In Defense of Kyle J.Howard, Reformed Theologian

AD Robles

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Well, I hope all is well, and you had a good 4th of July holiday. I know

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I saw some tweets from some people that said that it was bad for Christians to celebrate the 4th of July. Well, I don't really celebrate 4th of July in any special way.

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But what I found funny was that these people also think that not only is it bad for Christians to celebrate the 4th of July, but they should celebrate

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Juneteenth. So I guess the partiality that people are showing shows no bounds and will also be spilling over into the man -made holidays that we celebrate.

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But in any case, I wanted to do a video today, something that I never thought that I would ever do.

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But I guess I should have. So here it is. This is my defense of Kyle J.

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Howard. Somebody reached out to me and were actually showing how

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Kyle was very upset, tweeting like crazy about people that accuse him and others of being social gospel proponents.

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And he was very angry about that and said it was slanderous because everything to Kyle J. Howard is slanderous.

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And he was very upset with him. And I read the tweets, and this person that reached out to me asked me what

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I thought about him. And actually, I kind of have his little sympathy for Kyle J. Howard. I actually can understand why he's upset.

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And here is what I mean. So now, if you accuse

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Kyle J. Howard of preaching a social gospel, I understand why you do that. I do. You will not have heard me say that, even if I agree with a lot of your points.

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And the reason I don't say that is because, strictly speaking, from a very kind of foundational theological level,

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Kyle J. Howard, in my opinion, of course, has an actual true gospel. He actually believes that the gospel of Jesus Christ was that, even while we were yet sinners,

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Christ died for us to pay the penalty for our sins as our replacement, as our propitiation.

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And that, because of that, we died in Christ, you know, we died in Christ, but also we are raised with Christ.

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And so, as far as I can tell, Kyle J. Howard has a biblical understanding of that gospel.

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So the gospel was to save sinners. And that's how he understands it, as far as I know.

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The social gospel, and this is, you know, there's really no, like, hard and fast definitions for this. And that's,

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I think, part of the problem here. But the social gospel, at least as I understand it, is a gospel that says, well,

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Christ died on the cross, and the reason he died on the cross is to essentially reform society, and to sort of overthrow these evil oppressive systems, and to have it so that there's no more poor, no more injustice, and things like that.

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And that's the reason that he died. And there is sort of an aspect of that, of course. We understand that, you know, as Christians, you know, we live, you know, we walk in good works, the

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Bible says, And so, as the world becomes more Christian, and this is a, you know, you might debate me on that, just depending on your eschatology, but that's fine.

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But the point is, Christians in the kingdom of God, you know, people that believe in Christ, live and walk in good works.

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And so, within the church, within the body of Christ, there should be more justice, and there should be a more, you know, socially positive society.

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There shouldn't be, we shouldn't be stealing from one another, or devouring one another, or things like that.

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And so, you know, there's a kind of a sense of that, but the social gospel proponent would say, well, yeah, but we're supposed to go into the culture and create this sort of thing as well.

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And that's the whole point of the gospel. And so, I can understand, you know, why Kyle J. Howard would push back on that, because he does understand the gospel that saves sinners from their sin, the gospel that Jesus Christ was a propitiation, became sin, was crucified on the cross, was buried for three days, and rose to life again, so that we could live and be a new man, in other words.

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And so, you know, but here's the problem though, right? So, I'm going to defend Kyle J. Howard there.

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I think he does have a biblical gospel, but I think for most people, when they say he's a social gospel proponent, they say it's a matter of emphasis, right?

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Because if you look at Kyle J. Howard's Twitter feed, what you'll find, and I haven't run the numbers here, so this is just all off the top of my head, if you look at Kyle J.

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Howard's Twitter feed, you're going to find basically tweets and commentary and blog posts and things that would look absolutely the same if he was a social gospel proponent.

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And so, it would be hard to distinguish that Kyle J. Howard, you know, I actually had to really, really had to look for Kyle J.

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Howard comments that showed me that he actually understands the actual gospel. I had to really look hard.

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And so, I can understand why someone would say, yeah, you might understand the gospel, but you're applying all of this the same way a social gospel person would.

