Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them. Rom 16:17

Friends, quoting errant men is a really serious problem among believers — mainly it seems teachers, pastors, or those who uphold themselves as spiritually mature. It can be quite a pit you have dug for another, when they start sitting down to partake of the leaven you should have warned them about instead.

You may love C.S. Lewis

You may love Spurgeon

You may love Tozer

You may love Bonhoeffer

You may love _________________________fill in the blank…

Question is, do you love God’s truth above all else. And have you really thought about their serious doctrinal error in sharing it with others?

• Things such as Mystical, Contemplative or Ecumenical teachings.
• Denial of the Resurrection or the Virgin birth.
• Calling much of His Word a ‘myth’.
• Preaching a works-based accursed gospel.
• Pointing people to Calvinism as the gospel.

Life is very short. I’d like you to ask yourself if you are positive as to where you would go if you died today.. Please, take just a moment to listen to this short video. It could be a matter of life and death.

When Jesus warned His disciples about leaven (of both the Pharisees and Herod), they did not understand and reasoned it was because they had no bread. And Jesus rebuked them for their lack of understanding. I’m afraid many men who pooh-pooh warnings about leaven will be sorry later. Stop telling others to ‘chew the meat and spit out the bones’. You may need to really listen to the rebuke of Jesus.

• perceive ye not yet,
• neither understand?
• have ye your heart yet hardened? 
• Having eyes, see ye not?
• and having ears, hear ye not?
• and do ye not remember?  Mark 8:17-18

I’d like to ask you that same question. Don’t you get it still? Have your hearts grown hard? Or are you deaf and blind with no remembrance of His warnings? 

Pastor, elder, teacher — have you taken heed to the doctrine saving both yourself and your hearers? (1 Timothy 4:16).

This is serious. This is not about “chew the meat, spit out the bones,” as some of you patronizingly say. Friends, please. Leave off the sarcasm and condescending remarks. This can mean spiritual life or death for the unsaved, and a shipwrecked life for the saved. It’s a lose lose for everyone.

If you are just sharing (as many say), “a good comment” or “not endorsing everything,” then please do as Paul did in Acts 17:28, and warn that it is “one of ‘theirs’” who said it (see also Titus 1:12).

Warn of the error, please friends, don’t be smug, condescending or patronizing about this matter. If your audience takes this good quote as coming from someone good, they may follow them. Start reading or listening to them and fall into error. Please take this to the Lord in Prayer. Many have been hurt this way. You may believe you’re discerning enough to chew the meat and spit out the bones, but don’t lead others to it.

…Let God be true, but every man a liar …” (Romans 3:4).

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I don’t judge Bonhoeffer’s salvation.  I do not know if he once believed the gospel. Or later believed the gospel.

Bonhoeffer seemed to be a good man who saved some Jews from the Nazis (17 I believe). But tell the truth about his leaven — Bonhoeffer denied most of the important and do-no-pass-go doctrines.

He denied the literal, physical resurrection of Christ.

He denied His Deity

Denied His virgin birth.

Questioned the veracity of the Scriptures and more.  (More on what Bonhoeffer believed here).

Charles Spurgeon

Spurgeon quote:

“O sirs, In God’s name let me tell you, it is not the giving up of one sin, nor fifty sins, which is true repentance; it is the solemn renunciation of every sin. If thou dost harbour one of those accursed vipers in thy heart, thy repentance is but a sham. If thou dost indulge in but one lust, and dost give up every other, that one lust, like one leak in a ship, will sink thy soul.” (from Turn and Burn sermon).

Comment: Besides his wrong definition of repent (metanoia/metanoeo), as giving up of one’s sin, No one can give up every single sin (Romans 7:15-25). All of us will sin, until the day we die. Do you truly think you don’t have just one sin you haven’t given up and that it’s going to ‘sink your soul?’

Spurgeon on what the gospel is

“I have my own opinion that there is no such thing as preaching Christ and Him crucified, unless we preach what nowadays is called Calvinism. It is a nickname to call it Calvinism; Calvinism is the gospel, and nothing else. (Charles Spurgeon, The New Park Street Pulpit, Vol. 1, 1856).

“The old truth that Calvin preached, that Augustine preached, that Paul preached, is the truth that I must preach today, or else be false to my conscience and my God. I cannot shape the truth; I know of no such thing as paring off the rough edges of a doctrine. John Knox’s gospel is my gospel. That which thundered through Scotland must thunder through England again.”—C. H. Spurgeon

The Limited Atonement (L) of TULIP/Calvinism

Spurgeon says Christ dying for all men is ‘repulsive’.

