Extreme Theology

PSA Regarding Emergent Post-Modernism

The Fighting for the Faith podcast has just produced a very funny "public service announcement" regarding Emergent Post-Modernism and how they handle the truth. Enjoy!

Bullwhip Guy

This video is a DEAD ON the mark parody of Rob Bell's Nooma video Entitled Bull Horn Guy.

Speaking With Conviction and Authority

This video shows the first major cracks in the post-modern cultural zeitgeist. This guy is not a preacher. This was not shot in a church.

Here is something to think about. If the culture is making fun of this stuff then church leaders would be wise to unhitch their wagons from the post-modern star.

Part 3 - Everything Must Change: The Story We Find Ourselves In

One of the hallmarks of McLaren’s previous books and the Emergent Movement as a whole has been the fact that it has been extremely difficult to define their doctrine and theology. McLaren is notorious for shrouding his beliefs in mystery. In “Everything Must Change” McLaren has changed tactics and has openly come right out and said what he believes.

In chapter 10 of “Everything Must Change” McLaren gives us the clearest and most comprehensive outline of his Emergent views. He does this by comparing “Conventional Christianity's” answers to four basic questions to the Emerging View’s answers to those same questions. The four questions are:

1. The Human Situation: What is the story we find ourselves in?

2. What questions did Jesus come to answer?

3. Jesus’ Message: How did Jesus respond to the crisis?

4. Purpose of Jesus: Why is Jesus important?

[McLaren constructs this section of his book in a Narrative / Counter-Narrative format. I hope that Emergents recognize and appreciate the irony of this fact.]

In this post we are going to look at the first question, "What is the story we find ourselves in" and see how McLaren defines the two positions. (As you are reading McLaren’s interpretation of the Conventional View, please notice how he portrays it using pejorative and inaccurate language. This tells us something about McLaren and his agenda.)

Here is what McLaren wrote:

The Human Situation: What is the Story We Find Ourselves In?

Conventional View

“God created the world as perfect, but because our primal ancestors, Adam and Eve, did not maintain the absolute perfection demanded by God, God has irrevocably determined that the entire universe and all it contains will be destroyed, and the souls of all human beings—except for those specifically exempted—will be forever punished for their imperfection in hell.”(pg. 78)

Emerging View

“God created the world as good, but human beings—as individuals and as groups—have rebelled against God and filled the world with evil and injustice. God wants to save humanity and heal it from its sickness, but humanity is hopelessly lost and confused, like sheep without a shepherd, wandering farther and farther into lostness and danger. Left to themselves, human beings will spiral downward into sickness and evil.” (pg. 78)

When you take McLaren’s points and lay them side by side (see the chart below) McLaren’s pejorative mis-interpretation of the Conventional View comes into to sharp focus.

Notice that McLaren recasts the Conventional View so that the reason that man fell and will be punished is NOT because of sin (disobedience to God’s commands) but because of imperfection. McLaren even says that the Conventional View teaches that people will be “punished in hell for their imperfection”. This is not only untrue (Orthodox Christianity does NOT teach this), it makes the God of Conventional Christianity appear to be unjust and unfair. In fact, McLaren’s inaccurate description has turned the God of Conventional Christianity into a monster who unreasonably demands ‘perfection’ and will smite anyone who is imperfect. But notice that, perfection and imperfection are abstractions. The important question that critical thinkers should be asking at this point is “Perfection according to what standard?” Is God going to send us to hell because we have imperfections like pimples, freckles and skin blotches? Is God going to send people to hell because they are not perfect robots who march in lock step to God’s drumbeats? What is meant by perfection?

By discussing Conventional Christianity’s view in terms of the abstract concept of ‘perfection’ rather than the concrete concept of sin and disobedience to the clear commands of God, McLaren hasn’t portrayed Conventional Christianity fairly or honestly. The reason McLaren did this is because he is attempting to undo and deconstruct Conventional Christianity. McLaren has an agenda. In McLaren’s mind, Conventional (Orthodox) Christianity is one of the ‘things’ that must be changed in “Everything Must Change”. (see page 80 of Everything Must Change)

Since, McLaren has not fairly or accurately told us what Conventional Christianity believes regarding the answer to this question. I will take a few minutes here to set the record straight.

