This is old news but the lads at TeamPyro have taken Driscoll to task here. If you’re interested in why they’re upset watch the video. I’m a little wary getting involved with this as I don’t want to face the wrath of the Pyromaniacs in the comments section but I just can’t resist. Phil Johnson says that Driscoll makes preposterous claims? Hardly. I hope to show that TeamPyro’s arguments are seriously wanting. Hopefully some might find this helpful until someone like Dr. Sam Storms weighs in.
Let the fisking begin! My comments will be in red.
This is bad teaching. The biblical “Gift of discernment” has nothing to do with soothsaying and everything to do with maturity, clear understanding, the ability to make wise and careful distinctions, and (especially) skill in differentiating between holy and profane, clean and unclean, truth and falsehood (Ezekiel 44:23; Hebrews 5:14).
This is just proof texting. Fine. I can proof text too. If you don’t want to call it discernment let’s call it prophesying. Wayne Grudem defines prophesying as “sharing something that God spontaneously brings to mind.” This fits perfectly with what Driscoll has done. Now before we have a hissy fit about this destroying the normativity of Scripture we need to remember that the New Testament counterparts to Old Testament prophets are New Testament apostles, not New Testament prophets. Old Testament prophets spoke with absolute divine authority. To disobey a prophet’s words was to disobey God. In the New Testament Jesus refers to those who had this same function as apostles, not prophets. It must also be noted that when the apostles wanted to establish their unique authority, they never appealed to being prophets but always to being apostles (cf. Gal. 1:1; Eph. 1:1).
Grudem also notes that Paul probably used the word ‘apostle’ instead of ‘prophet’ to designate those who wrote with absolute authority because the word ‘prophet’ had a broad range of meaning at the time of the New Testament. Grudem says “it generally did not have the sense ‘one who speaks God’s very words’ but rather ‘one who speaks on the basis of some external influence.’” The Bible uses the word ‘prophet’ this way in Titus 1:12. We also see non-biblical writers referring to ‘prophet’ in this way, notably by Plutarch.
The counsel Driscoll gives is bad counsel. If by his own admission Driscoll’s divinations are not “a hundred percent always right,” he has no business accusing people of serious sins—including felony crimes—based on what he “sees” in his own imagination. Much less should he encourage his congregants to dream that they have such an ability and urge them to “use that gift.”
Well, since NT prophecy was never intended to be 100% accurate, Phil Johnson has no business accusing Driscoll of the serious sin of divination! Clear proof of this is found in Acts 21:4. Paul is told through the Spirit not to go to Jerusalem. And what does Paul do? He disobeys! This doesn’t seem likely if Paul believed that the prophet spoke with the same infallible authority of Scripture. Do we really want to impute such gross negligence to the apostle Paul? There is no hint by Luke that Paul did anything wrong here.
Even stronger evidence is found with 1 Thess. 5:19-21 and 1 Cor. 14:29-38. In both cases Paul exhorts the church to test prophecies. In 1 Thessalonians this implies that prophecies contain some good things and some not so good things. It is inconceivable that if Paul believed NT prophecy carried the authority of God’s very words that he would encourage people to test it in the way that he did. As John Piper writes, Paul desires that the church “not take prophecy as a word of Scripture but as a Spirit-prompted word to be weighed by Scripture.”
The salacious details he recounts are totally unnecessary. They serve only to reinforce the concern some of us have raised: Why does Driscoll have such a fixation with obscene subject matter, ribald stories, and racy talk? The smutty particulars regarding a counselee’s tryst in a cheap hotel are not merely unnecessary; “it is disgraceful even to speak of [such] things” (Ephesians 5:12).
This is a very weak argument. If you want to look for ribald stories and racy talk you need to go no further than the Scriptures. Has no one read Ezekiel 16? It makes Driscoll’s story look like something from Sesame Street. Sure, Driscoll’s story is obscene, but the purpose of it was to bring someone to repentance. And in that sense Driscoll’s prophetic impression is akin to a passage like Ezekiel 16.
