chscloud

Read David Cloud’s article first and then a few comments of mine at the bottom:

SPURGEON AGAINST POPERY AND NEW CALVINISM (Friday Church News Notes, May 31, 2013, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) –

The “new Calvinists” sometimes cite the late Charles Haddon Spurgeon, pastor of the Metropolitan Tabernacle, as a soul-mate, but he was nothing of the sort. Consider his stance against the Roman Catholic Church, for example. It was bold and unequivocal. It is impossible that Spurgeon would have, therefore, countenanced the ecumenical contemporary worship movement, which is so closely affiliated with Rome (as we have documented in the free eBook The Directory of Contemporary Worship Music.) Consider just two of many quotes that could be offered:

“I know what would happen if we feared God more: we should sooner die than remain in any fellowship with popery. Every man who saw any fear of his being found in complicity with Antichrist would at once say, ‘I will not have it. Popery is abhorred of the Lord, and they who help it wear the mark of the beast. I hate Antichrist, and therefore I denounce it and cry, Down with it, raze it even to the ground’” (Spurgeon, Oct. 7, 1877).

“It is impossible but that the Church of Rome must spread, when we who are the watchdogs of the fold are silent, and OTHERS ARE GENTLY AND SMOOTHLY TURFING THE ROAD, AND MAKING IT AS SOFT AND SMOOTH AS POSSIBLE, that converts may travel down to the nethermost hell of Popery. We want John Knox back again. Do not talk to me of mild and gentle men, of soft manners and squeamish words, we want the fiery Knox, and even though his vehemence should ‘ding our pulpits into blads,’ it were well if he did but rouse our hearts to action” (Spurgeon, Sermons, Vol. 10, pp. 322-323).

When was the last time you read something like that from the pen of John Piper or R.C. Sproul or Mark Driscoll or Ed Stetzer or Al Mohler? These men are not pro-Rome, but they are soft on Rome. They are men of soft manners in their zeal against heresy. They don’t call for strict biblical separation. Mohler, for example, is a big promoter of Billy Graham’s ecumenical evangelism, which destroys the effect of anything he might have said against Rome. These men are doing exactly what Spurgeon described as turfing the road to Roman Catholicism to make it smooth for those traveling thereon to hell.

End of Cloud’s Article 

Comment: While I fundamentally agree with Cloud’s article yet the following should be observed.

1) While Spurgeon would rightly have rejected those worldly  tenets of “New Calvinism” listed by Cloud yet he fervently embraced the “old Calvinism” with a glorious vengeance. Cloud keeps himself  technically right by the term “New Calvinism” but , IMO, the article is complete without mentioning Spurgeon’s doctrinal position. Obviously you don't have to mention his Calvinism at every cut and turn, but the context here virtually demands it to avoid an opposite impression being given.

2) Not only are the “New Calvinists” some distance from Spurgeon (and Knox) but so is Cloud himself. Every now and again, when blasting somebody or other, Cloud refers to the “heresy of Reformed theology” (see photograph). Cloud has several pages on his website blasting  Reformed Calvinistic theology, although (and I hope to post it here soon) he does tell us of some of the things he actually likes about Calvinism. 

Click on pic to enlarge

3) The very thing which Cloud accuses others of doing, he manages to do quite successfully himself. His site is filled with favourable quotes from Puritans etc., and other purveyors of “Reformed heresy” and therefore Reformed heretics. Even the dread John Calvin himself managed to get the odd favourable quote now and again.

Overall a reasonably good article by Mr Cloud. He is not my favourite author by any means, but always worth reading.