P. Andrew Sandlin
Nov. 6, 2001

It is often hard to be charitable and temperate in the face of hotly worded, erroneous charges, but I will try.

In his recently posted Trinity Review, John Robbins writes:

"This declaration [of the Bible] eliminates Romanist and Arminian doctrine, with its 'saved on Sunday, lost on Monday' soteriology, as well as the Neolegalism [sic] of men like Norman Shepherd and Steven Schlissel."

In the same article, he implies that John MacArthur, Schlissel and Shepherd are "false teachers." He favors individual responsibility and deprecates covenant faithfulness ("Individual responsibility is one of the pillars of Christian jurisprudence, and those who rant against the individual and individualism [in favor of covenant faithfulness] are merely displaying their ignorance of, or their rejection of, what the Bible teaches about the role and the significance of the individual person"). Robbins attacks those who espouse "Lordship Salvation" ("[O]ne may acknowledge the Lordship of Christ, perform many wonderful works, and still go to Hell. Jesus himself here warns us that 'many' who confess his Lordship and perform many works will go to Hell."). Robbins also attacks the Apostles Creed and the Nicene Creed: " . . . [T]he early creeds of the church . . . contain some truth (and some error) . . . ."

John Robbins is a crusader. In the post-9-11 atmosphere, that word has acquired deeply pejorative connotations; but it is still a good word. And it accurately describes Robbins. First, he was on a crusade against Cornelius Van Til. Then he was on a crusade against the Christian Reconstructionists, notably Greg Bahnsen, David Chilton, James Jordan, and Gary North. Then it was John Frame. Then it was Charles Colson. Now it's John MacArthur, Steve Schlissel, and Norman Shepherd. (I'm sure I've missed somebody.) He even has taken some shots at me, as kind and upstanding as I am!

Lately it seems that every month the Trinity Review brings a front-page assault on some Bible-believing Calvinist or evangelical. It's getting tiring.

It is not my intention here to refute Robbins' interpretation of justification. I will leave that task to more skilled exegetes than I. He is wholly correct in arguing that salvation is solely due to the grace of God accomplished in the redemptive work of Christ apart from any human merit of any kind. And none of those Calvinists he so ringingly castigates disagree with him on this. All are proponents of sola fide.

They do not, however, explain the relation between justification and obedience in precisely the same way he does. Therefore, they are "false teachers." Robbins does not take into account that there may be other ways than his own of depicting this great mystery of salvation by Christ's redemptive work alone. He scoffs at those who believe the Bible's teaching contains "paradoxes," "antinomies," and "tensions." I judge this denial to be a rather severe form of "Christian rationalism" that, taken to its logical [!] conclusion, would eviscerate the Christian Faith. In my opinion, Robbins's refusal to recognize the presence of paradox in the Bible leads him to distort Biblical teaching.

In any case, to classify Schlissel and Shepherd's views with Rome (as he does) is not merely misleading; it is slanderous. Anyone who has read Shepherd's The Call of Grace knows that he deplores the Roman idea of meritorious justification just as much as he does the popular evangelical idea that justification does not necessitate good works. The same is true of Schlissel's and MacArthur's published writings. They believe, like many of their Calvinistic predecessors, that though no one is saved by good works, yet no one will be saved without good works. This is not Romanism; it is good Reformed (and, I might add, Biblical) doctrine.

I implore the reader not to trust Robbins' interpretation of Shepherd, but actually to take the time to read the latter's brief (110 pp.) The Call of Grace before they jump onto the Shepherd-(and almost everybody else)-is-a-false-prophet bandwagon. The central part of Shepherd's thesis is expressed on page 83: "[T]he prophets and apostles viewed election from the perspective of the covenant, whereas we have tended to view the covenant from the perspective of election" (p. 83, emphasis in original). Calvinists may judge this mistaken, but it is not heresy. In the mid-90's, I myself criticized Shepherd's views (I never called him a false prophets) but have since come to believe there is more Biblical warrant for them than I once supposed.

Shepherd's work has been endorsed, to some degree at least, by John Frame, Richard Gaffin, Joel Nederhood and other Calvinists of impeccable theological credentials. Are all these men "false teachers"? I think not.

Robbins is free to debate these issues. But his sweeping crusades, which seemingly anathematize anyone who disagrees with his view, need to stop. John Robbins is not a theologian. He is an economist.

I just wish he would write more economically when it comes to theology.