How Close the Pentacostals and Catholics Are!

Here is a wonderful post from Scott Clark and his blog THE HEIDELBLOG. I have been saying for a long time that Pentecostals have more in common with Roman Catholicism than they would care to realize. The search for counterfeit miracles is just one example. The relying on outside knowledge beyond the word of God is another. Allowing people to speak Ex CATHEDRA, (not papal Ex Cathedra but allowing people to speak with the authority of Jesus none the less) is so prevalent with men claiming words from God over and sometimes completely against what is said in scripture.
Let us return to the 5 Solas! Let us truly be Protestants! Let us fight for what the reformation was about and return to the Scriptures!
The original post may be seen HERE

Rome, Pentacostals, and Credulity

One of the creepier aspects of both Romanist and Pentecostalist piety is their virtually indistinguishable credulity about alleged “miracles.” I use the pejorative adjective intentionally because, at bottom, despite the formal differences between them, both are peddling magic and superstition and that’s creepy. John Henry Cardinal Newman (1801–90) is about to be “beatified.” (HT: Beggars All) but some questions have arisen about the truthfulness of the claims made by a Romanist deacon that he prayed to JHCN and that the latter heard his prayer and healed him miraculously. The late Roman high priest (pontifex maximus) is on the fast track for beatification and canonization but he too has hit a speed bump.

In Romanist piety “beatification” is part of the process of canonization whereby a dead Christian is recognized as a true object of veneration. The process requires that it be proved that this dead Christian heard and answered a prayer and performed a miracle. Hence the requirement for credulity in both senses of the word. The theological problems with such claims are not insignificant. First, one has to agree that finite, dead, humans, can, because they are glorified, hear prayers. This assumes a sort of omnipresence and omniscience that neither Scripture nor Christian theology confers upon them. Second, it assumes that humans, because they are glorified and particularly pious, are able to do that which only God can do: interrupt what we understand as the ordinary providence of God.

In medieval theology Credulitas referred to assent to and trust in the magisterial teaching of the church. In modern usage “credulity” denotes a “disposition to believe on weak or insufficient grounds” (Oxford English Dictionary). The Reformation attacked this confidence in conciliar and papal dogmas as misplaced. Only the triune God and his self-disclosure in Scripture is worthy of implicit faith and unquestioned (not to say unreasoning) confidence. Hence, against the medieval and the Tridentine (Romanist) doctrine of credulity and fides implicita the Protestants asserted and taught the doctrine of sola scriptura, that only Scripture is God’s Word, that only Scripture deserves the sort of authority Rome confers upon the church. Scripture forms the church; the church does not form the Scripture.


Reading about the controversies over whether JHCN and JPII heard and answered prayer and are thus qualified, according to Rome, for beatification, I was struck by how similar the language and rhetoric of the Romanist is to that of Benny Hinn and his ilk. Neither the Romanist nor the neo-Pentecostalist (neo-Montantist!) confesses the sole, unique authority of the Word of God. Neither the Romanist nor the neo-Pentecostalist recognizes the unique nature of the canonical revelation or of the canonical apostolic and prophetic offices. The piety of the Romanist and the neo-Pentecostalist depends to a considerable degree upon their claims of ongoing apostolic authority and demonstrations of power (e.g., “signs and wonders”). Neither of them is satisfied with the finished work of Christ. Neither of them understands the sufficiency of Christ, how that all of redemptive history pointed to and was fulfilled by Christ. Each, in his own tawdry way, wants us to think that what he claims happens today is substantially identical to what happened in canonical redemptive history. If Paul survived stoning and serpents, the neo-Pentecostalist has done the same and more! If the apostles put people to death and raised them from the grave, the neo-Pentecostalist has done the same. Of course both Rome and neo-Pentecostalism really specialize in claims of healing. That’s where the discussion usually focuses.

Since the rise of Wayne Grudem’s more sophisticated revision of neo-Pentecostalism (attempting to affirm a predestinarian version of neo-Pentecostalism and to synthesize it with the Reformed doctrine of canonicity) it is considered by some to be bad form to invoke Warfield but I must. We should all go back and read his marvelous de-bunking of the neo-Pentecostal and Romanist nonsense: Counterfeit Miracles. The question has never been whether our sovereign triune God can perform the canonical signs and wonders. After all, he did it the first time! The questions are whether Scripture promises that he will and whether we can honestly say that he has done and is doing now. The exegetical case for ongoing signs and wonders is precarious at best. As to empirical evidence, Warfield was right. It usually comes down either to lowering the standards of what happened in the apostolic (or more broadly) the canonical period or in elevating what is alleged to have happened in our time. Thus, the biblical glossolalia is re-defined and identified with a universal religious phenomenon. Alleged occurrences of “healing” and other modern signs and wonders become as hard to verify as the Romanist claims that the JHCN or JPII performed a miracle.