Doug Wilson discusses the righteousness of God’s speech in these situations: “Ezekiel rails against the adulterous idolatry of the Israelites by using sexual imagery of the most graphic sort. He uses obscenity to reveal the real obscenity of doing such things in defiance of God’s law . . . Ezekiel was more concerned about the obscenity he was exposing than the obscenity he was using . . . Phineas certainly observed a man and a woman copulating, but he was not doing so as a voyeur. His interest was ethical; he was taking aim” (Fidelity, pp. 15-16).
For that same reason (among others), these yarns aren’t even believable. The Holy Spirit’s own eyes are too pure to behold evil, and He cannot look on wickedness (Habakkuk 1:13). So why would He display pornographic visions to Mark Driscoll, whose mind and mouth are already too lewd anyway?
Ummmm …. Ezekiel 16? Rinse, wash, repeat. And by the way, that’s a silly examination of Habbakuk. Remember, the book of Habbakuk is filled with punishments meted out on Judah and the countries who were used by God to punish her. The text indicates that these punishments included grotesque pillaging caused by the sovereign hand of the Father. We’re going to need to go a little deeper than prooftexting a verse from Habbakuk.
This proves that cessationists’ concerns are not far-fetched. Reformed charismatics frequently complain that it’s unfair for cessationists not to expressly exempt themwhen we criticize the eccentricities of the wacko
fringemainstream of the larger charismatic movement. But Reformed charismatics themselves aren’t careful to distance themselves from charismatic nuttiness. John Piper was openly intrigued with the Toronto Blessing when it was at its peak. (If he ever denounced it as a fraud, I never heard or read where he stated that fact publicly.) Wayne Grudem to this day endorses Jack Deere’s Surprised by the Power of the Spirit, despite the way Deere lionizes Paul Cain. Sam Storms aligned himself with the Kansas City Prophets’ cultfor almost a decade. I can’t imagine how anyone holding Grudem’s view of modern prophecy could possibly repudiate what Driscoll insists he has experienced. Does anyone really expect a thoughtful analysis or critique of Driscoll’s view of the “gift of discernment” (much less a collective repudiation of this kind of pornographic divination) from Reformed charismatics? I certainly don’t.
First of all, if John Piper was openly intrigued with the Toronto Blessing than I would certainly hope that the Reformed world would stop and listen to what he had to say. If we’ve gotten to the place where we’re openly questioning the Reformed bona fides of someone like Piper than we’re in real trouble. I’ll take John Piper over Phil Johnson any and every day of the week. And so what? Grudem endorses Deere’s book. Unlike most of the Reformed fanboys who comment on Teampyro’s blog I’ve actually read Surprised by the Voice of God. If you do read it, you will have to grapple with the eerily accurate prophecies that Paul Cain has made over the years. And in the cases that I’ve read they have all lead to God being glorified through his people being drawn back to Him. So, it’s implausible then that Satan is behind these claims. The only option must be that Cain and company are lying. But, do we really want to get ourselves to the place where we’re openly accusing someone with Sam Storms pedigree of lying?
Related posts:
Team Pyro never fails to disappoint me when they keep running with stuff like this.
This is brilliant, Brooks.
First, the gift that Driscoll describes is probably not what the New Testament calls discernment of spirits. The discernment of spirits is really the judgement of the prophetic gift, i.e., the distinguishing of whether a prophetic word or gift is to be accepted or rejected (1 Cor 12.10;14.29; 1 Thes 5.20-21; 1 John 4.1). Secondly, the manner in which one judges a prophet is not necessarily on the basis of the “accuracy” of his prophetic gift, but upon the person’s life (Matt 7.15-26). I could accept some of the criticisms of the TeamPyro, such as their particular critique of the salaciousness of the details, without casting doubt on Driscoll’s gifting. The true test of his prophetic gifting thus remains for his local community to determine if the fruit of his ministry and life actually matches up with the requirements of the gospel.
One has to be extremely careful about the type of gifting that Driscoll describes, because it is absolutely available to the enemy; psychics, for example, are able to see details of the sort that Driscoll describes. After all, Satan could hardly be unaware of these sorts of details in a person’s life, and so it is necessary to conclude that he or one of his minions could reveal such information to his human agents. This is why the accuracy of such prophetic words is not necessarily the crucial factor; and it is also why it is necessary to put the prophet under the microscope of Matt 7.15-26. A false prophet will eventually do something to prove he is operating in counterfeit gifts, such as stealing from the church treasury or molesting children–because that is what Satan does–he comes to kill, steal and destroy.
