The Spreading Plague of Antinomianism: A Critique of Tullian Tchividjian’s One Way Love

Gregory Perry | Wednesday, November 11, 2015
Copyright © 2015, Gregory Perry

When warning about the antinomianism that is prevailing in the evangelical, and even Reformed, church, Pastor Mathew said it this way, “A 9.8 earthquake struck the Reformed church, yet no one noticed.” Not only did Pastor Mathew recognize it, but he even spoke prophetically about it many years ago. At its core, antinomianism (literally “against-the-lawism”) is a theology that makes allowance for Christians to sin.

What I want to accomplish tonight is to use a critique of Tullian Tchividjian’s One Way Love(published Oct. 2013) to give us particular insight into the kind of antinomianism that is spreading like a deadly plague throughout evangelicalism.

Background of Tullian Tchividjian

William Graham Tullian Tchividjian, who goes by Tullian, is the son of the renowned evangelist Billy Graham’s eldest daughter Gigi. Tullian’s father, Stephan Tjividjian, was a clinical psychologist.

According to his own account, Tullian was raised in the church, but began living in serious sin even in his early high school years. He was finally kicked out of his house when he was sixteen and dropped out of high school. He tells how when he turned eighteen, he was able to get his own apartment, which “turned up the volume considerably on his South Florida-style debauchery.”

He says that during this time, his parents would regularly bail him out of trouble. He said that it was through their example that he learned “quite a bit about myself, my family, and, ultimately, about God. In fact, it was the beginning of my personal crash course in one-way love.”

Supposedly converted at age twenty-one, he went on to graduate from Columbia International University in philosophy and receive an M.Div degree from Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando. He then became an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church of America.

Tullian was the founding Pastor of New City Presbyterian Church before being installed in 2009 at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, which was founded by the late D. James Kennedy. The size of the church, which had been shrinking, doubled in the first year of Tullian’s ministry.

His book Jesus + Nothing = Everything was awarded “Book of the Year” in 2012 by Christianity Today. He founded Liberate, which is an organization basically designed to fight against “legalism,” which we will see means any requirement of a Christian to repent or obey.

Tullian made news recently when he was found to be cheating on his wife, who, he says, was also cheating on him. As a result, he was asked to resign as pastor of Coral Ridge. Shortly thereafter, he found another position on the ministry staff at a different PCA church in Florida.

Introduction to One Way Love

Over four years ago, I critiqued Rob Bell’s book Love Wins for its confusion over the gospel and its promotion of antinomianism. Bell comes from what is known as the Emergent movement, which was accepted in much of mainstream evangelicalism, but seemed to have little influence in the Reformed church.

One Way Love represents an expansion of the antinomian plague to even the Reformed world. After all, in Jesus + Nothing=Everything, he acknowledges Mike Horton (professor at Westminster Seminary), Steve Brown (professor at Reformed Seminary), and Tim Keller (a New Calvinist leader) to be his gospel mentors.

I also discovered that Westminster Seminary was selling his books on-line. Of the nine books by Tullian that they sold, five of them (including One Way Love) received the prestigious “Leader Recommended” label, which they say means that a trustworthy person associated with Westminster recommends it. Interestingly, of the many books they sell by John Murray, the late great professor of Westminster, none of them received the “Leader Recommended” label.^[1]

Part of the draw of One Way Love, especially for younger people, is its attractive edginess. The following is helpful in gaining a sense of the tone of the book:

It is high time for the church… to get back to proclaiming the only message that matters—and the only message we have—the Word about God’s one-way love for sinners. It is time for us to abandon, once for all, our play-it-safe religion and get drunk on grace. Two-hundred proof, unflinching grace. It’s shocking and scary, unnatural and undomesticated, but it is also the only thing that can set us free and light the church—and the world—on fire. (25)

One Way Love is fundamentally a polemic against legalism. Tullian insists that the gospel’s premier enemy is legalism, which he also calls performancism or moralism. He even calls legalism the one enemy of the church. He posits that the world worships immorality, and it is “just as wrong to worship morality, like everybody in the church seems to be doing.” His analysis of the church is far different than mine. I do not survey the church in America and see it worshiping morality. Rather, I see it becoming increasing immoral.

