Hi Guys (and Gals)

Got a lecturer at uni who is a regular contributor to religious/philosophical issues. His website is here.

In particular under Publications, we wrote an article about Jensenism and its compatibility with Chrisitianity. His basic premise is that:

...what will immediately strike anyone who has read even casually in the Bible is how grossly it [Jensen teaching] is out of tune with the Jesus of the gospels.

Let me know what you think.

EDIT: see brackets...made quote clearer

Oh....I am actually certain that Jensenism is something that all three Jensens would be the first to decry. In fact I am sure that one of them publicly stated this. I can't remember where however.

However, like Calvin and Calvinism, I think it is here to stay (for better or worse).

I think you're doing pretty well if you get an "ism" named after you.

edit: probably also worth mentioning Michael's reply here (pdf) and the author's response here.

I'm not surprised at all with Jim Franklin's words. I recall he was in support of an author who put up some opposition in the guild paper, but I hadn't ever heard anything from his mouth.

As an aside, back when Phillip Jensen was still the chaplain at UNSW, it was Jim who got the library to get books written by Phillip basically so that there would be fair grounds for others to examine him. Thanks to him, you can borrow Pure Sex from the UNSW library, amongst other titles from Matthias.

And despite being on the member's list since near when this thing started, this is my first post. Fancy that. I guess it might take me another 3 years for another one.

Manny C, in his introductory posting offerd the link http://www.quadrant.org.au/php/archive_details_list.php?article_id=1049
which was the work of James Franklin, written in 2003.
The first quote below:

Yet evangelicals have cut themselves off from the great body of Christian believers, Orthodox, Catholic and Coptic, the church to which Jesus promised his unending help. Evangelicals have created instead an inward-looking and recent sect, interested neither in understanding the Hebrew background of the Biblical text, nor in the person of Jesus, nor in the simplest "big picture" understanding of the gospel message. The real gospel does not make itself an object of worship, as in Peter Jensen's talk of "the gospel, by which men could be saved from the wrath due to their sins" (actually, he writes "saved for the wrath" but I am assured that is a Freudian typo). The slogan "scripture alone" is not just narrow, but self-contradictory

I don't know if James understood the sermon, he seems to be having the message zooming over his cranium. Where in the gospels did Jesus promise his message to certain denominations? Denominations were not even thought of by Jesus. He presented his Word to people wishing to be part of God's Kingdom.
Peter Jensen is one of many Christian minister/leaders who are proclaiming God's Word to people willing to know God. Sin is the ultimate problem of mankind. The gospels explain how Jesus defeats sin, and offers salvation to all mankind. "Jensens' as well as all ministers worth their salt proclaim this message. What's the prob?

And "Scripture alone"? For my help, I read the gospels to hear God's message. Where does James Franklin go to hear God's Word?

Jensenism believes it has an answer to these criticisms in the words of St Paul on the importance of faith. In addition to the obvious incoherence of preferring a follower of Jesus to Jesus himself, Paul has a few choice remarks about those in his own day who said, "I am for Paul." The faith Paul spoke of, he makes clear, is not his own but refers back to Jesus. The extraordinarily low profile of the gospels in the writings of the Jensens - except for carefully selected snippets - is the clearest indication possible of what is really happening. They fear the gospels, for the gospel message is inconvenient.

FEAR OF THE PLAIN meaning of the gospels explains several other distortions in the Jensenite approach to the Bible. The Jensens are not strict biblical literalists. Phillip Jensen admits that Jesus' statement, "If anyone comes to me, and hates not his father and mother and wife and children, he cannot be my disciple", is an exaggeration. That is plainly right, since a literal interpretation of the text would be out of tune with the moral tone of the whole. Why then are the Jensens uniformly suspicious of historical and linguistic studies that might cast light on the meaning of the whole? It can only be a fear of what might be revealed about the gospel as it really is.

I attended St Matthias Church for many years, and heard countless sermons (no, I didn't fall asleep during any of them) and I did hear sermons by both of the "Brothers Jensen" and they included many books of the bible.

When they were dealing with OT, and NT, both Pauline and Gospel books they were all dealt with according to the message given by that book. I dont recall any bias as the author contends.

It also explains the evangelical practice of "Bible study", in taking a very tiny portion of text and embroidering obvious comments on it for an hour. Will the text for comment ever fall beneath the size of a sentence, as in the classic Tory political broadcast from the British comedy Not the Nine O'Clock News, "'tis easier for a rich man to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a camel to"? If one could give a single piece of advice to those who have fallen into the rut of this kind of "study", it would be: read the gospels less often, but in longer portions.

