Is John Mcarthur guilty of heresy?

[Servus]

You seemed to have trouble with prayers honoring the Blessed Mother, the reason is well summed up by St. Methodius of Olympus (circa 311 A.D):

"God paid such honor to the ark, which was the image and type of your sanctity, that no one but the priests could approach it, open or enter to behold it. The veil separated it off, keeping the vestibule as that of a queen. Then what sort of veneration must we, who are the least of creatures, owe to you who are indeed a queen — to you, the living ark of God, the Lawgiver — to you, the heaven that contains Him Whom none can contain?" (Oration Concerning Simeon and Anna )

I'm saying the term "Mother of God" gives off the impression to some/many that Mary gave birth to the Godhead.

 

[OldAbramBrown]

Nah. MacArthur is a Trinitarian. What you're expressing is Catholic umbrage.

JM looks like what passes with most people as a Trinitarian. Functional heresy which is far more widespread than JM, isn't called formal heresy. I've never heard catholics complain about JM in my limited experience.

 

[OldAbramBrown]

I'm saying the term "Mother of God" gives off the impression to some/many that Mary gave birth to the Godhead.

Yes we all knew from infancy.

This is because of:

- materialist interpretations re. the Holy Trinity and all texts and language
- not sparing a few seconds to explain about the fact

Why not be the person to explain it to them? Doing so, doesn't imply condoning everything that a church organisation gets up to (the reason I no longer "commune"), nor does it imply things about "beliefs" and practices that everyone including JM is right to not accept.

Do you agree we all are bearing Christ (God) as we live the christian life? I knew some Romans who happen to focus on this part of it, so I would have thought protestants would like to.

JM likes to score easy wins, especially among people with materialist interpretations.

 

[OldAbramBrown]

I still like "Mary, Mother of Christ" or adjacently, "Mary, Mother of our Lord." Of course, I'm not going to push that on anyone. Different traditions (and people) are going to differ on this. I offered a suggestion. No need to take it if you don't want to.

However, making things more specific makes things less confusing. If you say to a Muslim, "Mary, Mother of God," that is not going to work in evangelism ... I just think that it would be problematic in the use of evangelism (several different religions now that I think about it would have quite a problem with this language). And I know we should not fence sit to appease non-Christians (or heretics). But I think there are better and worse ways of wording things. "Mary, mother of God" in a religion that is supposed to be theistic, could be problematic. "Mary, mother of Christ," or "Mary, mother of our Lord" seems to work fine. I personally like, "Mary, Mother of our Lord" better because it seems to fit better with "Year of our Lord." But that's a tangent. Anyways...

Of course those expressions are very much in use! I can't quite understand your worries about evangelising. The feedings of the 5,000 and 4,000 are both about the teaching activity of churches, including ones with gentiles in.

Have you got a thread open on evangelising? Give me a "reply alert" if you start one.

 

[Servus]

Why not be the person to explain it to them?

Go for it.

Doing so, doesn't imply condoning everything that a church organisation gets up to (the reason I no longer "commune"), nor does it imply things about "beliefs" and practices that everyone including JM is right to not accept.

Do you agree we all are bearing Christ (God) as we live the christian life? I knew some Romans who happen to focus on this part of it, so I would have thought protestants would like to.

JM likes to score easy wins, especially among people with materialist interpretations.

Oh well he's like 85 so we probably won't have to be plagued by him much longer.

 

[OldAbramBrown]

... God paid such honor to the ark ... (Oration Concerning Simeon and Anna )

This reminds me of JM's spelling "arc" (in the text accompanying link from OP), he may have been thinking of rainbows!

But I always thought this sort of thing - from Scripture - had helped everyone.

Is JM implying that people who use the phrase "MoG" are trying to impose it on oth? That is a mode of religious propagating he has been all too much in contact with, in his district.

 

[OldAbramBrown]

... be plagued ...

Is this term a bit strong? If the congregation and building, don't have to go in, if the page or channel, "turn it over" or switch off.

Where's your boundaries. Did the gospel call you to get yourself some? Just critique what you happen to hear / read when you happen to hear / read it, Scriptures says so,

 

[Servus]

Is this term a bit strong?

Yes. It's called hyperbole. I used it to acknowledge how much you seem to despise MacArthur.

If the congregation and building, don't have to go in, if the page or channel, "turn it over" or switch off.

Where's your boundaries. Did the gospel call you to get yourself some? Just critique what you happen to hear / read when you happen to hear / read it, Scriptures says so,

I can barely understand whatever you're trying to say.

 

[Xeno.of.athens]

You're right. I should have said Marianite umbrage.

That too is truly not right.

 

[GDL]

How will Holy Spirit (how I spell His personal name), be Comforter to us in a contingent world? The newfangled christian substitute for philosophy, which God had intended to be open to all honest people, is dominionism, which insists it is in control. One of the last few scientists to embrace contingency was S J Gould.

You're read in things I'm not. Things like this would have to be explained or you could be talking past me as I speculate; "contingent world"?

