What may be the most famous chapter in all of western literature portrays the appeal of a “therapeutic gospel.”

In his chapter entitled “The Grand Inquisitor,” Fyodor Dostoevsky imagines Jesus returning to sixteenth century Spain (The Brothers Karamazov, II:5:v). But Jesus is not welcomed by church authorities. The cardinal of Seville, head of the Inquisition, arrests and imprisons Jesus, condemning him to die. Why? The church has shifted course. It has decided to meet instinctual human cravings, rather than calling men to repentance. It has decided to bend its message to felt needs, rather than calling forth the high, holy, and difficult freedom of faith working through love. Jesus’ biblical example and message are deemed too hard for weak souls, and the church has decided to make it easy.

The Grand Inquisitor, representing the voice of this misguided church, interrogates Jesus in his prison cell. He sides with the tempter and the three questions the tempter put to Jesus in the wilderness centuries before. He says that the church will give earthly bread instead of the bread of heaven. It will offer religious magic and miracles instead of faith in the Word of God. It will exert temporal power and authority instead of serving the call to freedom. “We have corrected Your work,” the inquisitor says to Jesus.

The inquisitor’s gospel is a therapeutic gospel. It’s structured to give people what they want, not to change what they want. It centers exclusively around the welfare of man and temporal happiness. It discards the glory of God in Christ. It forfeits the narrow, difficult road that brings deep human flourishing and eternal joy. This therapeutic gospel accepts and covers for human weaknesses, seeking to ameliorate the most obvious symptoms of distress. It makes people feel better. It takes human nature as a given, because human nature is too hard to change. It does not want the King of Heaven to come down. It does not attempt to change people into lovers of God, given the truth of who Jesus is, what he is like, what he does.

Continue reading here.

THE THERAPEUTIC GOSPEL
By Dr. David Powlison

THE CONTEMPORARY THERAPEUTIC GOSPEL

The most obvious, instinctual felt needs of twenty-first century, middle-class Americans are different from the felt needs that Dostoevsky tapped into. We take food supply and political stability for granted. We find our miracle-substitute in the wonders of technology. Middle-class felt needs are less primal. They express a more luxurious, more refined sense of self-interest:

I want to feel loved for who I am, to be pitied for what I’ve gone through,
to feel intimately understood, to be accepted unconditionally;


I want to experience a sense of personal significance and meaningfulness, to be successful in my career, to know my life matters, to have an impact;


I want to gain self-esteem, to affirm that I am okay, to be able to assert my opinions and desires;


I want to be entertained, to feel pleasure in the endless stream of performances that delight my eyes and tickle my ears;


I want a sense of adventure, excitement, action, and passion so that I experience life as thrilling and moving.

The modern, middle-class version of therapeutic gospel takes its cues from this particular family of desires. We might say that the target audience consists of psychological felt needs, rather than the physical felt needs that typically arise in difficult social conditions. (The contemporary “health and wealth” gospel and obsession with “miracles” express something more like the Grand Inquisitor’s older version of therapeutic gospel.)

In this new gospel, the great “evils” to be redressed do not call for any fundamental change of direction in the human heart. Instead, the problem lies in my sense of rejection from others; in my corrosive experience of life’s vanity; in my nervous sense of self-condemnation and diffidence; in the imminent threat of boredom if my music is turned off; in my fussy complaints when a long, hard road lies ahead. These are today’s significant felt needs that the gospel is bent to serve. Jesus and the church exist to make you feel loved, significant, validated, entertained, and charged up. This gospel ameliorates distressing symptoms. It makes you feel better. The logic of this therapeutic gospel is a Jesus-for-Me who meets individual desires and assuages psychic aches.

The therapeutic outlook is not a bad thing in its proper place. By definition, a medical-therapeutic gaze holds in view problems of physical suffering and breakdown. In literal medical intervention, a therapy treats an illness, trauma, or deficiency. You don’t call someone to repentance for their colon cancer, broken leg, or beriberi. You seek to heal. So far, so good.

