Faithful theology has been likened to standing atop a mesa. A mesa, if you remember, is an isolated flat-topped hill with steep sides. There are many true things that one can affirm on the flat-top. But go too far in one direction and you’ll wind up plummeting off a cliff.
It’s not a perfect analogy but it is helpful. The safest place (or perhaps I should say most true and faithful) is to be right in the center. Varying theologies tip-toe towards the cliffs but maintain orthodoxy.
But human nature is not such that we are drawn to the middle. Human nature, like a foolish lemming, wants to throw itself off a cliff. Given to ourselves we’ll take a truth and push it so far that we end up careening off the flat-top and into the jagged rocks below.
This is why we need mentors. We need people who have felt the pull of the plummet. We need those who have tasted the lustrous fruit and found it empty—men and women who know where the edge of the cliff is to be found.
John Newton was this to John Ryland, Jr. The latter, I believe, felt the pull of a Calvinism which got a bit close to the edge. A Calvinism which for some actually pushed them over the edge into the unorthodoxy of Hyper-Calvinism.
Ryland had been reading Solomon Stoddard and it looks as if he was drawn to his teaching. It sounded quite orthodox but Newton looked through it as a pastor. Newton acknowledge that “some things he advances are worthy of attention” but cautioned Ryland that his teaching are “more likely to affright a soul from the Lord than to guide it to him”. (119)
Do you hear the warning? CLIFF AHEAD!
Newton went on to say this:
I think if Mr. Stoddard had been at Philippi, and the jailer had sprung trembling in to him (instead of Paul or Silas) with the same question he would have afforded him but cold comfort, and would have made him wait a few weeks or months to see how the prepartory work went on before he would have encouraged him to believe in Jesus. (Wise Counsel, 120)
Newton sees Ryland inching towards a cliff and he has the boldness to encourage him to run away. He saw in men like Stoddard (and many following him) a propensity to “confine the Holy Spirit to a system”.
He would rather Ryland, “read the Scripture and your own heart attentively” by doing so “you will have greatly the advantage of those who puzzle themselves by too closely copying the rules [you] find in other books”. (121)
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I am a seminary student but not your traditional sort. I live about an hour and a half away and so I feel kind of like an outsider. I believe this disadvantages me on one hand, but gives me a leg up in another regard. I’m distanced enough to see some dangers.
We all need those like John Newton. Those who take the things we are learning and put them on the ground—those who help us see where the cliffs are. Good theology wrongly applied can lead you off a cliff just as quickly as bad theology.
Every believer needs someone like Newton to point out our inconsistency and to keep us from jumping off into unfaithfulness. Likewise, we should also be growing in our faith in such a way that we can be a Newton for someone else.
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