Bible studies, and evangelical practice need to my mind concentrate on the essence of the message. St Matthias Church, to my memory, did that in a way that would benefit evangelists and the non converted to understand the main meaning of the scriptural texts

It explains too the Jensenite hostility to the other ("idolatrous") branches of Christianity. A fundamental contradiction in "Bible-based" Christianity is that the Bible itself does not say that Jesus left a book but a community. Yet evangelicals have cut themselves off from the great body of Christian believers, Orthodox, Catholic and Coptic, the church to which Jesus promised his unending help. Evangelicals have created instead an inward-looking and recent sect, interested neither in understanding the Hebrew background of the Biblical text, nor in the person of Jesus, nor in the simplest "big picture" understanding of the gospel message. The real gospel does not make itself an object of worship, as in Peter Jensen's talk of "the gospel, by which men could be saved from the wrath due to their sins" (actually, he writes "saved for the wrath" but I am assured that is a Freudian typo). The slogan "scripture alone" is not just narrow, but self-contradictory.

Answer: This is a distortion, and a reliance on denominational importance. An error in understanding that Jesus was interested in establishing his church, which would meet together in heaven itself.

The most unsavoury aspect of the Jensenites' distortion of the simple message of Jesus is its concentration on sin and guilt, without a compensating sense of human worth. The gospels are quite free of the extreme evangelical "heads I win, tails you lose" attitude to guilt, where everything I do wrong deserves God's wrath but anything I do right is done by him. The dark mindset of guilt alone is designed to prey on early teens and technically smart but socially unconfident older teens who, for one reason or another, have a shaky sense of self-worth. Missing is the sense, clear in the gospels, that God is only displeased when we have done something evil that we might not have done. Harming "little ones", the gospels record, was what made Jesus most angry.

This is the author, James Franklin's idea that if you only live a good life, that you should be OK with God. (And what Jesus did to deal with sin was not important??)

James Franklin, you have really missed the gospel message, mate.

Ken

I think you're doing pretty well if you get an "ism" named after you.

Excellent.
Several places I have been in have the term ¨Owenisms¨ although they tend to mean ¨weird things Owen has done or said.¨

Still, it´s a start.
Now, all I need is some followers,
and someone to write a scathing critique.......

Mr Thacker? I need your assistance....

G'day,

Owen said:

Now, all I need is some followers,
and someone to write a scathing critique.......

Mr Thacker? I need your assistance....

LOL. You've still got it Owen. Your memory is pretty good too. (For those who have no idea what I'm talking about see the Creation Museum thread).

Yours in Christ,
Mark

Here is my latest letter to Quadrant:


All that James Franklin has demonstrated in his fulminations against the so-called "Jensenism" is that Peter Jensen is an Anglican. In teaching that human beings - though they do have an inherent worth and dignity - are not justified by their merits, be they criminal or saint, but by the merits of Jesus Christ, Archbishop Jensen is only repeating the teaching of articles 9-14 of the Anglican statement of doctrine The 39 Articles of Religion, dated 1562. In their turn, these are faithful and accurate reading of the New Testament as whole, as even Roman Catholic theologian Hans Kung acknowledges.

The only appropriate response is a loud "Well, d'uh". The Anglican Archbishop an Anglican? Is the Pope Catholic?

Maybe we should start celebrating! When an Anglican diocese starts being labelled as being led by a sect, that's a sure time that some feathers are being ruffled.

May I suggest that we all pray to Jesus, and contemplate whether these feathers aren't prongs of conscience and hurt pride? Poor old deceiver, his machinations to lock the bible and its interpretations behind precedent and mazes with no end swept aside by the good old Holy Spirit. Where's the divide and conquer? Where's the stifling of the breath of God?

Good on the Jensens for having the courage to accept that the bible might have been bound and shackled. Good on the Jensens for being amongst the world leaders that were enabling the Holy Spirit to again communicate freely to parishioners.

Give praise, for without the Jensens and their compatriates' preparation work, humanity would have fumbled really badly with the tsunami.

Maybe they should start denouncing Tutuism too, after he had the audacity to believe that Jesus would help his people overturn apartheid. Maybe we should denounce the last Catholic pope for having the audacity to believe that Jesus would enable the Berlin wall to come down.

How dare God use ordinary people to quietly intervene and sabotage the deceiver's works. Outrageous.

People who criticise the Jensen's better go and read Revelations and Zechariah. They've done exactly what was required of them.

Michael Jensen is to be complimented on his excellent riposte to the Professor, especially when you note the Professor's spluttering dud of a response.

The only point I would add is that we should not give too much ground on the "good works" front and here I'm thinking of the place of the 10 commndments, and Jesus' teaching in John 14:15, 15:10, etc.

For all of you non Presbyterian/Reformed types, I commend to you the structure of that most beautiful, heart warming of all Reformation catechisms, the Heidelberg Catechism with its division into (and in this order):

Man's misery
Man's deliverance
Man's Gratitude

Man's gratitude includes an exposition of the 10 Commandments and Lord's Prayer.

Listen to the first Q&A in this 3rd section.

Lords Day 32, Question and Answer 86
Q. We have been delivered from our misery by God's grace alone through Christ and not because we have earned it: why then must we still do good?

