Posts Tagged ‘Brian McLaren’

Millennial Views of McLaren, Sproul, Driscoll, and MacArthur

Posted: September 4, 2012 in End Time Events
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Postmillennialist’s View of Brian McLaren

Brian McLaren has the philosophy of the liberal postmillennialists who sees the goal of the church to impact the globe and bring in the kingdom. McLaren has contextualized the message of the gospel as well as the lifestyle of Christianity. McLaren’s gospel is social. He desires to save the planet rather the individual sinner.

“African and African American Christians (Black theology) and Latin American Christians (liberation theology, integral missiology) have been hitting these themes with intelligence and passion for decades, but few of us listened to their spokespeople, whether it was Dr. King or Desmond Tutu, Gustavo Gutierrez or Rene Padilla. Eco-feminist theology—articulated by authors like Sallie McFague and Mary Grey….In many ways all of these voices echo what earlier Christian leaders (from Charles Finney to Walter Rauschenbusch…had been saying: the modern Western understanding of the gospel was too often truncated, shallow, thin, bland, anemic, privatized, personalized, polarized, and compromised” ( Brian McLaren. An Emergent Manifesto of Hope, Church Emerging: Or Why I Still Use the Word Postmodern but with Mixed Feeling. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007, 147-148).

Covenant postmillennialist, Loraine Boettner, provides the theological basis for postmillennialism and an example of allegoralizing the millennial passage of Isaiah 11:6 which predicts that in the future kingdom, “The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb.” Here is how Boettner allegoralizes this prophecy for Israel: “A fitting example of the wolf dwelling with the lamb is seen in the change that came over the vicious persecutor Saul of Tarsus, who was a wolf ravening and destroying, but who was so transformed by the Gospel of Christ that he became a lamb. After his conversion he lost his hatred for the Christians, and became instead their humble friend, confidant, defender” (Loraine Boettner, “Postmillennialism, in theThe Meaning of the Millennium: Four Views, ed. Robert G. Clouse, Downers Grove, Il. InterVarsity Press, 1977, p. 90). Really, did Isaiah have the conversion of Saul of Tarsus in mind when he wrote to Israel in 700 B.C.?

Amillennialist’s View of R. C. Sproul

Replacement theology states that the church has replaced Israel in this age and is the New Israel to the point of saying that the two terms in the New Testament are interchangeable according to William E. Cox in his Amillennialism Today on pages 46-47.

R. C. Sproul formerly was amillennial but more recently has changed to preterism, which is sill very similar to amillennialism. This view is expounded in Sproul’s The Last Days according to Jesus. R. C. Sproul in the article, The People of God, does not believe in Replacement theology but that there has always been one people of God. In the O. T. it was Israel and in the N.T. it is the church who is the true Israel of God. His conclusion is the similar to Replacement Theology in that the church is not a separate people of God and all the OT promises to Israel must be allegorized to be fulfilled today by the church. Walvoord defines amillennialism in his introduction to Revelation 20: “The amillennial interpretation is essentially a denial that there will be a millennial reign of Christ after His second advent. It is amillennial or nonmillennial because it denies such a literal reign of Christ on earth” (The Revelation of Jesus Christ, page 284). Driscoll also sees only one people of God in his view of Covenant premillennialism.

Covenant Premillennialist’s View of Mark Driscoll

Mark Driscoll takes a mediating position. “The church is not Israel. Israel is an ethnicity, a nation, and a religious system. The church is none of these. When the Bible—Old and New Testaments—uses the term Israel, it always means a group of Jewish people, not the ‘ransomed people of God from every tribe and language and people and nation’ (Rev. 5:9), which is the church.”  I totally agree. Driscoll goes on to refute Reformed theologians’ Replacement theology and also older, dispensationalist who believe in two different peoples of God which in Driscoll’s opinion “blur the distinction between Israel and church. But that negates the statements of God breaking down the dividing wall to form one new humanity” (Eph. 2:11-16).

Basically Driscoll’s view is Covenant Premillennialism which states there “is one people of God.” So today Israel and the church are one people of God. But in the future millennium “the Old Testament prophecies of a national restoration of Israel (Ezek. 36:22-38; Acts 1:5-7) will be fulfilled by racially Jewish Christians in the millennium” (Vintage Church, p. 58). This is where I part company with Driscol. In the millennium the Israel and the church will be distinct as they are today..

Premillennialist’s View of John MacArthur

MacArthur properly connects a literal or normal hermeneutic of separating Israel and the church in regard to his millennial view.

John MacArthur made this connection between Israel and hermeneutics in his controversial lecture, “Why Every Self-Respecting Calvinists Is a Premillennialist” at his Shepherd’s Conference at Grace Community Church on March 7, 2007.

What made MacArthur’s lecture controversial were the Reformed amillennarians present and several well-known amillennarians who were invited to speak at the conference by MacArthur.

When live-blogger Tim Challies posted his initial report about MacArthur’s lecture the blogosphere went nuts with e-mails: “Did you hear what MacArthur said about Calvinism?” “Did you hear what MacArthur said about amillennialism?” “Did you hear what he said about Calvin?” Here are some of MacArthur’s comments about Israel and literal hermeneutics.

“Now all that leads us to this: if you get Israel right you will get eschatology right. If you don’t get Israel right you will never get eschatology right. Never. And you’ll migrate from one view to another just depending on the last book you read or the last lecture you heard . . . . If you get eschatology right it’s because you get Israel right. You get Israel right when you get the Old Testament covenants and promises right. You get the Old Testament covenants and promises right when you get the interpretation of Scripture right. You get interpretation of Scripture right when you’re faithful to a legitimate hermeneutic and God’s integrity is upheld. Get your hermeneutics right, you’ll get the Old Testament promises right. Get promises right, you’ll get Israel right. Get Israel right, you’ll get eschatology right. The Bible calls God the God of Israel over 200 times. The God of Israel. There are over 2,000 references to Israel in Scripture, not one of them means anything but Israel. Not one of them, including Romans 9:6 and Galatians 6:16 which is the only two passages that amillennialists go to trying to convince us that that cancels out the other 2,000. There is no difficulty in interpreting those as simply meaning Jews who were believers; the Israel of God. Israel always means Israel, never means anything but Israel. Seventy three New Testament uses of Israel always mean Israel.

Arnold Fruchtenbaum presents a powerful refutation to the claim that terms Israel and the church are interchangeable in the New Testament when he states that the word Israel is used seventy-three times in the New Testament in Issues in Dispensationalism on page 118 and then proceeds to list all seventy-three references in the New Testament. When you read the seventy-three references to Israel, it is obvious that the two terms are not interchangeable. All of the seventy-three listings refer to ethnic Israel.