Tullian later argues that “we justify our legalism under the guise of keeping the moral law as we perceive it in Scripture” (48). In other words, the definition of legalism is striving to keep the moral law. This is far different than the classical view of legalism, which is the trusting in your law-keeping in order to save you.

The Definition of One-way Love

Essentially, one-way love means that God loves us without expecting anything in return— no repentance, no obedience. Especially vile to proponents of one-way love is the notion that there are blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience (though this notion is all through the Bible). Also odious to the one-way love position is the idea that what a Christian does can in any way affect his/her relationship with God.

Tullian is especially fond of pointing out that God’s unconditional love for us has “no strings attached”: “No matter how many times we’ve blown it, no matter how many years we’ve been unsuccessfully trying to get better, God attaches no strings to His love. None. His love for us does not depend on our loveliness. It goes one way. As far as our sin may extend, the grace of our Father extends further” (55).

In light of Tullian’s subsequent marital break-up, he gives this not-so-ringing endorsement: “I’m not overstating things when I say that discovering the message of God’s one-way love in all its radical glory has saved my marriage, my relationship with my kids, and my ministry” (34, italics mine).

Five Serious Problems with One Way Love

In critiquing this book, I must say that it is very hard to know where to start and where to finish. There are a lot of issues I can take up with this book, but for the purpose of being focused, I will especially spotlight five serious problems with One Way Love. I do my best not to take what he is saying out of context. I do not leave off qualifiers or balancing statements to make him sound bad. In fact, Tullian somewhat glories in not balancing or qualifying his radical statements on grace.

1) No Requirement to Change

Tullian says it this way: “One-way love has the unique power to inspire generosity, kindness, loyalty, and more love, precisely because it removes any and all requirement to change or produce” (34). To remove all requirement to change is to say there is no need for repentance.

He criticizes the way we tend to view God: “We view God as a glorified bookkeeper, tallying our failures and successes on His cosmic ledger. We conclude that in order for God to love us, we have to change, grow, and be good” (22). In other words, there is no need for us as Christians to change, grow, or be good. God is not keeping tabs.

What Tullian is indicating here is that you can believe in Jesus, and so be saved, yet go on living in your sin. There is no fruit of obedience needed. We do not need to repent, no need to change. Our Lord Jesus disagreed when he insisted, “Unless you repent, you too will all perish” (Luke 13:5).

He illustrates that there is no requirement for a saved person to change by the example of the sinful woman who anoints Jesus. He declares her sins to be forgiven without her making any commitment to changing:

Note that we don’t have any record of her saying anything like, ‘I’m really sorry. I promise to live a reformed life from now on.’ We don’t have a record of her saying anything at all! All we have a record of her doing is kissing his feet, washing them with her tears, and drying with her hair. No promises to do better, No declaration of fidelity and determination to live a changed life. No Sinner’s Prayer prayed; no resolutions signed. Just tears and kisses and audacious love. (174)

Tullian also points out that Jesus did not require Zacchaeus to change: “The truth is, Jesus didn’t require anything of Zacchaeus. He didn’t force, coerce, or guilt Zacchaeus into giving back what he stole; he just loved him” (127).

I suppose that we are to forget that Jesus called on the forgiven adulteress to “Go and sin no more” (John 8). Or the fact that Paul insists in Ephesians 4:28: “He who has been stealing must steal no longer…” Or again he says in 2 Timothy 2:19: “Everyone who confesses the name of the Lord must turn away from wickedness.” These are just some of many examples in the Bible where the Christian is clearly required to change.

Proponents of one-way love reject the third use of the law. In other words, the moral law is not to be used as a guide for how to live as a Christian.

Tullian also downplays the regenerate Christian’s new power over sin. Before being born again, a Christian was not able not to sin, but now he is able not to sin. But Tullian says that now that we are Christians we are free to lose: “The Gospel of Jesus Christ announces that because Jesus was strong for you, you’re free to be weak. Because Jesus won for you, you’re free to lose…. Because Jesus succeeded for you, you’re free to fail” (36).