But in today’s therapeutic gospel the medical way of looking at the world is metaphorically extended to these psychological desires. These are defined just like a medical problem. You feel bad; the therapy makes you feel better. The definition of the disease bypasses the sinful human heart. You are not the agent of your deepest problems, but merely a sufferer and victim of unmet needs. The offer of a cure skips over the sin-bearing Savior. Repentance from unbelief, willfulness, and wickedness is not the issue. Sinners are not called to a U-turn and to a new life that is life indeed. Such a gospel massages self-love. There is nothing in its inner logic to make you love God and love any other person besides yourself. This therapeutic gospel may often mention the word “Jesus,” but he has morphed into the meeter-of-your-needs, not the Savior from your sins. It corrects Jesus’ work. The therapeutic gospel unhinges the gospel.

THE ONCE-FOR-ALL GOSPEL

The real gospel is good news of the Word made flesh, the sin-bearing Savior, the resurrected Lord of lords: “I am the living One, and I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore” (Rev. 1:18). This Christ turns the world upside down. The Holy Spirit rewires our sense of felt need as one prime effect of his inworking presence and power. Because the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, we keenly feel a different set of needs when God comes into view and when we understand that we stand or fall in his gaze. My instinctual cravings are replaced (sometimes quickly, always gradually) by the growing awareness of true, life-and-death needs:

I need mercy above all else: “Lord, have mercy upon me”; “For Your name’s sake, pardon my iniquity for it is very great”;


I want to learn wisdom, and unlearn willful self-preoccupation: “Nothing you desire compares with her”;


I need to learn to love both God and neighbor: “The goal of our instruction is love that comes from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith”;


I long for God’s name to be honored, for his kingdom to come, for his will to be done on earth;


I want Christ’s glory, lovingkindness, and goodness to be seen on earth, to fill the earth as obviously as water fills the ocean;


I need God to change me from who I am by instinct, choice, and practice;


I want him to deliver me from my obsessive self-righteousness, to slay my lust for self-vindication, so that I feel my need for the mercies of Christ, so that I learn to treat others gently;


I need God’s mighty and intimate help in order to will and to do those things that last unto eternal life, rather than squandering my life on vanities;


I want to learn how to endure hardship and suffering in hope, having my faith simplified, deepened, and purified;


I need to learn to worship, to delight, to trust, to give thanks, to cry out, to take refuge, to hope;


I want the resurrection to eternal life: “We groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body”;


I need God himself: “Show me Your glory”; “Maranatha. Come, Lord Jesus.”

Make it so, Father of mercies. Make it so, Redeemer of all that is dark and broken.

Prayer expresses desire. Prayer expresses your felt sense of need. Lord, have mercy upon us. Song expresses gladness and gratitude at desire fulfilled. Song expresses your felt sense of who God is and all that he gives. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound. But there are no prayers and songs in the Bible that take their cues from the current therapeutic felt needs. Imagine, “Our Father in heaven, help me feel that I’m okay just the way I am. Protect me this day from having to do anything I find boring. Hallelujah, I’m indispensable, and what I’m doing is really having an impact on others, so I can feel good about my life.” Have mercy upon us! Instead, in our Bible we hear a thousand cries of need and shouts of delight that orient us to our real needs and to our true Savior.

GOOD GOODS, BAD GODS

Properly understood, carefully interpreted, the felt needs make good gifts. But they make poor gods. Get first things first. Seek first the Father’s kingdom and his righteousness, and every other good gift will be added to you.

This is easy to see in the case of the three particular gifts offered by the Grand Inquisitor’s therapeutic gospel. It is a good thing to have a stable source of food, “bread for tomorrow” (Matt. 6:11, literally). All people everywhere seek food, water, and clothing (Matt. 6:32). Our Father knows what we need. But seek first his kingdom. You do not live by bread alone, but by every word out of his mouth. If you worship your physical needs, you will only die. But if you worship God the giver of every good gift, you will be thankful for what he gives; you will still have hope when you suffer lack; and you will surely feast at the endless Banquet.

