why so long ?

Tim Challies says he was shocked by what Driscoll said in Scotland. My question for Tim and others like him, where have you been? Mark Driscoll has been teaching this since the early Street Talk days before Mars Hill Church was founded. Driscoll's essential message from Song of Songs hasn't changed. What has changed is the scope of his audience and his more outrageous packaging of the message. Why did it take a over fifteen years for the evangelical leaders to wake up and hear what this guy was preaching? Unlike the Colonel, Driscoll's ideas and methods were always unsound.

"After that, his ideas, his methods became unsound, unsound."

Tim Challies Missing the Forest for all the Trees

Song of Songs - MacArthur

The most signficant point made by John MacArthur in
The Rape of Solomon's Song was one on hermeneutics. Be sure to print this statement on paper and fold it into your bible at the first page of Song of Songs.

We're assured moreover that the shocking hidden meanings of these texts aren't merely descriptive; they are prescriptive. The secret gnosis of Solomon's Song portray obligatory acts wives must do if this is what satisfies their husbands, regardless of the wife's own desire or conscience..

MacArthur has nailed it. Pay attention.

Old Testament Poetry:
Psa. 137:9 Happy is he who
takes your little ones
and dashes them against the rock!

As I have stressed several times in this blog, I am culturally a great distance from John MacArthur. I am not an evangelical. My concern about this is Mark Driscoll's egregious abuse of scripture. The points MacArthur makes about hermeneutics and application are the same points I would make. Driscoll's treatment of the Song of Songs is both ridiculous and profane. The point I want to stress is that his exegesis is silly. He should be laughed at as well as anathematized. I will leave the anathemas for the church leaders. I am content to just laugh at him. Driscoll is doing something really stupid and he is doing it in public. Ignorant people are buying into it.
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The Right of Private Judgment & Totalitarian Mega Churches

In the mid '70s I heard Peter Toon a church historian form the UK give a lecture series on The Right of Private Judgment and the Reformation. Toon focused on the rights and responsibilities of private judgment. What some people are calling the "New Calvinism" has a deeply ironic twist in that it is being promoted by Papal Pastors at totalitarian Mega Churches where the right of private judgment has been taken away. The head pastor has replaced the Pope and his interpretation of the scriptures has been put above criticism. Anyone who dares to openly question his teaching is ostracized or removed from membership.

Mark Driscoll at Mars Hill Church in Seattle is a case in point. Driscoll's exegesis is generally pretty loose. He assumes that his audience is too ignorant to see this. He supports his questionable teachings on sexual ethics, marriage & family, gender roles, and many other popular themes with highly dubious exegetical tactics. He would be blasted out of the room if he presented these readings in a scholarly forum. But at Mars Hill Church his teaching is above criticism. If you are a member of HIS church you do not question HIS teaching.

This is a very common scenario at mega churches. These fellows are not capable of dealing with dissent. When they step into the pulpit they are infallible. They may not claim this in so many words but their policy of repressing dissent carries a subtext of infallibility.



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