Please also elaborate on your comment on the philosophy of dominionism. Is the message of the Bible not in one sense about whose universe this ultimately is?

If I may presume to describe you to yourself, based on my hard won experience (and I mean hard), you have shut the door on the false charismatic and are (we hope) keeping it open for the real kind.

I think you have read me correctly. The work then becomes the true line of demarcation, where the false actually begins. If we rule out for instance the barking dogs experiences and the obvious pseudo-tongues movements and we take an honest approach to the Scriptures used mostly to "determine" cessationism, there is obviously a wide center area.

My read of Scripture, and it has been years since I've looked at the topic, left me open to the center area and shut me off from the nonsense. I'll address the "children" below.

False charismatic and anti-charismatic from widely differing motives, are not the full story. A pincer movement is a material dialectic. False charismatic is the same thing as devious anti-charismatic: put down the agency, discretion and inference of the individual. The real gifts come through children, the frail, the poor, those without connections, far more than the high status personalities.

As I read you, I think we both know that deception can be right or left of center of truth. It doesn't matter in which direction we're lead away from truth. The high-status personalities are not usually my interest. I say usually, because I am a student of the Word so I may well read the interpretive opinions of this or that personality in the "scholarly" arena. If there were someone I thought had it all figured out and who I discerned I might have been led to in Spirit, I'd probably walk out the door with only a small backpack and go settle in at his feet for the duration, whatever that is.

What you say about the children and others, is also a right & left of center issue, but there's an issue with this that people have recognized with phrases like, 'out of the mouths of babes.' Not as a comparison, but per Scripture, God also spoke through a donkey (but not by braying).

I cannot jettison the fact that in my spiritual youth and even before, I had some experiences I will not let go to any cessationist. These encounters were before I ever heard of that interpretation. I also had an experience that was likely a deceptive one which I recognized for a deception I was prepared to recognize. And I had at least one other experience that was well after I was becoming more studied. I may still be fairly healthy and alive because of it.

At the end of the matter, I'm open to truth, while cautious of deception, and people do not automatically have my trust to jump on their bandwagon of experiences or interpretations of Scripture.

 

[OldAbramBrown]

... seem to despise MacArthur ... 1

I can barely understand whatever you're trying to say 2

1 I'm wary of his type of reported church leadership model which occurs in lots of churches of other church leaders as well - including, with little variation, a number I've been at.

I think many other leaders did him and us all a severe disfavour by not heeding the meaning of his message when he warned against the Kansas City Five and the restorationists, who heavily impacted churches I was at.

They could have supported him in continuing his wholesome ministry. Many church leaders discouraged prayer from ordinary believers for the quality of church leadereships and that's at the root.

2 Your initiative and discretion to switch off / turn the page

 

[Servus]

1 I'm wary of his type of reported church leadership model which occurs in lots of churches of other church leaders as well - including, with little variation, a number I've been at.

I think many other leaders did him and us all a severe disfavour by not heeding the meaning of his message when he warned against the Kansas City Five and the restorationists, who heavily impacted churches I was at.

They could have supported him in continuing his wholesome ministry. Many church leaders discouraged prayer from ordinary believers for the quality of church leadereships and that's at the root.

I'm sorry, but I really don't understand most of that.

2 Your initiative and discretion to switch off / turn the page

I suppose I might as well at this rate.

 

[GDL]

Out of all of that I'm seeing that MacArthur is being accused of Nestorianism. Which is; the Christian doctrine that Jesus existed as two persons, the man Jesus and the divine Son of God, or Logos, rather than as a unified person. Please show a direct statement from MacArthur proving that he believes and teaches that.

I don't know who noticed this earlier or took the time to read it, but maybe its helpful:

MacArthur's Church - the Hypostatic Union

 

[OldAbramBrown]

You're read in things I'm not. Things like this would have to be explained or you could be talking past me as I speculate; "contingent world"? 1

Please also elaborate on your comment on the philosophy of dominionism. Is the message of the Bible not in one sense about whose universe this ultimately is? 2

1 - Anything can happen. Healthy philosophy used to talk about kinds of causation, correlation, sufficiency, necessity, contingency, sound hermeneutics, the ups and downs of life - things children used to understand. Some kinds of "evangelical" religion try to push the idea that we're alright because of that kind of religion (not enough prayers is one sign).

Controlling can happen, thinly disguised, by whipping up excitement (sometimes including excitement about a false "Mary" concept) as distraction, and by clever organisational means ensuring genuine spiritual gifts bear no communal fruit. JM was very right to be against this.

2 - What I call hard dominionism is conquering the seven mountains by the seven mountain mandate. Politicians love this, even those who pretend to hate it. It is done by restorationists a.k.a new apostolics, who ensure that only their elite are the ones being "restored".

What I call soft dominionism is meant to blend in with that and at the same time blend into some of the recent forms of "evangelicalism". It is typified with:

- the attitude that evangelising means "influencing"
- whatever might be hinted at by slogans like "change the city for Christ"

Again I've seen prayer lessening. Both hard and soft lead to legalism and reliance on dispensations as a form of passivity in place of discretion and agency in our own lives and co-ministering. The OT predicted equal including of the Hebrew clans and gentiles, all along.