An Orthodox / Conventional Answer to the question ‘what is the story we find ourselves in?”

One need only spend a little time reading the book of Genesis to understand the drama that unfolded in the creation of the heavens and earth and the fall of mankind. The opening chapters tell us of the wonders of God’s creative power in speaking all things into existence over the course of six days. We learn from the narrative that God pronounced all the things that He created to be ‘good’.

We also learn that on the sixth day God created a very special species. This species was created in the actual ‘image of God’. This crowning apex of God’s creation was man.

Our first parents Adam and Eve, walked and talked with God face to face and they cared for God’s creation. God also graciously provided for all of their needs. It truly was paradise on Earth. The narrative also tells us that God laid down a rule. Adam and Eve could eat from the fruit from any tree in the garden except the fruit from the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. God also warned them that to disobey him in this matter would result in their deaths. Tragically, our first parents we’re deceived and directly disobeyed God. As a result, they no longer reflected the image of God. Instead, they had become sinners and everything has been affected by their sin.

We learn from other passages of scripture (Eph 2:1-3, Rom 5:15-19) that all humans who are naturally descended from Adam and Eve are sinful by nature and dead to God. The entire race of mankind from beginning to end, from the greatest to the least are self-centered, self-worshipping and self-absorbed little deities who by nature only think about their self-interests and are in active rebellion to the God who spoke them into existence. Left in this condition, every single one of us from our greatest humanitarian activists to our most murderous dictators has earned and deserves both God’s temporal and eternal punishment.

This story alone explains mankind’s unbroken historical chain of evil, inequity, injustice, slavery, robbery, adultery, idolatry, murder, terror, environmental destruction and warfare. We also learn that our sin has even impacted nature and the environment we live in (Rom 8:19-12). All of the evil we see played out in society as a whole (macro-evil) is an extension of the evil that is individually played out in each of our own personal lives (micro-evil).

BUT, we also learn from scripture that God loves us dearly and is not about to stand idly by as we all send ourselves to hell. From the very first day of the fall of mankind God sprung into action and began enacting His rescue plan. All the way back in Genesis 3 God announced His ‘Good News’ in the promise of a savior that will crush evil and rescue us from death, sin, and its terrible and eternal consequences.

According to Conventional Christianity which is grounded and rooted in the Word of God, this is the story that we find ourselves in. This story ALONE tells us the truth about the current condition of humanity and God's relationship to us in our fallen state.

The Emerging View of the story we find ourselves in.

Sadly, McLaren has re-written the story of the fall of man. He has re-framed the opening chapters of Genesis in the Marxist social/economic categories of consumption, Imperialism and class warfare. Said McLaren:

"It's interesting to consider the importance of consumption in the biblical narrative. When the crisis of human evil is introduced in a passage beginning in Genesis 1:19 and ending in 2:20, forms of the words "eat" and "food" are used about twenty times. Consumption is closely linked with human evil. Adam and Eve live in harmony with creation in a garden, surrounded by food-bearing trees. But to be a human being is to live within creaturely limits in God's creation - reflected in self-restraint in regard to eating the fruit of 'the knowledge of good and evil' (Genesis 2:17). If they break the limits represented by the fruit hanging on that tree, they will taste death (or as we said earlier, they will decompose).

Eve exceeds the limit, drawn to consume a fruit that "was good for food and was pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom" (3:6). Adam joins her. As a result, an avalanche of alienation crashes into the human story - alienation from God, alienation from one another, alienation from oneself, and alienation from the creation.

In the following chapters, brother is alienated from brother and a form of class violence enters the story, as the class of pastoralists (symbolized by Abel) are exterminated by the class of agriculturalists (symbolized by Cain). Soon new forms of institutionalized violence arise in great cities, so horrible that they are swept away by a flood of judgment. Eventually empires emerge, reflecting the imperial dream of unifying people under one dominating language and culture in Babel. Genesis provides a genealogy for all the pain and evil in the whole social structure of humans on planet Earth: it can be traced back to a problem of consumption beyond limits." (pages 209-210)

McLaren’s re-interpretation of the fall of man (which ironically utilizes a Biblically foreign and thoroughly Modern meta-narrative) distorts the Biblical story of the fall of man and thereby, completely dodges the issue of our sin and disobedience to God. But this re-interpretation of the fall also provides us with the key to unlocking the meaning of Emerging View’s answer to the question regarding the story we find ourselves in.

