The “unbelievable” radio program will be releasing this debate on May 31st, 2019
Andy Stanley has been promoting a doctrine that stems from getting away from the “mean” ol’ testament God, outdated Mosaic laws, the creation, global flood etc… instead we should only focus on the historicity of the life, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ and his followers.
Andy makes the claim that many atrocities were committed in the name of the old testament God, but no one can make the same claim about the red letters i.e. sermon on the mount. Andy argues that people are leaving the church, because they are being peddled a “because the bible tells me so” childish believism, and that his message projects a grown up view of the Christian faith.
In Luke 19:27, a character representing Jesus says this;
But as for these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slaughter them before me.’”
1 Corinthians 9:9:
For it is written in the Law of Moses, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain.” Is it for oxen that God is concerned?
Compare this to that ‘nasty’, ‘vengeful’ God of the Hebrew Bible:
And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?”
In other words, contra NT, God tried his hardest to spare unbelievers, and does have concern for animals.
BTW, the NT is arguably more to blame for the ecological crisis than the Tanakh. Judaism has always recognised the principles of Tsa’ar Ba’alei Chayim (relieving animal suffering) and Bal Tashhit (against wanton destruction), whilst the NT rejects the notion that animals have any value (also seen in the story of the Gadarene Demoniacs) and that is how Christian thinkers (with rare exceptions such as St Francis) have understood things until comparatively recently.
Dear @Wookin_Panub,
Why are you promoting this so much? I have clicked three times on your links and it is not even available to listen to yet. Also, why should anyone invest so much time to listen to two guys?
Best Wishes, Shawn
It is absolute nonsense to think that Christianity can be separated from the Hebrew Scriptures. Not to mention that such a view reveals profound ignorance of the much older Messianic Faith that is preserved in texts of the Old and New Testaments.
I have not listened to the debate yet (am at work; thanks for the reference, @Wookin_Panub), but the sermons are not this extreme. I think that the drift is not, as some say, throwing away the OT; it’s focusing on Christ as the best revelation–something Christ himself said. . We had a discussion about this here , and below this is a link to an article that he is not a Marcionite–thus, doesn’t reject the God of the OT as someone else. Marcion and the first ecumenical councils - #9 by Randy
Thanks. Good discussion. I look forward to the debate; they usually have a very good format.
Because this doctrine “mere Christianity” being pushed by Andy Stanley, William Lane Craig and others are growing in the church. It is the death knell for Christianity. mere Christianity is a step towards liberalism
Well maybe that’s being a bit melodramatic there Wookin? I’m glad the future of Christianity, such as it is, isn’t in our hands.
But anyway: thanks for sharing this Wookin! I thought both of them ended up making a lot of good points and I learned from both.
By the way ,… for those who may just want a freshly uploaded youtube link so you don’t have to search around at the radio site: here it is now at youtube.
[and at this link you can listen to it at higher speeds]
One point Andy made that stuck with me on my initial listen was this in response to “What about the 10 commandments?” He noted that you could follow all ten commandments and still be a lousy spouse, employee, friend, etc… But there is no way you are let off the hook if you listen to (and Andy referenced some N.T. love passage here…) which gives us a much higher standard than the 10 commandments ever did.
My pastor would fight to the death against the heresy of Marcion. But the OT represents about 2% of his Scripture citations. And that 2% is generally uncontroversial moral exemplar passages.
How is Stanley’s teaching any different from Bill Bright’s 4 spiritual laws?
I find such an approach rather thin, but I don’t consider it to be heretical.
Stanley has nothing to do with Marcion. That’s just the rumor that might circulate among Stanley’s critics who haven’t really listened to him. Durbin (who opposes Stanley) didn’t accuse him of anything like that. He had more substantive rebuttals and concerns - and even though I didn’t think Durbin made his case in the end, I still think he brought forward the best defense that could be made as a caution against Stanley’s approach, making a lot of good and true points along the way.
After listening to the whole exchange, I have following comments.
The first thing that hist me is that is exchanges like these, that help push Christianity away from none Christians. How can two Christian ministers argue so much and use the same bible quotes to support the opposite position?
As a biblical scholar, I find Jeff to be reasonable and measured and well read. But Andy makes my skin crawl. Here the top three comments on his presentation:
Early in the talk he talked about how he talks with nonbelievers and has to remind himself that they are “not one of the elect.” How can any Christian place themselves above another?
Later he insists that: “had there been no resurrection there would be no bible” and he repeated this fanatically. Jeff tried to talk him down from this position, but he could not bring logical reasoning for this (false) statement.
And then he goes on to say that the (inerrant) Bible then appeared in the 4th century, but claims to be teaching as the early Christians did. As Jeff said, the early Christians did not jettison the OT. Those scholars worked diligently to reconcile the OT with the New. The Bible that appeared in the 4th century was a product of the Church (priests and scribes) and not of the original writers of the scripture. Only fragments of some of the original scriptures have survived and all we have is the “Bible” from the hands of the priests written after the council of Nicea.
This is a rather misleading statement. Yes, only fragments of the original manuscripts have survived to today, but we have direct copies of the original manuscripts. You make it sound like the council of Nicaea got together and created the manuscripts we have now from their memory and imagination. That’s not accurate at all.
I mean what we have today are copies of the original manuscripts, not someone’s jotted down memories of what the original manuscripts said, or something fabricated by filling in a bunch of blanks while looking at fragments. Textual criticism says that we are very certain what the exact content of the original documents was except for a few places that don’t affect the central message.
Furthermore. I cannot control that they keep pushing back the clock