Thanks Peter, that’s a good point. I chose to defend Driscoll because Teampyro et al are cessationists and seem to castigate anyone who believes that God speaks outside of the Scriptures after the closing of the canon.
There is also a tendency among Reformed types to argue that charismatic gifts have had no place in Reformed history which is patently false.
Hopefully I’ll get the time to write about this in future posts.
This is an important point to make because charismatics and cessationists can often get mired down in arguing whether this or that gift is operation without defining what terms mean or defining them in question-begging ways that fit their theological assumptions. It’s not a given that tongues as Pentecostals use them now are what Paul was talking about is a popular meme with cessationists. But given that seven daughters mentioned in Acts had the ability to prophecy then a complementarian cessationist, for instance, is actually hamstrung by a polemical definition that assumes “prophecy” is “preaching the Word”, he has to account for why seven women would have a spiritual gift he believes scripture says they can’t be allowed to use within the local church.
“If we’ve gotten to the place where we’re openly questioning the Reformed bona fides of someone like Piper than we’re in real trouble.”
Unintentionally hilarious! For one thing, Piper’s a Baptist. (So is Johnson.) For another, he’s a proud disciple of Daniel Fuller. He’s the exemplar of how “Reformed” has come to mean a subculture instead of a confession.
Piper at least says serious things. Driscoll seems to be trolling for attention.
Wenatchee: I’m not sure all complementarian cessationists would argue that prophecy = preaching the Word. Some, I believe, would argue that any NT prophecy is the functional equivalent of Scripture. Although that leads to a whole host of other problems
Douglas: Piper does subscribe to a confession. Bethlehem Baptist subscribes to a Reformed baptist confession.
I don’t see how Dan Fuller contradicts any Reformed confessions but I’m open to correction on that.
There are problems with this whole Reformed confessional meme. For example, people like R. Scott Clark will claim that nothing is Reformed unless it can be found in the Confessions. But, as far as I know those confessions don’t say that this is how we ought to define what “Reformed” means. I think John Frame is right to say that this suffers from a mild case of self referential incoherence.
http://www.frame-poythress.org/frame_articles/2010Clark.htm
Yeah, that’s the core problem, because it misconstrues the whole core purpose of prophecy, which is not to take the role of scripture. Prophecy isn’t the functional equivalent of scripture because we have so many prophets in the canon. There isn’t a cessationist definition of this spiritual gift I’ve come across so far that actually accounts for prophecy and prophets even within the OT. My impression is that because cessationist has developed as a polemical systematic against charismatic theology it fails because it’s too busy trying to disprove charismatic/pentecostal pneumatology to ever get to what the biblical texts they exegete are actually saying, instead of conscripting them into their own theological/ecclesiological agenda. This was one of the big reasons Mark eventually dropped cessationism and since I was at Mars Hill during the period in which this transition too place I think I can feel fairly safe mentioning this. OF course this doesn’t prove charismatic interpretations are correct but the more I study these issues the less convinced I am that the biblical texts are as firm supporting one or the other as partisans have claimed.
I’ve added a post at my personal blog which deals with the various functions of prophecy in the New Testament. I think it is relevant to this discussion, particularly with regard to the question of whether preaching is prophecy or whether Driscoll is using “discernment of Spirits”. In my analysis, discernment of spirits is a type of prophecy whose function is to detect demonic activity. Driscoll’s gift would be a type of prophecy which reveals people’s thoughts and sins.
http://petrostelos.wordpress.com/2011/09/23/function-of-prophecy/
I guess the utilitarian sort of Anglo-Saxon thing to do here would be to observe what effects result from Driscoll’s visions. I mean checking if they cause anger and division or if they heal and restore the community he pastors. This is not to say that the truth can’t be painful or divisive, but in the long run is this harming or helping his people?
Otherwise I don’t know, I am probably the least-charismatically gifted (almost wrote least-charismatic, but that may also be true) person on this site.
Yeah, I am way behind. I actually just discovered this site. My only question is in regards to Piper over Johnson. In recent years I have found myself questioning Piper far more than some of the younger preachers.