Gay Theologians’ Interpretation of Six Passages Denouncing Homosexuality

Posted: August 16, 2012 in Marriage
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In response to the many negative commits from McLaren’s blog mentioned in Part 1, McLaren posted a second blog defending his view:

Please be assured that as a pastor and as someone who loves and seeks to follow   the Bible, I am aware of Genesis 19, Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, Romans 1, 1 Corinthians 6:9, and related texts. Believe me, I have read them and prayerfully pondered them, and have read extensively on all the many sides of the issue. I understand that for many people, these verses end all dialogue and people like me must seem horribly stupid not to see what’s there so clearly to them. I wish they could understand that some of us encounter additional levels of complexity when we try honestly and faithfully to face these texts.[1]

Let’s examine how homosexuals interpret these pertinent Scriptures. There are pro-homosexual Bible teachers who claim that the Word of God does not condemn homosexuality such as Walter Barnett and John J. McNeill. McNeill writes: “Nowhere in the Scripture is there a clear condemnation of a loving sexual relationship between two gay persons.”[2]

Genesis 19:1-11

There are six passages that deal with homosexuality about which these Gay theologians claim no condemnation. The first passage is Genesis 19:1-11. The first homosexual interpretation states that the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was not simply homosexuality but homosexual gang rape. “Jude 7 gives a commentary on this passage. It clearly states that the sin of Sodom involved gross immorality and going after strange or different flesh. It is no accident that Jude describes their actions by using ‘fornication.’ The verb definitely refers to sexual immorality.”[3]

The next homosexual reinterpretation claims that the sin of Sodom was a gross violation of a hospitality code. Lot broke the code of hospitality because he was a resident alien. He received two foreigners who might have hostile intentions. The two visitors should have first been received by the citizens of Sodom. If this was the case why did Lot not just introduce everyone if the problem was a breach of hospitality? Why did Lot offer his daughters for sexual pleasure, if the problem was a lack of hospitality? If the sin of Sodom was a breach of the hospitality code, Lot broke it and not the inhabitants of Sodom. But Lot was not judged and the two cities were.

Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13

Another passage the pro-homosexuals reinterpret is Leviticus 18:22. In Leviticus 18:3, God commanded Israel not to live like the unsaved nations of Egypt and Canaan and then proceeded to specifically instruct what this meant. In two passages, God forbad the practice of homosexuality. Leviticus 18:22 forbids homosexuality and 20:13 assigns the death penalty for homosexuality. Here is how one pro-homosexual advocate dismisses these prohibitions:

It is interesting how lightly evangelicals have taken other proscriptions found in the same Old Testament Code, e.g.: rules against eating of rabbit (Lev. 11:26), oysters, claims, shrimp, and lobster (Lev. 11:10ff), and rare steaks (Lev. 17:10). Evangelicals do not picket or try to close down seafood restaurants nor do we keep kosher kitchens. We do not always order steaks “well-done.” We eat pork and ham. The wearing of clothes made from interwoven linen and wool (Deut. 22:11) does not seem to bother us at all. Evangelicals do not say, in accordance with these same laws of cultic purification (Lev. 20:13), that those who practice homosexual activity should be executed as prescribed. Evangelicals do not demand the death penalty for the Jeane Dixons of this world (Lev.20:27) nor do we “cut off” from among the people, as is demanded by this same Code, those who have intercourse with women during menstruation (Lev. 20:18) and those who marry women who have been divorced (Lev. 21:14). Evangelical do not keep out of the pulpit those who are visually handicapped or lame or those “with a limb too long” (Lev. 21:18ff).[4]

McLaren is very sympathetic with Bair’s view of the irrelevance of the Old Testament Law and Evangelical inconsistent application of the Old Testament Law:

These questions are all the more challenging for some of us when we realize that the Leviticus texts themselves, if taken literally, call for the death penalty. Nobody (I don’t think?) takes that literally, nor do we take many of the other 611 Mosaic proscriptions literally. Why take these selected verses literally, and only partially so? And it gets even more complex for some of us when we realize that people in later Biblical times didn’t enforce some of these proscriptions literally either. For example, David committed adultery but wasn’t killed as Leviticus 20:10 would require; why didn’t Nathan require the death penalty for David and Bathsheba when he brought the word of   the Lord?[5]

The issue with the priestly Holiness Code of Leviticus is not a literal hermeneutic but whither God’s people today are dispensationally still under the Law as a rule of life. The answer is no. Still there are moral principles from the Old Testament reincorporated in the New Testament that are binding today. Some of these restated moral principles were before the Law such as the capital punishment requirement in Genesis 9 which is restated in Romans 13. As in David’s case, there are exceptions which do not eliminate the rule. While the civil, ceremonial, and moral aspects of the Law were terminated with Christ (Romans 10:4) some of the sins condemned in the Old Testament are likewise condemned in the New Testament.

The Mosaic law has been done away in its entirety as a code. God is no longer guiding the life of man by this particular code. In its place He has introduced the law of Christ. Many of the individual commands within that law are new, but some are not. Some of the ones which are old were also found in the Mosaic law and they are now incorporated completely and are forever done away. As part of the law of Christ they are binding on the believer today.[6]

Romans 1:26-27

In the New Testament, Gay theologians use the “abuse argument” to justify homosexuality in Romans 1:26-27. The most common reinterpretation is that Paul is condemning unnatural homosexual acts. For example:

In his catalog of vices in which homosexual behavior is listed, it should be noted that it is included with what the apostle regarded as certain heterosexual sins such as adultery, fornication, Epicurean over-indulgence, and general abuse of the body. For perspective, note should be taken of Paul’s equally weighty inclusion in this passage of drunkards and the repeated censure of the greedy, the grasping, and those who steal. Here are simply other examples of sinful abuse, since, for example, Paul advocated alcoholic temperance but not necessarily abstinence. He recommends to young Timothy that he drink some wine for his (1 Tim. 5:23). Elsewhere, Paul urges whole-hearted enthusiasm in all that one undertakes, but that does not mean the abuse of over-indulgence, greed, or coveting in the process (1 Cor. 10:31). One should not assume uncritically that there is in the Corinthian passage a proof text against all homosexuality or even all homosexual acts   Of course, homosexual behavior can be perverted and sinful and exploitative just as heterosexual activity can be – or any kind of activity can be – but this is not the same as rejecting either sexual orientation or specific acts as sinful as such.[7]

It is correct that Paul is condemning abuses in this vice list. However, for a vice to be an abuse there must be a corresponding norm that is godly and healthy. The adultery and fornication is the abuse of the “one flesh” relationship of marriage that God ordained in Genesis 2. What is the responsible norm that homosexuality is the abuse of in Scripture? The norm is not godly or responsible homosexuality but heterosexuality as stated in Genesis 1 and 2.[8]

It is also argued by pro-homosexual advocates that to  go “against nature” in Romans 1:26-27 is for an heterosexual to commit homosexual acts, which is against his nature or unnatural, and not for constitutional homosexuals to be involved in homosexuality which is natural for them.

