The Nine Cracks in the Emergent Pillars – Crack #2

April 14, 2008

We’re examining the Nine Pillars that the Emergent church is founded on. The list of foundational points comes from Brad Cecil.

2. Language is limited

I said that I agree with this point in my first post on this subject. I must now eat crow, because I don’t agree with this point at all. This second excuse is also a matter of pragmatism.

God seems to think language is sufficient enough. The Bible comes to us through words. The LORD used language as the primary means to communicate His will and purpose to men for the last 6,000 years. Take a simple phrase like “the LORD spoke”. That phrase appears 143 times in the Old Testament. Revelation came to men as “the word of the LORD” 242 times in the OT and that phrase can be found 13 times in the New Testament. Paul tells that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God (Rom 10:17).

Satan tempted Jesus after the LORD fasted in the wilderness, telling him to turn a stone into bread. Jesus answered him saying, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God (Mat 4:4).

Conversation, which Emergents seem to worship, is dependant on language! So, if we concede to this point about language being “limited”, then what is to be accomplished by conversation?


The Nine Cracks in the Emergent Pillars – Crack #1

April 11, 2008

Brad Cecil presents nine pillars that the Emergent church is founded on. The pillars are cracked!

1. Post modern refers to the period after modernity. It appears to “us” that a significant epistemological shift is occurring – the likes of which we haven’t seen in 400 years.

Crack 1. Paul spoke about the present generation of vipers in 2nd Timothy 3. Note that they resist the truth and want to redefine God as being weak. They never come to the knowledge of the truth. They are reprobate concerning the faith.


This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;

Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith. But they shall proceed no further: for their folly shall be manifest unto all men, as theirs also was. (2Ti 3:1-9)


I don’t hear believers disputing the power of God, or being ashamed of biblical truth and faith. I hear practically nothing but those things from Emergers.

My experience in conversing with Emergers is that they refuse to read their Bibles in context. They push their Bibles aside and resort to pragmatism when I show them where they deal with the text deceitfully. They make self-refuting statements and get angry when I point out their error. And when their poor handling of scripture and their fallacious statements are exposed, then they claim that they are being slandered.

That kind of inability to read and process Scripture with integrity points to a corruption of their mind as the problem. The epistemological shift is one away from knowledge grounded in truth toward knowledge grounded in belief. In other words, opinion and pragmatism trump the Word of God. Postmodernism merely tries to validate that shift away from the Holy Bible (truth) as good and progressive. The Word of God says it is bad and regressive. I side with the Word of God, because postmodernism leads away from rationality and not toward it. That much is clear to me from my experience with Emergers.


Disengaging the Bible

April 10, 2008

Brad Cecil has started blogging in defense of the Emergent church. He has a list of points that the Emergent church is founded on. I’m copying them here for discussion.

The Nine Foundational Pillars of the Emergent church

1. Post modern refers to the period after modernity. It appears to “us” that a significant epistemological shift is occurring – the likes of which we haven’t seen in 400 years.
2. Language is limited
3. Human concepts are limited
4. There is no place of irreducible certainty (foundation)
5. Considering the above it would be very difficult to convey absolute meaning using language and human concepts
6. Christian theology has become enslaved to the 1st order assumptions of modernity and is far more Cartesian than Christian and has become ashamed of faith
7. A Reformation of recognition and repentance is needed
8. New theological thought is needed to free Christian theology from the enslavement of modernity and enlightenment assumptions and conversation and friendships would be more productive than developing imperatives.
9. This is just the beginning of the transition and a great deal of work and theological thought lay ahead for those who desire to join the conversation.

Being a Cartesian rube, I don’t get it. I’m sure the postmodern schoolmen will disagree, but my rejection of this is not based on ignorance. My rejection of it is based on the Holy Bible.

I can agree with points two and three, but I don’t don’t agree with points one and four. So point five doesn’t follow. And the remaining points are not supported. In other words the last four are founded on the fifth, which is founded on the first four. You’ve got about one-half of a foundation there, and the walls are unsupported. (Please accept my apology for mixing metaphors. Pillars, structural elements, …)

Jesus Christ is Truth and He is The Foundation. So this attempt to reduce him to a weak god does not fly.


Many False Christs

April 8, 2008

I am glad to see others talking about the heresy that Oprah is teaching. That hyperlink will take you to a YouTube video. Take note of what Oprah says at about 3:15 minutes in to it. Her spiel about “the absolute indescribable hugeness of that which we call God“. That statement parallels the Emergent church’s statement about the Gospel, that it “is the irreducible good news of God, ultimately delivered in the person of Jesus Christ“.

I hate to sound like a conspiracy nut, but the Gospel is being attacked in bold ways and with big money. Joel Osteen attacks it on TV screens across America every week from a crossless pulpit. Doyle Davidson, a drunken lecher, attacks it from his pulpit nightly. Osteen has a huge following. Davidson has a small cult. Osteen and Davidson have similar ministries.

