Friday 22 May 2009

Reformed Charismatics

Phillip Jensen cuts to the chase:

“The Reformed system of belief and the Charismatic system of belief are incompatible.”

That's at about the 10 minute point of this half-hour video.

3 comments:

Laura said...

So... Piper? Driscoll? Mahaney? Theology guys like Grudem and Storms? All of them currently hold belief systems that are incompatible. Huh.

Nick Mackison said...

He's absolutely right. there is not such thing as 2nd level prophecy, despite what good guys like Grudem and Piper believe. If it comes from God, then it's authoritative. The 2nd level view has been used to justify the evils of movements like the Kansas City nut jobs.

The fruit of the charismatic movement has been to turn normally sane individuals into complete wackos who are tossed to and fro by inward impressions. The Reformed faith is truly liberating.

A seminal book for me on this was Jensen and Payne's Guidance and the Voice of God.

Steeejei said...

That was an informative video from Phillip. I've seen this term bantered around a fair bit of late and whilst I agreed with Phillip on the whole I did notice a few things:

1. Phillip's right when he says that you can change the meaning of words to make it suit whatever you want.

2. Phillip compares the classical 'Reformed' position with the classical 'Charismatic' position and rightly points out that they are incompatible.

Those two points said, I wonder if he also missed the opportunity to interact with some of the revised 'Charismatic' theology coming out of the US. Whilst labelled 'Charismatic' it appears, to my relatively limited readings, that the use of the term 'Charismatic' in relation to the 'Reformed Charismatic' movement is not the same as the 'classical Charismatic' movement Phillip rightly points out is incompatible with 'Reformed'.

Does that make sense?