This does not strike the same chord of Paul in Romans 6, where he emphasizes the power of the Spirit that enables us to say “no” to sin: “But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life” (Rom. 6:22).

2) Abuse of the Scriptures

Tullian’s second big problem in One Way Love is a hermeneutical one. He simply does not rightly divide the Word of truth. Tullian consistently misuses and abuses the Scriptures. Though he claims to be Reformed, he seems much more dispensational in his almost complete disregard for the Old Testament.

In fact, Tullian makes no serious attempt to find out what the whole Scripture has to say about whatever he is talking about. And in a postmodern age that exalts the hermeneutic of deconstructionism, it is far too easy to do this. You can get the Bible to support whatever idea you want. You can just pick and choose whatever verses you want, regardless of the context, to support your idea. And this is exactly what Tullian does throughout One Way Love.

For example, Tullian notes in the parable of the prodigal son that the father demands nothing from his returning son. This is supposed to be a model of one way love. Is this really the point Jesus was making in telling this parable? Certainly the parable speaks of the love of the father in receiving his repentant son, but using this parable to imply that God makes no demands on his people is patently false.

One of Tullian’s main theses is that our behavior and actions in no way affect our relationship with God. In asserting this, Tullian simply ignores the hundreds of Scriptures that deny this proposition. He in no way addresses the passages that deal with God’s blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience among His covenant people (see Deut. 28 and Lev. 26). He disregards such statements as the psalmist makes in Psalm 66:18: “If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened.” He pays no attention to statements such as the prophet Azariah’s in 2 Chronicles 15:7: “The Lord is with you when you are with him. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will forsake you.” He ignores Paul’s teaching that a man reaps what he sows (Gal. 6:7-8).

I am sure that Tullian would theoretically agree with the notion that the Bible alone is to be our final authority, but in practice he rejects the principle of sola Scriptura. In practice, Tullian’s final authority is what he likes or what others like or especially what works/sells. This is what is known as pragmatism. In other words, the final argument becomes whatever works. After all, Tullian doubled attendance in his first year and became a bestselling author. You cannot argue against success.

We see this exaltation of pragmatism in the strange and shamelessly irreverent way that Tullian critiques even Jesus for his failures to do what works. He first criticizes Jesus for the way he drives away the rich young ruler through speaking to him law instead of grace:

Christ knows that his money is emblematic of his self-salvation strategy, so he aims the hammer of the Law and brings it down, telling this poor guy to sell it all and give the money to the poor. Notice how the young man responds. Is he inspired to take the plunge and give it all away? No! He becomes sorrowful and leaves. The Law has exposed him as the sinner he is, a man unwilling to give control over his life and soul, and this is not happy news. The information Christ provides does not translate into action— we learn that the Law does not and cannot produce its desired effect. (86)

Tullian has the audacity to criticize Jesus for his “severe indictment of the Jewish leaders” because it led not to “a heartfelt repentance, but to his own crucifixion” (87). He also notes that Jesus commanded “his disciples that they must take up their crosses and follow him;… instead, they all abandon him.” He even passes judgment on God issuing the command not to eat from the Tree of Good and Evil, because it prompted Adam and Eve to disobey rather than follow it.

Tullian views fear of judgment as being bad, not because it is unbiblical, but because it does not work. He notes, “The fear of judgment, arguably the deepest of all fears, creates much of the stress and depression of everyday life” (69). Jesus did not share Tullian’s aversion to the fear of judgment. In fact, Jesus declared in no uncertain terms, “But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after the killing of the body, has power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him” (Lk. 12:5).

3) A Call to Christian Holiness Is Legalism

Another major problem is Tullian’s flawed definition of legalism. Instead of viewing legalism as trusting in the keeping of the law for salvation, he essentially equates legalism with any call for a Christian to be holy.

He speaks of his own previous experience as an “absurdly uptight” legalist after his conversion (79). He tells how he would frown at his wife for planting flowers on the Sabbath, while sitting on his couch watching sports on TV. He looks back with embarrassment at the times he insisted on having hour-long prayer sessions each night.