A sense of wonder and mystery is also a very good thing. But the same caveat, the same framework, applies. God is no wizard of Oz, creating experiences of wonder for the sake of the experience. Jesus said “no” to making a spectacle of himself in the midst of temple crowds. His daily faithfulness to God is a wonder upon wonder. Get first things first. Then you’ll appreciate glory in small ways and large. In the end you will know all things as wonders, both what is (Rev. 4) and what has happened (Rev. 5). You will know the incomprehensible God, creator and redeemer, whose name is Wonderful.

Similarly, political order is a good gift. We are to pray for the authorities to rule well, so that we may live peacefully (1 Tim. 2:2). But if you live for a just society, you will always be disappointed. Again, seek first God’s kingdom. You’ll work toward a just social order, enjoy it to the degree it’s attainable, have reason to endure injustice. In the end, you will know unutterable joy on the day when all persons bow to the reign of the true King.

Of course, God gives good gifts. But he also gives the best gift, the inexpressible Gift of gifts. The Grand Inquisitor burned Jesus at the stake in order to erase the Gift and the Giver. He chose to give people good things, but discarded first things.

The things offered by the contemporary therapeutic gospel are a bit trickier to interpret. The odor of self-interest and self-obsession clings closely to that wish list of “I want_____.” But even these, carefully reframed and reinterpreted, do gesture in the direction of a good gift. The overall package of “felt needs” is systematically misaligned, but the pieces can be properly understood. Any “different gospel” (Gal. 1:6) makes itself plausible by offering Lego-pieces of reality assembled into a structure that contradicts revealed truth. Satan’s temptation of Adam and Eve was plausible only because it incorporated many elements of reality, continually gesturing in the direction of truth, even while steadily guiding away from the truth: “Look, a beautiful and desirable tree. and God has said that the test will reveal both good and evil, with the possibility of life not death arising from your choice. Just as God is wise, so you the chooser can become like God in wisdom. Come now and eat.” So close, yet so far away. Almost so, but the exact opposite.

Consider the five elements we have identified with the therapeutic gospel:

1. “Need for love.” It is surely a good thing to know that you are both known and loved. God who searches the thoughts and intentions of our hearts also sets his steadfast love upon us. However all this is radically different from the instinctual craving to be accepted for who I am. Christ’s love comes pointedly and personally despite who I am. You are accepted for who Christ is, because of what he did, does, and will do. God truly accepts you, and if God is for you, who can be against you? But in doing this, he does not affirm and endorse what you are like. Rather, he sets about changing you into a fundamentally different kind of person. In the real gospel you feel deeply known and loved, but your relentless “need for love” has been overthrown.

2. “Need for significance.” It is surely a good thing for the works of your hands to be established forever: gold, silver, and precious stones, not wood, hay, and straw. It is good when what you do with your life truly counts, and when your works follow you into eternity. Vanity, futility, and ultimate insignificance register the curse upon our work life — even midcourse, not just when we retire, or when we die, or on the Day of Judgment. But the real gospel inverts the order of things presupposed by the therapeutic gospel. The craving for impact and significance — one of the typical “youthful lusts” that boil up within us — is merely idolatrous when it acts as Director of Operations in the human heart. God does not meet your need for significance; he meets your need for mercy and deliverance from your obsession with personal significance. When you turn from your enslavement and turn to God, then your works do start to count for good. The gospel of Jesus and the fruit of faith are not tailored to “meet your needs.” He frees from the tyranny of felt needs, remakes you to fear God and keep his commandments (Eccl. 12:13). In the divine irony of grace, that alone makes what you do with your life of lasting value.