The homosexual is not desirous that everyone should be like him or her in sexual preference. Homosexuality is a variation from what is normal, i.e., heterosexuality. It is not, however, a sin or disorder. Nature is full of variations from its overall design. Some people are midgets, others are albinos, still others are left handed. These, like homosexuals, are and always will be minority variations from the majority. These differences are not unique to our culture and time. They have always existed and will continue to do so. They evidence neither sin nor the fallen condition of humanity, but merely the lack of uniformity in nature. Rather than condemn them, we should affirm them and rejoice that they exist.[9]

There are two reasons this is a faulty argument for the meaning of “against nature.” The reason this argument is eisegesis is because homosexuality is not genetic or the result of being born a constitutional homosexual. Studies have not proved this. In addition, how could God condemn as sin a condition for which the person is not responsible? The second reason is that “against nature” means against the natural order for sexuality that God established in the Garden in Genesis when He stated “therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh” (Genesis 2:24).

1 Corinthians 6:9-11 and 1 Timothy 1:8-10

In 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 and 1 Timothy 1:8-10, Paul includes in these two sin or vice lists homosexuality. The Greek words malakoi and arsenokoitai refer respectfully to the passive and active partners in homosexuality. The homosexual interpretation states that this list cannot be taken seriously because we all are covetous.[10] “To say that a sin in a long list does not draw special condemnation does not mean Scripture approves the action. A vice list is still a vice list. Moreover, there is a failure to make a biblical distinction between a repentant sinner who seeks with God’s help to be free of some sin but who may at some time fail and an unrepentant sinner who follows a planned and uninterrupted course of disobedience. The vice lists refer to the latter, not the former. There is grace and forgiveness for the former.”[11]

Conclusion

Homosexuality is clearly condemned in Scripture like other sins. Homosexuality is not genetic nor the result of someone’s environment. Homosexuality is a choice and homosexuals are responsible for their actions. Therefore homosexuals should not be given a minority status. As Carson predicts, this will soon be a battle for the church of epic proportions: “I suspect that in our generation, for better and for worse, the homosexuality issue is becoming one of these triggering issues (like indulgences at the time of the Reformation) that is forcing upon us some profound reflections on whether we will submit to Scripture.[12]

Homosexuals can be saved just like other sinners (1 Cor 6). God loves homosexuals, Jesus died for homosexuals, and believers should seek to win them. But making excuses for their behavior or being uncertain if homosexuality is sin or not, as McLaren and other Emerging church leaders do, is not in the best interest of homosexuals and will not help lead them to Christ and out of their sin.

“I believe many emergent leaders are truly torn up inside over homosexuality. They don’t want to hurt anyone. But their refusal to take a stance (and sometimes their decision to take an unbiblical stance) also hurts people—it hurts those struggling to overcome sexual temptation, it hurts those gently calling homosexuals (along with other sinners) to repentance, and it hurts those who dare to speak with certainty on this issue.”[13] An example of some leaders who are already paying a price for taking a stand against homosexuality is Peter Akinola, primate of Nigeria, and Archbishop Livingstone Mpalanyi Nkoyoyo of Uganda who sacrificed financial aid from the West rather than be implicated in the Episcopal church’s homosexual scandals, and the rest of the global South who know exactly what emerging leaders should think about homosexuality.”[14]

[1]  Brian McLaren. “Brian McLaren on the Homosexual Question,” in “Out of Ur,” a Leadership Journal blog, http://blog.christianitytoday.com/outofur/archives/2006/01/brian_mclaren_o.html

[2] John J. McNeill, “Homosexuality: Challenging the Church to Grow,” Christian Century, March 11, 1987: 246.

[3]P. Michael Uklega, Homosexuality and the Old Testament. Bibliotheca Sacra (July-September 1983) 262.

[4] Ralph Bair, An Evangelical Look at Homosexuality (Chicago: Moody Press, 1963) 3.

[5] Brian McLaren. “Brian McLaren on the Homosexual Question,” in “Out of Ur,” a Leadership Journal blog, http://blog.christianitytoday.com/outofur/archives/2006/01/brian_mclaren_o.html

[6] Charles Ryrie, “The End of the Law,” Bibliotheca Sacra 124 (July-September 1967): 246.

[7] Ralph Blair, An Evangelical Look at Homosexuality (Chicago: Moody Press, 1963), 6.

[8] We find it significant that those favoring homosexuality seldom discuss Genesis 1 and 2. However, those chapters recount God’s creation of man as male and female, not male and male or female and female. God then explicitly tells Adam and Eve that they are to reproduce. Does this not clearly imply that God’s desired order for human sexuality is that men and women will have sexual relations with one another, not with members of the same sex? We think so. Some may object that God created man as male and female only because that was the only way to propagate the race; other than reproduction; homosexual and lesbian relationships are fine….The same God who created Adam from the dust of the ground could have produced the rest of the race by special creation, and the rest of that race could have been male only. God created woman not because there was no way to produce the race, but because woman is the proper helpmate for man (John S. Feinberg and Paul D. Feinberg, Ethics for a Brave New World [Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1993], 432).

[9] Walter Barnett, “Homosexuality and the Bible,” in Pendle Hill Pamphlets (Wallingford, PA: Pendle Hill Publications, 1979), 21-22.

[10] Virginia Mollenkott and Letha Scanzoni, Is the homosexual My Neighbor? Another View (San Francisco: Harper & Ro, 1978), 70.

[11] Fineberg, 200.

[12] D. A. Carson. Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005), 172.

[13] Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck. Why We’re Not Emergent, (Chicago: Moody, 2008), 47.

[14] Ibid., p. 48.

Chick-fil-A, Christians, and Homosexual Activists, Part 1

Posted: August 15, 2012 in Marriage
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The recent Chick-fil-A battle with homosexual advocates (and activists who retaliated to the Appreciation Day with the “Kiss In”) is just one more skirmish in this long war. The clash, however, is not just between the secular and the sacred, but between alleged believers.

Here is what Emerging church leader, Brian McLaren said in a Leadership Journal blog about homosexuality:

Frankly, many of us don’t know what we should think about homosexuality. We’ve heard all sides but no position has yet won our confidence so that we can say “it  seems good to the Holy Spirit and us.” That alienates us from both the liberals and conservatives who seem to know exactly what we should think. Even if we are convinced that all homosexual behavior is always sinful, we still want to treat gay and lesbian people with more dignity, gentleness, and respect than our colleagues do. If we think that there may actually be a legitimate context for some homosexual relationships, we know  that the biblical arguments are nuanced and multilayered, and the pastoral ramifications  are staggeringly complex. We aren’t sure if or where lines are to be drawn, nor do we know how to enforce with fairness whatever lines are drawn.