“If Christ on His cross intended to save every man, then He intended to save those who were lost before He died. If the doctrine be true, that He died for all men, then He died for some who were in Hell before He came into this world, for doubtless there were even then myriads there who had been cast away because of their sins. . . That seems to me a conception a thousand times more >>repulsive than any of those consequences which are said to be associated with the Calvinistic and Christian doctrine of special and particular redemption. To think that my Savior died for men who were or are in Hell, seems a supposition too horrible for me to entertain.” (Charles Spurgeon, Autobiography: 1, The Early Years, p. 172)

More of Spurgeon on Limited Atonement

“I would rather believe a limited atonement that is efficacious for all men for whom it was intended, than a universal atonement that is not efficacious for anybody, except the will of men be added to it.” (Charles Spurgeon, Sermons, Vol. 4, p. 70)

C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis is identified as a Christian apologist, yet denied many core doctrines¹ including thinking Creation was a myth.

As for the gospel, Lewis believed you need to be baptized and take sacraments to be given the free gift of eternal life. Again, I sure hope that somehow he believed the simplicity that is in Christ (2 Cor 11:3-4). I am not judging his salvation, only the Lord knows. But his gospel was false, and would not help anyone be saved.

Lewis was a member of the high Anglican Church of England, and was heavily influenced by Roman Catholics such as J.R.R. Tolkien and G.K. Chesterson.^1,4 Many have loved their writings as well. Widely loved and accepted by all religions, he was lauded as a ‘superstar’, a ‘patron saint’, ‘one of the most influential theological writers’²⁶ and ‘the 20th century’s greatest Christian apologist’.^24,25,27

Those of you who are into ‘chewing the meat and spitting out the bones’, I leave you with a thought. Is there somewhere in the Bible that tells us to chew leaven vs. beware of it?
If you are a church leader, are your choices of dabbling in leaven and sharing it, affecting others? I hope you’ll at least pray about it. I’d rather warn people, so they aren’t led into error, thinking this man is some great apologist.

The most crucial doctrine C.S. Lewis got wrong was the gospel. That should be enough for any believer to mark and avoid (Rom 16:17), especially from one identifying as a theologian and Christian apologist.

C.S. Lewis believed in Justification by works (Sacramentalism)

In Mere Christianity Lewis wrote,

“There are three things that spread the Christ-life to us:

• • baptism,
  • belief,
  • and…the Lord’s supper…. (bullet points mine –- keep in mind Lewis believed in the Eucharist – transubstantiation, not the Lord’s supper as we know it) And perhaps that explains one or two things. It explains why this new life is spread not only by purely mental acts like belief, but by bodily acts like baptism and Holy Communion…. God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. That is why He uses material things like bread and wine to put the new life into us.”^1,13

False: We do not receive the new life by the works of Baptism or by receiving the Lord’s supper.

C.S. Lewis denied Eternal Security

Lewis believed that a Christian could lose his salvation — and had to keep it.

“There are people (a great many of them) who are slowly ceasing to be Christians….

A Christian can lose the Christ-life which has been put into him, and he has to make efforts to keep it.”^1,14

C.S. Lewis and Paganism

• Lewis referred to the false god Apollo as a sub-specie of Christ

“I had some ado to prevent Joy (and myself) from lapsing into paganism in Attica! At Daphne it was hard not to pray to Apollo the Healer. But somehow one didn’t feel it would have been very wrong, one would have only been addressing Christ’s sub-specie Apollonian.^26,34

Tozer

Tozer had a backdoor loaded Gospel. On being given the free gift of eternal life, Tozer said:

“In the Bible the offer of pardon on the part of God is conditioned upon intention to reform on the part of man. There can be no spiritual regeneration till there has been a moral reformation” 

Comment: Salvation is a free gift and it is a unilateral covenant (the New Covenant is conditioned upon God’s promise alone). How do you have a moral reformation before spiritual regeneration? We can do nothing apart from Christ.

Tozer also dabbled in Roman Catholic Mysticism and would quote the Catholic Mystics, Chinese Sages, the Apocrypha, even the highly contemplative Thomas Kempis.