3. “Need for self-esteem, self-confidence, and self-assertion.” To gain a confident sense of your identity is a great good. Ephesians is strewn with several dozen “identity statements,” because by this the Spirit motivates a life of courageous faith and love. You are God’s — among the saints, chosen ones, adopted sons, beloved children, citizens, slaves, soldiers; part of the workmanship, wife and dwelling place — every one of these in Christ. No aspect of your identity is self-referential, feeding your “self-esteem.” Your opinion of yourself is far less important than God’s opinion of you, and accurate self-assessment is derivative of God’s assessment. True identity is God-referential. True awareness of yourself connects to high esteem for Christ. Great confidence in Christ correlates to a vote of fundamental no confidence in and about yourself. God nowhere replaces diffidence and people-pleasing by self-assertiveness. In fact, to assert your opinions and desires, as is, marks you as a fool. Only as you are freed from the tyranny of your opinions and desires are you free to assess them accurately, and then to express them appropriately.

4. “Need for pleasure.” In fact, the true gospel promises endlessly joyous experience, drinking from the river of delights (Ps. 36). This describes God’s presence. But as we have seen in each case, this is keyed to the reversal of our instinctive cravings, not to their direct satisfaction. The way of joy is the way of suffering, endurance, small obediences, willingness to identify with human misery, willingness to overthrow your most persuasive desires and instincts. I don’t need to be entertained. But I absolutely NEED to learn to worship with all my heart.

5. “Need for excitement and adventure.” To participate in Christ’s kingdom is to play a part within the Greatest Action-Adventure Story Ever Told. But the paradox of redemption again turns the whole world upside down. The real adventure takes the path of weakness, struggle, endurance, patience, small kindnesses done well. The road to excellence in wisdom is unglamorous. Other people might take better vacations and have a more thrilling marriage than yours. The path of Jesus calls forth more grit than thrill. He needed endurance far more than he needed excitement. His kingdom might not cater to our cravings for derring-do and thrill-seeking, but “solid joys and lasting treasures none but Zion’s children know.”

We say “yes” and “amen” to all good gifts. But get first things first. The contemporary therapeutic gospel in its many forms takes our ‘gimmes’ at face value. It grabs for the goodies. It erases worship of the Giver, whose greatest gift is mercy towards us for what we want by instinct, choice, enculturation, and habit. He calls us to radical repentance. Bob Dylan described the therapeutic’s alternative in a remarkable phrase: “You think He’s just an errand boy to satisfy your wandering desires” (from When You Gonna Wake Up?). Second things are exalted as servants of Number One.

Get first things first. Get the gospel of incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, and glory. Live the gospel of repentance, faith, and transformation into the image of the Son. Proclaim the gospel of the coming Day when eternal life and eternal death are revealed, the coming Day of Christ.

WHICH GOSPEL?

Which gospel will you live? Which gospel will you preach? Which needs will you awaken and address in others? Which Christ will be your people’s Christ? Will it be the “christette” who massages felt need? Or the Christ who turns the world upside down and makes all things new?

The Grand Inquisitor was very tender-hearted towards human felt need–very sympathetic to the things that all people everywhere seek with all their heart, very sensitive to the difficulty of changing anyone. But he proved to be a monster in the end. There is a saying in mercy ministries that runs like this, “If you don’t seek to meet people’s physical needs, it’s heartless. But if you don’t give people the crucified, risen and returning Christ, it’s hopeless.” Jesus fed hungry people bread, and Jesus offered his broken body as the bread of eternal life. It is ultimately cruel to leave people in their sins, captive to their instinctive desires, in despair, under curse. The current therapeutic gospel sounds tender-hearted at first. It is so sensitive to pressure points of ache and disappointment. But in the end it is cruel and Christ-less. It does not foster true self-knowledge. It does not rewrite the script of the world. It creates no prayers or songs.

We must be no less sensitive but far more discerning. Jesus Christ turns human need upside down, creating prayer. He is the inexpressible Gift of gifts, creating song. And he gives all good gifts, both now and forever. Let every knee bow, and let everything that has breath praise the Lord.