When the Emerging view states that “Human beings—as individuals and as groups—have rebelled against God and filled the world with evil and injustice” the evil the Emerging view is referring to is NOT sin and disobedience against a Holy and Just God. The evil the Emerging view is referring to is the evil of ‘consumption beyond creaturely limits’ and the evil of class warfare ‘pastorlists’ vs. ‘agriculturalists’ and the evil of institutionalized violence and imperialism.

This radical re-imagining of the Genesis story doesn’t provide us with an accurate understanding of sin and evil. The Emerging view only really describes the symptom of sin and evil but does not correctly address their root cause which is disobedience to God. The reason why McLaren avoids discussing evil in terms of ‘sinning against God’ is because he denies that Christ (who is God in human flesh) is going to return in glory to judge the living and the dead and punish sinful mankind with an eternal punishment. (see part 2 of my review) Therefore, McLaren has carefully re-crafted the story of fall of man in such a way that it becomes a story about mankind’s ‘evil’ against humanity. In this re-framing of the story, God no longer stands as the righteous judge of mankind. Instead, God’s role is to help save us from ourselves. McLaren’s 'god' is there to help us build the ‘Kingdom of God’ here on Earth which McLaren, later in the book, envisions as the global eradication of injustice, imperialism, environmental destruction, warfare and inequitable economies. In other words, God wants to help us reverse the destruction we are inflicting on ourselves and the planet through our Imperial framing stories. God wants to help us adopt Jesus ‘framing story’ of non-violence, peace and an economy of love. If we defect from imperialism and join the Jesus Revolution we will re-make the Earth and all human societies into the ‘Kingdom of God’ on Earth. Notice how God's Judgement and punishment of sin are omitted in McLaren's Emerging View.

As we will see in Parts 4, 5 and 6 of my review of “Everything Must Change”, McLaren’s Emerging View is not only incompatible with scripture, ultimately His Jesus isn’t the Jesus of the Bible but instead is a powerless figment of his imagination who is incapable of saving anybody.

Part 2 - McLaren’s “Everything Must Change”: Jesus’ Second Coming

Since Jesus’ ascension (Acts 1:6-7) Christians have been waiting and hoping for Jesus’ promised second coming in order to judge both the living and dead and visibly establish His Kingdom on Earth. This doctrine has such an important place in Christian thinking that it is confessed in both the Apostle’s Creed and Nicene Creed.

The Apostles Creed confesses:

He (Jesus) ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. From thence He will come to judge the living and the dead.

The Nicene Creed confesses:

And the third day He rose again according to the Scriptures and ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father. And He will come again with glory to judge both the living and the dead, whose kingdom will have no end.

Jesus’ return in glory has been the hope of Christians for two millennia. But we learn in “Everything Must Change” that this is NOT Brian McLaren’s hope at all!

Brian McLaren has re-imagined and re-crafted a kinder and gentler Jesus who WOULD NEVER return to judge the world and forcefully establish His Kingdom on Earth. The "Jesus" that McLaren has created is more like Ghandi. McLaren's "Jesus" works by subverting Imperialism through the use of non-violence and would never utilize the methods of Imperialism to establish his own kingdom.

Said McLaren:

“The phrase “the Second Coming of Christ” never actually appears in the Bible. Whether or not the doctrine to which the phrase refers deserves re-thinking, a popular abuse of it certainly needs to be named and rejected. If we believe that Jesus came in peace the first time, but that wasn’t his “real” and decisive coming - it was just a kind of warm-up for the real thing - then we leave the door open to envisioning a second coming that will be characterized by violence, killing, domination, and eternal torture. This vision reflects a diversion, a return to trust in the power of Pilate, not the unarmed truth that stood before Pilate, refusing to fight...

If we remain charmed by this kind of eschatology, we will be forced to see the nonviolence of the Jesus of the Gospels as a kind of strategic fake-out, like a feigned retreat in war, to be followed up by a crushing blow of so-called redemptive violence in the end. The gentle Jesus of the first coming becomes a kind of trick Jesus, a fake-me-out Messiah, to be replaced by the true jihadist Jesus of a violent second coming.

