Response to Dave Welsh on WorldNet Daily

To get to Hitchens. We'll keep that queued up for Thursday. But I did want to get to an article that I was directed to today by one of my bloggers. Mike Porter sent me a link to a WorldNetDaily for Tuesday, December 22nd.

Dave Welch and the Manhattan Declaration

Dave Welch, WorldNetDaily exclusive commentary. John MacArthur, wrong on this one. Posted December 22nd, 2009. Dave Welch is the founder and executive director of the U .S. Pastor Council and Houston Area Pastor Council, inter-dominational and interracial ministries of and for pastors based in Houston, Texas.

Over the past 24 years, he has held numerous leadership positions, including founding executive director of Christian Coalition of Washington, national field director of Christian Coalition, and executive director of Vision America.

And so with that in mind, he says, with nearly 300 ,000 citizens added to the original 189 signatories, the Manhattan Declaration of which I was privileged to be one, opposition from the outside is not only natural but expected.

Taking even reason, compassion, and principle stands in the sanctity of life, definition, integrity of marriage, and vitality of religious freedom are throwing red meat before the pit bulls, the media, political, academic, and even the religious elite.

It is the in-house opposition I would like to speak to, recognizing my very humble standing to do so. I would like to specifically address concerns of opposition expressed by some evangelicals, Dr. John MacArthur in particular, who have given seemingly legitimate and theologically based reasons for opposing the Declaration.

I'm glad that he gave a link there to Grace to you and to Dr. MacArthur's article. If you would like some other articles to link to, I'd be happy to provide them as well. A necessary disclaimer is that I am not ever, I am not nor ever will be in the same league of biblical training, education, or proclamation as Dr. MacArthur.

He is one of the truly outstanding biblical scholars of our day. MacArthur's primary objection is that, quote, the gospel is barely mentioned in the Declaration, end quote. He is also opposed because, quote, thus for the sake of issuing a manifesto decrying certain moral and political issues, the Declaration obscures both the importance of the gospel and the very substance of the gospel message, end quote.

Unfortunately, that is all that Mr. Welch gave of John MacArthur's response, and I think that's why Dave Welch missed it. He missed it because that's not Dr. MacArthur's primary problem. He's not just simply saying this document should have been a full explication of the gospel.

The Gospel Cannot Be Left Undefined

The point, Mr. Welch, and the point that we all have been making in attempting to respond to the Manhattan Declaration is that the document mentions the gospel. It talks about the gospel. Let me quote from it.

Christians are heirs of a 2 ,000-year tradition of proclaiming God's word. Notice, all Christians, Catholics, East and North Arks, Protestants. It speaks of the gospel of costly grace, and it says specifically, it is our duty to proclaim the gospel of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, in its fullness, both in season and out of season.

Now, these are Catholics, East and North Arks, and Protestants talking about the gospel. And everyone knows, as Mr. Welch knows, that there are not only side issues of definitional difference, there are fundamental defining differences between what each of those groups believes the gospel actually is.

Dr. MacArthur's problem is that if you're going to mention the gospel, if you're going to say we are Christians, making these statements, then we cannot allow the gospel to remain undefined. And the key elements of the gospel are not in the document.

The cross is not in the document. The wrath of God is not in the document. It's not there. And there's a reason for that. The reason for that is that the primary writer of that document, a man by the name of Robert George, is a natural theologian and a natural philosopher.

And as he has said since the document was released, I'm quoting now, over lunch last month at the Princeton Faculty Club, George noted that many evangelicals had signed the Manhattan Declaration despite the traditional Protestant skepticism about the corruption of human reason.

Quote, I sold my view about reason! Exclamation point! Quote, he declared, he was especially pleased that by signing on to the text, so many Catholic bishops had endorsed his new natural law argument about marriage.

It really is the top leadership of the American church, he said. So here is Mr. George, who in, of course, Timothy George, who is not Robert George, and Chuck Colson, willing abettors of Robert George, who is a Roman Catholic, saying, I sold my view about reason.

Well, here's the problem. This has been one of the fundamental differences between Reformation Christianity and Roman Catholicism all along. Now, it's not shocking that there are many Protestants that have already abandoned the Reformed view of the total depravity of man.

And if you're wondering who I'm talking about, remember just a few months ago, we went through William Lane Craig's discussion of these issues? And his adoption of a slightly modified view of the Council of Trent over against the Reformers as his preferred definition of the gospel?

So there are many who have already bought into these things. Frank Beckwith, clear example of someone who never bought into the Reformed view of the nature of man, the preeminence of Scripture over human reason.

This has been part and parcel of the argument all along. And so here, the very man who wrote this thing is saying, I sold my view, which is an anti-Reform view, rah, rah, rah me. And evidently, Mr. Welch would be one of those who has likewise bought that view, even if he, the problem is, I doubt that he even recognized that.

