Gerhard Visscher on James Coates & Romans 13
In a recent series of Facebook posts Gerhard Visscher (former professor at the Canadian Reformed seminary in Hamilton) offered a critique of James Coates’ recent sermon on Romans 13. Visscher worries that Coates’ sermon is “causing confusion” in their church community. I assume he means the Canadian Reformed churches. He writes, “I am not posting the sermon itself here because I do not wish to promote its content, which I find wanting… please be careful how you share it.” Those are strong words. Not “be a Berean and search the Scriptures to see if these things are so” not “here’s how the passage should be understood” but “be careful how you share it” and don’t listen to it yourself. I won’t attempt here to respond to all that Visscher wrote. Instead, I would like to address a couple significant problems with Visccher’s position as he articulated it. First , he claims that it is an exaggeration to say that...