Chuck Swindoll: Rewriting the Reformation
July 30, 2008 – 7:49 pmIn his magnum opus, The Grace Awakening, Charles R. (Chuck) Swindoll presents himself as taking up “the torch of freedom” as brandished by protestant Reformers such as Martin Luther. In this he leads his readers to believe that by following him and his teaching in The Grace Awakening that they are being true to historical Reformation teaching on the doctrines of grace and faith alone. Consider:
Human works must accompany faith before you can be sure of your salvation. We continue to hear that “different gospel”…It is heresy. It is antithetical to the true message that lit the spark to the Reformation: Sola Fide - faith alone (The Grace Awakening, p.86).
When sixteenth-century European Reformers raised the torch of freedom and withstood the religious legalists of their era, grace was the battle cry: salvation by grace alone a walk of faith without fear of eternal damnation (The Grace Awakening, p. xiv).
True, the “spark that lit the reformation,” as Swindoll states, was Sola Fide or faith alone. However, the Reformers did not understand their theological terms as Chuck Swindoll does. Swindoll’s understanding of grace maintains, “regardless of how you choose to live, you can’t live so bad that God says to you, ‘you’re no longer mine’” (Shedding Light On Our Dark Side, tape sld 1A). Swindoll’s confidence in the inevitable salvation of even the most corrupt necessitates his elimination of the biblical and Reformation joining of works to genuine faith.
Chuck Swindoll aligns himself with the Reformers and leaves the naive reader with the false notion that his views on grace and faith are the identical to those of the Reformers. Contrary to Swindoll, however, Luther insisted that works or “human achievement,” as Swindoll says, go arm in arm with authentic, saving faith. On saving faith Luther said:
“Faith must of course be sincere. It must be a faith that performs good works through love. If faith lacks love it is not true faith. Thus the Apostle bars the way of hypocrites to the kingdom of Christ on all sides…Idle faith is not justifying faith. In this terse manner Paul presents the whole life of a Christian. Inwardly it consists in faith towards God, outwardly in love towards our fellow-men” (Luther, Commentary On Galatians).
In his bookFaith Alone Dr. R.C. Sproul wrote: “The Reformers saw saving faith as necessarily, inevitably, and immediately yielding the fruit of works. Martin Luther insisted that the faith that justifies is a fides viva, a vital and living faith that yields the fruit of works.” In opposition to this Dr. Swindoll insists it is heresy and a different gospel to believe that works must accompany saving faith. And this he does as if he were representing the Reformation!
Plainly, Chuck Swindoll leads the uninformed reader to view The Grace Awakening as book recovering the lost truths of the Reformation from the devious hands of present-day legalists who have corrupted them. When the truth is that Luther himself aggressively argued against the conception of grace and faith extolled in Swindoll’s book.
Like those who rewrite history to bolster their agendas, Chuck Swindoll has changed the history of the Reformation to coincide with his views. Does Swindoll teach that “justifying faith is a vital faith that necessarily yields the fruit of works” as did Luther? Does Swindoll insist that “whoever doesn’t do good works is without faith,” as did the Reformers? No he doesn’t, rather, Chuck Swindoll teaches the opposite: that there is no external proof of salvation or spirituality and that it is heresy to maintain that works must accompany faith. And he does this in the name of Reformation teaching! Is this not dishonest? How can this be anything short of historical revisionism?
Tags: Christianity
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