Ligonier Ministries: Being Defamed, We Sue

“Being defamed, we intreat.” (1 Corinthians 4:13)

I received an email this week from a gentleman whose name I recognized and whose opinions I respect. His email was about a conversation that he had with a Reformed seminary professor over the Ligonier Ministries lawsuit. I thought his comments were worth repeating here, so I obtained his permission to post the content of his email:

Dear Mr. Vance,

R.C. Sproul has been a great blessing to me and my family. Discovering that his ministry had sued a Christian blogger came as quite a shock. My admiration for Dr. Sproul caused me in my initial impressions of the situation to side with Ligonier Ministries. I tried to find some kind of justification to condemn you, but that only lasted up until I started investigating the details.

I realize now that you’ve probably had to deal with a lot of that. We’ve all got personal biases, and our biases will usually cause us to take sides and defend those we admire and condemn those we don’t know. Few people seem to know who you are, but a lot of people know who R.C. Sproul is, and for the most part R.C. Sproul is a highly respected minister of the gospel. Surely no one wants to believe that the ministry of such a smart theologian could be acting so stupidly, or that R.C. Sproul could have surrounded himself with fools and men of such poor character as Tim Dick.

The easiest way out of all of this is to try and find some logical excuse and some biblical justification for why it was okay for Ligonier to sue you. But as much as I’ve searched for some kind of out-clause in 1 Corinthians 6 I just can’t find it. I’ve seen the allegations that you haven’t proven that you’re a Christian (at least to some people’s satisfaction), and since 1 Corinthians 6 doesn’t explicitly prohibit Christians from suing non-Christians then it’s apparently okay for Ligonier to sue you. If ever there was a case of straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel this would be it.

I find it incredible that the Reformation Study Bible, which R.C. Sproul is the General Editor for, clearly condemns the practice of Christians suing Christians, because of the disgrace that it brings upon the church, and how it ruins the church’s testimony for the Lord Jesus. In the commentary for 1 Corinthians 6:7 the Reformation Study Bible says:

“Nevertheless, if the Corinthians understood the serious implications of all the improprieties in their church, and if they appreciated the qualities that should characterize believers (cf. 12:4-7), they would much sooner bear injustice than bring disgrace upon the Christian community by publicly exposing their misdeeds in the civil courts.”

What’s the intent behind this lawsuit prohibition? It’s to prevent the church from undermining it’s testimony before unbelievers. The question shouldn’t even be “Can Frank Vance prove unequivocally that he’s a Christian to everyone’s satisfaction?” The question is “Did Ligonier’s lawsuit bring disgrace upon the Christian community by publicly exposing their misdeeds in the civil courts?” The answer is self-evident and anyone at Ligonier with half a brain in his head should have known that before they sued you.

Anyone who continues to claim that it was okay for Ligonier to sue you, for whatever reason they think they can concoct, are acting just like Pharisees. They’re reading strictly the letter of the law while ignoring the spirit of the law — the intent. That kind of legalism is exactly what Christ blasted the Pharisees over.

I took my family to a conference recently at a church in a neighboring community. The messages by the speakers were very encouraging. All the speakers were Reformed. One of the speakers is a seminary professor that teaches at a small but well respected Reformed seminary. He’s also written several excellent books. Over lunch we had some interesting dialogue about some of our mutual areas of concern, including theological errors that have crept into the church, such as Federal Vision (this man is well known for his opposition to Federal Vision/Auburn Avenue doctrine). We also discussed church discipline, so quite naturally the subject of R.C. Sproul, Jr. and his defrocking was discussed. That then segued into R.C. Sproul’s public defense of his defrocked son, which then segued into the Ligonier defamation lawsuit.

This seminary professor struck me as a man who formed opinions on matters only after careful research and examination. But for some odd reason the Ligonier lawsuit proved to be a standout exception. This man has a personal relationship with R.C. Sproul and based on what he said it was obvious that he’d been talking to R.C. Sproul about the lawsuit. Here’s what he said:

“I haven’t read Vance’s site, but I did get Ligonier’s side of the story. What I was told is that they tried to sit down and talk with Vance. They told Vance that what he’d heard about Soli Deo Gloria was all wrong. But he just refused to listen. He threatened to go public anyway. They offered to settle the dispute with Vance ecclesiastically but Vance refused to give them the name of his church and pastor. So they felt they didn’t have any other choice but to get an injunction.”

So I said, “If you’ve only gotten Ligonier’s side of the story then you haven’t been following this thing carefully. Vance has a lot of detailed information on his blog. He’s covered this story thoroughly since the very beginning. What you’ve been told by Ligonier isn’t what was being said by Ligonier until just very recently. They’ve been lying about a lot of stuff. I hate to say that about them but I’ve experienced it first-hand and so have a lot of other people too. I know because I’ve called Ligonier myself to try and figure out what was going on. Every time I called it was a different story. First they said there wasn’t a lawsuit at all. I asked them how there couldn’t be a lawsuit when the Orlando Sentinel was reporting on the lawsuit. They told me the paper didn’t know what they were talking about. So I called the court and had no trouble getting a case number from a clerk and verifying that there was a Ligonier vs. Vance lawsuit. The next day I called Ligonier again and this time they said it wasn’t a lawsuit it was an injunction, like there’s supposedly a big difference. When I pointed out to the customer service rep that it wasn’t only an injunction but they were also suing Vance for defamation the rep told me my information was wrong. Then when I called again later they finally admitted there was a lawsuit but that they’d dropped it. So I checked with the court and it hadn’t been dropped at all. They haven’t said one single thing that’s been truthful. But even if they were being truthful do you think they have biblical justification to circumvent 1 Corinthians 6?”