That is to say, he has shown himself to be lacking in discernment. No, I don’t mean the whole Rick Warren-gate, as grating as that was
Far more important, in my opinion, is his lack of clarity on the beginning of creation. He wants to try and hedge his bets by remaining deliberately murky on whether it was six literal days or whether there was a long gap between days and so on. In fact, I would say he errs more on the side of a figurative six days.
There have been other issues as well, enough that I question his “bona fides” for certain!
Actually, having re-read my post, I guess it may be off topic. I am still curious to hear someone else’s opinion on these recent issues.
We’re pretty loose with permitting tangents in the comments, so no worries. And thanks for the comment! Welcome to CoG!
I just saw this now. I believe that “hedging ones bets” on certain interpretive issues may be acceptable. However, our current environment does not allow this kind of hedge to remain acceptable for long. He either needs to claim that how one interprets Genesis 1 does not matter (which is wrong), or he needs to claim a particular interpretation of the passage. Given that he is a pastor (Piper), he is expected to address the concerns of his ‘flock’ and this is a current concern; he is not permitted to withhold judgment on that matter. He must investigate it and come to some kind of conclusion.
I know that other people have questioned his understanding of salvation as human happiness. I am being vague because I do not clearly remember their criticisms or his responses to them.
I am wondering where Piper avoids committing himself to an opinion on these issues.
To sorta tie things back to the initial TeamPyro topic, TeeamPyro didn’t really accomplish much just by going for pornographic divination. They would need to at least get into what divination was, why it was bad, why it was forbidden and what the alternative was.
But at a more practical level focusing on divination sidetracks more serious and immediate considerations. Even a Christian who is charismatic in principle could express concern about how often the things Driscoll alludes to are past events. It’s not like the recovered memory movement wasn’t debunked decades ago in secular research. Yet, sadly, by the time the trend was debunked was when spiritual warfare advocates started assimilating it into their books and seminars. Now if Team Pyro had connected a few more dots and said the problem with Driscoll’s claims at divining sexual abuse is that in addition to doing this in a way that seems to fetishize sexual content it also betrays too many potential links to a pop psychology fad that was debunked decades ago I think TeamPyro would have made a stronger version of the case they have been trying to make. Even when I was a Pentecostal I had come to the conclusion that most recovered therapy counseling methods were fraudulent and dangerous. If anything the more I consider the Team Pyro polemic the more I think the problem is they didn’t go far enough at proposing the mechanics of pop psychology as a form of divination that could inform Driscoll’s ideas about spiritual warfare.
Or someone could actually read all of William gurnall’s The Christian in Full Armour and find out whether any of it backs up anything Driscoll taught in his 2008 Spiritual Warfare series.
Interesting question about Piper, Matthew. It reminds me that Driscoll has hedged bets on the same subject and has avoided entirely making any committments on any formal eschatological statement. Driscoll’s always said we can’t be too certain about things that haven’t happened yet. Fine, so he won’t commit to even a partial form of preterism or historicism but that doesn’t mean he’s a premillenial dispensationslist. ANd since he camps out on a literal Hell he won’t be taking the typological/moral conflict reading either.
But it may be that jumping straight to Piper might be a good way to go because if Driscoll ends up hedging where Piper has beeen hedging the two end up intertwined. And Driscoll’s practically a Calvinist Baptist now anyway, right?
Interesting points. This new “Matthew” should add something so that his name does not get confused with mine.
What you have said on recovered memory is a good point. It is certainly something I did not know about Driscoll.
Unfortunately, a lot of people have hedged their bets on the question of creation. Naturally, this opens a lot of people to criticism. I think that we are allowed to withhold on issues of eschatology where we could not on issues of creation.
However, our general understanding of eschatology should be clearly made. My knowledge of Driscoll is all second hand, so I don’t want to say something that implies knowledge I lack.
yeah … I was thinking a LOT about asking for that, too.
Driscoll has been clear that he’s not for premillenial dispensationalism because of the Hal Lindsey stuff. He’s also made it clear he’s not postmillenial because he believes the Christian reconstructionist approaches of Rushdoony and others are dangerous and not helpful to the cause of evangelism or Christians cultivating positive relations to unbelievers. On the other hand, while he’s been clear what he’s against he’s not particularly for something.
Say, new Matthew, you okay with “new Matthew”?