David Powlison teaches and counsels at the Christian Counseling & Education Foundation’s School of Biblical Counseling and at Westminster Theological Seminary. He is also the author of numerous articles and books and the editor of The Journal of Biblical Counseling.

©9Marks. Website: http://www.9Marks.org. Email: . Toll Free: (888) 543-1030.

Used with permission. Source here.

Greg,

Again, another thought provoking read. Thank-you(I think) for presenting a paper that is challenging me where I stand today.

Needs vs. Wants, always a tricky topic, especially when viewed in the greater scheme of things.

Self love vs. Self acceptance. It seems like the big questions raised in this paper have to do with motivations. This is an area I continue to grapple with.

I will reread it later, and let it settle in for a while.

Blessings to you,

Randy

Thanks Greg for this very thought provoking article.

I have been guilty too often of trusting in the feel goodism of materialism.

I think we can all find something in this essay to go before the Lord and repent of.

We all fall short of the ideal, but the good news of the gospel is that despite our shortcomings and failures, we are accepted by God for Christ’s sake.

Rejoicing in the imputed righteousness of Christ,

Stan

John 3:16
Greg, Thanks for the article.  In the past I did not read those long articles posted.  Now that I am better grounded in Jesus Christ I am being adventurous again and reading other Christian literature.
What I get from this article is that to do what God gives us to do we cannot leave Him out of it.  We feed the hungry food, then feed their souls.  It is a delicate line at times, especially for me who works in a hospital with
very sick people.  I pray every day that when people see me, they will see God in me.
I have to boil something down to a very simple statement, so I understand it.
Again, thanks Greg.
Diana

Yaay! Another Dostoevsky fan! 

The Grand Inquisitor was penned by an atheist who professed love for mankind—Ivan Karamazov (a character in Dostoevsky’s novel).  He had great ideas and a kind of genius.  At one poignant point in the novel, he declared, “There is no virtue without immortality.” In other words, there is no “right” or “good” without God.  The Russian monk, Elder Zossima, then replies, “You are most blessed if you believe so, or else most unhappy.”

“Why unhappy?” Ivan asks.

“If you do not believe what you are saying...” the elder answered.

The Grand Inquisitor essentially believes he has found a better way, that he has better-recognized the needs of humanity.  He is angry with Jesus for rejecting the three temptations in the wilderness.  His fundamental problem is unbelief.  Like his author, Ivan, the Inquisitor does not believe in God, and even if he does believe in God, he rejects God (the preceding chapter is entitled “Rebellion”, in which Ivan tells his younger brother Alyosha that he loves humanity but “returns God the ticket” because of humanity’s suffering).

The antithesis or inversion of the Inquisitor’s argument is faith.  “Faith”, the Inquisitor believes, is too difficult for humanity.  Believing what is unseen, holding on even through the worst suffering, following God for oneself (as opposed to having faith controlled by the church).

Interestingly, the story finishes when the Inquistor finishes his tirade against Jesus, and Jesus replies only by going over to the Inquisitor and kissing him.

Somehow even the atheist Ivan knew there was a divine love in Jesus, and though “the kiss burned in the old man’s heart but he adhered to his idea”, even in spite of this, there was a mystery in Christ’s love that was even in Ivan’s mind somehow greater than the whole tirade of the Inquisitor.

Dostoevsky had a difficult time “answering” the Inquisitor’s challenge.  Many people read only the chapter “The Grand Inquisitor” from the book “The Brothers Karamazov” and kind of stop there, seeing it as the high point of the book (Sigmund Freud was one; Nietzsche was another, I believe).  However, the chapters that follow are Dostoevsky’s response.  They detail stories and anecdotes from the life of Elder Zossima, and they paint a humble love, a life of dependence on agape love and with the destination of agape love.

Somehow, though God’s way is hard to “see” (it is of faith, not sight), He is love, and He asks us to trust Him that He is love and His will for our lives is love—even if it goes through hard things on the way there.  God turns ashes into roses, as one of my friends said.

Ramone, it’s good to see you again, and thanks for giving me a lot to think about tonight.

