. It isn’t just “whiteness” (i.e., racism, white privilege) which must now be addressed. But also the wholesale opposition to immigration, discrimination of LGBT people, and whatever’s next on the social justice list. The embracement of these issues is becoming the standard for a new social gospel.
Has Tim Keller’s Theistic Evolutionism subtly influenced his doctrine? I don’t know. But Peter Enns’ evolutionism certainly informs his views of the Bible, including sin and atonement. Here’s the problem as I see it – if evolution is true, there was no Adam and Even, or a fall.
If there was no original sin, what was the purpose for the Cross? It gets reduced to a sacrificial example for Christians to live by. This seems to be one of the messages in progressive Christian Rachel Held Evans’ new book “Inspired.” RHE is critical of:
…a view of Christianity that reduces the gospel to a transaction, whereby God needed a spotless sacrifice to atone for the world’s sins and thus sacrificed Jesus on the cross so believers could go to heaven. In this view, Jesus basically shows up to post our bail. His life and teachings make for an interesting backstory but prove largely irrelevant to the work of salvation. (Emphasis mine)
Aside from the straw man remarks, Evans de-emphasizes Christ’s finished work on the cross. She goes on to say that Jesus didn’t simply die to save us from our sins; He lived to save us from our sins. She adds that Jesus’ life and teachings show the way to liberation. Do you see the inference to a works based social gospel?
Further on RHE favorably cites ELCA Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber. Bolz-Weber has described the gospel in seven words: “We are who God says we are.” That’s it? Megan Hill has reviewed one of Nadia’s books HERE. Pay particular attention to the paragraph on Grace and the Gospel.
After reading RHE’s book someone tweeted the following comment (promptly retweeted by Evans):
When reading the Bible we shouldn’t ask, “What does the Bible say?” we should ask: “What am I looking for it to say?”
This invites the following subjective approach,
Not all Scripture is valid – because of the Canaanite genocide, angry God, pro hell, anti-LGBT etc. Not everything Paul wrote is of equal value – because he didn’t allow women to preach, taught submission of wives to husbands etc. Hence the Christian must filter Scripture (and the gospel) through the lens of Social Justice and Universalism.
Some time after The Gospel Coalition kerfuffle regarding the church’s role in social justice issues, Alistair Begg preached a sermon on Philemon. I think it was likely his response to TGC, and I’ll add that he began nervously. There was a younger African-American man sitting in front of me. My palms suddenly got sweaty. How would he react?
Begg went on the say that the call of the church is not to reform the world on social issues. Wretched’s one minute video captures the essence of Begg’s sermon. To my relief, the young man in front kept nodding his head in approval as he took notes.
“…the church is to proclaim the gospel, and whenever that which is central, namely the gospel, becomes peripheral, then that which is peripheral inevitably becomes central – whatever you want to use as the issue” ~ Alistair Begg
The gospel is straightforward. Simply trust the texts. See John 3:14-18; 1 Cor 15:1-4. Don’t add or take away from this because of some peripheral issue. Don’t be deceived.
But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed! Gal 1:8
Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, knowing that as such we will incur a stricter judgment. Jam 3:1
And finally…
…preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths. 2Tim 4:2-4
Maranatha!
Further resources:
The Rise of Woker-Than-Thou Evangelicalism
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