This is why I believe that many of our current eschatologies, intoxicated by dubious interpretations of John’s Apocalypse are not only ignorant and wrong, but dangerous and immoral.” (page 144).

McLaren’s newly re-imagined "Jesus" didn’t come to Earth to die for the sins of the world. (Mclaren and other emergents like him reject and ridicule the Penal Substitionary Atonement). Instead, McLaren’s "Jesus" is a blend of non-violent civil rights leaders like Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Bishop Desmund Tutu. In McLaren's thinking, Jesus’ death on the cross, much like Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination, exposed the brutality and injustice of the Imperial System. The mission of McLaren’s "Jesus", much like Ghandi's, was to teach us a 'new framing story' that would topple imperialism through the practice of non-violence and defection from empire. Since the historic Christian teaching that Jesus ‘will come again in glory to judge both the living and the dead’ requires Jesus to utilize violence and imperial tactics to establish His kingdom on Earth, McLaren concludes that the historic Christian doctrine regarding the Second Coming is a false and immoral eschatology that turns Jesus into a jihadist rather than an unarmed non-violent peace maker.

Let’s review what the scriptures teach regarding Jesus Second Coming and then we can determine which teaching is false and immoral.

Since McLaren thinks that dubious interpretations of the book of Revelation are to blame for the formation of these immoral eschatologies I’ll only quote passages from other books of the Bible and will start with Jesus’ words from the gospels.

In John 5:28-29 Jesus says,

“Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice 29 and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.”

In Matthew 24:27, 29-31 Jesus says,

“For as the lightning comes from the east and shines as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.... 29   “Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. 30 Then will appear in heaven the sign of the Son of Man, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. 31 And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.”

Jesus continues in Matthew 25:31-33 by saying:

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. 32 Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left.”

Jesus says that He will then judge the sheep and the goats. Regarding the goats Jesus ultimately says, “And these will go away into eternal punishment”. Regarding the sheep Jesus says they will enter into ‘eternal life’ (v46).

The Apostle Paul writing about Jesus Second Coming says this in 1 Thess 4:15-18:

“For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16 For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. 18 Therefore encourage one another with these words.”

Paul continues in 1 Thess 5:1-3 by saying:

“Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers, you have no need to have anything written to you. 2 For you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. 3 While people are saying, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.”

Finally, the author to the Hebrews writes, in Hebrews 9:28:

“So Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.”

Every one of the passages quoted above make it perfectly clear that the Historic and Biblical Jesus promises and intends to return to Earth a second time. When he appears, HE SAYS that He will come in glory with the angels and will judge the living and the dead. McLaren doesn't like this inconvenient Biblical truth. It contradicts the nature of the "Jesus Idol" that he has created for himself. That is why he attacks the Biblical Jesus by calling Him an immoral Imperialist and a Jihadist.

So I ask you, who is truly being immoral here? Is it immoral for Jesus to return a second time in power and glory to judge the living and the dead (afterall, Jesus is God)? Or is it immoral for Brian McLaren to refashion Jesus in such a way that McLaren could call the Biblical doctrine of Jesus’ second coming an evil act of jihadi imperialism?

More to Come in Part 3

McLaren's New Book 'Everything Must Change' - Part 1

Brian McLaren's new book 'Everything Must Change' marks a significant turning point in the Emergent Conversation. This book, unlike McLaren's previous works clearly DEFINES emergent thought and theology. McLaren is apparently finished with his deconstruction and chemotherapy on the 'cancer' of American Evangelicalism and he is now ready to reveal the new religion that he has been constructing all along.

'Everything Must Change' is a manifesto. Having just finished the book, the best way that I could condense and describe McLaren's ideas is that he has created a hybrid of Theism and Neo-Utopian Marxism. McLaren's 'new religion' is globally pragmatic and re-imagines Jesus' life and message so that they can be applied to solving the Earth's most pressing problems (as identified by the United Nations). In order to do this, McLaren completely retools the Biblical message and Jesus' life in particular in terms of social, political and economic struggles and injustices.

In "Everything Must Change" we learn that in McLaren's way of thinking, the primary problem that the Bible is trying to solve is mankind's injustice to mankind. In the opening chapters McLaren warns us that humanity is about to commit planetary suicide through the selfish misapplications of our security, prosperity and equity systems. Since THIS problem is the 'real evil' that we face (not our sinfulness), Jesus' actual reason for coming to Earth was to call mankind to defect from the Imperialistic framing stories that justify oppression and resource hoarding and call humanity to adopt His new 'framing story' of peace, non-violence and social / economic justice.

