Pilgrim
Puritanboard Commissioner
Has anyone else noticed this tendency on the part of people who should know better? (For any newcomers who may be puzzled by this idea, see Westminster Larger Catechism questions 150 and 151 and their proof texts.)
It seems to me that it is reaching almost epidemic proportions among people who claim to be Reformed if my internet reading is any indication. One person who seems to deny this quoted Paul David Tripp. Does Tripp deny that some sins are more heinous than others in the sight of God? Does some other Biblical counseling or "Christian living" type material that is endorsed in broadly Calvinistic or evangelical circles deny it?
I've also seen sex abuse victims and their advocates assert that pastors and counselors have engaged in "sin leveling" where physical or sexual abuse are essentially said to be no more heinous than any bitterness or anger harbored by the victim. The victim is told to repent of her bitterness, the admitted abuser "repents" of sex or physical abuse and they apologize to each other or whatever, with the abuser getting hardly more than a slap on the wrist, if that. I've seen enough of this sin leveling (i.e. denying that some sins are more heinous than others and maybe even denying that some sins require more urgent attention than others) on the internet to suspect that it does happen.
In another twist, I recently had a conversation with a partial preterist Calvinistic Baptist pastor who said that certain passages in the Gospels where Jesus said that there will be worse judgment for certain sins and sinners only applied to the "judgment" in 70 AD. He then proceeded to outright deny that there are different degrees of punishment in the final judgment. So reminiscent of Scofieldism, his eschatology is driving the bus. I haven't read much preterist literature in recent years, but hopefully his views are an anomaly.
It seems to me that it is reaching almost epidemic proportions among people who claim to be Reformed if my internet reading is any indication. One person who seems to deny this quoted Paul David Tripp. Does Tripp deny that some sins are more heinous than others in the sight of God? Does some other Biblical counseling or "Christian living" type material that is endorsed in broadly Calvinistic or evangelical circles deny it?
I've also seen sex abuse victims and their advocates assert that pastors and counselors have engaged in "sin leveling" where physical or sexual abuse are essentially said to be no more heinous than any bitterness or anger harbored by the victim. The victim is told to repent of her bitterness, the admitted abuser "repents" of sex or physical abuse and they apologize to each other or whatever, with the abuser getting hardly more than a slap on the wrist, if that. I've seen enough of this sin leveling (i.e. denying that some sins are more heinous than others and maybe even denying that some sins require more urgent attention than others) on the internet to suspect that it does happen.
In another twist, I recently had a conversation with a partial preterist Calvinistic Baptist pastor who said that certain passages in the Gospels where Jesus said that there will be worse judgment for certain sins and sinners only applied to the "judgment" in 70 AD. He then proceeded to outright deny that there are different degrees of punishment in the final judgment. So reminiscent of Scofieldism, his eschatology is driving the bus. I haven't read much preterist literature in recent years, but hopefully his views are an anomaly.