Perhaps we need a five-year moratorium on making pronouncements. In the meantime, we’ll practice prayerful Christian dialogue, listening respectfully, disagreeing agreeably. When decisions need to be made, they’ll be admittedly provisional. We’ll keep our ears attuned to scholars in biblical studies, theology, ethics, psychology, genetics, sociology, and related fields. Then in five years, if we have clarity, we’ll speak; if not, we’ll set another five years for ongoing reflection. After all, many important issues in church history took centuries to figure out. Maybe this moratorium would help us resist   the “winds of doctrine” blowing furiously from the left and right, so we can patiently wait for the wind of the Spirit to set our course. [1]

Brian McLaren said we needed a five-year moratorium in order to consult scholars in different fields including ethics. Let’s examined what scholars in ethics have discovered about homosexuality. The problem with McLaren’s proposal of a five year moratorium is that the Word of God has not taken a neutral stance of this issue. I my next posts we will dig into the teaching of Scripture on homosexuality.

Barnabas Piper, son of John PIper, in World Magazine has taken another response to the open conflict between homosexuals and Christians:

Mike Huckabee, the conservative former governor of Arkansas and one-time presidential candidate, started a group on Facebook recently to declare Aug. 1 “Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day.” It is an effort to support the popular but currently beleaguered fast food chain in the face of the vitriolic criticism after public statements by Dan Cathy, the company’s president, regarding same-sex marriage. So far more than 452,000 people have committed to attend. (Some have called this a movement in support of free speech,but that isn’t what Huckabee writes on his own page.) I agree whole-heartedly with Dan Cathy’s comments (see here and here). I believe in the biblical definition of marriage. I think Christians in prominent positions speaking in a reasonable and level-headed way about their convictions is a good thing. On top of that I am a borderline addict of Chick-fil-A’s sandwiches, waffle fries, and sweet tea. But I will not be attending “Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day” on Wednesday. Here’s why.

Homosexuality is one of the most defining, contentious, and complex issues facing this generation of the church. We cannot sacrifice our biblical convictions but neither can we sacrifice the church’s ability to serve people of opposing viewpoints and lifestyles. The 452,000 people supporting Chick-fil-A are delivering more than one message, and the message the homosexual community and its supporters see is “us versus you.” The event also sends a message of separatism and territorialism in the “reclaiming” of those restaurants that are being boycotted, a collective action easily seen as a shaking of the for a wagging of the finger. Convictions, especially biblical ones, will divide people. That is inevitable, but not desirable. The separation of believers and unbelievers, when it happens, must  be a last resort or an unavoidable result. Actions to the contrary, those that clearly promote an “us versus them” mentality, are most often unhelpful. There is a time for Christians to engage in boycotting, such as when a business deals in obviously immoral areas or is clearly unethical in its methods. But for a mass of Christians to descend upon Chick-fil-A restaurants across the country tomorrow to support the leadership’s view on this issue is, I believe, a bold mistake. So I stand with Dan Cathy in his biblical affirmation of family but I cannot stand with those making a movement out of his beliefs. I do not question the motives of Mike Huckabee or those thousands joining him, but what about the wider effects? How is the Kingdom of God served by this? Is Jesus represented well to the gay community and the politicians pandering to them? Marching on Chick-fil-A tomorrow like an army will produce nothing more than defined battle lines, and the result will be greater contention and fewer softened hearts. On both sides.

In my next posts, I want to examine the Biblical teaching on homosexuality and what the Christian response should be.

[1] Brian McLaren. “Brian McLaren on the Homosexual Question,” in “Out of Ur,” a Leadership Journal blog, http://blog.christianitytoday.com/outofur/archives/2006/01/brian_mclaren_o.html

Contextualize without Compromise, Part 3

Posted: June 10, 2010 in Contextualization
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One of the debated areas of engaging culture is pulpit language. Driscoll defends his postion in this clip.

There are preachers, however, who disagree with Driscoll’s use of language: Phil Johnson, Tim Challies, and John MacArthur.

The following quotes are from MacArthur’s article entitled The Rape of the Song of Solomon:

Apparently the shortest route to relevance in church ministry right now is for the pastor to talk about sex in garishly explicit terms during the Sunday morning service. If he can shock parishioners with crude words and sophomoric humor, so much the better. The defenders of this trend solemnly inform us that without such a strategy it is well-nigh impossible to connect with today’s “culture.” (In contemporary evangelicalism that term has become a convenient label for just about everything that is uncultured and uncouth.)

Mark Driscoll has boldly led the parade down this carnal path. He is by far the best-known and most prolific popular proponent of handling the Song of Solomon that way. He has said repeatedly that this is his favorite passage of Scripture, and he has come back to it again and again in recent years, culminating in a highly publicized series released on video via the Internet last year.

This debate illustrates the point seen in Galatians 2:11-21 that engaging the culture can go to far or not far enough. Paul’s three principles help keep us in check.

1. We Do Not Change our Message to Engage our Culture (See Part 1)

2. We Do Adapt our Methods to Engage our Culture (See Part 2)

3. We Cannot Allow Moralism to Limit our Methods

A. Peter had contextualized in Antioch and was eating Boganles’ Country Ham Biscuits with the Gentile believers.

B. When the Legalists from Jerusalem came, Peter gave up his Christian liberty and ministry to the Gentiles and started eating bagels with cream cheese with the Jews. Peter who was properly engaging culture withdrew and lost his ministry. There are two extremes in engaging culture. One is go too far into syncretism. This is where many in the Emergent Church (Brian McLaren and Spencer Burke) are today with its Social Gospel. The other is not to go far enough with isolationism. This is where many of our conservative churches are. Our critics say our only social involvement is condemning abortion and homosexuality.

C. Peter knew better because of his experience with Cornelius in Acts 10. But Peter caved under the pressure of his legalists. His fear of man supplanted his fear of God and became his snare.

D. Paul rebuked Peter for compromising the message of salvation by his actions.

Peter’s actions preached: “You must please God by your rules, not eating pork, etc. By your works.” Paul’s message was this: “You cannot please God by what you do but by accepting what Jesus has already done in His death, burial, and resurrection.”

E. Moralism or Legalism is the enemy of the Gospel in

1) Justification which Paul will elaborate on in Galatians 3 and 4.

2) Sanctification which Paul will expand on in Galatians 5 and 6.

Conclusion. At Advance 10 Conference, Tullian Tchividjan, pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, told the story of Donald Grey Barnhouse who pastored 10th Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, PA. In a sermon Barnhouse asked this question, “What would Philadelphia look like, if Satan took over? What would any city look like if Satan took complete control? Here is his answer, “All bars would be closed. There would be no drunkenness. All pornography would be banished and pristine streets would be filled with tidy pedestrians who smiled at each other. There would be no swearing and all of the children would say ‘No sir’ and ‘Yes ma’am.’ And the churches would be full every Sunday where Christ is not preached.”