In McLaren's theology Jesus' death on the cross wasn't a sacrifice for our sins. Instead, Jesus' death demonstrated the injustice and brutality of the Imperial System. Therefore, according to McLaren, the real solution for all of our problems is for us to defect from Imperialism and Theo-capitalism and follow Jesus' example and adopt Jesus' new framing story. McLaren believes that if humanity does this, we will be able to eradicate global poverty, end social and economic injustice, heal the planet's eco-system and achieve God's original vision and dream for mankind. In short, McLaren argues that WE can build 'The Kingdom of God' on Earth. All we need to do is adopt and implement Jesus' 'framing story' of peace, justice and an economy of love.

To give you a taste of McLaren's thinking, here is a passage from his book where he warns us of the evils of 'Theo-Capitalism' by reinterpreting the early chapters of Genesis through an economic / class warfare lens. Said McLaren:

"It's interesting to consider the importance of consumption in the biblical narrative. When the crisis of human evil is introduced in a passage beginning in Genesis 1:19 and ending in 2:20, forms of the words "eat" and "food" are used about twenty times. Consumption is closely linked with human evil. Adam and Eve live in harmony with creation in a garden, surrounded by food-bearing trees. But to be a human being is to live within creaturly limits in God's creation - reflected in self-restraint in regard to eating the fruit of 'the knowledge of good and evil' (Genesis 2:17). If they break the limits represented by the fruit hanging on that tree, they will taste death (or as we said earlier, they will decompose).

Eve exceeds the limit, drawn to consume a fruit that "was good for food and was pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom" (3:6). Adam joins her. As a result, an avalanche of alienation crashes into the human story - alienation from God, alienation from one another, alienation from oneself, and alienation from the creation.

In the following chapters, brother is alienated from brother and a form of class violence enters the story, as the class of pastoralists (symbolized by Abel) are exterminated by the class of agriculturalists (symbolized by Cain). Soon new forms of institutionalized violence arise in great cities, so horrible that they are swept away by a flood of judgment. Eventually empires emerge, reflecting the imperial dream of unifying people under one dominating language and culture in Babel. Genesis provides a genealogy for all the pain and evil in the whole social structure of humans on planet Earth: it can be traced back to a problem of consumption beyond limits." (pages 209-210)

Notice that McLaren is injecting a Marxist framework into his interpretation of the opening chapters of Genesis. Gone are the ideas of sin, rebellion, disobedience against God, the fall of man, and the Lord's solution to our sin in the promise of a savior. McLaren has replaced those Biblical themes with the economic & political categories of consumption, class warfare and imperialism.

In "Everything Must Change" we are finally able to see what McLaren has really been up to. In this book we are witnessing the emergence of a North American Protestant strain of Liberation Theology and a resurgent "Religious Left" that will have a twisted Biblical 'framing story' that they can use to impose their interpretation of the 'common good' upon all of us in the name of God's new 'Love Economy'.

More to come in Part 2

Emergent-See Posters YouTube Style

If you have not already seen the satirical Emergent posters created by Pyromaniacs, then I strongly recommend that you watch the video below then visit the Team Pyro website. These posters nail the zeitgeist of the Emergent Church and show its absolute absurdity.

Enjoy.

Emerging Uncertainty vs. the Book of Acts

I’ve recently discovered another popular Emerging Guru by the name of John Armstrong. This guy sings from the same song sheet as Brian McClaren regarding certainty. Here are a few choice quotes from Armstrong on the topic:

"Certitude is often idolatrous. I have been forced to give up certainty."

"If there is a foundation in Christian theology it is not be found in Scripture. Theology must be a humble attempt to hear God never about rational approaches to text."

“The most dangerous plans in history were carried out by people who were very certain of both themselves and their actions. Do you recall Saul of Tarsus persecuting devout Christians?”

It is very odd that Armstrong would mention Saul of Tarsus (Paul). Let’s look at Paul and see if he jettisoned all pretenses of certainty and rational approaches to scripture after he became a follower of Jesus.

