John MacArthur's Shocking Confession

From Current Events:

The task of exposing the doctrinal aberrations of popular pastors and theologians is never a task to be taken lightly. Nothing could make me sadder than this. For some years now, John MacArthur has been moving closer and closer to the views of John Piper in his own theology. A few days ago, MacArthur's church, Grace Community Church in California, hosted this year's Shepherds Conference. One of the keynote speakers was John Piper. Among other things, he said: "Our love for Jesus is erotic to the core." A subsequent theological evaluation of some of John Piper's statements, published by the operators of the website "Protestia", states:

 [Piper] appears to be attempting to reclaim the term “eros” to illustrate a deep, consuming love for Jesus that seeks pleasure in the joy of communion with Him. But that isn’t biblical, and that is the problem. Not only does the New Testament never once use the term “eros” to describe the love between Christ and the Church, but the biblical portrayal of our love for Jesus is deeply relational, characterized by agape—selfless, sacrificial love. It is not typically associated with the English term “erotic,” due to its contemporary connotations.

At the 2022 Puritan Conference, hosted by MacArthur's church, the moderator asked Piper and MacArthur in a Q&A session how they agreed or disagreed theologically. Without a second's hesitation, MacArthur replied that it was an easy question for him to answer. Turning to Piper, he said, "I appreciated everything about him" [2:40, time references are to this video]). As a general statement about a friend, this sounds a bit exaggerated, but MacArthur really meant what he said, as evidenced by his immediately following remark: "I mean that sincerely" [2:49]. Many in the audience then applauded for a few moments. Laughing, they took up the following question from John Piper: “Appreciate and agree with wouldn’t be the same?“ [2:55]). MacArthur, with some feigned "indignation," objected to how Piper could even question the statement he had just made.

As a first example of mutual appreciation and theological agreement, MacArthur cited his discussion with theologians at the Dalles Theological Seminary about the content of his book The Gospel According to Jesus [3:15]. In the dispute over the so-called "lordship thesis" advocated by the author in that book, John Piper had immediately backed MacArthur. Piper affirmed MacArthur's statement with "absolutely" [3:29]). The fact that MacArthur himself had to admit that he had spread a major heresy in the first edition of this book, which he corrected in the second edition after fierce and justified criticism, was not mentioned in this exchange of words. If Piper "robustly" [3:45] supported MacArthur as soon as the controversy erupted and "affirmed" [3:50] the content, what does that say about him? MacArthur claimed to have addressed a biblical truth that had been completely lost in evangelicalism. No, he had initially promoted an ancient heresy and had to admit it himself when other theologians, not those at Dallas Theological Seminary, pointed out the biblical truth and challenged him fundamentally to revise the main thesis of the book lest he lose his own credibility as a neo-evangelical pastor.

What John MacArthur said in his next statement completely shocked me: "I am a secret Christian hedonist" [4:18]. The context of this remark is the fact that John Piper has been known as the leading propagandist of Christian hedonism since the publication of his best-selling book Desiring God more than 38 years ago. The subtitle of that book is: "Meditations of a Christian Hedonist." It has also been known for about two years now that John MacArthur had secretly considered himself a "Christian hedonist" for some time, but had not publicly communicated this theological position to anyone until he finally announced it in the presence of John Piper at his church's Puritan Conference in 2022. Why did he feel the need to keep this confession of being a "Christian hedonist" to himself? How many years had he been a "Christian hedonist"? What prompted him to make his commitment to "Christian hedonism" public two years ago? He provides some answers to these questions in his following remarks. But the most important question remains unanswered: For what religion is the term "Christian hedonism" used as a synonym? For nearly four decades, John Piper has been enlightening his readers in the opening pages of his bestselling book, Desiring God. There is no doubt what the author means. It is the so-called "Romantic Religion". To make this identification even clearer, John Piper held an annual conference on this topic in 2013. Piper's own presentation, "C.S. Lewis, Romantic Rationalist: How His Paths to Christ Shaped His Life and Ministry" is available on the Desiring God website. All of the papers from this conference on "Romantic Religion" were subsequently published in an anthology entitled Romantic Rationalist. John Piper does not hide any of this, in fact he praises this religion with all the means at his disposal. He did so most recently at the John MacArthur Shepherds Conference a few days ago. And Pastor John MacArthur is helping him as much as he can.

2 Tim. 4:3-4: ³ For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, ⁴ and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.

NASB 1995

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