Most of us would be satisfied if our cities, lives and churches looked like what Barnhouse described. The moralists and legalists would be happy. So would Satan. Satan would have succeeded in convincing us that salvation is earned by our morality: what we do not do and what we do practice. Satan would also have succeeded in brainwashing Christians into thinking that a life of not breaking the rules of our particular church equal spirituality. In Galatians 2:19 and 20, Paul tells us what is the life that pleases God. I am dead to thinking that pleasing others by keeping their rules is spirituality. I am dead to that thinking because “I am crucified with Christ.” But now I can live because I have by faith been justified i.e., been declared righteous, based on what Jesus did not what I did. But now I live as a believer because Christ is in me and by faith in Christ who loved me and gave Himself for me I live for Him out of love for what He has done.

An Expose of Emerging Church Preaching, Part 4

Posted: November 20, 2009 in Emerging Church, Homiletics/Preaching
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What unifies the doctrinally divergent EC is the passion to impact culture. This passion is driven, in part, by the philosophy of liberal postmillennialism where the church will build the Kingdom of God which is followed by the return of Christ. The premillennial view of Christ’s return is that Christ will return and establish the culture altering Kingdom, not the church.

Tony Jones after poking fun of pretribulational rapturists like Tim LaHaye who say “when things ‘down here’ become bad enough, Jesus will return in glory.’ But those of us represented in this book take the contrary view. God’s promised future is good, and it awaits us, beckoning us forward. We’re caught in the tractor beam of redemption and re-creation, and there’s no sense fighting it, so we might as well cooperate” (Tony Jones. An Emergent Manifesto of Hope. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007, 130).

The mandate of the church is not to impact culture but to “make disciples” in Matthew 28:19-20 by winning people to Christ, baptizing them, and teaching God’s Word. Will fulfilling the Great Commission impact culture? The answer is that culture will to some degree be impacted by fulfilling the Great Commission. Historically this has been the case. One of the most colorful of all preachers was Billy Sunday. Sunday’s most famous sermon was “Booze” and the common result of Sunday’s city wide campaigns was the closing of saloons (Robert A. Allen. Billy Sunday Home Run to Heaven (Milford: Mott Media, 1985), 87).

His preaching impacted culture. But the church’s commission is not to impact the culture.

When impacting the culture drives a church, however, then there is the potential for what has happened in the EC: Culture impacts the church. For example and in contrast to Billy Sunday, EC preacher Mark Driscoll (though to his credit, he has distanced himself from the EC) endorses Protestant Pubs: “I personally long to return to the glory days of Christian pubs, where God’s men gather to drink beer and talk theology” (Mark Driscoll. The Radical Reformission. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004, 147).

Mark Driscoll encourages his men to brew their own beer. According to Driscoll, it is not a sin to drink but it is a sin to drink light beer (Driscoll, 139).

Part of Driscoll’s leadership training of the young men in Seattle includes “how to study the Bible, get a job, invest money, buy a home, court a woman, brew beer, have good sex, and be a pastor-dad to their children” (Driscoll, 184).

It has been claimed that Sigmund Freud enjoyed telling his followers a story of a pastor who visited an atheist insurance agent who was on his death bed. The family had asked the pastor to share the gospel with their dying loved one as they waited in another room. As the conversation continued longer than expected there was hope that the pastor was being successful in his mission. When the pastor finally emerged from the bedroom it was discovered that the agent had not converted to Christ but he had been able to sell the pastor an insurance policy.

Richard Mouw, president of Fuller Seminary, after providing this example applied it to our discussion. “In rejecting the very real defects of fundamentalism during the past few decades, evangelicals have begun to take very seriously their responsibilities to the larger culture – and with some obvious signs of success. The questions we must face honestly are these: Have we sold a new policy to the culture – or has the culture sold us a policy” (Richard J. Mouw, The Smell of Sawdust (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), p. 64, quoted in Gary E. Gilley, “The Kingdom of Emergent Theology-Part 1” http://www.svchapel.org/Resources/articles/read­_articles.asp?ID=139).

The verdict is in: Culture has sold the EC a policy. McLaren has the philosophy of the liberal postmillennialists who sees the goal of the church to impact the globe. McLaren has contextualized the message of the gospel as well as the lifestyle of Christianity. McLaren’s gospel is social.

“African and African American Christians (Black theology) and Latin American Christians (liberation theology, integral missiology) have been hitting these themes with intelligence and passion for decades, but few of us listened to their spokespeople, whether it was Dr. King or Desmond Tutu, Gustavo Gutierrez or Rene Padilla. Eco-feminist theology—articulated by authors like Sallie McFague and Mary Grey….In many ways all of these voices echo what earlier Christian leaders (from Charles Finney to Walter Rauschenbusch…had been saying: the modern Western understanding of the gospel was too often truncated, shallow, thin, bland, anemic, privatized, personalized, polarized, and compromised” ( Brian McLaren. An Emergent Manifesto of Hope, Church Emerging: Or Why I Still Use the Word Postmodern but with Mixed Feeling. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007, 147-148).

While Driscoll exposes the heresy of the McLarens, he states, “we must help cultivate a kingdom counterculture where we live” (Driscoll, 170) and “we seek to build our kingdom culture” (Driscoll,184).

Culture is mostly neutral and not worldly for Driscoll. Many aspects of culture can be used in building the kingdom culture, according to Driscoll. Consequently, culture has impacted his ministry.

In my next post I will state the views of John McArthur and Tim Challies concerning the impact of culture on Driscoll and his ministry.

An Expose of Emerging Church Preaching, Part 2

Posted: November 17, 2009 in Emerging Church, Homiletics/Preaching
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Postmodernism’s Impact on the Content of EC Preaching

Andrew Perriman, an Emerging church theologian, in his website Open Source Theology posted this blog entitled “Jesus, God and narrative theology.”  In this post, Perriman, explains away the deity of Christ with narrative theology. In narrative theology, it is not the context of the Scriptural passage that determines its meaning, as much as the context of the community. Clearly the Biblical context of John 20:28 “My Lord and my God” exclaimed by Thomas to Jesus, is the deity of Christ. However, in the narrative context of Perriman’s community the deity of Christ is deconstructed.[1] Perriman rejects universal truths or static beliefs for dynamic insights that the Spirit of God can communicate to the current community of believers.  

The late Stanley Grenz, a theologian and philosopher in the Emerging church, would agree and actually laid a new theological basis for this emergent thinking. Grenz revealed his low view of Scripture found in his Revisioning Evangelical Theology by stating that he believes traditional evangelicalism has made mistakes that need to be revisioned. One of the mistakes, in Grenz’s view, is traditional evangelicalism’s emphasis on the Bible as a divine book rather than a human book. Translated means, importance has been placed on inspiration over illumination. According to Grenz, “We can more readily see the Bible—the instrumentality of the Spirit—as the book of the community.”[2] With this communal subjectivism, truth is found in each community, and inspiration is mixed with believers’ illumination: “The confession of the inspiration of the Bible is closely intertwined with the experience of illumination.”[3] Norman Geisler[4] observes that this view sounds like neo-orthodoxy’s view of inspiration which states that the Bible becomes the Word of God when you have experienced this event.[5] The difference between Neo-othodoxy’s view of Scripture and that of the Emerging Church is found in their emphases: Neo-orthodoxy emphasizes the individual experiencing God’s Word and the Emerging church stresses the community experiencing the Word.

