Phil Johnson and Mark Driscoll, Part VII - Phil Johnson's Personal Letter to Mark Driscoll

Throughout these posts regarding the controversy between Phil Johnson and Mark Driscoll over pulpit language, I have focused our attention on the facts — like officer Friday of the famed Dragnet series. In virtually every program, he was heard to say something like, “The facts ma’am, just the facts.” To formulate valid judgments and opinions we must know what these brothers have actually said in the pulpit and in print about the pulpit. It’s never right to rush to judgment before understanding the facts. My prayer is that these posts have served that cause.

Upon request, Phil was kind enough to share with me his private letter to Mark sent approximately three months (December 3, 2008) prior to his polemical sermon, “Sound Doctrine; Sound Words” otherwise known as The Pornification of the Pulpit. Knowing he was going to be addressing the issue of pulpit language, and knowing that he was going to be making some pointed references to Driscoll, Phil wanted to be sure of Mark’s position. After expressing several concerns, Phil asked Mark six pointed questions. According to Mark, however, he never saw Phil’s letter until one week before the Shepherd’s Conference, when he received another copy of it from a mutual pastor friend with whom Phil had shared it. Allegedly, it had been lost in the huge volume of Mars Hill mail.

After reading the letter, Mark asked Phil in a phone conversation if he could respond to his questions by way of video. Phil said that would be fine, and so Mark sent him a DVD. Through Phil’s kindness, I have obtained an exclusive copy of Mark’s nine minute, fifty-one second response. Lord-willing, I will make that video available to you in my next post. It is not inappropriate or unethical for me to share this with you because it was designed by Mark himself for public viewing — even to be shown at the Shepherd’s Conference. That video was never played at the conference. Phil said there was insufficient time one week before the conference to make adjustments to the schedule in order to show the video. The fact is, Phil asked Mark to respond to his letter, but never went so far as to extend an invitation for Mark to address the entire Shepherd’s Conference. In any case, I will post that video soon.

Now, back to the Phil’s letter to Mark. In fairness to Phil, I should observe that his letter was not caustic, sharp or harsh. It was, however, straightforward and pointed, written with both conviction and passion. By way of overview, Phil revealed profound concerns regarding the following six matters:

1. The relationship between Mark’s continued use of “inappropriate language” and his previous words of repentance.

2. Mark being comfortable making jokes from Scripture that evoke imagery of homosexual activity and the excretion of bodily waste.

3. Mark speaking of Christ less reverently than he would presumably want another man to speak about his own wife.

4. Mark justifying the use a certain Scripture as a punch line in a sexually suggestive joke.

5. Mark’s understanding of the third commandment, and how it should or should not govern his speech in the pulpit.

6. Mark’s presumed ability to reconcile crass language about Christ with the concept of the fear of God.

In summary to those questions, Phil writes,

“My criticism of the type of language you employ in these contexts is not merely that it is too lowbrow or too “contextualized,” but that it crosses the line into the realm of blasphemy.”

Anticipating Mark’s yet needed clarification of these issues, Phil writes in the closing paragraphs of his letter,

“Knowing your reputation for candor, I had hoped you would answer questions like those in your message at Desiring God. I expected that you would at least acknowledge specifically what you meant when you said you were sorry for past sins of the tongue. Instead, it seemed you sidestepped your critics’ most serious concerns and dealt with a completely different set of questions.”

Well, as I have already stated, Mark answered Phil’s letter with a brief video. In my next post, I will make it available to my readers.

In the meantime, I want to thank Phil for his kindness in sharing his otherwise private correspondence with Mark. My fear in sharing the above information is that some of my readers will use it to exacerbate the conflict between them. Please do not do that. Such behavior will not honor God. As a means of promoting peace and seeking to honor each of these brothers, I made a commitment to Phil to share the following 5 statements from him as a means of promoting peace and unity, not discord:

From Phil Johnson

1. From my perspective, I’ve been more or less put in an impossible situation by the attitudes of some of the commenters here. My preference from the start would have been to keep all the correspondence between me and Driscoll private. I have no wish to enflame the passions underlying this controversy on either side.

2. Yet false accusations have been made about motives and attitudes on both sides that can be easily answered with the facts. I have no moral duty to keep what I wrote a secret; Mark Driscoll’s reply was sent to me on video with the intention of making a public statement; and John MacArthur has no objection if his letter to Driscoll is made public. So allowing Jonathan Christman to post these things violates no rules of protocol that I am aware of.

3. Still, I did not suggest that Jonathan should post this material, and when he persuaded me that he sincerely wanted to be fair with both sides, I did not try to influence him one way or the other regarding which excerpts to post (or not to post). I left every decision about the matter to him.

4. I am deeply frustrated that so many brethren who generally share the same theological perspective I hold to seem so much more concerned with matters of protocol and politeness than with what the Bible says about the real issue at the heart of this controversy. The answer to the question of whether certain kinds of language and subject matter are appropriate in the pulpit or not does not really require anyone’s analysis of the tone of my correspondence with Mark Driscoll (or his with me). Which is to say I think most of the controversy in this controversy is unnecessary, voyeuristic, and stems from the very attitudes that have given the “New Calvinism” a reputation that frankly is going to be very hard to live down. Controversy over a point of biblical truth can be a good and helpful thing. Bickering over who has been the nicest or most humble never is a healthy or productive pursuit. That style of “debate” nearly turned the entire visible church to Arianism in the fourth century.

5. I’m especially disheartened by those here and in the RBS blog-comments who were insistent on making dogmatic judgments (before reading any of this correspondence) about whether there was any love or grace in my heart or in my private dealings with Mark Driscoll. Even after I pleaded with concerned persons to write me directly if they had questions about my motives, not one of the commenters who published accusations or criticisms of me ever bothered to write me directly—including those who complained I had wronged Mark by not approaching him directly about the issues that disturbed me.