As you said, we find God’s way hard to “see”. The continual question we should be asking ourself is, “Is this of God, or am I imposing this on God?” In my own life, and I’m sure in the lives of most Christians, the latter is so often the case.

The author of this above article, David Powlison, made essentially the same point when he asked these rhetorical questions: “Which gospel will you live? Which gospel will you preach? Which needs will you awaken and address in others? Which Christ will be your people’s Christ? Will it be the ‘christette’ who massages felt need? Or the Christ who turns the world upside down and makes all things new?”

It can be so difficult to see past our need to make God “do something” for us, and embrace the things He has already done for us in Christ. He has already met our most profound need–to have our sins removed and be reconciled to Him–yet so often we are looking for “something more” than this. If the treasure of Jesus Christ and the communion we have with Him is not our greatest “felt need”, we may have missed the very center of the Christian faith.

Again, great thoughts Ramone, and thanks for sharing them.

Best wishes and blessings for you and your family,

Greg

I think I probably didn’t represent Dostoevsky’s book well, because I notice I wasn’t able to describe the chapters on the Russian Monk (Elder Zossima) very well—the ‘rebuttal’ to the Grand Inquisitor.  It is faith, or more precisely, faith in love, the faith in God’s love and that He is love.  Along with humility, it is probably the greatest theme in those chapters, as well as through the whole book and its conclusion.

Speaking of the therapeutic gospel, did anyone catch 60 minutes last night and the segment on Joel Osteen which featured a guest appearance from Dr. Michael Horton, host of the White Horse Inn?

Michael Horton writes about this phenomenon here:

http://www.wscal.edu/faculty/wscwritings/horton.osteen/glorystory.php

And Tim Challies has an excellent book review here:

http://www.challies.com/archives/book-reviews/become-a-better-you-by-joel-osteen.php

Joel Osteen reminded me of the perfect used car salesman.

Why are so many thousands, if not millions, attracted to this man’s teachings?

Tim Challies offers this suggestion:

“As I closed the cover on this book I began to wonder, What is it that draws people to Joel Osteen? Why do people enjoy his teaching so much? After all, tens of thousands of people attend his church each week and hundreds of thousands more watch him on television. He has become one of America’s most popular pastors, even while he teaches things that most pastors would testify are inconsistent with the Bible.

I think the secret to Osteen’s success is this: he teaches self-help but wraps it in a thin guise of Christian terminology. Thus people believe they are being taught the Bible when the reality is that they are learning mere human wisdom rather than divine wisdom. Osteen cunningly blends the wisdom of this age with language that sounds biblical. He blends the most popular aspects of New Age and self-help teaching with Christianity. And his audience is eagerly drinking this in.”
-------------------------------------------------

I think of what Jesus said in Matthew 7:13,14:

13 “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. 14 For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.

When you see the faces of the admiring fans and adulation and praise Osteen was getting last night, your heart weeps for the thousands of people who are following Joel Osteen right into the broad way that leads to destruction.

Stan

[quote author="Stan"]...your heart weeps for the thousands of people who are following Joel Osteen right into the broad way that leads to destruction.

No, not if they have been predestined to be saved.

Hi Glenn,

Good to see you again.

I take the possible slight note of sarcasm in your post.

BTW, how are you coming with reading Michael Horton’s book “Putting Amazing Back into Grace”?

I don’t think Horton, or anyone of us who believe in the Reformed view of salvation would take this approach. Notice it was Horton who took the time to go on 60 minutes and offer his critique.

Stan

[quote author="Stan"] I don’t think Horton, or anyone of us who believe in the Reformed view of salvation would take this approach. Notice it was Horton who took the time to go on 60 minutes and offer his critique.

Thanks for the welcome back.

So what exactly is Horton’s critique? That Osteen’s message (or lack thereof) poses an eternal danger for his listeners?

That can’t be the case if John 10:28-29 in interpreted as it has been on this site to mean that no one (including the saved person himself) and not anything can take away from Jesus those whom His Father has given him.

