Until the Reformed renounce the WCF, they are no less Catholic, with their triple epistemology. Because “SOLA SCRIPTURA” is no less a triple epistemology than the Catholics, it is not redeemable. It cannot be saved. It is to be trashed. God might have temporarily used sola scriptura, like a dipper, in the early days, but He has long ago thrown this soiled diaper in the trash. The Reformation took the idea of only standing on Scripture for knowledge and soiled it with empiricism and tradition. Sola scriptura is now God’s target practice. We ought to do the same.
Their cessationism alone soiled the Scripture as the only starting point for knowledge. But their boast about leaving Catholicism is also naive and delusional. They could not leave it alone. Man (WCF) and empiricism managed to be equal starting points for knowledge. They were abused under Catholicism and when they tried to leave, they became the abusers and abused Scripture with addition starting points, despite their honest intention to solely use scripture. Its tragic, but it is also demonic. They blasphemed. Also, the doctrine of God’s sovereignty, which Martin Luther largely got correct, (except faith and miracles) the Reformed soiled that diaper too with the WCF. They served their purpose that God ordained for them, and afterwards God discarded them. The proof is that in application God did not predestine them for faith, healings and casting out demons, when Jesus said you give proof you are a disciple and that He “chose you” by you asking getting what you want (John 15). Jesus said the ones he predestined will bear fruit. Jesus says, you will know them by their fruit.
“…If anti-faith and anti-miracle ministers and groups were ever useful, they are not useful anymore. God has exploited them for his own purpose. The salt now has no flavor, and it is ready to be thrown out and stepped on by men. They are holding people back, and they should be discarded and forgotten. The church has recovered to a point that we no longer need teachers who refuse to teach the word of God as it is written. It has reformed indeed, and then reformed again. There are those who refuse to continue after the first small step, who after they have rejected Satan, refuse to continue with Christ and welcome him in all his fullness. But there is only one Christ. If you do not receive him — all of him, since he is one — then you reject him. For the church to move forward, it must cast aside these useless people like wet dog poo, and leave them behind to die….”
Vincent Cheung. “The Primacy of Healing Ministry.”
From ebook. Contract, 2020.
[The below, is slightly out of context from the source, but should be followable. It is a person, Johnny, who was offended by uncle Vincent Cheung’s teaching on God’s sovereignty and saying God is by logical necessary the metaphysical author of sin and evil.]
1. I agree with Johnny’s analysis of Gordon Clark. The traditional definition of “sola scriptura,” does not mean what we mean by saying, “the Scripture is our sole epistemology.” They mean the scripture plus, what God sovereignly caused the Reformers to say and doctrinally formulate at the time. (In this, the Reformed are nothing more than a rehashed version of Catholicism, with their dual and even triple epistemologies.) The main sovereign work of these men forming doctrine is the WCF. And it is clear the WCF, (in addition to other heresies, such as cessationism) affirms secondary causes relative to God. Clark, because he was a Presbyterian must affirm the WCF. Thus, his only recourse was to irrationally make the WCF affirm the type of sovereignty that Martin Luther and himself taught. What Clark and Luther taught contradicts the WCF: thus, somebody is teaching the truth and the other a blasphemy. But the WCF is almost Arminian level weak on God’s sovereignty. It is blasphemy. There is no rescuing it. Clark was grasping at straws in order to make himself look like a good Presbyterian. The author is correct that Clark’s remarks to make the WCF be as sovereign as the Bible teaches was a failure.
2. Johnny’s remarks on Luther, however, are incorrect. Luther clearly teaches God both creates and causes/moves evil and sin in people and demons, and not merely “lightly nudges some evil that ontologically was put there in the man, apart from Himself.” To Luther, the same directness God uses to cause “faith” is the same sovereign directness God uses to cause unbelief (i.e. sin) in a person or demon. Luther, who was writing in non-stop syllogisms and the necessary connections of arguments clearly states that God is not what He creates and causes, by logical deduction. According to Luther if God creates or cause evil, it has no logical necessary connection that God is that Himself. The author does not know what Luther taught.
