• Some Struggles with John Piper

    August 28, 2009

    When I was a sophomore in college, I helped to lead a high school mission trip to Russia.  On the plane, I was reading a book someone had recommended, “Desiring God,” by John Piper.  Through the first 1/2 of the book, I was looking for a way to throw it off the plane – I thought it was crap.  By the end of it, I was transformed.  I had a completely different take on the nature of Christian faith and discipleship that has stood the test of time.

    Once I started to get into Podcasts, Piper’s was one of the first ones I subscribed (iTunes link) to.  I still listen to it with some regularity and commend it to you.

    When I was contemplating resigning my role as a student pastor in 2004 to pursue more theological education, I decided to take some time off to think, pray, reflect, and ask questions.  I traveled to Minneapolis, visited Bethlehem Baptist Church where John Piper preaches, and had the chance to talk with him for a while after one of the services.  An alum of Fuller Theological Seminary, I expected him to be encouraged that this was one of my options.  He wasn’t.  He said that they had gone down a dangerous to path toward Christian liberalism.

    I went to Fuller anyway and discovered that John was wrong.

    My idolatry of Piper broken, I began to notice some other aspects of his theology that I had a really hard time with.

    I think he gets the issue of God’ sovereignty wrong – not because I believe the opposite, but because I think the whole Calvinist/Armenian debate is flawed at its core.  Both positions assume that salvation is something one can have and therefore argue about who secures our having it – God or man.  With good intention, some will attempt a middle road and say it’s a both/and issue.  It’s not.  It’s a neither/nor issue.  When you begin to understand that “salvation belongs to God” (Rev. 7:10) and is therefore something we can only participate in, never have, the whole debate changes.

    I also lament Piper’s view on women. Again, he will argue the “conservative” side of the complimentarian/egalitarian debate, which I think begins with flawed premises.  Do men and women compliment each other or are they equal?  That question isn’t nearly biblical enough to be of any real value.  A more important question, at least as the Bible is concerned, is, how do men and women, who only together image God, as couples and singles, function together in doing and equipping others for ministry.  And the plain answer is that they serve as co-laborers – that each and every aspect of ministry, from preaching and teaching, to caring for children, suffers when not practiced by both capable and gifted women and men.

    There was much bally-who in the blog-o-sphere last week when Piper connected a tornado in Minneapolis to a meeting the ELCA was having regarding the issue of homosexuality (here’s the original article and a follow up one).  I have listened to Piper enough that I think what he meant to say was that whenever natural disaster strikes it is an opportunity for us to remember and turn to God, but he seemed to be saying quite a bit more than that and it calls for some accounting.

    Lastly, he’s got a bad take on the woman at the well (John 4).  Like perhaps the majority of preachers, he is quick to assume the moral degradation of the woman Jesus encounters, frequently noting that “she’s sleeping with her boyfriend.”  As I take into account the cultural factors at play in this passage as well as the fuller scope of Jesus’ ministry, I find this interpretation to be maddening.

    Women had not rights in Jesus’ day; they had not power to divorce a husband; they were property.  Unless they were from a royal or extremely well off family, they had almost no hope of being able to provide for themselves.  As the Bible makes clear, the ability to produce children more often than not determined a woman’s worth.

    While we might trip over some of the translated language, I think it’s much more faithful to the text to understand this Samaritan woman, not as a whore (essentially what Piper and others tend to d0), but as a shamed and broken victim of injustice.  When Jesus notes that this woman had had five husbands, he’s not digging her for her sin – when did Jesus ever do that except for the religious leaders?!  And when he says that the man she now has is not her husband, he’s not some *&$%^&# calling her out for “sleeping with her boyfriend”  – again, just doesn’t fit the Jesus of the gospels.  He is calling out the source of her shame and injustice so that he can heal it – something he did all the time.

    I love John Piper as a brother in Christ.  His passion and zeal for the supremacy of God captivates and inspires me.  But here’s the final thing about John and this gets me more than anything else.  I have never heard him say (and he’s really public!), “I might be wrong.  There are other followers of Jesus who believe differently than me and they just might be on to something.”  Even if he has said something like this at some point – it is quite definitely not a theme in his teaching the way I wish it was.  I’m not talking about being wishy-washy.  I am taking about some good ol fashioned humility and firm trust in God’s work over his theology.

