Longtime pastor and seminary Dean, John MacArthur, is currently on his way to be with the Lord. It was announced at his church, Grace Community Church, in Sun Valley, CA, that JMac has come down with a pneumonia that he isn’t expected to survive (like only days left). This is sad news, but also points-up, once again, that this life truly is but a vapor. May we hold his family and close friends up in prayer at this time.
Relatedly, I have been a longtime critic of JMac’s, online in particular. I started out my blogging career in 2005 bantering back and forth with JMac’s editor, executive director of Grace to You radio ministry, Phil Johnson, at his personal and then team blog, Pyromaniacs. My critique of JMac’s theology, like many’s, has to do with what he famously identified as Lordship Salvation in his book The Gospel According to Jesus. In reduction, so-called ‘Lordship Salvation,’ really, is just a Baptistic form of 5 Point Calvinist soteriology. For MacArthur’s version though, he presented this schema with a pointed emphasis on perseverance of the saints (the “P”). In other words, JMac’s soteriology presses the notion of “good works” in salvation as the proof of salvation in very Puritanical types of ways. To the point, I have argued, that instead of causing the person to be assured of their salvation before God in Christ, they are constantly ‘thrown back upon themselves’ (to riff, TF Torrance’s phrase) as the source and ground of knowledge of their salvation. As far as a Christian spirituality goes, this is terrible doctrine, which causes the person, ironically, to ‘turn to the subject,’ to the point that ultimately, if sensitive to such introspection (many aren’t), a person can only despair and hope that they are indeed one of the elect for whom Christ died. But when the basis of the person’s assurance of salvation is their own good works (whatever those are, and however that is supposed to look), the person is really just thrown into the winds of a black abyss.
The aforementioned was the nub of what I have been critical of with reference to JMac’s soteriology. It is no small matter, and I have made many arguments and critiques against it; both directly, and more generally, as I have critiqued its more critical grounds as found in Federal (Covenantal) theology. Indeed, JMac is not a Covenantal theology proponent, but the mercantilist/transactional nature of the doctrine of salvation he propounds, finds its historic rootage within the broader framework provided for its themes, within Federal theology. In fact, I wrote a whole book chapter on these matters, which you can read via Google Books, here.
This has been part of my long connection with the ministry of John MacArthur. Beyond that, I grew up in Southern California (LA county), where JMac’s presence is rather ubiquitous in the evangelical environs therein. It has been a critical relationship for sure. Even so, JMac is representative of a nearly bygone era of evangelical church ministry and ministers that is grievously leaving us right now (just because of lifespan). I don’t like that aspect of this at all.
May John MacArthur repose in the bounties of God’s triune life in Christ, as he pierces the bonds of his body of death (Rm 7), and enters into the banqueting table of the LORD.