Old Testament commands are dismissed because they are from the Old Testament, but he also dismisses the many New Testament imperatives. He says these imperatives are not generally to be taken as commands; rather, they are merely invitations: “While every expression of Law contains an imperative, not all imperatives are necessarily Law…. It is not a conditional imperative; it is an invitation (63).” Apparently you are free to choose which imperatives you prefer to see as invitations instead of commands.

Since Tullian cannot use the Bible to support his idea that Christians do not need to follow any rules, he turns to Netflix as the exemplar. ^[2] Netflix, he claims, has no official vacation policy. They let their employees take as much time off as they want, whenever they want, as long as the job is getting done (189). The implication is that the church should imitate such a pattern.

Throughout the book, there is also this undercurrent of the exaltation of chaos. The idea is that chaos is spiritual, while order is not spiritual. We see this exaltation of chaos in the following bizarre roller coaster analogy:

Grace is a bit like a roller coaster; it makes us scream in terror and laugh uncontrollably at the same time. But there aren’t any harnesses on this ride. We are not in the driver’s seat, and we did not design the twists and turns. We just get on board. We laugh as the binding law of gravity is suspended, and we scream because it looks like we’re going to hurtle off into space. Grace brings us back into contact with the children we once were (and still are)—children who loved to ride roller coasters, to smile and yell and throw our hands up in the air. Grace, in other words, is terrifyingly fun, and like any ride worth standing in line for, it is worth coming back to again and again. In fact, God’s one-way love may be the only ride that never gets old, the only ride we thankfully never outgrow.

It is hard to discern what he is driving at in this analogy, but the general idea is that a life of grace is comparable to an out-of-control roller coaster ride.

We also see this embracing of chaos in his call for everyone to throw away their to-do lists:

Grace turns our world upside down. It disrespects our values, pops the bubble of our self-righteousness, suspends reciprocity, and introduces chaos. It throws our to-do lists out the window. But perhaps the scariest and most offensive part of all is the question it asks… What do you want to do? What are you going to do now that you don’t have to do anything? (182)

In all of this, Tullian completely ignores the biblical call to holiness. A minister who repeats the following sample of verses is in danger of being dubbed a legalist by Tullian:

Lev. 19:2: “Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy.”

2 Tim. 8-9: “But join with me in suffering for the gospel, by the power of God, who has saved us and called us to a holy life.”

Heb. 12:14: “Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord.”

1 John 3:9: “No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God.”

4) Antinomianism Is a Myth

A somewhat inexplicable flaw of Tullian’s is his denial that antinomianism actually exists. He quotes Judy Koch as joking that “bigfoot called my unicorn an antinomian.” The implication is that there is no such thing as antinomianism in the real world. Antinomianism is mere mythology.

Tullian asserts that he himself has never met an antinomian, and he gives this anecdote:

Godfrey used to say in class that there have been many antinomian controversies throughout history, but in many cases the legalists won them by default, since the antinomians never showed. In other words, they’re hypothetical in the truest sense…. These claims certainly line up with my nearly twenty years of ministry experience. I’ve never actually met anyone who has been truly gripped by God’s amazing grace in the Gospel who is then so ungrateful that they don’t care about respecting or obeying Him. (195)

Since antinomianism is just a myth, there is no need of “balancing” grace by warning against using grace to justify your sin.

God loves us independently of what we may or may not bring to the table. There are no strings attached! No ifs, ands, or buts. No qualifiers or conditions. No need for balance. No broccoli in sight! Grace is the most dangerous, expectation-wrecking, smile–creating, counterintuitive reality there is. (37)

Though Tullian says there is no need for balance, the biblical writers disagree. They repeatedly warn that we not use grace as a license for immorality (see Rom. 6:1; Gal. 5:13; 1 Pet. 2:16; Jude 4).

In spite of the clear warning in the Bible, Tullian is convinced that the church is much too concerned about people using grace as a license to sin.