“……But what do they effect by this playing upon words” This is no more than saying, the act is not God Himself. This remains certain, that if the action of God is necessary, or if there is a necessity of the consequence, everything takes place of necessity, [then] how much [more] the act be not God Himself. But what need was there to tell us this? As though there was any fear of our asserting the things done were God Himself….” [2]
[i.e. God is not what He causes. If God creates a river and directly causes it to move north, then God Himself is not a north flowing river. The same with men and their good and evil choices that God directly causes. Or if God causes a man to choose evil, then God is not that.]
“…Paul teaches that faith and unbelief comes to us by no work of our own, but through the love and hatred of God (228).”
[God the author of all good and evil, of all things by direct causation]
“…What I assert and maintain is this: that where God works apart from the grace of His Spirit, He works all things in all men, even in the ungodly; for He alone moves, makes to act, and impels by the motion of His omnipotence, all those things which He alone created; they can neither avoid nor alter this movement, but necessarily follow and obey it, each thing according to the measure of its God-given power. Thus all things, even the ungodly, cooperate with God(267).”
[God the author of all good and evil, of all things by direct causation]……..”
3. Johnny says Vincent’s argument infers God made Adam defective and this infers something further, saying,
“If the defect of man is something caused by God, then God must have this defect in itself…”
This connection in this hypothetical syllogism is not a “necessary connection.” At best it might be said to be a sufficient one, but a syllogism only works if the connection is necessary. The only way for this connection to be necessary is if God is “NOT” separate from His creation as taught by pantheism (etc.). That is, unless the author proves the Bible teaches pantheism, he has no necessary connection in his argument. But if what he says is true, then by implication if God creates a north flowing river then God Himself is a north flowing river.
(3.a) John Calvin clearly taught that God could have created Adam in a type of perfection that would have given Adam the “strength” to not commit the original sin. Calvin says it is the height of injustice to suggest God had to create Adam with the strength to not fall to sin. So not only does Calvin contradict the author, he but provides a counter argument. If God did not create Adam with the strength to withstand a nuclear bomb, is that a “defect”? No, it is not a defect. It is a matter of strength and weakness. That fool has no idea what he is talking about. And as Romans 9 shows, God loved and hated in order to show His previous goal of showing His power and mercy. This original goal for the elect is truly perfect, compete and God-level valuable. Since the order of the decrees are in logical order, then if we were to talk about defect or perfection, it is the original decree for the elect that is to be evaluated, and not the last decree, which is last, in a long list of decrees to get to this perfect original goal.
(3.b) Also, as Luther shows, it does not logically follow that what God creates and causes, proves that God Himself is what He creates and causes. Luther even points out that His opponents understood this logical inference, and is asking why they need to state something so painfully obvious. Since, Johnny contradicts this obvious thing, when even Luther’s opponents agree with him, then he must be dumber than a litter child.
He also slanders and bears false witness to what Luther actually taught. He commits the same mistake he accuses Gordon Clark of. Luther is still considered part of the Reformed, and so to a degree, Luther is nebulously part of the “sola scripture’s” triple epistemology Catholic copycat. He slandered Luther to make him say what the WCF says. This is the result for having people, like the Pope, and empiricism, part of your “sola scriptura.” When there are contradictions between two divine fathers, you have to pick a side and bear false witness of the other to make them say the same thing. These are lovers of men, and the approval of men. They have their reward.
However, whether Luther this or Calvin that, I do not care. I do not bear the label of Reformed or Presbyterian. I do not adhere to “sola scriptura,” because no one has proved the Bible teaches that men and empiricism are a triple epistemology with itself.
4. The person, despite his rhetoric, keeps meta-morphing God’s commands, epistemology and ontology together like a child, the very thing Luther accuses Erasmus of. This person is a delusional and not some biblical hero.
5. “…Cheung, recognizes that the reformed doctrine denies that God is the author of sin….”
I agree with the author. When the Reformed chose the WCF (over Luther’s Bondage of the Will) as its creed, it publicly and formally denied God is the metaphysical author of sin, along with faith and expansionism. There is no rescuing this. The Reformed willfully chose this, they bear it. As long as the WCF stands the Reformed are no less Catholic than the Catholics.
Oshea Davis 