Various years in the past, I wrote a weblog submit asking Andy Stanley to step down from ministry. The cause of this used to be relatively simple, in that whilst he would now not deny the virgin delivery, he made statements suggesting that the Christian religion doesn’t hinge off of the account of the virgin delivery. That is false.
Afterward, Andy Stanley additionally made feedback that earned him the spurn of many Evangelicals, suggesting that it used to be time to unhitch from the Outdated Testomony. In essence, his intent right here used to be to mention, that during a lot the similar manner the Christian religion doesn’t hinge off of the virgin delivery, the Christian religion likewise doesn’t hinge off of the Outdated Testomony.
In mild of this, Andy Stanley instructed that such things as miraculous phenomena, the historicity of Adam and Eve, and so forth., are all negotiable tenets of the Christian religion—that if this stuff are your dangle up—center of attention as a substitute on Jesus’ lifestyles, loss of life, and resurrection, for that is the core of the Christian religion. Regardless that he once more made it transparent that he doesn’t deny the aforementioned hang-ups, he however instructed one “unhitch” themselves from this stuff and as a substitute “hitch” themselves on Jesus.
I wrote every other weblog submit to handle this factor at duration, as additionally it is false. Suffice it to mention, we merely by no means to find that more or less luxurious throughout the corpus of Scripture, as Jesus Himself used to be content material to uphold this stuff as literal truths. Had Andy Stanley instructed one needn’t determine all of this stuff out previous to wrestling with who Jesus is, I believe the general public would naturally agree. The gospel, this is, the lifestyles, loss of life, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, definitely takes priority in how we evangelize. However that’s now not what Andy Stanley implied in his phrases.
It will have to be famous that one of the vital issues of the Nice Fee is that we train others to obey the whole thing Christ has commanded us (Matt. 28:20). God has impressed all of Scripture, for the very goal made transparent by means of Christ in issuing the Nice Fee (2 Tim. 3:16-17). It’s in mild of the truth that Scripture is God-breathed, or actually expressed, from the Spirit of God Himself, that the person of God is also provided to show, rebuke, right kind, and teach others in righteousness. This command to make disciples then encompasses the twofold fact of each instructing and obedience to that instructing, which the apostle Paul choices up extensively in other places in relating to the religion (Rom. 1:5; 1 Cor. 16:13; Eph. 4:13; Col. 1:23).
The religion right here isn’t that private, subjective wisdom and alertness of the gospel (i.e., your religion), it’s as a substitute, that collective frame of reality, from Genesis to Revelation, which used to be as soon as for all passed right down to the saints (Jd. 1:3). It’s this identical frame of reality that Jude instructions the church to fret over—not to simply shield, however to head at the offensive, to offer protection to, guard, or even overcome the lies of this age with (Col. 4:6; 1 Puppy. 3:15). The straightforward level being that we don’t seem to be at liberty to evenly counsel one can “unhitch” themselves from any portion of Scripture. It’s all authoritative and binding upon each guy, girl, and kid, for it’s God Himself who gave us this Phrase (2 Puppy. 1:21).
Once more, Andy Stanley claims to confirm biblical inerrancy and authority, but his personal phrases counsel another way. No longer lengthy after he instructed folks “unhitch” from the Outdated Testomony, he equipped this weblog submit, the place he then instructed a type of Marcionism, additional divorcing the Outdated Testomony from the New Testomony. I wrote but every other weblog submit right here to attract out why his teachings have been in reality heretical, however in a nutshell, he amped up his “unhitch from the Outdated Testomony” language to a extra extensively outlined “red-letters” more or less Christianity, the place the ethos and instructing of Christ is not directly insinuated to contradict the remainder of Scripture.
Why then do I write this weblog submit?
In a sermon on Luke 1:1-4 dated March 6, 2022, the next opening remark used to be made by means of Andy Stanley:
“The Christian religion doesn’t upward push and fall at the accuracy [or the inerrancy] of 66 historical paperwork [or books we call the Bible]. It rises and falls at the id of a unmarried person: Jesus of Nazareth” (brackets come with fuller quote to what used to be observed on social media).
I’d inspire you to look at the entire sermon beginning at concerning the 26 minute mark within the provider. It’s going to now not most effective supply fuller context to his statements however will in reality reveal fairly obviously that folks’s objections to Andy Stanley are completely based.
There are a selection of issues he makes right through the sermon that I consider maximum would confirm:
In spite of this stuff, there are a variety of items Andy Stanley said which can be, frankly talking, opposite to the whole thing I simply recorded above. The ones with quotations beneath are direct quotes from the sermon.
That is the primary of a sequence Andy Stanley will probably be preaching, so I will be able to most effective bear in mind what he’s mentioned up to now on this submit. Then again, I consider that it’s transparent, particularly given his earlier statements, the place his trajectory goes.
He appears to be hanging number one forex at the gospel of Luke, given that is the guide he’s selected for this sequence and his remarks above. In that, he alerts a key conjunction when he refers to all the gospels. Word once more, Andy Stanley mentioned, “The query to invite is that if Matthew, Mark, Luke, or—now not and—or John, are a competent account of exact occasions.” The planned selection of the phrase “or” isn’t incidental or a misspoken phrase, and we see this from the rest of his thesis, which is only a rehashing of his earlier teachings in this subject.
