Entries Tagged 'Separation' ↓

Peter Masters has a little booklet called Stand for Truth. It is a good presentation of the basic arguments for the separatist point of view, first published in 1983, revised in 1996 and reprinted in 2009. I think it is worth your while.

Masters argues for secondary separation (he embraces the term) with the following points:

1. Non-separators deal a terrible blow to the exclusive nature of the gospel.
2. Non-separators help the devil to achieve one of his main objectives – to cause such confusion that the world no longer sees a distinctive, biblical Christian community standing clearly apart from Catholic and liberal error.
3. Non-separators lower the guard of the people of God, exposing them to further infiltration by false believers and false doctrine.
4. Non-separators encourage false teachers in their infidelity and sin, and so strengthen them in their work.

Scriptures cited in this section are 2 Jn 11, 2 Th 3.6, 14-15 with 2 Chr 18.3, 2 Chr 19.2 and Rev 18.4-5 added as illustrations.

The booklet is 36 pages long and sums up the doctrine of separation quite nicely. Masters deals with ten common objections at the end of the booklet.

I recommend it to you. We have ordered a number of copies for our church people.

I’m a little late to the party, but it seems to me that so far one point is missing from all the discussion of the manhattan declaration.

The fundamentalist reaction, all over the place, is to note that the declaration is a serious compromise of the gospel by its declaration that all signers are Christians. I’ll not repeat all of the analysis on this point, you can find that elsewhere.

The evangelical reaction is mixed. Some fairly conservative names have signed the document while others have notably and publicly made their opposition clear. Al Mohler is a prominent conservative signatory while John MacArthur is a prominent non-signatory.

Dave Doran comments in one of his blogs on the subject:

Thankfully, to this point Dr. Mohler has kept a theological edge that has prevented him from fully embracing the ecumenical path of men like Timothy George and Chuck Colson. I hope he never loses that edge. Well, truth be told, I really hope he slides closer to John MacArthur’s position.

This quotation contains all the elements of the one point I’d like to highlight and poses a serious question for the rising neo-fundamentalists who seem to want closer ties to the conservative camp.

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I am in my home town, assisting my parents in a move out to the coast so that our family can more directly care for them in their old age. Today I went to church with my dad. It was in this church that I grew up and had my first preaching opportunities. It is a church almost 100 years old. It has had a significant impact on many lives during its existence, including at least 5 men in the ministry from its young people just in my generation.

The style of service and many doctrinal issues make this a church I could no longer have close fellowship with, even if the Lord had brought me back to my home province for my ministry. I rarely attend here, not usually visiting my parents over a Sunday. In the last 27 years, I have probably been in the church for one of its services less than 5 times.

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Within fundamentalism, ongoing discussion of our views and practices inevitably leads to a discussion of worldliness. Traditionally fundamentalism has called for a separation not only from false teachers and modernism but also for a separation from the world. Fundamentalism has spoken out against an attitude of worldliness developing in the church.

In Dave Doran’s recent presentations concerning separation, he touched on the area of worldliness, some of which I objected to earlier. He continues this discussion by putting into writing a good deal of the material he covered in the presentations. This article deals with worldliness.

Dave starts off with a reasonable definition of worldliness:

Worldliness is having a heart and mind shaped by the world’s beliefs and values so that we engage in its sinful pleasures and pursue earthly treasures.

So far, so good. You can read any number of articles on worldliness and come up with similar definitions.

But it is the expansion of this definition that I find … what? Curious? Unusual? Discordant? Troubling? Perhaps all of the above…

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The analogy of map and compass is a useful one for considering our navigation the ‘wilderness of this world’ and especially useful for navigating the ecclesiastical wilderness.

For a good understanding of the analogy, though, one must have some understanding of how maps and compasses work. A much more full description can be found from a chapter of a book, The Backpacker’s Field Manual, excerpted here on the Princeton University site, but I’ll attempt a bit in this post.

I suppose when we think of ‘mapping’ the locations on the ecclesiastical landscape, we probably envision a political map, with nation-states and their boundaries. Such maps seem fairly objective and definite in allocating the bounds of various domains, but they are of limited value for navigation.