A. To be sure, Christ has redeemed us by his blood.
But we do good because
Christ by his Spirit is also renewing us to be like himself,
so that in all our living
we may show that we are thankful to God
for all he has done for us,1
and so that he may be praised through us.2

And we do good
so that we may be assured of our faith by its fruits,3
and so that by our godly living
our neighbors may be won over to Christ.4

1 Rom. 6:13; 12:1-2; 1 Pet. 2:5-10
2 Matt. 5:16; 1 Cor. 6:19-20
3 Matt. 7:17-18; Gal. 5:22-24; 2 Pet. 1:10-11
4 Matt. 5:14-16; Rom. 14:17-19; 1 Pet. 2:12; 3:1-2

I subscribe to Quadrant and I read the article. I wrote in, by way of a reply, but was not published. On reflection, I suppose I was both a little sarcastic and too preachy - not a good combination:

James Franklin calls Peter and Phillip Jensen “the public face of a proudly narrow interpretation of the Bible that has had an immense success in the English-speaking world in the last quarter of Christianity’s history”.

I guess he must mean the Reformation! It is not clear whether Franklin has heard of it? Why else would he label historic Protestant doctrines as “Jensenism”?

Can we expect next month to read an expose of Roman Catholicism, re-badged as “Pellism”?

The ‘great alones’ were not, as a credulous reader might suppose, invented by the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney. Any schoolboy (well, maybe the clever ones) could correctly ascribe ‘sola fide’, ‘sola scriptura’ and ‘sola gratia’ to Martin Luther (not a notable English-speaker).

Since Protestant or Reformed Christians are still (nominally at least) a majority of Australians, don’t their beliefs deserve a fairer hearing than Franklin gives them?

His central argument - that the Jesus of the gospels (represented as someone more concerned with works than with faith) is different to the Christ of the epistles – is false.

It was the same person, after all, who said “blessed are the peacemakers”, and also “whoever believes and is baptised will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.”

“Why then are the Jensens uniformly suspicious of historical and linguistic studies that might cast light on the meaning of the whole”? Search me! You might as well ask them when they stopped beating their wives. The question is without meaning, if the unsourced and unproved premise is not defended – which Franklin doesn’t even try to.

“By Faith Alone” has never meant merely “assent to propositions.” In the Bible, faith simply means trust – a commitment of the whole heart and life to the Lord.

Nor does “Scripture Alone ” mean closing one’s mind to the lights of science, or poetry, or church tradition. It simply says that these sources of knowledge, however useful, cannot be normative for a Christian.

Finally, “Grace Alone” has never been understood as rejecting all good deeds. It repudiates only the notion that, by doing them, anyone can overcome the effects of sin and deserve eternal life. To the ‘Bible-believing Christian’, the peace of God is a peace which the world cannot give – no matter how hard you try; no matter what religion you follow. It is the gift of God: ‘by His wounds you are healed’. Christians do not act charitably to earn a place in heaven, but only in gratitude for their Saviour’s death of the Cross for them.

Whether or not Mr Franklin is deliberately trying to fan the embers of denominational rivalry, I expect Christians of all confessions would reserve the epithet “inward-looking and recent sect”, not for any particular branch of the church universal, but for that woolly-headed pluralism which one could be excused for thinking that Mr Franklin, faute de mieux, is espousing.

Alan Dungey
Kalgoorlie

Just for the record:

James Franklin came to lunch at Moore College recently with me. He is an interesting and very intelligent man, much as we disagree. I can imagine that he is a stimulating teacher.

I wrote a review of his book "Corrupting the Youth" which is somewhere on this website.

What a top notch reply Michael!

I think that God has truly blessed us in putting the Jensen brothers where they are, two out and out evangelicals who have had no qualms in making known to the public the good news of the Good News. I pray that we evangelicals can make more of an uncompromising impact on the world around us with the gospel.

I must admit some (godly) jealousy in regards to you Sydney folk. My experience in WA is, apart from the exceptions, that the Anglicans are liberal, Churches of Christ are treading a charismatic line in the by and large and the Baptists are at the crossroads of the same. There are some churches (like St Matts in Shenton Park, North Beach Baptist, my own Busselton Baptist, Highgate Anglican and a couple of others) with fantastic evangelical ministers, and Trinity Theological College keeps getting bigger every year, but there is still much more room for improvement.

Praise God though for what He has done so far in WA, what He is doing and the blessing He has given me through the ministry of evangelicals in Perth!

I wish Peter and Phil would come to Scotland!!!!


Lee

Say g'day to the Webbs for me. Went to SMBC as did I.

This whole jensenism thing is crap! Both BJ (Big Jensen -Peter and LJ (little Jensen - Phillip) are preaching the Gospel which Frankllin does not believe in. This is his real problem. Sydney is blessed to have these men and others who are contending for the faith. I am very grateful to God that I was brought up in a Sydney Anglican church as the norm!

Guys in Sydney - remember how spoild you are - it is a different world Church-wise in Scotland.
JJ is pretty cool too (JJ as in Junior Jensen - Michael)

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