    I am not writing this to disparage.  Beginning with myself, I would ask anyone who has some theological issues with another brother or sister in Christ, to think first and foremost about who they really are and what they have done for the sake of the gospel.  I am no anti-Piperian. I consider John a true partner in the gospel and would run to his defense on most occasions.  But this is just some stuff that I really struggle with enough to hope that others would as well.

    Posted in: bible, Fuller Seminary, gender, Jesus, preaching/teaching

Recent Comments

  • Josh G said...

    1

    Desiring God is on my read as soon as I find time list. I've listened to Piper's podcasts and read the desiring God blog regularly for a long time. Having said that, I really appreciated this post and agree with you on pretty much everything.
    For a while I was pretty into the Calvinist/Arminian issue. I researched it and wanted to know all the reasons. Ultimately what I figured out is that both positions have good Biblical arguments for and against. Then I realized that both positions are within the real of historical Christian orthodoxy. That drew me to the final conclusion that not only is this a non-essential argument, it's a detrimental argument that tears the Church apart. As long as the other side has a Biblical, orthodox, position, why are we arguing about it? Ultimately I came out in the same position I started in for primarily pragmatic reasons.

    08/28/09 6:11 PM | Comment Link

  • Josh G said...

    2

    Oh, and I agree with you that the complimentarian/egalitarian question is flawed, or at least, improperly defined. I am in favor of women in leadership positions but would still would say I have a complimentarian view. I believe that God designed women and men differently, and by insisting that women are the same as men radial egalitarians loose the unique gifting that women have that we miss. By insisting that women are not fit for church leadership radical complimentarians also loose the ability to fully utilize those unique giftings that women have.
    Thanks for getting my brain kick-started today.

    08/28/09 6:12 PM | Comment Link

  • Joshua Elek said...

    3

    I have to say, I think the Armenian/Calvinist debate is a difficult debate, and I agree that both sides have scriptural grounds for their claims. But I'm not satisfied with the claim that sharing in salvation as opposed to harvesting salvation fixes either the religious or the philosophical problems at hand. Keep in mind, the issue of Armenianism/Calvinism is not strictly an issue of salvation. It asks questions about the nature of humanity itself. If we are born with free will, then humanity is of one sort. If we are born without free will, then humanity is of a different sort. If we have free will, then our participation in salvation has certain implications regarding the justice of God. If we do not have free will, then our inability to participate in salvation has alternate implications regarding the benevolence of God. I think that this issue is a deeply important, religious and philosophical issue. It is a very difficult question that Christianity and Philosophy have been trying to more fully understand for thousands of years. I'm not content with the conclusion that after two thousand years of discussion on this issue, we should just call the battle won because we participate in salvation rather than gaining it.

    I don't have an answer, and don't mean to pretend as if I do. Religiously, I am compelled to accept the antinomy that human beings have free will, and God is completely soveriegn. If I undermine either of those issues, my beliefs regarding humanity and the nature of God begin to deteriorate. Together they don't make sense, but I'm okay with that. Philosophically, I rely on Zeno of Elea's acceptance of paradoxical logic to demonstrate that something needn't be logically sound for it to be true.

    That's not an answer, if anything I guess it makes me a both/and guy. And I'm okay with that. I just want to say that your answer glosses over some of the more important issues in the debate, and those issues hold some very deep implications regarding what who we think we are, and what we think God is like.

    08/28/09 6:43 PM | Comment Link

  • Olga said...

    4

    Joshua Elek- I don't know you- but I am on the same page as you are….

    08/28/09 7:50 PM | Comment Link

  • Emily said...

    5

    Yeah, I agree with you on most of that. Never heard that interpretation on the woman at the well before, but it definitely does make more sense, thanks for sharing. =) Piper is great, but I am frustrated that he's become a leader that his followers rarely question, in some circles he reigns supreme and whatever he says is taken as the gold standard. I'm glad you threw those questions out there.