Nor can that be the case if our salvation is all of God and not dependent one iota on our response, so that nothing we do, or fail to do, affects our standing with God.

So what is Horton’s critique? Well, he thinks Osteen doesn’t say enough about sin and suffering and the wrath of God.  But of what import are these things if they are entirely beyond man’s ability to effect?

Horton and the Calvinists seem to want to have things both ways. They want to ensure that nothing they do or fail to do dooms them to damnation (hence the need for election, limited atonement, forensic justification, and all the rest), but on the other hand, when someone like Osteen comes on the scene, they act as if what this man says and does DOES in fact have consequences for believers (and unbelievers).  I can’t see how both sets of concerns can be valid.

Glenn, welcome back.

I don’t see any tension between believing God is completely sovereign to save and resisting those who are not teaching truth. What you’re essentially arguing against is a hyper-Calvinist position that says there is no need to even evangelize because, after all, God will save whom He will save. Hyper-Calvinists who believe this would probably agree with your conclusions, but the majority of Reformed believers (and the Bible) vigorously oppose such fatalistic thinking.

As Christians, we are called to share the gospel because this is the means by which God opens people’s eyes and ears to the truth (see Romans 10). God works through the proclamation of the gospel to regenerate unbelievers and to give them faith to believe what they are hearing.

It is our solemn duty as Christians, therefore, to preserve the truth of the gospel. While God’s ways are mysterious to finite humans, the way we know He works is through the proclamation of the good news. Romans 10 is very clear on this. As such, we need to be very clear on presenting the good news as free of error and as faithfully as possible, “guarding the deposit” entrusted to us (2 Timothy 1:14). Having a high view of God’s ability to draw His sheep is not in opposition to this, since we want God’s Word to reach as many ears as possible without being obscured by error. Put another way, believing God is sovereign does not negate our human responsibility to faithfully preach the Word.

To turn this around, we cannot endorse a belief that says God uses error to save people. God has not said this about Himself, so we should not be tolerant of those who are teaching gross error, particularly when it comes to distorting the gospel.

This particular case with Joel Osteen is even more problematic, because he’s been billed by CBS as “America’s Most Popular Preacher”, so now he’s representing the Christian faith in the minds of millions of people. As Christians (Calvinist or not), we should care about the reputation of Christ and how the faith He established is being represented. Therefore, when a false teacher like Osteen irretrievably confounds the gospel of Jesus, we can’t roll over and pretend like it’s not a big deal. Christ’s very reputation is at stake here–Osteen teaches that Christ just wants you to be happy, wealthy, successful, etc., but the Christ of Scripture says “take up your cross and follow me”, even warning the disciples that the world would hate them because of Him. We must remind the world that the Christianity of Osteen is not the Christianity of Scripture, if for no other reason than to protect the reputation of Jesus and the church he established.

Greg

P.S. For those who haven’t seen the 60 Minutes segment with Horton and Osteen (and are wondering what the fuss is all about), you can view it here.

Hi Glenn,

I am somewhat puzzled by the tenor of your post. There is a sarcastic tone which was not present in some of your previous postings.

Greg is correct about your characterization of Calvinism being the false doctrine of hypercalvinism.

As Michael Horton points out in his book “Putting Amazing Back Into Grace”, the true fruit of Reformed theology is a love for evangelism and preaching God’s Word.

We must take what scripture says at face value.

I see no contradiction between God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility. The true gospel preaches both of these two truths simultaneously.

Stan

Here is a helpful article on predestination which I just ran across:

http://www.aomin.org/index.php?itemid=2311

Stan

Glenn,

I noticed that you voiced the same concern in the comments section following the Chailles review and was wondering if the responses both there and here cleared anything up for you?

Aaron

Glenn,

Here is a helpful link explaining the differences between genuine Calvinism and false hypercalvinism:

http://www.jesussaidfollowme.org/hypercalvinism.htm

Stan