This Reformed seminary professor, a man that I consider to be a biblical scholar replied, “God has ordained the civil magistrate to be His minister of justice. There are times where it’s appropriate to have the magistrate step in to resolve disputes, sometimes even against a fellow Christian.”

I agreed and said, “Yes, clearly there are cases where calling on the civil magistrate is entirely appropriate, even against a fellow Christian, at least if it involves some criminal act. But what Ligonier sued Vance for wasn’t a criminal act. What they sued him for and alleged is that he was about to commit an act of defamation against them and they asked the judge for prior restraint in the form of an injunction. That’s something that judges hardly ever do because a prior restraint injunction is viewed as such a blatant violation of free speech rights. It was foolish for them to even attempt it. But my bigger concern isn’t about the civil law but about biblical law. What does the Bible say the Christian is supposed to do about defamation, either before he’s about to be defamed, or after he’s already been defamed? You say that Ligonier was justified in suing Vance because it hasn’t been shown that he’s a believer. So for the sake of argument let’s just go ahead and say he’s not a believer. Ligonier says that Vance defamed them, or that he was about to defame them. I don’t see that it makes any difference whether Vance is a Christian or not. Isn’t Scripture plain in what it says Christians are to do when they’re defamed? It says ‘Being defamed, we intreat’. It doesn’t say ‘Being defamed, we sue’.”

It’s really strange what happened then. Here’s a Reformed seminary professor, a genuine scholar and theologian who espouses the five solas of the Reformation, including Sola Scriptura. Yet his rationale for supporting Ligonier’s defamation lawsuit against you was one of the most convoluted and unscriptural things I’ve ever heard. Not only was it unbiblical it wasn’t even logical or rational. I pressed him several times to support his position from Scripture, which he never did. I’m convinced he didn’t because he simply couldn’t. There’s just no biblical support for it.

I’m very dismayed by what happened in that conversation. That Reformed seminary professor’s defense of Ligonier was absolutely pathetic. The fact is though there just isn’t any valid biblical defense for what Ligonier has done, and anyone who continues to defend Ligonier is just making a fool of themselves. I’ve lost considerable respect for that seminary professor. He’s put his personal friendships ahead of his loyalties for the integrity of the gospel of Christ. He’s also undermined his own faithfulness to Sola Scriptura.

When even such learned men can be so willfully blind the Reformed faith in America is in serious trouble. That seminary professor is training future pastors and ministers. I shudder to think of the ramifications of that.

You’re in my prayers Frank, as are our Reformed ministry leaders. May God convict their hearts to be godly men who will stand firm, refusing to compromise the integrity of the Scriptures for the sake of their personal friendships.

Sola Scriptura,

XXXXXXXX

The problems here as I see it are three-fold:

1. Ligonier Ministries is lying to its friends and allies about what they supposedly did prior to suing me (I’ve exposed Ligonier’s lies previously, so no surprise there). Not one single thing that RC Sproul privately told that seminary professor is true. That’s not to say that RC Sproul is a liar, but it is to say that Tim Dick is a liar and at the very least RC Sproul has accepted Tim Dick’s lies as fact and not bothered to investigate matters for himself.
2. Even if Ligonier’s story weren’t a bold-faced lie, Ligonier’s friends and allies (including apparently now even scholarly Reformed seminary professors) would still have to strain out interpretations of 1 Corinthians 6 that just aren’t there in order to say that Ligonier was justified in suing me.
3. Even though “God is no respecter of persons” (Acts 10:34) many Christians are “respecters of persons.” When it comes to RC Sproul, and anything related to him, there are some who treat him as though he can do no wrong. This smacks of man-worship and idolatry.

In spite of men’s personal sentiments for RC Sproul, sentiments which evidently are blinding their abilities to think logically and biblically, Ligonier Ministries has done wrong — very wrong. As Mark Epstein put it in his article, Ligonier: Christendom’s Enron:

“Now there may actually exist a time when a Christian has approbation to use the heathen courts but, as the Bible makes clear, defamation is not a legitimate cause for such action, regardless of the alleged perpetrator’s status.”

David McCrory also has an excellent article on his blog, Covenant Corner, entitled Christian v. Christian which includes quotes from a number of Bible commentaries from 1 Corinthians 6.

The Reformed church in America has reached a new low and nothing demonstrates it more clearly than the Ligonier Ministries vs. Frank Vance lawsuit. The fact that so many Reformed ministry leaders are privately siding with Ligonier only confirms just how far the Reformed church in America has departed from the Scriptures.

Ligonier Ministries is not being held accountable by Reformed ministers for filing an unbiblical lawsuit, as well as repeatedly lying and engaging in a pattern of cover ups about that lawsuit. I’m not aware of one single prominent Reformed minister who has publicly commented on this. Worse yet, at least some of them are privately defending Ligonier’s unbiblical actions. For men who generally seem to know the Scriptures so well they’re now doing an incompetent job of showing it.

Not one single Reformed ministry leader who personally knows RC Sproul and who has shared a speaker’s podium with him has issued a public statement regarding Ligonier’s lawsuit. By their silence these men are demonstrating that they are compromised. If you’re troubled about those Reformed ministers’ apparent agreement with Ligonier’s lawsuit by their silence I would urge you to personally contact those Reformed leaders and express your concerns. Contact information is available at RC Sproul Sinning By Silence. Please comment here with any responses you receive.

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