See more on Tozer’s many mystical quotes here:

These men may seem mainstream to many, but they need to understand why they should not follow their line of thinking. Don’t fool yourself, a little leaven does leaven the whole lump.

I realize some of you have said you are ‘discerning enough to chew the meat and spit out the bones.’ It’s your choice if you choose to read them. But please don’t quote men that are in error without warning of the error. Think of stumbling block to young ones who believe on Him. I know this stumbling block. I’ve stumbled over many of these things myself. I know many who had a life made shipwrecked for a while.

Please at least pray about it.

Previous Article: Leaven Everywhere You Look

Footnotes

C.S. Lewis Citations: (warning: none are a recommendation, just citing sources, many of which gave titles and page numbers from his books)

[1] – GARY GILLEY ON C.S. LEWIS : Apprising Ministries

[2] James Townsend, “C. S. Lewis’s Theology: Somewhere Between Ransom and Reepicheep,” Journal of the Grace Evangelical Society (Spring 2000), p. 52.

[3] Ibid., p. 53.

[4] See Christian History (Fall, 2005), pp. 17-18.

[5]Ibid., p. 4.

[6] C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (New York: Macmillan, 1962), pp. 72, 77, 79.

[7] Ibid., pp. 71, 77.

[8] Ibid., pp. 66-67.

[9] Townsend, p. 56.

[10] C. S. Lewis, Miracles (New York: Macmillan, 1947), p. 139.

[11] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan, 1969), pp. 57-58.

[12] J. I. Packer, “Still Surprised by Lewis,” Christianity Today (September 7, 1998), p. 56.

[13] Lewis, Mere Christianity, pp. 62, 65.

[14]Ibid., p. 64.

[15] C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (New York: Macmillan, 1961), p. 11.

[16] C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock (Grand Rapids: Erdmans, 1983), p. 102.

[17] C. S. Lewis, The Last Battle (New York: Collier Books, 1951), p. 156.

[18] Lewis, Mere Christianity, pp. 176-177.

[19] Wayne Martindale, Beyond the Shadowlands ( Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2005), p. 203.

[20] Bob Smietana, “C.S. Lewis Superstar,” Christianity Today (December 2005), p. 29.

[21] Ibid., p. 31.

[22] Ibid., p. 42.

[23] Ruth A. Tucker, God Talk ( Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Books, 2005), p. 56.

[24] CS_Lewis_and_Evangelicals_Today.pdf

[25] Christianity Today

[26] – Sharon Phibbs post 8-13-23, citing Jaime H. Rivera, August 9, 2019  

[27] “Still Surprised by Lewis,” Christianity Today, Sept. 7, 1998

[28] Letters to Malcolm -page 109

[29] Letters to Malcolm -pages 110-111

[30] Roger Lancelyn Green and Walter Hooper, “C. S. Lewis: A Biography, 1974,” pp. 198, 301

[31] Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 65     

[32] (Christianity Today, Dec. 20, 1963).

[33] In a letter to the editor of “Christianity Today,” February 28, 1964, Dr. W. Wesley Shrader, First Baptist Church, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, warned that “C. S. Lewis … would never embrace the (literal-infallible) view of the Bible” ( F.B.F. News Bulletin, Fundamental Baptist Fellowship, March 4, 1984).

[34] C. S. Lewis to Chad Walsh, May 23, 1960, cited from George Sayer, Jack: “A Life of C. S. Lewis, 1994,” p. 378

[35] C. S. Lewis, “Mere Christianity,” Harper San Francisco edition, 2001, pp. 64, 208, 209.

[36] “Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism,” Christian Reflections, edited by Walter Hooper, Eerdmans

[37] Mere Christianity, Harper San Francisco edition, 2001, p. 182

[38] Mere Christianity, Harper San Francisco edition, 2001, pp. 54, 55, 56

[39] C.S. Lewis and Evangelicals Today Copyright 2000 by David W. Cloud Tis edition June 18, 2014

[40] Quotes from Mere Christianity, Part 21, (1952; Harper Collins: 2001) 54-56.

[41] Pinnock, More Than One Way? Zondervan, 1996, p. 107

[42] John W. Kennedy, “Southern Baptists Take Up the Mormon Challenge,” Christianity Today, June 15, 1998, p. 30

[43] Roman Catholic website, C. S. Lewis’ Views on Christian Unity & Ecumenism | Dave Armstrong (patheos.com)

[44] Evangelicals and Catholics Together (ECT) Common Mission, p. 36