Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Why this discussion cannot be cordial

I'm realizing the Harbinger critics are dangerous.  They are branding Cahn as pretty much a heretic -- everything from false prophet to mystic -- based mostly on their own false Dispensationalist assumptions, and anyone who defends him comes under the same suspicion.  There is no way to have a theological discussion with respect on both sides because failure to meet their standards brands you a heretic.  If by their standards you are supporting "extrabiblical revelation" although their judgment of what this amounts to is false, you won't be able to escape being convicted of that charge, and the charge of violating Sola Scriptura along with it.  Their arguments are NONSENSE but they are far from seeing their error and they have a fair amount of influence.  Listen to the call-ins on Brannon Howse's show, go read the comments at Dave James' site.  Their fans just ape their conclusions and accuse their opponents of all manner of serious doctrinal deviations without justification.

 The divide between the supporters of The Harbinger and its critics is astonishing to say the least.  Just about every single point James makes that he thinks shows serious doctrinal issues in The Harbinger hits me for one as an outrageous twisting of truth, an absurdity, a piece of insanity.  Yet, again, I keep realizing these guys BELIEVE what they are saying.  I'd never have guessed it was possible to have such adamantly entrenched positions among Christians on both sides of an argument like this.

As I discovered some time ago, much of the difference is due to the critics' Dispensationalism.  How much I haven't quite figured out yet, but the major argument that Harbinger doesn't give the right weight to Israel and the Old Testament comes from that theological camp.  I don't know what theology Cahn follows, but I consider my own to be basically Reformed and nothing in his book is a problem for me theologically. 

Maybe the most offensive attitude of the critics is that they pronounce judgment from the standard of their own system as if it is THE biblical system and there is no other.  THAT is REALLY offensive.  Cahn just IS commiting hermeneutical error, period, although there are conservative biblical hermeneutical systems other than theirs that wouldn't judge his as error.  There is something rotten to the core about that way of dealing with a fellow Christian who is following another theology.