Assaulting the Nature of Truth

"Words matter to God. After all, they are His chosen means of communication. He doesn’t bring people to a saving knowledge of Himself through mystical, subjective experiences. He has spoken clear, objective, propositional truth to His creatures through His written Word.

That’s why Peter—who saw firsthand the profound supernatural power of God, both in the life of Christ and in his own apostolic ministry—pointed to Scripture as “the prophetic word made more sure” (2 Peter 1:19). Even after Peter heard the voice of God from heaven (v. 17-18), his unfailing confidence was in the written Word of God.

Obviously, as fallen creatures not inspired by the Holy Spirit, we are incapable of replicating that divine standard of perfect, authoritative, inerrant communication. Nonetheless, Christians throughout history have deployed written statements as a vital defense in the ongoing war against false teaching. Ancient Christian creeds and catechisms have endured for centuries as constant reminders that the truth of our faith is non-negotiable and worthy of vigorous defense.

The Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel (also referred to as the Dallas Statement) was crafted for similar reasons. Troubled by the rapid rise of social justice rhetoric within the church, several Christian leaders drafted the Dallas Statement in response. John MacArthur is a key signatory to that statement and has moved with urgency to further substantiate his concerns in great detail. In recent months he has responded through a series of blog posts and sermons exposing the dangers posed by the evangelical social justice movement. As expected, loud opposition has flowed freely ever since.

What is surprising—even disappointing—about the pushback is the widespread failure of critics to engage with the actual content of what has been stated clearly in the articles, sermons, and the Dallas Statement. Many evangelicals have chosen to argue against what they perceive those declarations to represent—not what they actually say. What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.

Tim Keller, founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, is candid enough to admit his complicity in not dealing with the substance of the arguments set forth. But that’s because he believes how he feels about the Dallas Statement is more important than what it actually says.

Is it Unloving and Divisive to Call Out Unbiblical Doctrine?

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It is often (wrongly) assumed that if you call out doctrinal error within the body of Christ you are somehow endangering the unity of the Christian Church (per John 17:11-21). "How unloving!" "How uncharitable!" "How unchristian!"

Yet in John 17 Jesus asks the Father to protect his disciples from the world and to keep them from the "evil one." Lenski highlights a very important question in his commentary; "How may this oneness be endangered, how may a disciple drop out of it? (Answer) By any teaching or doctrine contrary to the word. This cuts into the bond that ties the disciples together and may easily cut it all together and thus sever some of the disciples from the oneness, dropping them back into the world. The entire prayer has the one great burden that we may be preserved in oneness by complete adherence to the Word." 

Christian unity and biblical sanctification are tethered to the truth. In actuality unbiblical doctrine and bad theology are what really threaten the spiritual communion and biblical maturation of Christ's church. It is therefore unloving to let doctrinal impurity and/or unrepentant sin go unchecked (see also John 8:31, 17:17; Titus 1:9-10).  God's people must seek to speak the truth in love (Eph. 4:15) as we contend earnestly for the faith (Jude 3-4).