I've been going back and forth a bit with my friend Brenden on his blog.
At issue is "what is a false teacher?" Is a false teacher easy to recognize? How should the term be used?
Thus far, here's me, then him, then me.
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Hey Brenden – just found your blog. And I thought it was just a Facebook thing.
I recognized the phrase “false teacher” – it shows up in the second Helvetic confession ch. 18.
“For, if they be false teachers, they are not to be tolerated at all.”
And of course 2 Peter 2:1 says, “But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction.”
It seems that your description of “false teachers” is a little softer than either the 2Helvitic or the Bible. Are you using “False Teachers” in a different sense?
Jarid – Yeah, that’s a good question. I think I may have been using a different sense. My intention was more to bring out the ‘hypothetical’ false teacher and identify him via certain strains of ‘false teaching’ more specifically. False teaching rarely is conspicuously apparent, but rather veils itself through sophisticated reasoning and wordplay. Mine was an attempt to unveil the spirit of the age by identifying some of its underlying motivations.
Your criticism is quite well-founded. However, my question then would be: if he’s dong false teaching, when does he become a ‘false teacher’? Thanks for the comment. We should catch up sometime soon.
Well, there’s a sense in which the identification of false teachers is the work of the church, not the individual. It’s not a complete sense, i.e. we should be able to discern truth from error, but it’s there.
I would say that someone is a false teacher as soon as they start teaching what it certainly false.
It’s the evaluation of the falsehood that is the trouble.
I’m not sure that false teaching is quite so veiled. For example, is Baptist sacrementology false teaching? I believe it is, in fact, in error, but it’s not “false teaching.” Every theological is a matter of error or not-error, but that doesn’t mean that either all Baptists or all Presbyterians are false teachers.
False teaching is a statement that salvation is not by faith but by circumcision. Arianism, Docetism, Sabellianism, or Pelagianism are all false teachings. JW’s and Mormons are false teachers.
It seems from Scripture and the Reformed confessions that a “false teacher” is someone outside of salvation, an damnable heretic who is, apart from heartfelt repentance, going to go to hell, and all who follow him shall go with him.
They often attempt to be sophisticated in the description, but the error is plainly seen.
What caught my attention was the word “emphasis,” which certainly apply to #s 1-4, and maybe 5. I remembered John Frame’s essay “evaluating theological writings.” He mentions 3 unsound criteria for theological evaluation, the first one being “emphasis.” He writes, “In this kind of criticism, one theologian attacks another for having an improper ‘emphasis.’ But there is no such thing as a single normative emphasis. An emphasis becomes a problem only when it leads to other sorts of problems.” (John Frame, _The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God_, P&R Publishing, 1987), p. 370. He refers in this section to chapter 6, where he discusses problems of evaluating “emphasis” – a. Emphasis is a matter of degree. Exactly how much has to be done before a proper ‘emphasis’ has been achieved? b. Scripture has a “central message,” but valuable theological work can be done in areas that are distantly related to this central message. For example, the veiling of women in 1 Cor 11 is not illegitimate because it is pays little attention the Scripture’s central message. c. Theology cannot have precisely the same emphasis as Scripture, because it does more than simply repeat Scripture from Gen. to Rev. Theology exists to apply Scripture.
Finally, he suggests that a problem of “emphasis” is better understood as either a problem of truth, clarity or cogency.” (182-183).
There are a couple of points in Frame (just the above part) I’m not sure I agree with, but his final point is the best – instead of looking for the man’s emphasis, let’s look to see if he’s wrong, unclear, or unconvincing.