Helpful Responses to Andy Stanley's Aberrant Teaching

Many of you may be familiar with my own challenges to the teaching of Andy Stanley in a previous blog post entitled Is Andy Stanley Ashamed of the Bible? In that post I offered a critique of three of Andy's sermons and demonstrated how his disdain for expository preaching derives from a different view of Scripture. In fact, I have come to believe that Andy has departed from the orthodox faith in regard to the authority and sufficiency of Scripture, and his more recent assertions have only reinforced this belief. In light of these more recent assertions and teaching, then, I would recommend reading my previous post if you have not already done so, for in it I challenge many of the very kinds of things he has been continuing to say. But I would also like to recommend listening to the critique offered by James White (pictured right), which is contained in the videos below, as well as reading some recent articles over at the Pulpit & Pen blog, which are linked at the bottom of this post.

In order to set the table, many of you may already be familiar with Andy's recent comments made in an interview with Russell Moore. Here is the video containing the relevant comments:



In the Dividing Line video below, at about the 30 minute mark, James White begins to discuss Andy's statements. He challenges Andy's assertions in the interview, as well and some other statements made by him on his church's website. He also does a very good job of working through 1 Corinthians 1 and demonstrating the difference between Andy's perspective and that of the Apostle Paul.



In the next video below, James responds to Andy's sermon entitled The Bible Told Me So, the third part of a series entitled "Who Needs God," in which Andy continues to make the same kind of silly argument I had challenged in the sermons I had previously critiqued. Here is the description of the episode from the Dividing Line website:

There were three major topics on the DL today (after the opening discussion of some urgent situations where the people of God need to bring certain issues before the throne of grace): first, an article published today on Revelation 16:5 and the Textus Receptus; then, a rather lengthy review of Andy Stanley’s sermon from Sunday on the Bible and Christianity. About 2/3 of the way through we were joined by Dr. Tony Costa on the phone, but we pressed on and finished the sermon, commenting as we went along.  And then in the last half hour or so Tony and I discussed the double standards so often used by Islamic apologists. Two and a half hours long! Have the days of hour long Dividing Lines ended? Tune in next week to find out!

As you can see, James had as hard a time being brief in his critique of Andy as I did! But it is well worth listening to the entire critique, which begins at about the 41:30 mark.



James does a good job of pointing out the theological issues with Andy, not to mention the fact that he simply doesn't know what he is talking about in much of what he says (unless he is deliberately distorting the most basic facts of Church history). At any rate, we need to warn our brothers and sisters in Christ about the real danger of ignorant, liberal, unorthodox teachers like Andy Stanley, and I appreciate James so ably helping us in this regard.

I also appreciate the efforts of Bud Ahlheim over at the Pulpit & Pen blog, who has written a series of recent posts about these issues:

SBC Conference: “Get The Spotlight Off The Bible” (Courtesy of Russell Moore & Andy Stanley)

Superstar Mega-church Son of A (Hopefully Ashamed) Preacher Man Andy Stanley: Scripture Can’t Be Defended  

Andy Stanley: You’re Not Smart Enough If You’re Not In “One of Our Churches” (Doubling Down on Unnecessary Scripture)

Although I would have stated a few things a bit differently, I certainly agree with Bud's conclusions regarding Andy's view of Scripture and the Church. As always, we welcome your comments.