The book of Acts Chapter 17 records Paul’s method of evangelism while he was on his Missionary Journeys. Here is what history records on this matter.

Acts 17:1 When they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a Jewish synagogue. 2 As his custom was, Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, 3 explaining and proving that the Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead. “This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Christ,” he said.

This hardly sounds like behavior of an ‘Uncertain” Postmodern Emergent. In fact, it sounds completely contrary to the advice that Emerging gurus like Armstrong and McClaren are offering us.

Rather than being “uncertain”, Paul was absolutely certain of the truth of the Christian faith. He was so certain that he reasoned with potential converts from the Scriptures. He used the scriptures to explain and prove propositional truths. Paul is not the only Christian to use this approach.

The book of Acts also records the evangelistic practices of a Christian convert by the name of Apollos. Here’s what the Scriptures tell us about him:

Acts 18:27 "When Apollos wanted to go to Achaia, the brothers encouraged him and wrote to the disciples there to welcome him. On arriving, he was a great help to those who by grace had believed. 28 For he vigorously refuted the Jews in public debate, proving from the Scriptures that Jesus was the Christ.”

Apparently, Apollos had never read McClaren’s books or heard Armstrong’s lectures. Thank God, or the church wouldn’t be here today!

Apollos was very certain of the fact that Jesus was the Christ. He was so certain of that truth that he ‘vigorously refuted the Jews in public debate’ and He used the scriptures to PROVE his point.

Over and over again the advice and teachings of the Emerging Church flat out contradict what we read in Scripture. If we were to follow the advice and teachings of the Emerging Church we’d lose the certainty of our faith and the forgiveness of our sins through Jesus death on the cross. Even worse, we’d stop sharing the message of the gospel and Scriptures to our un-believing friends and neighbors.

I can think of only ONE spiritual being who wants to rob us of our certainty, silence God’s Word and silence our evangelistic efforts. That being is the Prince of Darkness himself.

Maybe If I Said it With Marbles in My Mouth

The Emerging Church is one of the greatest sources of comedy today.

Since, uncertainty is the highest spiritual virtue among the Emergents, they have no choice but to endlessly converse about all kinds of theological theories (many of them are nothing more than old heresies). Rather than discuss whether these theories are ‘true or false’ they instead focus on the ‘Narrative Value’ of these diverse ideas. The end result of all of this is conversations that get farther and farther away from rational thinking and sanity. The comedy of all of this is that otherwise ‘rational’ people think this stuff is ‘profound’.

Case in point.

A recent "conversation" on “The Passion as Story For Us” on an Emerging blog site, led off with a nearly incomprehensible point about the Atonement. See if you can decipher this quote from the conversation:

In the third section of Alan Mann’s book, Atonement for a ‘Sinless’ Society, Mann deals with the Passion narrative of the Gospels as a narrative that invites the postmodern self into the text in order to find ontological coherence through Jesus’ own coherence…

“The reader is beckoned into the narrative by the hope that, perhaps, here is the narrative possibility of liberation from his or her own ontological incoherence, here is a counter-story with which to retell his or her own story in a coherent way without the fear of shame that comes through exposure” (113).

Judas, whom Mann treats with sensitivity, is an example of narrative incoherence. In other words, the reader is challenged to be like Jesus or like Judas — to have a real self or a shamed self. “Judas experienced the total and utter collapse of his personal narrative — psychologically, socially and spiritually” (124).

Jesus, as the real self, goes to the cross by his own choice. It is his commitment to give his life for others — and having others is the only way to have the real self.

Did that make any sense to you? Could you imagine Peter standing up at Pentecost and preaching a sermon about finding ‘Ontological Coherence through Jesus own coherence and its impact on the real self'?

I think those in the Emerging Church should try preaching about the collapse of Judas’ personal narrative and Jesus ‘as the real self’ at homeless shelters in the inner cities of America. I’m certain that the homeless and the poor will find this message invigorating and liberating.

As for me, I have no idea what any of that was supposed to mean. I guess I’m just not ‘enlightened’. Therefore, I’ll just have to continue in my simple and crude theological understandings.

Silly me, I thought that scripture taught that Jesus died for me, that he paid the penalty for my sins on the cross of Calvary.

Apparently, that’s way too simple. Plus, that way of talking about the atonement can lead to ‘certainty’.

