What Would Charles Spurgeon Think of Rob Bell?

This is from Dennis Swanson's The Down Grade Controversy and Evangelical Boundaries, originally read as a paper at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society (November, 2001)

During the years of the Down Grade Controversy Spurgeon repeatedly warned of six areas of “down grade” in evangelical doctrine.

• The denial of the verbal inspiration (that is, inerrancy) of Scripture.
• The denial of ETERNAL PUNISHMENT and the affirmation of UNIVERSALISM.
• The denial of the Trinity, mainly in terms of the rejection of the personality of the Holy Spirit.
• The movement towards Socinianism or the denial of the deity of Christ and original sin
• The denial of the creation account in Genesis in favor of evolution.
• The unhealthy influence of Higher Criticism on Biblical scholarship, particularly as it related to the Old Testament.

"How much farther could they go?

What doctrine remains to be abandoned?

What other truth to be the object of contempt?

A new religion has been initiated,

which is no more Christianity than chalk is cheese"

- C.H. Spurgeon

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You might also like the book

The Forgotten Spurgeon

by Iain Murray

click HERE

3rd Halo-halo Huwebes

Trigonometry and Honesty

"Today I am giving two examinations- one in trigonometry and the other in honesty. I hope you will pass them both. If you must fail one, fail trigonometry. There are many good people in the world who cannot pass trig, but there are no good people in the world who cannot pass the examination of honesty"

- Madison Sarratt of Vandervilt University
  Our Daily Bread, Vol. 31/ July 10, 1986

If they hated Spurgeon, keep in mind that they hated Christ first

(John 15:18) 

Observe that the enemies of Charles Spurgeon in the "Downgrade Controversy" denied some of the essentials of the evangelical faith:

1. the imputation of Adam's sin
2. the imputation of Christ's righteousness
3. the doctrine of everlasting conscious punishment
4. the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures
5. the Trinity

"We are now at the parting of ways, and the younger ministers especially must decide whether or not, they will embrace and undisguisedly proclaim that the 'modern thought' which in Mr. Spurgeon's eyes is a 'deadly cobra' while in ours it is the glory of the century. It discards many of the doctrines dear to Mr. Spurgeon and his school, not only as untrue and unscriptural, but as in the strictest sense immoral; for it cannot recognise the moral possibility of imputing either guilt or goodness, or the justice of inflicting everlasting punishment for temporary sin. It is not so irrational as to pin its faith to verbal inspiration or so idolatrous as to make its acceptance of a true Trinity of divine manifestation cover polytheism."

-Christian World

cited in R.J. Sheehan's C.H. Spurgeon and the Modern Church

Ano nga ba ang aking istilo sa pagsusulat?

In this site, you can submit a few paragraphs of your work for "statistical analysis". Based on your word choice and writing style, the site will tell  "which famous writer you write like".

I submitted "God's Sovereignty Over the Wills and Desires of People Around Us", and the result was I write like William Shakespeare.

 I submitted "We Have Seen His Glory", the result was I write like Edgar Allan Poe.

 I submitted "Beautiful Extravagance", and the result was a name I never heard before-- I write like H.P. Lovecraft, "American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction, especially the subgenre known as weird fiction" !!! (Wikipedia)

Since it was a three-way tie, I submitted another post to break it. After analyzing "How to love your son without walking in the path of Marlene Aguilar -Pollard", the final result is William Shakespeare.

The Influence of Books and Teachers

"If I had even the faintest clue when I was younger as to how profound an impact books and professors would have upon my life, I would have kept a better record of my thoughts and emotions. Why? Because some books and teachers leave indelible fingerprints on our souls. And when those fingerprints are left, it's as if your DNA has changed. Our physical body takes on characteristics because of our chemical DNA. Likewise, those whom we've read and those whose feet we have studied will transform our passions, power and purpose."

-Ravi Zacharias

Just Thinking (Winter 2003), p.1

also appeared in the book Indellible Ink:

22 Prominent Leaders Discuss the Books That Shaped Their Faith (Ed. Scott Larsen)

Spurgeon and Evangelical Boundaries

Nine years ago, the appendix Spurgeon and the Downgrade Controversy in John Macarthur's Ashamed of the Gospel took me by storm. It was also the book that "first sparked" Phil Johnson's interest in Charles Spurgeon. Perhaps he would not have built Spurgeon Archive if he has not read that book.

That appendix lead me to pick-up R.J. Sheehan's C.H. Spurgeon and the Modern Church and Iain Murray's The Forgotten Spurgeon.

Just last week, I was blessed to discover a paper written by Master Seminary's Dennis Swanson. He read this paper at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society in 2001 when the society's theme was Defining Evangelicalism’s Boundaries.

The paper is available in PDF format here.