 As a result of this new neo-orthodox view, many doctrines are rejected. Here are the doctrines Driscoll says the left wing of the EC, what he calls Emergent Liberals, are questioning and in most cases abandoning. As will be obviously observed, the EC has an aversion for doctrine. I have added to Driscoll’s list some documentation of this aversion.

1. Scripture

2. Jesus Christ

3. Gender

4. Sin

5. Salvation

6. The Cross[6]

7. Hell:[7] Will sinners experience a conscious eternal torment?[8]

The secular and evangelical postmodern focus on community has not only directly impaired the content of preaching by lowering people’s view of Scripture and questioning core doctrines, but the style of preaching. In my next post, I will discuss postmodernism’s impact on the style of EC preaching.

[1] “So, for example, Thomas’ words ‘My Lord and my God’ (John 20:28) are read not as an expression of a universal truth but as a particular confession of personal faith within a particular narrative context. This was how Thomas responded – or how John understood Thomas to have responded – to Jesus’ invitation to believe. So I think I’m arguing for two rather different things – first, to exercise a measure of theological restraint in reading the texts, allowing them to set contextual limits to the language that we use about Jesus; but secondly, to recognize that within the covenant community, within the body of Christ, the Spirit of God prompts (continues to prompt) a wide range of personal and corporate insights into the nature of the overlap of identity and purpose between Jesus and God.” Andrew Perriman. “Jesus, God, and narrative theology.” Open Source Theology (September 20, 2005). http://www.opensourcetheology.net/node/728. Accessed December 18, 2008.

http://www.opensourcetheology.net/node/728. Accesssed January 1, 2009.

[2] Stanley J. Grenz. Revisioning Evangelical Theology (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1993), 115.

[3] Ibid., 118.

[4] Norman L. Geisler and Thomas A. Howe. A Postmodern View of Scripture. A Christian Apologetics Journal 7/1 (Spring, 2008), 70.

[5] “The Bible is God’s Word so far as God lets it be His Word, so far as God speaks through it .…The statement, ‘The Bible is God’s Word,’ is a confession of faith, a statement made by the faith that hears God Himself speak in the human word of the Bible….this act of God upon man has become an event, therefore not to the fact that man has reached out to the Bible, but to the fact that the Bible has reached out to man. The Bible therefore becomes God’s Word in this event….the Bible must from time to time become His Word to us” Karl Barth. Church Dogmatics. Vol. I (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1936), 123-124. Karl Barth is important to the EC. One chapter in An Emergent Manifesto of Hope is given over to promoting Barth: “Digging Up the Past: Karl Barth (The Reformed Giant) as Friend to the Emerging Church.” (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007).

[6] “And did the conservative Protestant emphasis on the death of Jesus necessarily marginalize Jesus’ life—his wise teachings and his kind deeds, which had captured my childhood imagination? Over time I began to feel as though, from my perspective, the gospel became simply an individualistic theory, and abstraction with personal but not global import. It became about the solution to a cosmic legal/business/political problem, real and serious, but a bit dry, a bit removed from real life. In my heart grew a deep, subtle, unspoken sense that something was missing, which gradually opened my heart to search for other ways of seeing Jesus” McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004), 48-49.

[7] “I should add that this dissatisfaction with the conservative Protestant Jesus intensified just last Christmas when one of my children was home for the holidays from college. I asked him how he was doing spiritually. ‘I’m struggling, Dad,’ he said. ‘Tell me about that,’ I said. He replied, ‘Well, Dad, if Christianity is true, then nearly everyone I love is going to be tortured in the fires of hell forever. And if it’s not true, then life has no meaning.’ He was silent for a moment and then added, ‘I just wish there were a better option.’ My heart was broken, I asked, ‘Is that the understanding of Christianity you got from me?’ He replied, ‘No, but that’s the way most Christians think. They just kind of bottom-line everything to heaven or hell, and that makes life feel kind of cheap.’ My son’s insight doesn’t apply to the best expressions of conservative Protestants, but it does, I fear, apply too often to the most popular ones. He put into blunt and powerful terms exactly what I felt vaguely and inarticulately when I was his age”[7] Brian McLaren. A Generous Orthodoxy, 49.

[8] Driscoll, “A Pastoral Perspective on the Emerging Church.” Criswell Theological Review. 3/2 (Spring 2006) 91.

An Expose of Emerging Church Preaching, Part 1

Posted: November 16, 2009 in Emerging Church, Homiletics/Preaching
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In the following posts, I want to explore the current doctrinal and practical impact of the emerging church on preaching.

With some humor, hyperbole, and much accuracy, the authors of Why We’re Not Emergent (By Two Guys Who Should Be) provide a detection list for Emergents (See Tim Challies’ review). Notice this list begins and ends with references to preaching:

You might be an emergent Christian: if you listen to U2, Moby, and Johnny Cash’s Hurt (sometimes in church), use sermon illustrations from The Sopranos, drink lattes in the afternoon and Guinness in the evenings, and always use a Mac; if your reading list consists primarily of Stanley Hauerwas, N.T.Wright, Stan Grenz…(not to mention McLaren, Pagitt, Bell, etc.) and your sparring partners include D. A. Carson, John Calvin, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, and Wayne Grudem;…if your political concerns are poverty, AIDS, imperialism, war-mongering, CEO salaries, consumerism, global warming, racism, and oppression and not so much abortion and gay marriage;…if you love the Bible as a beautiful, inspiring collection of works that lead us into the mystery of God but is not inerrant; if you search for truth but aren’t sure it can be found;… if you believe who goes to hell is no one’s business and no one may be there anyway; if you believe salvation has little to do with atoning for guilt and a lot to do with bringing the whole creation back into shalom with its Maker; if you believe following Jesus is not believing right things but living the right way;…if you disdain monological, didactic preaching; if you use the “story” in all your propositions about postmodernism… then you might be an emergent Christian. [1]

The current impact of the Emerging church (hereafter EC) is seen in the preachers of the EC who have large churches, best sellers, and high profiles in American Christianity. Brian McLaren is a prolific writer. He was listed among “The 25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America” Time, 7 Feb 2005.  Another prominent name in the emergent movement is Rob Bell. He is the founding pastor of Mars Hill in Grand Rapids which was started in 1999. 10,000 people attend his church weekly. Bell is also the creator of the widely viewed Nooma movies. Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill in Seattle, Washington and co-founder of Acts 29 Network, also played a part in the initial discussions of the movement. Driscoll, who reveals the theological diversity of the EC, now is exposing many of the doctrinal errors of the left wing of the EC that he refers to as the Revisionists. Over 6000 attend Mars Hill on Sundays and 100,000 download his sermons weekly. While the EC preachers enjoy mega popularity and connect to our postmodern audiences, the Biblical content, style, and effect of their overhauled preaching is adversely altered by postmodernism’s rejection of absolute truth.