There is a shortage of distinct teaching. Both the feedings - of the 5,000 and the 4,000 - are about teaching and the support we can all give to teaching.

My point about listening to the intuitions and honest inferences of invalids and the youth etc, meant people that are out of fashion with the elites insofar as they can't be manoeuvred / induced. I've actually known a lot of (commonsensical) cases.

The rest of your post assures me you are on the same road as me.

Ref OP: many other leaders have made the same omissions by bad example of their forebears and lack of care from colleagues. The point is not heretics but heresies, and the ones we've pinpointed are so prevalent as to be more or less usual christianity, their effect leading to controlling somehow. JM got let down by standard "evangelicalism". But at least he does try to teach quite a lot!

Semi glitch: from "Anything can" is my reply.

 

[OldAbramBrown]

... don't understand most of that ...

The reason a heresy is functional is because of the impacts that flow out, which we have lived through. Reading up a checklist of heresies before we've been embroiled in those situations is meant to make us alert in case.

I went wrong in construing OP as about JM specifically, he has gone with the trend or countertrend and I don't need to worry about his motives. When I pray these days I am praying for all church leaders.

 

[OldAbramBrown]

I don't know who noticed this earlier or took the time to read it, but maybe its helpful:

MacArthur's Church - the Hypostatic Union

I see he tries hard (by teaching against it) to avoid the effects that ESS (fashionable in other churches) would have on relations between church officers and their congregation members.

 

[The Liturgist]

And the Orthodox churches do receive the Chalcedonian formula, so they have the Christology expressed above from the Athanasian Creed, though some wording (in English) may differ a little, the meaning will be the same.

Indeed the wording of the Orthodox version of Quincunque Vult* consists in English of two longer paragraphs rather than three smaller ones, and lacks phrases that express the doctrine of the Filioque that are present in the Roman Catholic and Protestant versions.

*Quincunque Vult is properly understood neither as.being written by St. Athanasius personally, or as a creed, but is rather a creedal canticle. The Athanasian Creed first appeared around the year 500 and appears to be largely derived from two sources: a confession of faith written by St. Athanasius, (but actually based on the 21st Oration of St. Gregory the Theologian (also known as St. Gregory Nazianzen) commemorating the life of St. Athanasius of Alexandria, who had recently reposed, which included a summary of the teachings of St. Athanasius; in it St. Gregory also famously called St. Athanasius ”the Pillar of Orthodoxy” and declared his name to be synonymous with virtue owing to enduring his lifelong service to the Church from a young age, his asceticism, his tireless advocacy for the Nicene Creed and Holy Orthodoxy, and His long exiles and persecution at times seemingly by all the major powers in the Roman Empire, hence the phrase Athanasius Contra Mundum (Athanasius Against the World). So while psuedepigraphical, it is theologically Athanasian, but we have no idea who compiled it.

 

[The Liturgist]

I'm saying the term "Mother of God" gives off the impression to some/many that Mary gave birth to the Godhead.

Lots of people say that, but since no Roman Catholics, Lutherans or High Church Anglicans or Eastern and Oriental Orthodox or Moravians or Calvinists actually believe that, nor are there any cults which teach that, It is a pointless objection. And even if a cult emerged which did believe it, there is an easy solution which is to preferentially use the term Theotokos, or Birth giver to God, in the original Greek, which is what is done in the Greek Orthodox liturgy.

Our liturgy refers to St. Mary as “Our glorious lady Theotokos and ever-virgin Mary.”. Because the phrase is in ancient Koine Greek, and not a vernacular language, it makes it clear it is a technical term and the use of that phrase eliminates even the remote possibility of an extraordinarily daft member of the church misinterpreting it as meaning that the Virgin Mary gave birth to the Holy Trinity.

 

[Xeno.of.athens]

I'm saying the term "Mother of God" gives off the impression to some/many that Mary gave birth to the Godhead.

These some/many are who? They would not be Catholics, except perhaps in a case of terrible catechesis and very poorly formed faith. They would not be Orthodox except in similar cases of terrible catechesis and very poorly formed faith. So far the ones who have asserted this kind of thing are evangelicals who have been taught by men such as John MacArthur to misunderstand Catholic teaching by asserting that "mother of God" implies that Mary is above God. That is a consequence of the heresy that John MacArthur presents and misconstruing what Catholic Church teaching truly is.

 

[Servus]

These some/many are who? They would not be Catholics, except perhaps in a case of terrible catechesis and very poorly formed faith. They would not be Orthodox except in similar cases of terrible catechesis and very poorly formed faith. So far the ones who have asserted this kind of thing are evangelicals who have been taught by men such as John MacArthur to misunderstand Catholic teaching by asserting that "mother of God" implies that Mary is above God. That is a consequence of the heresy that John MacArthur presents and misconstruing what Catholic Church teaching truly is.

I think it's simply because in scripture "God" usually is refers to the Godhead or the Father. Rather than all of the sinister reasons that people are coming up with in this thread.