Hmmmm…. Maybe if I said it with marbles in my mouth it would achieve incoherence and create ‘uncertainty’.

What is the Emerging Church Movement and Why I’m Post-Emergent

Technically speaking, the Emerging Church Movement is a re-packaging and re-imagining of liberal and Neo-Orthodox theology and thinking in a post-modern context. Put more simply, it is a reaction by liberal fringe theologians against the mass marketing and commercialization of Christianity by the mega-churches and the church growth movement.

If the Emerging Church Movement were a political party, they’d be the ‘Green Party’; having vaild complaints about commercialization but whose solutions are actualy worse than the problems their trying to correct.

The hallmark of their doctrinal and theological position is that it is fluid and indefinable. They spend a lot of time conversing about and nuancing theological theories. The more novel, creative and abstract the theory, the more they love it and converse about it.

Emerging is a great term for them because in reality they never arrive anywhere. In fact, one of the primary leaders within the movement is Brian McClaren. He is the author of one of the main books in the Emerging Movement called, A Generous Orthodoxy. One of McClaren’s key ‘talking points’ is that certainty and faith are mutually exclusive concepts. I call this, “McClaren’s Principle of Uncertainty.” This ‘principle’ is at the very heart and center of the Emerging Movement.

It would not be an overstatement to say that Mclaren is vehemently hostile to the idea that we can claim any degree of certainty about any point of truth. (And this hostility is mirrored by many followers of the Emergent Movement)

McClaren states over and over and over in his books and lectures that he despises every hint of certainty or assurance. He claims that it is arrogant and unspiritual to speak dogmatically about any point of spiritual truth.

McClaren’s favorite whipping boys are Radio Preachers. He says it makes him angry to listen to Christian radio and hear preachers who seem so sure that the doctrines they believe and teach are really true.

Brian McLaren's opinion is that “Authentic humility”, must start with a refusal to insist on the absolute truth of any given proposition.

I don’t know how anyone can miss the blatant contradiction in McClaren’s position. On the one hand, he despises anyone who seems sure that the doctrines they believe are true. Yet, McClaren is absolutely certain that his doctrine of uncertainty is absolutely true.

It is precisely this principle of uncertainty that makes the Emergent Movement so seductive and dangerous. On the one hand, the Emergents appear loving, tolerant, and open minded to all religious views. On the other hand, this uncertainty robs Emergents of the promises held out to us in the scriptures for our salvation.

The saddest and most dangerous example of this is seen in how the Emerging Church deals with Christ’s Death on the Cross.

Emergent leaders and followers openly attack the doctrine of Christ’s sacrificial atonement for the sins of the world in their writings, lectures and websites. The Emergents argue that, the penal substitionary theory of the atonement is only one of many explanations for Jesus’ death on the cross. Because Emergents value uncertainty, anyone making the exclusive and certain claim that Jesus died for our sins, is rejected and ridiculed.

When I’ve tried to discuss the scriptural support and evidence for Jesus’ death on the cross as a sacrifice and atonement for our sins with Emergent followers, I was told that, “Scripture simply does not propose a theory of cohesive theology of atonement.” That “it’s only one theory and only one aspect of the atonement.” While other Emergent followers were openly hostile to the idea that Jesus died for them by saying things like, “I don’t want to have the guilt of having someone die for me” and, “the idea that God punished Jesus for my sins is repugnant to me because it sounds like cosmic child abuse.”

The Bottom Line: The Emergent Movement claims to be a church movement, but the fruit of this fad is utter uncertainty and an absolute denial of the atoning sacrifice of Jesus death on the cross for our sins.

These two facts alone are enough to brand the Emerging Movement as heretical and anti-Christian. This is also why I’ve started the Post-Emergent Movement. People in the Emerging Movement need a real alternative to the lies and uncertainty that their being fed by leaders such as McClaren and McKnight.

For those within the Emerging Church, I would assure them that scripture offers humanity a sure and certain faith in Jesus Christ. The scriptures tell us plainly and clearly that God is offering all of humanity salvation and peace with Him through the victorious death and resurrection of His Son Jesus Christ. These promises are true, these promises can be believed with certainty and these promises can set you free from the tyranny of uncertainty. In short, Jesus Christ died for YOU. Repent and believe the Gospel!