David Platt’s Radically Incoherent Gospel of the Gospel and Disciples and Stuff

A friend of mine shared a David Platt video on Facebook this morning. I concentrated his seven-minute video for you. Because I like you.

1.notmakingdisciples
Fantastic start, David. Just fantastic. Tell people they’re not disciples of Jesus. Good job.
And if you don’t feel like God’s calling you to make more disciples, you’re probably not a Christian.
It is SO not “pray this prayer.”

5.Damning

7.fullpicture
“My boyfriend is a wonderful person. Sometimes he causes people to be tortured for all eternity, and he might do that to me, but he’s absolutely great.”
8.deadmeansdead
Greek and Hebrew Bibles exist so your pastor can look up words to find that they mean exactly what every English translation says they mean.
“Christians go to heaven and non-Christians go to hell, but if you haven’t heard the gospel, you get a free pass.” Apparently, 72% of white evangelicals believe this, though I’ve never met anyone who does, and most evangelical outposts explicitly disagree, but whatever.
10.diedthedeath
The Bible never says anything remotely like this… so I’m pretty sure it’s not the gospel.
11.thegospel
I tend to doubt it.

I admit, he didn’t actually ever say he wasn’t going to tell us what the gospel is. He just never did.

I think I know why David Platt annoys me. There’s a verse in Proverbs about zeal without knowledge, and, to his credit, there are few people as zealous as David Platt, but for the life of me I can’t figure out how he convinced anyone to give him a Ph.D. Maybe Southern Baptists just give Ph.D.’s to charismatic people who pledge to use the phrase “the gospel” at least twenty times per sermon, because the “gospel” in this clip is no gospel at all – in fact, it’s worse than no gospel; it’s nothing. The emperor, as the tale goes, has no gospel.

I don’t know; maybe he thinks the gospel is that line about Jesus living the life we could not live and dying the death we should have died. Platt correctly identifies the sinner’s prayer as not being found in scripture, but the line he cites is not found in scripture either, and though it’s plastered all over the internet, I couldn’t track down its origin.

Platt condemns everyone who is not a disciple of Christ to eternal damnation by proxy (God’s going to do it, not him) and then refuses to tell anyone how to be a disciple! Is it something you believe, or a vague “obedience” to rules that he doesn’t tell you? Is it just believing that little ditty from earlier? How does one become a disciple?

Platt isn’t going to tell you.*

And that’s why he annoys me.

If you’d like him to annoy you, here’s the video clip.

* I hope they talk about this in seminary, because I don’t know how I would tell someone how to become a Christian / disciple, but it’s not David Platt’s way, which is no way at all, and it’s not the evangelical way of “pray this prayer” that he condemns, either, though it might be. Seminary is going to be fun. Did I mention I’m going to seminary?

David M Schell About David M Schell
I am a doubter and a believer. I have a Master's in Divinity from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, but because faith grows and changes, I don't necessarily stand by everything I've ever written, so if you see something troubling further back, please ask! Read More.

Author: David M Schell

I am a doubter and a believer. I have a Master's in Divinity from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, but because faith grows and changes, I don't necessarily stand by everything I've ever written, so if you see something troubling further back, please ask! Read More.

One thought on “David Platt’s Radically Incoherent Gospel of the Gospel and Disciples and Stuff”

  1. On rare occasion, I like to Google David Platt’s zealous incoherence and I had just come across this.
    Thank you.

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