I am not saying that God is absent from the universe or that he is not active constantly and wonderfully. Not at all. The Biblical doctrine of providence says that God exercises the same power manifested in creation to uphold and govern and sustain and work through his creation today. He has promised to work wonders through the preaching of the holy gospel to bring his elect to faith and to sustain and confirm that faith through the use of the holy sacraments. I am not saying that God never wonderfully and unexpectedly heals anyone. I’m sure he does but I am as unsure that he has done so either through the intercession of dead cardinals and popes as I am that he does so through the imprecations and invocations of jet-setting, white-suited charlatans.

It is striking how, on examination, the cardinal, the pope, and the pentecostalist all begin to look the same but ironically none of them sees himself in the other.

Scott Clark Explaining the Problem with "Childrens Church"

Bravo!!! Dr. Clark Hit a home run here, i couldn't have said it any better than this. If you do not read Scott Clark's Blog, you should start to. It is a fount of rich theology and understanding of Reformed Theology. You can find it HERE.

Here are his thoughts on Childrens Church. Stop taking the kids and youth away from the communion of the saints!!!

THE MYSTERY OF CHILDREN'S CHURCH
BY DR. SCOTT CLARK

I do not understand why so many ostensibly Reformed congregations have adopted the practice of dismissing their covenant children from the service to “children’s church” (or whatever more clever name it may have). From what I see this appears to be a common practice. Sometimes the bulletin explains that the children are sent out of public worship in order to “prepare them to worship.” Really? This seems like sending one’s child from the dinner table in order to prepare them to eat.
I understand the practical problem. At least some of the same congregations that have this practice also do not set aside time outside of the worship service for Christian instruction or catechism. So, it seems, they’re holding catechism during the worship service. I guess that the reason that there’s no additional time for catechism is that the parents won’t make time and the church won’t make them make time. So, congregations are making due.
It’s hard to know where to start with this complex of problems. Obviously there is a misunderstanding of the nature of the Sabbath. There’s a misunderstanding of the nature of worship. There’s a misunderstanding of the nature of baptismal vows and church membership. There’s a misunderstanding of Christian nurture and there’s a misunderstanding of the nature of Christian parenting. Other than these things, as they say, “it’s all good.”
In such a case, the act of sending children out of the the stated service for instruction sends a more powerful message than the instruction is likely to send. It sends the message to the children that they are not really members of the covenant community. It sends the message that the gathering for public worship may be marginalized if something else is deemed more important. It sends the message that it’s acceptable to arrange one’s priorities during the week so as to require this ad hoc solution, that church is something we do but not something we are.
Underneath all of this there is another series of misunderstandings: Of what we are, who Jesus is, what he did, and what the implications are for those who would follow him.
We may look like happy, upwardly mobile suburbanites but we’re not. We’re wretched, horrible people by nature. That manicured lawn covers over a multitude of hell-deserving sins. We’re gossips, murderers, adulterers, and God-haters. If the children’s church-sending parents understood that, if they really believed that about themselves and their children, they would find time during the week to see that their children are instructed. They would be catechizing their children, praying with and for them. Then it wouldn’t be a matter of squeezing a little instructional time into the Sabbath. They would be pleading with the minister to teach their children.
If we saw ourselves for what, but for the grace of God, we really are then we would understand the grace of God. If we understood the grace of God, we would more and more embrace the consequences of following Jesus. Death to self entails death to the successful suburban lifestyle where that lifestyle marginalizes Christ and his church. Jesus didn’t come to facilitate a happy, upwardly-mobile lifestyle and discipleship calls us to die to the mall and live to Christ.
Yes, having children in church means that it will be slightly less entertaining and possibly less moving emotionally. It’s a little harder to be enraptured by the latest chorus when your child is fidgeting next to you or someone else’s is wailing in your left ear. That’s okay. You might not have the same emotional “high” this week as you did when their was children’s church. That’s okay. Worship isn’t about your experience of religious ecstasy. It’s about hearing God and responding appropriately, according to his Word.
God doesn’t mind that your emotional experience is less intense. He takes the long view. Your children will grow up not segregated from public worship and the means of grace. They’ll grow up a part of the community of the redeemed and watching baptisms (so they can see what happened to them). They’ll see the supper administered and they ‘ll ask, “When can I have it?” They’ll hear the Law and the Gospel (Dv) and they’ll grow up knowing that this is their identity, that it’s really true, that God said, “I will be your God and your children’s God.”
Church leaders don’t want to challenge parents and parents don’t want to be challenged. The cycle has to end somewhere. It should start with pastors and elders. That’s why they call it leadership. A leader goes first. A leader takes the risk. Elders and pastors need to get over their desire to be popular, to be liked, to be “successful.” Perhaps the reason that parents don’t see any contradiction between their definition of “success” and the Christian life is because their pastors and elders haven’t shown it to them?
Children’s church is a problem but it’s not the problem. It’s a symptom of much larger problems. It’s not too late, because it’s never too late to repent. Grace is free for everyone, pastors and parents alike. God bless those noisy congregations with fidgeting and fussy children. Let the noise of children inhabit all our congregations.