Christians often speak about grace with a thousand qualifications. They add all sorts of buts and brakes. Listen for them! Our greatest concern, it seems, is that people will take advantage of grace and use it as a justification to live licentiously… The biggest lie Satan wants the church to believe is that grace is dangerous and therefore needs to be kept in check…. Grace is radically unbalanced. It contains no but: it is unconditional, uncontrollable, unpredictable, and undomesticated—or else it is not grace. (129, 180)

Tullian ignores the consistent biblical warning against antinomianism. Yes, Christ warned against and rebuked the legalistic Pharisees, but he also pronounced judgment on those who profess his name, but are “workers of lawlessness” (see Matt. 7:21-23). The apostle Paul warned against both legalists and antinomians. Second Peter, Jude, and James were especially written as polemicals against antinomianism.

5) Unbiblical Applications

Perhaps the biggest danger in all of this is in its application, especially for parents. There is an inevitable connection between doctrine and life. Bad doctrine will eventually lead to a bad life, or a bad life inevitably results in bad doctrine. This is why Paul calls Timothy to “watch your life and doctrine closely” (1 Tim. 4:16).

The Bible speaks of the blessing and necessity of receiving a word of rebuke. Psalm 141:5 says, “Let a righteous man strike me–it is a kindness; let him rebuke me –it is oil on my head” (see also Prov. 3:11; Luke 17:3; 2 Tim. 3:16; 4:2; Rev. 3:19).

Tullian, on the other hand, sees rebuke as “the voice of the law,” while “the voice of grace” does not judge. He then tells of his experiences in his “rebellious years” of interacting with various family friends who were concerned for him. The one who came as “the voice of the law” rebuked him, confronting him in his sin and calling him to repent. While everything he said was correct, the rebellious Tullian tuned him out after five minutes. Another family friend came as “the voice of grace” and just told him that he loved him and would be there for him, then he switched the subject to talk about sports.

Although the Bible commands us to rebuke and commends it as a blessing, the pragmatic Tullian condemns it basically because it does not work.

He then gives a number of examples of one-way love parenting. He again tells of his rebellious years, when he had already been kicked out of his house. He would regularly get and lose various jobs. One time that he lost a job, he called his father and insisted, “Rent’s due. And I don’t have any money.” When his father asked what happened to his job, Tullian just lied and said something about cutbacks. His father arranged for them to meet at Denny’s.

When they met, Tullian’s father gave him a signed blank check and said, “Take whatever you need. This should hold you over until you can find another job.” Tullian points out that his father did not probe into why he lost the job and did not yell at him for doing so. He didn’t give a limit of any amount of money.

This is one-way love! This is supposedly what God is like, and what we should be like as parents. God’s saving grace is just Him giving us a blank check to do what we want. Tullian unintentionally illustrates how deadly this application is when he tells about his own response to his father’s on-way love:

And I absolutely took advantage! I not only remember taking that check and writing it out for much more than I needed, I remember sneaking into my mom and dad’s house on numerous occasions and stealing checks from out of his checkbook. I mastered forging his signature. I went months at one point without a job, because I didn’t need one! Any time I needed money, I would go steal another check and forge his signature—five hundred dollars, three hundred dollars, seven hundred dollars. I completely abused his kindness—and he knew it! Years later he told me that he saw all those checks being cashed, but he decided not to say anything about it at the time. It didn’t happen immediately, but that demonstration of unconditional grace was the beginning of God doing a miraculous work in my heart and life. (56)

Tullian also tells of how Billy and Ruth Graham taught him about one-way love through their example. When asked about how his well-known grandparents reacted to his rebellious years, Tullian informs us: “The truth is, my grandparents never said a single word to me about getting my act together. They never pulled me aside at a family gathering and told me about how I needed to submit myself to Jesus, etc. Never. Only God knows what they were thinking and feeling, but I never picked up on a shred of judgment from them” (156).

Moreover, in his rebellious years, Tullian wore earrings, which especially drove his parents crazy. But his grandmother Ruth would bring him new earrings whenever she visited.

Tullian then uses his own parenting example to illustrate one-way love. He tells how he and his wife (at the time) caught his son doing “some pretty bad stuff. Stuff that we had explicitly and repeatedly told him he was not allowed to do. This was willful defiance, and it was affecting his schoolwork and the rest of the family (sound familiar?)”

