Hyper-separatism: a response

Thank you for the opportunity of replying to Stuart Olyott's response to our three articles, and we are grateful for his gracious comments.

There are only two areas that we think it necessary to take up.

Hounded out?

The first concerns Stuart's pastoral models. He suggests that if a man is truly faithful in exposing error and demanding action he will soon be hounded from his denomination. This is just not true. In most denominations it is virtually impossible for a man to be expelled, which is part of the problem, and such a man will normally be tolerated however much fuss he causes. We know men in just this position.

Similarly, Stuart is wrong to conclude in his model of A2 and B2 that a minister in a denomination has to 'fraternise with false teachers'; we know men who rarely if ever attend such meetings. In fact, they openly state that they simply do not recognise many of the 'churches' in their denomination as true Christian churches, and they never allow a false teacher, bishop or otherwise, to preach to their congregation.

This is often the only way open to them to exercise discipline against false teachers. We are not defending the position of such evangelical men - we still believe that they ought to leave their denomination - but we are simply explaining that there are men who pursue the line Stuart pleads for. Although, it has to be admitted, with little effect.

Antioch

The more important point in Stuart's response is his understanding of Peter's actions at Antioch that are described by Paul in Galatians, and those of the Galatians themselves. In our view the Essentially Evangelical men are not to be compared to either Peter or the Galatians. Both were in far greater error than Stuart concludes and hence Paul's robust response. Here is an alternative understanding of Galatians.

According to Galatians 1.7, the Galatians were not merely tolerating those who preached a false gospel (Judaisers), but were actually accepting their teaching; they themselves were 'deserting' the truth and were 'turning' to a false gospel (1:6).

The chief issue was not what they were doing with the Judaizers, but what they were doing with the truth. They had been 'thrown into confusion' by people who were trying to 'pervert the gospel of Christ'. And what was Peter's error? Similarly, it was not simply that he refused to discipline the Judaizers - which is what Stuart suggests, Peter's problem was far more serious than this.

He actually behaved like the Judaizers and separated himself from the Gentile Christians. But it was even worse that this. According to 2:14, Peter was 'forcing' the Gentile converts to adopt the practices of these false teachers. In other words, Peter was actually teaching a false theology himself, and as a result, other Jewish Christians - including for a moment even Barnabas - followed Peter's example and began putting pressure on the Gentile converts to conform to the heresy.

In other words, though we may draw this conclusion reluctantly, Peter's sin was not his passive acceptance of error, still less his refusal to discipline heresy, but his active promotion of it. Not one of the men involved in Essentially Evangelical can be said to fall into that category.

No NT denominations

Stuart does not confront another point that is raised from Galatians, and that is that there is no direct parallel in the New Testament to our modern denominations - whether the Church of England or the FIEC! Therefore the equivalent of Antioch and Galatia is a man's local church. The application, therefore, is primarily to look at what a leader allows or tolerates in the local church under his care. At this point the immediate relevance of Galatians is that we should warn our brethren in doctrinally mixed denominations of the ever-present danger of them imbibing the errors that they reject, and we should encourage them to oppose vigorously all false teaching. You can be sure that both of these things we do! However, if they are themselves men who are firmly grounded on God's word, robustly and publicly countering error, and ensuring that in their 'Antioch' or 'Galatia' only truth is tolerated, then their failure to secede from their denomination does not place them in the category of Peter at Antioch.

Looking to ourselves

One final note - which has no reference to Stuart Olyott, whose ministry and friendship we greatly value and respect. As reformed, baptistic, free church men, we are often quick to criticise biblical and evangelical men who remain in their denominations, but we are very slow to examine our own church life and attitudes to see whether we are a community that would attract these men if and when the time comes for them to secede.

Jonathan Stephen, Brian Edwards & John Rosser respond to Stuart Olyott's response!

Hounded out?

Antioch

No NT denominations

Looking to ourselves

Brian Edwards, John Rosser, Jonathan Stephen

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