I'm a Heretic

I confess that I am a heretic. Dr. Jerry Falwell has found me out. I refer the reader to Tom Ascol's recent blog where he comments on the following statement by Falwell to nearly 2,000 prospective students of Liberty University:

"We are not into particular love or limited atonement. As a matter of fact we consider it heresy."

While I disagree with Dr. Falwell's interpretation of the purpose and scope of God's love and Christ's atonement, I would not call him a heretic deserving the flames of hell. As a matter of fact, I have gone to great lengths to correct those who have remarked that they did not believe those of a semi-Pelagian persuasion (such as Dr. Falwell) teach a false gospel and therefore are not truly saved.

However, lest one misunderstand the ramifications of the word "heresy," consider the words Peter:

1 But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves. 2 Many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of the truth will be maligned; 3 and in their greed they will exploit you with false words; their judgment from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep. 4 For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness, reserved for judgment; 5 and did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; 6 and if He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly lives thereafter; 7 and if He rescued righteous Lot, oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men 8 (for by what he saw and heard that righteous man, while living among them, felt his righteous soul tormented day after day by their lawless deeds), 9 then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment. [2 Peter 2:1-9 NAU]

According to Peter, if I am a heretic as Dr. Falwell claims, then I should be disciplined by my church unless I repent of my interpretation of Scripture that God does not specially love all men equally and that Christ's atonement actually saves and does not merely make one savable. And, given the fact that my oldest daughter is currently considering where she will continue her education following high school graduation next year, I take it from Dr. Falwell's comment that she, also a heretic like her father, would not be considered by Liberty University.

Now for the irony of all of this. I am very grateful for the ministry that Liberty University has had in my own life. You see, it was in the midst of working towards a Bible diploma from Liberty University that I came to my heretical Reformed persuasions. I was studying Church History as one of my electives and began for the first time ever to read about heretics like Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Knox, John Owen, Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, William Carey, Charles Spurgeon, and others. This inflamed my passion to read R. C. Sproul, John MacArthur, John Piper, etc.

So, Dr. Falwell, I have you to thank (not blame) for making me a heretic.