    08/28/09 7:51 PM | Comment Link

  • jrrozko said...

    6

    My bad – I shouldn't have offered a few sentences of synopsis on how I have come to see the issue in a different light when I wasn't prepare to go deeper into the matter. That's not really what the post is about anyway. I actually do think that a participatory view of salvation changes the nature of the discussion deeply enough to make the C/A debate irrelevant as far as biblical discussions of salvation are concerned, but there is no way I could go into all that here.

    08/28/09 7:59 PM | Comment Link

  • jrrozko said...

    7

    Hey Olga. Josh is a long-time good friend who lives in Chicago as well. I'm just happy you took the time to read – thanks.

    08/28/09 8:01 PM | Comment Link

  • jrrozko said...

    8

    Hey Emily, thanks. If I had posted this while I still lived in Memphis I imagine I'd have people at my door by now.

    08/28/09 8:04 PM | Comment Link

  • Joshua Elek said...

    9

    Well, certainly there's a lot to go into there. Let's get coffee and fix the world. You game?

    08/28/09 9:39 PM | Comment Link

  • Karen Gonzalez said...

    10

    I've never been a huge fan of Piper, mostly because of the heavy emphasis on the reformed tradition and his views on women. But he has contributed some good things to the church overall, and I can't deny that despite the fact that humility isn't as high on his list of virtues as say being dogmatic and emphatic!

    One question that I have for you is, isn't the whole idea of being co-laborers egalitarian in nature?

    08/28/09 11:33 PM | Comment Link

  • jrrozko said...

    11

    Done.

    08/29/09 2:28 PM | Comment Link

  • jrrozko said...

    12

    As I understand egalitarianism – the basic idea is that anything a man can do a woman can do – they are exactly equal and therefore interchangeable. I disagree with this. What I am saying is that every ministry of the church is incomplete when one gender dominates. So, for example, classic egalitarians will say that women can teach congregations every Sunday just the same as a man can. I would say that this is to make the same error in the opposite direction. Instead, it seems to me that the goal is to have gifted men and women co-laboring to do everything.

    08/29/09 2:35 PM | Comment Link

  • Emily said...

    13

    Hey, JR, I just read this post again b/c I saw it on your main page… so here's my second comment on it! I'm interested in what you said in the beginning about salvation being something we participate in and not something that we can have. Can you elaborate on that and/or point me to some sources (web or book) that might go deeper into it?

    03/20/10 3:00 AM | Comment Link

  • jrrozko said...

    14

    Emily, there are a few angles to consider on this. Eastern orthodoxy offers a theology of divinization or theosis that you could probably get a pretty good idea of just by doing some google searches or checking out Wikipedia. This is helpful, but I would say that my understanding of this has come more through a theology of the Kingdom of God which shifts the point (and therefore locus) of salvation from getting souls into heaven to heaven breaking forth into the world. On this count, I don't think you can do better than Lesslie Newbigin or NT Wright. Hope that helps some.

    03/20/10 6:30 PM | Comment Link

  • Julie said...

    15

    Good food for thought. On the women's issue… sounds like you think both camps get it wrong. I agree — though I think a lot of the problem stems from the fact that we try to define roles without trying to understand the fundamental God-designed symbol. We obsess over what we're supposed to do (and not do) and miss who we're supposed to be and why.

    Love "When you begin to understand that “salvation belongs to God” (Rev. 7:10) and is therefore something we can only participate in, never have, the whole debate changes." Forgive me for asking a dumb question… But, is that a perspective borrowed from N.T. Wright?

    09/16/11 5:10 PM | Comment Link

  • jrrozko said...

    16

    Hi Julie, thanks for dropping a comment. That's not a dumb question at all. I do think that NT Wright's scholarship in the area of the New Testament helps to move in this direction, but this is more something that I have gleaned from Anabaptist perspectives in theology. Also formative for me in this was Chris Wright's book, "Salvation Belongs to Our God." Definitely worth checking out. Hope to hear from you again.

    09/19/11 6:40 PM | Comment Link

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