Postmodernism’s Impact on the EC beginning

The term “emerging” was first used by Leadership Network (hereafter LN) based in Dallas. LN hired Doug Pagitt to find the next generation of leaders and hosted a gathering in 1997 in Colorado Springs called Gen X 1.0 to discuss why the youth were leaving the church. The popular idea at the time was that the problem was generational. The generational advocates said that Busters think differently from Boomers and decided to attract young people by making church cool. Brad Cecil, an evangelical pastor from Texas, who had been researching postmodernism and listening to men like the French Father of Deconstructionism, Jacques Derrida, attended the meeting and argued the reason the church was losing young people was epistemological and not generational. Brad Cecil diagramed on a white board a mega shift that was occurring in epistemology:

Pre-modernism            Modernism (1550-1945)        Post-modernism

Absolutes are known           Absolutes are known                    There are no   

through God’s written         through reason as in                      absolutes

revelation and reason         Rationalism or Empiricism

The ultimate outcome of that pivotal meeting was the EC. To minister to those caught in the mega shift of postmodernism there must a mega shift in church ministry. The result is the Emerging Church’s new ecclesiology.

In the 1997, a second conference (Gen X 2.0) met at Mount Hermon, CA on how the church can reach “Gen X” or the postmodern generation. Mark Driscoll agreed with Cecil that “Gen X” was different from the Boomer, Seeker, and Traditionalist churches and spoke on how to minister to the church that was in transition from modern to postmodern.[2]

The Three Periods of Epistemology

The Emerging church sees a paradigm shift from modern to postmodern epistemology. Epistemology is the “philosophical inquiry into the nature, sources, limits and methods of gaining knowledge”[3] and has gone through three major phases. We will briefly survey the three major phases of epistemology, pre-modern, modern, and postmodern.

Pre-modern Epistemology

Pre-modern or the Judeo-Christian epistemology existed for two millennia before the Enlightenment with Western theologians’ and philosophers’ belief in absolute, universal truths. The foundation for pre-modern epistemology was God’s written Word and philosophy. There developed an emphasis on reason with Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274). Aquinas believed the Fall did not so adversely affect the reason of man that he could not through rational arguments (Aquinas’ theistic arguments for God’s existence) know truth apart from God’s written truth. In the modern or the second phase of epistemology, thinkers would take Aquinas’ view to the extreme of totally abandoning the need for God’s written Word to know truth.

Modern Epistemology

Modern epistemology or the Enlightenment prevailed during the 17th century to roughly the mid 20th century. While the foundation for pre-modern epistemology was God’s written revelation and or objective truth, the foundation for modern epistemology was reason (rationalism) or experience (empiricism) that could discover God or at least truth for those who rejected the existence of God. Thinkers like David Hume, Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Nietzsche took Aquinas’ rationalization to exclude God’s written revelation.  These men were precursors for the postmodern epistemology rejection of absolute truth in the form of language being the barrier to reality.[4]

Postmodern Epistemology

Postmodernism rejects foundationalism. There is no absolute knowledge in postmodernism. In postmodernism truth is discovered, not individually, but in the language of each community.[5] “There are as many worlds as there are communities and languages. There is at least one Christian world, as well as a Muslim world, a Buddhist one, a Hindu one, a secularist one, a Mormon one, and many, many others.”[6] This secular postmodern community view of truth has morphed into an evangelical postmodern view in the left wing of the EC.

The following posts will discuss postmodernism’s impact on three areas of  Emerginng Church preaching: Content, Style, and Effect.

[1] Kevin Deyoung and Ted Kluck. Why We’re Not Emergent. (Chicago: Moody, 2008), 20-22.

[2] Darrin Patrick, “History of the Emerging Church,” October 22, 2007. http://www. journeyon.net/sermn/session-one-the-histroy-and-streams-of-the-emerging-church. Accessed December 20, 2009.

3 Stanley J. Grenz, David Guretzki & Cherith Fee Nordling. Pocket Dictionary of Theological Terms (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 1999), 45.

[4] David Hume (1711-1776) was a empiricist, who believed truth was discovered through the five senses, which excluded God since God could not be seen or experienced through the senses. Hume said we could not know the “real” world because we are “trapped” behind our sense experiences of sight, smells, and sounds. Things in our everyday existence “like chairs, tables, and even other people are projections of the mind.” Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) “attempted to answer Hume’s empiricism in order to defend rationalism….Kant’s attempted answer becomes an important precursor to current postmodern ideas. …We cannot know objective reality (what he would call the noumena); we only know how it appears to us (the phenomena).” Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) was the first one to introduce the idea that language somehow is involved in the process of how we know the world” Scott Smith, Truth and the New Kind of Christian (Wheaton: Crossway, 2005), 28-30.

[5] Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) and Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) make the transition from our senses being the barrier to reality to language being the obstacle that stands between us and objective reality. “No longer was it thought that we are ‘stuck’ behind our experiences and cannot get ‘outside’ to the real world. Instead, they developed the idea that we are on the ‘inside’ of language and cannot know reality.…This shift in emphasis in philosophy from experience to language is what is called the linguistic turn, and it marks a turn toward postmodern thought” Ibid., 30.

 [6] Ibid., 31.

The Emerging Church’s Rejection of the Substitutionary Death of Christ

Posted: April 1, 2009 in Emerging Church
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The Scriptures teach the doctrine of the substitutionary death of Christ (1 Peter 2:21-24). Isaiah 53 also predicts the penal substitutionary death of Christ. Paul in Romans 8:3 teaches the penal atonement: “God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh.” The Emerging leaders, however, have a very different opinion.

“That just sounds like one more injustice in the cosmic equation. It sounds like divine child abuse. You know” (Brian McLaren, The Story We Find Ourselves In, page 102).

“And did the conservative Protestant emphasis on the death of Jesus necessarily marginalize Jesus’ life—his wise teachings and his kind deeds, which had captured my childhood imagination? Over time I began to feel as though, from my perspective, the gospel became simply an individualistic theory, and abstraction with personal but not global import. It became about the solution to a cosmic legal/business/political problem, real and serious, but a bit dry, a bit removed from real life. In my heart grew a deep, subtle, unspoken sense that something was missing, which gradually opened my heart to search for other ways of seeing Jesus” (McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy, pages 48-49).