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And I would happen to agree with that. I think that there is an absolute obsession with social engineering, with all kinds of social justice when it comes to Kyle J.

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Howard's Twitter feed. And so, if you say that he preaches a social gospel, I'm not going to say you're wrong.

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I have a slightly different viewpoint. And I think everyone's threshold is the same. Here's where I come at this, right?

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Because I think when you look at Kyle J. Howard's Twitter feed, you can very easily see that there is a rivalry.

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There is a sort of, you know, how can I put this? I think, you know, there's definitely a covetousness, a selfish ambition.

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There's an envy there where he thinks that Black people should have something that he perceives

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White people as having, whether it's privilege, whether it's, you know, more Black authors, more

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Black theologians need to be read because he perceives sort of this idea where we only read White theologians and we need to read

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Black theologians. And he really wants that. It could be even economic. I mean, he cites economic disparities as if there is something that White people have that Black people are owed.

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He even uses that terminology from time to time that Black people are owed something. And so there is a kind of a covetousness, an envy, a rivalry in his gospel presentations.

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And here's the thing. We're reading in Philippians chapter one, and this is Paul's kind of position on this because he recognizes that there are some people that preach the gospel from this kind of a conceit, from this kind of a rivalry or envy.

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And he says this, he says, some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from goodwill.

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He then says, the former proclaimed Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment.

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And here's what Paul says. He says, what then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth,

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Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice. Now, I know that Paul also says that if somebody's stirring up division, that you warn him once, you warn him twice, and then you have nothing more to do with him.

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I think Kyle J. Howard is stirring up division, and I think he's doing it intentionally. I think he's doing it from a place of envy. I think he's doing it from a place of selfish ambition in a lot of ways.

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And the reality is that everyone's threshold is going to be different because, you know, warn him once, warn him twice, does that mean literally two times?

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It could, and I'm not going to say it doesn't, and I'm struggling and praying through this myself, but I'm going to take right now, my stance for Kyle J.

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Howard and others like him is that I'm going to be rejoicing Christ being proclaimed because a lot of these brothers are proclaiming

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Christ, the real Christ, and the real gospel. And I do think, though, at the same time there is an envy, there is sort of a rivalry that's going on here, and it's between, you know, minorities and the dominant culture, the white culture, whatever you want to call it.

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And I think that that's bad, and I think that there comes a point where we do have to warn them once, warn them twice, and then have nothing more to do with them.

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I haven't reached that threshold yet, and many of you have, and I'm not going to say you're wrong for that.

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So even though I'm going to defend Kyle J. Howard here, I do not call him a social gospel proponent. I think he understands and proclaims the real gospel.

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But there's going to come a point where, if he does not change, and he continues to sow division, and he continues to sort of,

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I mean, let's just be honest, his Twitter feed is racist. He has a disdain for white people in a very real, palpable way.

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You only have to read a few tweets to see it. And so there's going to have to come a point where, even for myself, and I might be, here's the thing,

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I don't deny that I could be in sin here, that I'm not being faithful to, you know, Paul's, the scripture's warning about warning someone twice, warning them, and then having nothing more to do with them.

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And I struggle with that every single day, because I want to strike that balance of rejoicing in the fact that the gospel is going out, but also making sure that, you know, the unity of the church is maintained in such a way.

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And, you know, as an elder, that's something that I feel the weight of every single day. And so I am defending Kyle J.

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Howard here. I think he preaches the real gospel, but there will come a point when, you know, we just have to realize that he's never going to stop sowing division.

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Never. It'll never happen. I hope it doesn't get to that point, but if it does, God help me.

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And I just pray that I do the right thing. And so if you disagree with me here, if you think he's already reached that point, I have no beef with you.

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I can understand why you think so, because his Twitter feed is vile. You know, and I just want to make sure that I'm not acting from a place of rivalry or conceit, because in Philippians chapter two,

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Paul says, do nothing from rivalry and conceit and consider others more important than yourselves. And so that's sort of what

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I'm thinking about. How do I balance those two? And I'm just not sure. I'm not sure if I'm doing it right. Anyway, I hope this was helpful.