The crux of the problem for Andy Stanley is obviously what we make of the resurrection—what he refers to as “the development.” On this, it’s fairly transparent he’s suggesting that with out the resurrection, there’s no Christian religion, to which all of God’s folks would say, “Amen.” The place he’s taking this line of reasoning despite the fact that is spurious at perfect, as all right through his sermon he puts a divide between the Phrase of God and the true moments in time and area the place this stuff came about. In different phrases, he puts primacy at the resurrection, however to the detriment of the textual content which testifies of the resurrection itself.
To make that much more transparent, Andy Stanley posits a logical fallacy which is referred to as the “false quandary,” the place he bifurcates between the Bible’s document of this stuff and the true occasions that transpired in historical past. It will have to be quite obtrusive to any informal reader of Scripture that we most effective know of this stuff with simple task as a result of they’re in reality recorded for us. The attention-grabbing quandary for Stanley is that he lifts up Luke because the textbook instance of a New Testomony gospel that we will be able to accept as true with, all of the whilst suggesting coyly that the rest of the Bible isn’t similarly as devoted.
In truth, as you smartly noticed above, he in reality suggests the important thing to recapturing and safeguarding the religion of this era and the following is on this idea: that the Christian religion rests or falls upon the reliability of the gospels—now not all of Scripture. That is in particular the place the dialogue above in regards to the distinction between one’s subjective, private religion, and that frame of reality referred to as “the religion” is apropos. Whether it is simply a question of maintaining any person’s person religion, then all kinds of propositions can come forth which might be to detriment of the religion.
The issue with this mindset is that it presupposes that one’s private religion may also be divorced from the religion as doctrine right kind, which all of the saints have professed for millennia. We’re a part of this broader fact referred to as the tale of redemption, which isn’t merely the resurrection, however a tale of redemption that culminates within the resurrection. In different phrases, the resurrection, is without equal intention of this tale—now not the tale itself, however even right here that verbiage falls quick for the reason that final intention of redemptive historical past is the redemption of all issues within the New Heavens and the New Earth. In different phrases, a gospel this is only fixated at the second in time and area the place Christ presented Himself as much as die on our behalf and rose once more, is a truncated gospel, particularly, for the reason that resurrection of Christ is the first culmination of the resurrection of all believers, and the renewal of all issues, when the curse of sin, Devil, and loss of life and defeated forevermore.
That is however part of the issue whilst you begin to in reality observe Andy Stanley’s hermeneutic of “the instant,” as he calls it. The bigger factor in the back of it’s the power, flippant dismissal of the significance of all of Scripture. As we learn the Scriptures, we discover that no jot or tittle lets in us to easily give it an informal, dismissive handwave, let on my own proposing what he does, which is to jettison it in want of maintaining only one guide (or simply the gospels) of Scripture. All of Scripture finds the God this is, and in particular so, how this One true God has acted right through all of historical past.
The reality of Genesis 1:1 is similarly as foundational to the Christian religion as the reality of the resurrection. The truths of the primary 11 chapters of the guide of Genesis, in truth, lay the very basis of the Christian religion we consider lately, because it encompasses in a microcosm the truth of introduction, fall, redemption (protoevangelium), and recovery via covenant—which is the full arc of the Bible’s whole tale. From this level ahead, we merely observe this arc in motion, seeing how God is devoted to His covenant guarantees to the country of Israel, and in the end, to the church produced from each tongue, tribe, and country.
What you’re inevitably left with from those statements of Stanley (at the side of his earlier ones) is a religion that is in a position to be compartmentalized except the whole lot of God’s revelatory plan. Extra problematic than that is that Stanley intentionally pits Christ in opposition to His personal Phrase. Christ Himself gave us the inscripturated phrase, throughout the company of guy, by means of the facility of the Spirit.
To place it within the bluntest manner I know the way, that is absolute anarchy to what the Bible teaches about itself. How we view the authority and inspiration of the Phrase issues. It’s both true and authoritative or it’s not, however you can’t know the Jesus of historical past should you have no idea, consider, and love the ones 66 books that divulge Christ and discuss of the fullness of our triune Lord. The purpose being: we both take God at His Phrase, and by means of that, I imply all of it, or we create a synthetic divide that God hasn’t ever meant us to create within the Phrase. On this divide, we will be able to now not simply chance instructing falsely of Christ, we will accomplish that, and maximum perniciously, we will be able to accomplish that on the expense of our hearers.
It’s something for an ignorant Christian who isn’t ready of educating authority to carry those perspectives. It’s a wholly other one for a pastor to carry those perspectives. Pastors are entrusted with the oracles of God. They’re to spread the textual content, fashion a lifestyles in submission to that textual content, and speak to others to do the similar. Their activity is to as it should be maintain the Phrase of reality. If a person can’t do this within the pulpit, he has no industry occupying one.
Relatively than shrink again from the Phrase because the tradition spirals down the drain, we needs to be daring males who entrench ourselves additional in what is right and proper, which invariably way we stand or fall at the Phrase. For the pastor, that is the one authority you have got. For a pastor to mention this type of factor as Andy Stanley has, isn’t just silly, however it’ll additionally actually shipwreck the religion of any who in reality heed it. In case you inevitably pit Scripture in opposition to itself in an effort to say one section is extra devoted than every other, you’ll to find little to no floor to face on which is devoted in any respect. We don’t want extra males who downplay the authority and inerrancy of the Scriptures in our day; we want males who proclaim all of God’s recommend to His sheep, with trembling and worry of the stricter judgment promised them, lest they be discovered a wolf.
In mild of this, should you, Andy Stanley, occur to learn this in any respect, I sincerely ask that for the sake of those that listen you and the confusion you generate, and for the myriad of devoted pastors merely in the hunt for to feed Christ’s sheep smartly, please, step out of the pulpit.

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