He confiscated his unrepentant son’s cell phone and sold it. He also took his son’s car keys and put him on social lockdown so that he could see the seriousness of what he had done. A month later, before heading out of town for a conference, Tullian told his son in his “most earnest, authoritative father voice, that there was only one thing he needed to do while I was gone and that was to not give his mother a hard time. If he didn’t give her any unnecessary headaches, when I got back, we might revisit the phone issue.” Midway through his trip, his wife called to tell him that his request was not being respected. Tullian then tells how he applied one-way love:

Well, I got home, called my son out of his room, and told him we needed to talk. I reminded him of everything I’d said before I left—the conditions under which he would get a phone. He looked at me very sheepishly, knowing he was guilty—again! I talked to him for a few minutes about life and choices and how much we loved him. He listened intently. Then I looked at him and said, “Now put your shoes on, and let’s go to the phone store and get you a new phone.” (160-162)

What Tullian taught his son through his example is that God does not keep his words. His threatenings are hollow.

Even worse, Tullian gives an example of the one-way love of his friend’s father. When this friend of his was sixteen he wrecked his car. He had been drinking, and in fact, he and his friends were all drunk. After assuring his father that he was fine, he confessed that he was drunk. He was terrified at how his father might respond. Later that night, after [Tullian’s friend] made it home, he wept and wept in his father’s study. He was embarrassed, ashamed, guilty. At the end of the ordeal, his father asked him a question: “How about tomorrow we go and get you a new car?” (164-165).

Apparently God will not only refuse to punish us when we sin, but He just blesses us all the more. This is a total denial of biblical parenting. Tullian is encouraging parents to deliberately teach their children that their sins have no consequences. We are to give the impression that when we sin God will just give you a hug and say, “It’s alright,” and make room for you to sin more. This is absolute blasphemy.

Why One Way Love Matters

It would be a mistake to dismiss Tullian’s One Way Love as just the latest empty popular work in the evangelical world. This book is significant in that it represents not only a growing antinomian movement in evangelicalism, but also in the Reformed wing of the evangelical world.

Tullian perhaps says more explicitly what many others hold implicitly. In fact, a lot of the antinomianism in today’s church can often be detected not necessarily in what is said, but what is left unsaid. Preachers are silent when it comes to preaching on the necessity of repentance and the call for the Christian to live in holiness.

Sometimes they mask their antinomianism by using terms that sound good on the surface. For example, many churches proclaim themselves to be “gospel-centered.” That certainly sounds good, but the term is often used as a catch-phrase for people promoting the idea that “Christ obeyed so I do not have to.” You will also hear people speaking against “Christless Christianity.” Again, our instinct is to join the fight against “Christless Christianity,” but then we come to find out that the preacher means that Christless Christianity is any form of Christianity that says that the Christian is obligated to obey God.

One consequence of the spread of antinomianism in the church is that it makes biblical, orthodox churches increasingly aberrant. Biblically-sound churches will be (and already are) labeled as legalistic for preaching the biblical truths of the necessity of repentance and the importance of a Christian’s obedience to God’s moral law.

Increasingly, people who want to sin and still be a Christian will find a haven in synagogues of Satan that promote an unholy God that makes allowance for sin and a form of salvation that does not require repentance or obedience.

But these havens are not safe havens—to follow doctrines of demons that lead to a demon-controlled life will surely lead to the same lake of fire to which the demons and their followers are going.

The stakes are high, the temptation to fold and compromise is great. We need to pray and resolve, by the power of the Spirit, as individuals and as a church, to stand our ground. Pray that we will remain a pillar and foundation of God’s truth for generations to come. Pray that we may ever be what God calls us to be: a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that we may declare the praises of him who called us out of darkness into his wonderful light (1 Pet. 2:9).

[1] After I wrote a complaint to Westminster, they stopped selling all Tullian’s books, but I strongly suspect that they only stopped selling his books because of his recent moral failures, not for the content of the book. I suspect this because they still sell other pro-antinomian books, such as Steve Brown’s A Scandalous Freedom.

[2] Tullian often uses secular examples to prove his spiritual points. Throughout the book, he uses football coach Urban Meyer, actors Robert Downey and Mel Gibson, fictional character Jean Valjean, and secular psychologists as evidence.