Drinking A Little or A Lot

I recently read of the removal of Pastor Perry Noble from the pastorate of South Carolina mega church known as NewSpring Church. Right off the bat I want to say that I have no reason to attack Noble. He is not in my circles, his church, in my estimation has never been Biblical and other than seeing his name appear from time to time in articles I only glance at, he has been a non-issue to me. What is an issue is the lesson that is learned from his fall.

 
In an article I found in Christianity Today[1], Noble declares that he believes it is perfectly acceptable for Christians to consume alcohol so long as they do not abuse alcohol. His problem, by his own admission, is that he "slipped" from socially consuming to personally abusing alcohol.

I am reminded of a podcast[2] I recently heard where James White and Jeff Durbin defended themselves from certain attacks made by fellow Calvinist, JD Hall[3]. Hall had gotten wind of two separate but actual events that had taken place in connection with some fundraising for a new church Durbin's church is planting in Hawaii. Whether Hall's accusations are accurate or not is not the point of this piece. What is the point is the defense White and Durbin make against those accusations.

 
Apparently Durbin's congregation is primarily composed of alcohol and drug abusers who have been rescued through this ministry. Durbin, Who works to help addicts recover, preaches a message very similar Perry Noble's, "social drinking is acceptable but abusive drinking is sin" line.

 
Durbin cited Scripture after Scripture that he believes speak of drinking wine in a positive, even exalted light. One reference was Jesus' turning water into wine at the wedding in Cana. On more than one occasion Durbin used the word, conviction, claiming that it was his conviction that the Bible did not condemn wine.

Here's my take. First, wine, in the Bible, is not always alcoholic. Men like White, who boast of their skills in accurately interpreting the Bible, should see this. Too many people they know and claim to respect have published by too much information on the subject for them to not be aware of this. I would expect that this is a conscious choice to deny a valid understanding of the word, wine. For Durbin to insist on serving strong drink, i.e. alcoholic wine, at his communion services is, in my estimation, just plain irresponsible.

Secondly I want to challenge Durbin’s use of the word, conviction. When Durbin says it is his "conviction" that it is biblical to drink alcoholic wine, does this mean that the social drinking of alcoholic beverages is actually a Christian practice Durbin would suffer persecution to defend? I expect it is more of a preference.

I end with this. Since a man, such as Noble, could slide into the abusive use of this substance that is so well known to be addictive, since it is not a matter critical to the Christian faith, and since abstinence from alcohol is a certain means of preventing such abuse, wouldn't it be wiser to entertain more thoroughly those interpretations of the Bible that teach complete abstinence?

Marvin McKenzie

In the fields

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[1] http://www.christianitytoday.com/gleanings/2016/july/how-perry-noble-alcohol-firing-by-newspring-church-compares.html

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gn_1q_8fep8

[3] http://polemicsreport.com/author/jdhall/

James White's Opposition to "KJV Onlyism"

James White is a hero to many modern Calvinists, including Reformed Baptists. White takes frequent hits at those, even among the Reformed crowd, who hold to the “King James Only” position on the Bible. I admit that the groups that hold to KJV Only are diverse and some of the positions held on the KJV go much too far. However, there are legitimate arguments for the exclusive use of the King James Version of the Bible. In this article I want to address White’s arguments against the exclusive use of the King James Bible and offer a few answers.

His argument, as I understand it, against using the King James Version of the Bible exclusively:

A key passage, Psalms 12[1] is, according to him, misused.

This argument appeals to the academic but denies the spirit of God's Word. The Bible, and especially the Psalms, is filled with passages where the context appears to be one thing but there are obvious secondary lessons found in them. How would we have ever seen the allegory of Sarah and Hagar using strictly academic context? Yet we know the allegory is authoritative. So many of the Psalms jump from a Davidic context to prophesy clearly of the Saviour. There are too many passages that promise the first infallible preservation of God's Word to deny that this passage must also be included among them.

Interestingly, I have not heard White or anyone else for that matter, cite a passage suggesting that God would, as they claim He has done, preserve His infallible Word through a variety of corrupted but reliable enough manuscripts.

KJV onlyists must isolate the one KJV text that is the infallible one.

By insisting upon this, White demands of us what he claims is not necessary for himself: one perfect text. He claims to believe that we have the word of a God and that no Word of God has been lost. He just claims that it exists among thousands of manuscripts that don't agree. The scholar gets then the job of choosing for the masses what is the Word of God and what is not. He sets himself up in a place of perpetual awe before his inferiors who must wait upon him to declare for them what God has said.

My claim is that the KJV is the infallible word of God in fact. There may be editions with errors, but there is no error in the KJV as God illuminated the translators to record it.

KJV onlyists ignore historical fact to hold their traditional view of the Bible.

My claim is that White ignores the nature of God to hold his presumptive view that the Bible must contain errors that scholars may be employed to ferret out. I would rather side with God that He has preserved His Word perfectly than with historians who are inherently fallible and admittedly biased.

White dismisses the KJV only position as indefensible in the real world.

This of course is a matter of opinion. He claims he has taken his position into the world through debates with Muslims, atheists, Mormons and others. My observation, having listened now to numerous of his debates, has been that White claims himself to be the winner of these debates but that they are structured in such a way that both sides can make that claim if they choose.

White is the sort of man who, I doubt, ever sees himself as loosing.

Conclusion

White's position appears to me to be loosely based upon his understanding of the key texts and much more dependent upon his understanding of the history of the transmission of the Bible. He has a compelling motivation to forever keep the Bible in a state of incomplete perfection. It preserves his importance as a textual authority.

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[1] White, who claims to dislike listening to people he believes yells too much, is himself very loud spoken and in very loud tones mockingly corrects those who would call the address Psalms 12 instead of Psalm 12. The fact is that many scholars past and present refer to a single address in the Psalms using the title of the book as a whole in the address. It is not an error to do so, it is rather one of White’s ways of belittling and marginalizing the person with whom he disagrees.