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There’s something right and something wrong about the "compass and map" analogy. The purpose of the analogy is to teach us that it is more important to have the right philosophy and direction (spiritual discernment) internally rather than depend upon uncertain and changeable labels that might be attached to various individuals in the ecclesiastical world.

I think we can agree with the point being made to this extent: it is vital that men in the ministry develop their spiritual discernment so that they can wisely guard the flocks the Lord gives them. This includes making decisions about who you might enter into ministry partnership with and who you might recommend as a resource to your people, or why you might give various levels of cautions concerning some resources.

Likewise, men in the ministry need to be able to develop the same kind of discernment in those whom they train for future ministry.

And it is more important to understand the Biblical principles of separation than it is to know exactly where every prominent figure in the current ecclesiastical landscape stands. We need to understand the principles ourselves to make good judgements and evaluations.

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The doctrine of separation insists that Christians must separate from professing Christians who deny essential doctrines. This is the fundamentalist position. Some have a problem with the notion of ‘essential doctrines’ because it suggests that other doctrines are ‘non-essential’. That really isn’t the case, as Dave helpfully explains here:

The problem is that the word essential is sometimes used as simply meaning important, and, thus, non-essential would mean unimportant. But that’s not what the word essential means in the statement above (or normally when people use it in contexts like this). If something is essential it relates to or constitutes the essence of something. As the dictionary states, “essential implies belonging to the very nature of a thing and therefore being incapable of removal without destroying the thing itself or its character.” So, to speak of the “essential doctrines of the faith” is to talk about those doctrines which cannot be removed without destroying the faith itself or its character.

This understanding of ‘essential’ is … essential!

It isn’t that any doctrines or teaching of God from the Bible is unimportant. But the thing that makes a doctrine essential is that if someone doesn’t believe it, he is not a Christian.

I thought I might offer an analogy as a further explanation.

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Mark Snoeberger is working on a series of articles called “A Fundamentalist raison d’etre” (except he knows how to put the fancy accent mark over the first ‘e’ in etre). In part 4 of his series, he highlights two issues that he believes are significant areas of concern in the conservative evangelical camp:

I am convinced that at least two doctrines deemed non-essential by the conservative evangelical majority are more essential than at first meets the eye, viz., cessationism and young earth creationism, which will be the topics of my next two posts. Ambivalence to these blind spots, in my mind, does not serve Christian unity, but rather functions to erode biblical authority. And that is something fundamentalism most definitely stands for.

I agree with him on these points.

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In the comments on “fundamentalism defined”, a certain ambiguity in the FBFI definition was noted at this point:

3. Endeavors to practice Biblical conduct in all areas of his life.

A question could be raised here: “So exactly how does this aspect of the definition differentiate you fundamentalists from conservative evangelicals? Don’t they believe in practicing Biblical conduct in all areas of life also?”

In my reply, I noted that other phrases of the definition might more clearly differentiate a fundamentalist from a conservative evangelical. I am willing to concede that in many ways, conservative evangelicals agree with fundamentalism in terms of “Biblical conduct in all areas of life.”

I will also concede that the statement as it stands is pretty open-ended. Everyone thinks that the way they apply the Bible to their life is the ‘Biblical’ way.

However, let’s be really clear… Fundamentalists are not vague and uncertain about what they believe to be biblical conduct.

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Interesting.

See this follow up and this one as well. See a response to the original article at 9Marks and one at another blog. Finally, see here Dave’s excellent response (and he says, hopefully, his last word) on the subject. Hear, Hear! Exactly right, Dave.

A little kerfuffle between Fundamentalists and Conservative Evangelicals erupting over Dave’s quite reasonable questions illustrates perfectly why we have two groups of men, Fundamentalists on the one hand and Conservative Evangelicals on the other. Fundamentalists don’t get why CEs are willing to be collegial and congratulatory of those who betray the faith. CEs don’t get why Fundies question their respect for their ‘moderates’.

Hence the divide.

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