I don't know. I don't know what discussions he had with Mr. George. But that is the issue that John MacArthur is raising, Alistair Begg's raising. I am raising in this matter, as we mentioned last week in my discussion of this subject, when I went through J. Lincoln Duncan's explanation of his signing of the statement.

And I should say that Sunday, Saturday night, I got a very nice note from Dr. Duncan in an email, and he signed, signed it, your friend. So that's, we remain friends on that level, and I appreciate that.

Biblical Authority, Natural Law, and the Ecumenical Problem

Let me continue on with Mr. Welch. I must state why I believe he has missed the point of the declaration, although at least he is consistent with the fact that he also believes that the Declaration of Independence was a violation of biblical principles of authority.

I won't digress on that other than to assert that there is no rational defense of that position, biblical or historical, unless a person grants absolute authority to civil rulers and institutions in clear violation of sound biblical interpretation.

So that sounds like a challenge there. With the current declaration, however, I believe the issue is simple. It was based on a Christian worldview, but was not designed or purposed to be an evangelistic document any more than was the Magna Carta, Lex Rex, the 1689 English Bill of Rights, etc.

Okay, once again, we have the exact same argument that's being made. It wasn't meant to talk about the gospel. Then why does it talk about the gospel? Why does it assert that we as Christians, Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestants have the duty to preach the gospel in its fullness?

Why does it do that? I'm not getting any answers to that. And as we pointed out last time, Dr. Neil Nielsen, the president of Covenant College, brought out those very things and said, quote, while I could unreservedly commit my name to the main body of the declaration regarding sanctity of human life, marriage, and religious liberty, I hesitated to sign because of these references to the gospel, recognizing as I must.

But there is not a common understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ among the signers. In early November, he sends out some emails, and here was one of the things that specifically said, the key question for me is, am I willing to sign a statement like this, along with Christian leaders who define what is stated as the basis for the statement in very different ways?

For example, what do the Catholic leaders sign the statement mean by, it is our duty to proclaim the gospel of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ in its fullness, both in season and out of season? Well, I can tell you one thing, they are going to include the sacraments in it.

They're going to include a mass that is a blasphemy against the finished work of Christ, so how can you sign it, becomes the question. And what I have said is that I don't see how Dr. Nielsen actually gave us a reason for why he did anyways.

That's the problem. He saw what the problem is, and says, I wish that such theological language had been left out entirely, and that the statement referred more directly and exclusively to the issues themselves, but when such a statement as that at the bottom of page two is included, the document implies a theological agreement of the content of the gospel, and thereby goes beyond co-belligerence in a similar way as the ECT documents.

And they knew. They knew. He says later on, it's hard for me to imagine that Colson and George, both ardent supporters of ECT, are not at some level still just as ardent about the theological reunifying of Protestant and Catholic communities.

The theological language of the document, extraneous if the purpose is co-belligerence pure and simple, carries implications and connotations for a theological agreement that I don't think I can countenance.

Well, I don't know why he eventually could, but those remain the very reasons why John MacArthur, R .C. Sproul, myself, Alistair Begg, and others have said, nope, can't go there. And so, there is no parallel between this and the Magna Carta, because that was not written by ecumenists.

That was not written by a Roman Catholic philosopher and two ecumenical Protestant leaders who are at the very forefront of attempting to forge a political ecumenism in America. You have to allow context to be context.

He says, I reject Catholic and Orthodox doctrines that place church ecclesiastical authority equal to that of scripture, the elevation of Mary beyond that of one who was clearly a virgin favored by God to give birth and nurture his son, our Savior Jesus Christ, as well as salvation by anything other than by faith in Christ through grace alone.

I am a sola supporter. However, and here's where we really, I think, hear what's going on today. Time and time again over the past 20 years, I have stood side-by-side with Catholics and Mormons who shamed the evangelical church by the level to which they put their money and their time, where their faith is in standing for life and marriage.

According to a California Proposition 8 insider, over three-fourths of the money and volunteers that ever came from these two religious groups, again, that this was in spite of many megachurches in California flowing with money and manpower.

And what did I say in 1994 when I wrote my first response to the Evangelicals and Catholics Together? I've seen the ecumenism of the trenches, where when you stand side-by-side with someone against a common evil, what happens more often than not is your priorities change.

And the purity and clarity of the gospel, which is the only power given to the church that can impact any of these cultural areas, is sacrificed for a unity that does not actually exist. And that's the problem.

That's the issue here. You cannot address an anti-godly view of life without talking about the author, without asserting his right and his law and his wrath and his judgment. And the document doesn't do that.

And it can't do that. But it remains a theological document. Its own writers admit it. We have to allow the authors to define what the intention of that document was. So once again, hopefully that is helpful in understanding what's going on, thinking these issues through.