Here is another emergent preacher’s scorn cast on the cross work of Christ whose book McLaren endorsed. It was in The Lost Message of Jesus that Steve Chalke wrote, “The cross isn’t a form of cosmic child abuse—a vengeful Father, punishing his Son for an offence he has not even committed. Understandably, both people inside and outside of the Church have found this twisted version of events morally dubious and a huge barrier to faith. Deeper than that, however, is that such a concept stands in total contradiction to the statement: God is love. If the cross is a personal act of violence perpetrated by God towards humankind but borne by his Son, then it makes a mockery of Jesus’ own teaching to love our enemies and to refuse to repay evil with evil” (Steve Chalke and Alan Mann, The Lost Message of Jesus, Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2003, 182-183).

Steve needs to read 1 John 4:10 where propitiation is the result of God’s love: “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”

Spencer Burke, creator of theooze.com and author of A Heretic’s Guide to Eternity rejects major doctrines such as exclusivism, Hell, and the substitutionary death of Christ. “Of all the elements of Christianity, the most repugnant is the notion of the Christ who took our sins upon himself and sacrificed his body in agony to save our souls. Did we ask him to?” A better approach is to see Jesus as “the model of sinless living, the ultimate example to which all humanity should aspire” (Spencer Burke and Barry Taylor, A Heretic’s Guide to Eternity, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2006, ix, x).

Apparently saints in Heaven have a different prescriptive on the penal atonement when they fall at the feet of Christ and worship Him in Rev. 5:9 as the “who has redeemed us to God by thy blood.”

“In light of the fact that Paul and John (and probably the author of Hebrews as well) expressly represent it as a propitiating work, it is important to recognize that Christ’s cross work had a Godward reference. The Bible plainly teaches the doctrine of the wrath of God. It teaches that God is angry with the sinner, and that this holy outrage against the sinner must be assuaged if the sinner is to escape his due punishment. It is for this reason that a death occurred at Calvary. When we look at Calvary and behold the Savior dying for us, we should see in his death not first our salvation but our damnation being borne and carried away by him” (Robert Reymond, A New Systematic Theology of The Christian Faith, Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1998, page 639)!

N. T. Wright is probably the most prominent and influential of the New Perspective theologians. Nicholas Thomas Wright is a British New Testament scholar and the Anglican Bishop of Durham, England.

For that reason, John Piper wrote an entire book, The Future of Justification: A Response to N. T. Wright, exposing the errors of the New Perspective on Paul.

There is a connection between the New Perspective on Paul and the Emerging church. The Emerging church leaders have read the New Perspective on Paul theologians. For example, Emerging church leader in England, Steve Chalke, has read N. T. Wright. N. T. Wright admits that Steve Chalke, in his controversial book, The Lost Message of Jesus, where Chalke denies the propitiation of Christ, “embarrassingly at times—the book follows quite closely several of the lines of thought I have myself advanced, though giving them a good deal more energy through shrewd use of anecdote and illustration” (N. T. Wright in a 2007 Internet post quoted by Piper on page 49 in The Future of Justification). What is ironic is that N. T. Wright has written strongly in favor of the propitiation of Christ. Here is a sample:
“The idea of punishment as part of atonement is itself deeply controversial; horrified rejection of the mere suggestion has led on the part of some to an unwillingness to discern any reference to Isaiah 40-55 in Paul. But it is exactly that idea that Paul states, clearly and unambiguously, in Romans 8:3, when he says that God ‘condemned sin in the flesh’—i.e. the flesh of Jesus. Dealing with wrath or punishment is propitiation; with sin, expiation. You propitiate a person who is angry, you expiate a sin, crime” (N. T. Wright, The Letter to the Romans, 475-476).

John Piper makes this appraisal of further comments that Wright makes on the same page that seems to contradict his other statements about penal substitution. “In view of this assertion that God propitiated the anger of God, it is mystifying that Wright would construct the following sentence in this context: ‘It should go without saying that this in no way implies, what the start of the verse has already ruled out, that God is an angry malevolent tyrant who demands someone’s death, or someone’s blood, and is indifferent as to whose it is’ (The Letter to the Romans, 476).”

Piper responds to Wright’s mystifying statement. “What is subtle and misleading about this sentence is that it starts with the denial of pejorative things about God and then ends up denying, with no distinction, things that Wright himself has affirmed. The sentence is written in such a way as to make Wright’s own true view almost unrecognizable. What is to be denied and what is not? Is God angry: Yes. Is he malevolent: No. Is he a tyrant? No (too many false connotations), but he is certainly totally in charge. Does he demand someone’s death? Yes. Blood? Yes. Is he indifferent as to whose it is? No. This is not a helpful way to explain what one thinks. It seems to me that he undercuts with this sentence the force of what he has spent great effort defending from the text of Romans” (John Piper, The Future of Justification, 52).

Emerging Church and Inclusivism

Posted: January 1, 2009 in Emerging Church
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The truth of salvation which determines a person’s eternal destiny is too serious to get wrong. Yet many in the Emerging church are wrong on the doctrine of salvation.

People in the Emerging church are all over the map when it comes to soteriology (the doctine of salvation), as the following two examples show: Spencer Burke and Brian McLaren.

Spencer Burke in his A Heretic’s Guide to Eternity wrote “Could it be that—beyond religion, reason, and conventional wisdom—grace is something to be opted out of rather than opted in to? Is it not something you get but something you already have? When I say I’m a universalist, what I really mean is that I don’t believe you have to convert to any particular religion to find God. As I see it, God finds us, and it has nothing to do with subscribing to any particular religious view.The God I connect with does not assign humans to hell” (page 52, 184-185, 197, 199).

Scott McKnight properly evaluates the Emerging church’s varying views on salvation.

“Some emerging Christians point to the words of Jesus: ‘Whoever is not against us is for us’ (Mark 9:40). Others, borrowing the words of the old hymn, point to a ‘wideness in God’s mercy.’ Still others take postmodernity’s crushing of meta-narratives and extend that to master theological narratives—like Christianity. They say what really matters is orthopraxy and that it doesn’t matter what religion one belongs to, as long as one loves God and one’s neighbor as one’s self. Some even accept Spencer Burke’s unbiblical contention in A Heretic’s Guide to Eternity (Jossey-Ball, 2006) that all are born ‘in’ and only some ‘opt out.’ McKnight rejects this inclusivism” (Five Streams of Emerging Church, Christianity Today, Dec. 31, 2008).

Brian McLaren holds a similar view of inclusivism.

“I don’t believe making disciples must equal making adherents to the Christian religion. It may be advisable in many (not all!) circumstances to help people become followers of Jesus and remain within their Buddhist, Hindu or Jewish contexts … rather than resolving the paradox via pronouncements on the eternal destiny of people more convinced by or loyal to other religions than ours, we simply move on .… To help Buddhists, Muslims, Christians, and everyone else experience life to the full in the way of Jesus (while learning it better myself), I would gladly become one of them (whoever they are), to whatever degree I can, to embrace them, to join them, to enter into their world without judgment but with saving love as mine has been entered by the Lord (A Generous Orthodoxy, 260, 262, 264).

Both Burke and McLaren totally repudiate Jesus’ claim to be the exclusive “way, the truth, and the life.”