Osteen leads people away from the cross by avoiding all discussion of sin. He focuses on prosperity, wealth, and opportunity. His weapons are pleasing words, a nice smile, and lots of cash. Osteen has people close to him that prop him up and make apologies for his crossless brand of Churchianity.

Davidson leads people away from the cross by bringing every issue down to a matter of demon possession. He focuses on his own lusts, disappointments, and his own self-righteousness. His weapons are bottle of whiskey, endless prayers of repetition, and his own Jezebel-doctrine. Davidson has people to prop him up too, and they make apologies for his sickening presence and preaching.

One brand of churchianity is no better than the other.

Back to Oprah. At about 4:40 minutes into the video, she talks about a “search for something more than doctrine started to stir within” her. She relates this to a time in her late twenties. She was sitting in church and the pastor said, “And the LORD thy God is a jealous god”. Her response was, “God is jealous of me?” She says that she rejected that teaching because her inner spirit didn’t agree with it.

That makes sense, right? What does Exodus 20:5, Exodus 34:14, Deuteronomy 4:24, Deuteronomy 5:9, Deuteronomy 6:15,and Joshua 24:19 have to do with the truth about God? No, Oprah says that God is love and God is in all things.

Back to the video again. She turns to Eckhart Tolle (about 4:50 minutes) for a critique of Christian faith…”Man made god in his own image. The eternal, infinite, and unnamable was reduced to a mental idol that you had to believe in and worship as my-god our our-god“. They go on to talk about Christ-consciousness, making false Christs out of everyone who will embrace their doctrine. The say that Christ is all about a feeling and not about a belief. How does Oprah’s New Age teaching parallel the teaching of Emergent leaders?

PS: Please note that Tolle is a pseudo Red Letter christian.

HT: Slice of Laodicea

UPDATE 04/09/2008: The video referred to above promotes a book and an author that I don’t wish to promote. That author is apparently a shameless plagiarist, and she does more harm than good to the name of Christendom with her unsavory methods. Nevertheless, the video does a great job of presenting the spiritual poison that Oprah is peddling.


Emergent future

March 25, 2008

Herescope has an nice article on Brian McLaren’s vision for Christianity and the World. But NWO globalism is just a conspiracy theory, right?


Resurrection without Atonement?

March 23, 2008

Lighthouse Trails (LT) has in interesting article about so-called churches that celebrate Easter while denying the purpose for which Christ died.

Given that today is Easter 2008, I thought I should add as much as I can to the LT article. The list of names cited by LT is  not comprehensive, by any means.

Other names come to my mind when I think of men who deny the atonement. Jeffrey John comes to mind, for instance. He compares penal substitutionary atonement to "divine child abuse". Marcus Borg comes to mind. Borg, a Jesus Seminar fellow, doesn’t think that most of the Bible is literally true. John Shelby Spong comes to mind. Spong, another Jesus Seminar fellow, believes that modernism and postmodernism calls for Christians to embrace universalism and existentialism.

So, I have but a few names to add. I could add many more. Just follow the links, dear reader. Who is at the root of the latest "progressive Christian" movements? Who are their influences? How does secular philosophy enter into it? What are they really saying about the Holy Bible?

He that hath an ear, let him hear!


Pragmatism as the "new" test of truth?

March 19, 2008

Relevant Christian has a post by Joe Martino. He makes a whining argument for pragmatism as a basis for letting heretical teaching go unchallenged.

I get tired of the Bible being used as the final shock and awe weapon to win the battle. I just don’t believe that when God wrote this love letter He intended for us to use it as a battering ram to win arguments. Anybody can claim that what they believe is backed by the Bible. Anybody can say their way is the most Biblical way. They are the one’s defending the truth. Heck, there is an even a Blog where some one has decided to call themselves the “Keepers of Christ’s Truth.” They tell us, Right now, Truth is under attack, and much is at stake.” So I just want to get this strait: The same God who created the entire universe, who has kept the Bible preserved through countless attacks. The same God who reconciled all men to Himself through the sacrificial death, burial and resurrection of His Son needs some guy with a BLOG to defend the Truth? That’s retarded. That goes beyond any sane, reasonable train of thought. It bugs me to no end.

Martino clearly alludes to Doug Pagitt and Rob Bell as “godly men” who are being unfairly attacked by bible-thumpers. Brother Joe is under the tutelage of Seminary professors. That explains quite a bit!

Sorry, Joe. You should study up on these guys before you defend them.

****

UPDATE: 03/21/2008

Be sure and read the comments. Brother Joe stopped by to demonstrate his fruits of the spirit. Joe likes to run house churches and demonstrate his contempt for youth ministry.

UPDATE: 03/24/2008

Brother Joe Martino dropped by again to lecture on repentance and tell us that Rob Bell is his pastor.


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