NeoZine

Chaos suddenly flared across Europe, tearing apart the fragile coalitions of the Holy Roman Empire, the “Protector of the Church.” This was bad timing, because Muslim Turks were marching into the soft underbelly of Europe and advancing to the heart of the Empire.

Europeans were romantic and hopeful about their Holy Roman Empire. It was the rebirth of ancient Rome and Europe’s best hope for holding back the invasions of Muslims equally bent on world domination. When Charles V (1519–1558) came to power, he wore the crowns of Spain, Austria and Germany, which could finally unify most of Europe under church rule.

But a crazy monk messed it up early one frosty morning in 1517 with a hammer, a nail, and a handwritten list of “protests” against local abuses by church authorities. As he tapped the nail he had no idea his protests would expose deep fractures lying beneath the glossy surface of the HRE.

His complaints became a movement defying the Vatican’s monopoly on Christianity. It was infectious and flashed across Europe, triggering religious confusion, chaos in revered social structures, riots and wars. The armies of Charles V were preoccupied with the invading Turks and could do little to quash the Protestant Reformation for years, and then it was too popular and unstoppable. Continue Reading »

You just gotta love ‘em: the “New Calvinists” they’re called, which means they embrace Reformed theology, commonly known as Calvinism.

A young generation of Christian leaders like Mark Driscoll are capturing headlines even in the NeoZine! They are dubbed “the young and restless Reformed” because they are innovative church-planters, but they still maintain a strict diet of old-fashioned Reformed theology.

Driscoll is speaking in July at the Xenos Summer Institute, so it’s worthwhile to study Reformed theology and its history in order to appreciate Driscoll. Especially at Xenos, people are largely unfamiliar with the old, tired dog of Reformed Christianity called Covenant Theology.

Reformed churches were once-monolithic Protestant denominations, such as the Episcopalians, Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Baptists, but since the ’60s they are growing increasingly irrelevant, with few exceptions. The newest research now shows about 7% of the population is “evangelical”, and the hardest-hit are these Reformed denominations.¹

But changes are underway, and some Protestant churches are trying to stop the bleeding.

A Gen-X Revolution?

Generation-X made a big splash in the pool of American church life with “Emergents” (Emergent Church) and young, Restless Reformed. The Emergents and Restless Reformed are driving new directions, but with very different theologies.

Emergents are represented by the Emergent Village, and is renown for blending Postmodernism with the Bible,² but the Restless Reformed maintain a classical epistemology (view of truth).

Driscoll characterizes Gen-X as largely ineffective, silly Christianity:

This generation can be a whiny bunch of idealists getting together in small groups to complain about mega-churches and the religious right rather than doing something. - quoted in Relevant Magazine

He then describes his Restless Reformed theopraxy³ as a backlash against the “whiny” Emergent church:

In Revelation, Jesus is a prize fighter with a tattoo down His leg, a sword in His hand and the commitment to make someone bleed. That is a guy I can worship. I cannot worship the hippie, diaper, halo Christ because I cannot worship a guy I can beat up. I fear some are becoming more cultural than Christian, and without a big Jesus who has authority and hates sin as revealed in the Bible, we will have less and less Christians, and more and more confused, spiritually self-righteous blogger critics of Christianity.

The Thrill is Gone

Still, these very different Gen-X movements bear the same prominent Gen-X trademark: a penchant for the banal. (What does “Generation-X” stand for, anyway? Nobody knows, and nobody cares.) They know how take the zing out of the Bible.

Continue Reading »

1. See Dennis McCallum’s review of “Fall of the Evangelical Nation”. [⇑]
2. See Wikipedia - Emerging Church: Postmodern World View and the language of deconstruction. [⇑]
3. Theopraxy is the practice of theology, or what some call “the practice of God.” [⇑]

By Dennis McCallum

Now, I was not happy to see that McLaren is on the cover of Bruxy’s book because the emergent movement is headed directly away from biblical orthodoxy. I should make clear that I know most of these leaders personally (not McLaren), have attended their conferences, visited their churches, had lengthy arguments with them in public debate, blogs, email, and by phone.

McLaren is at this print doubting the reality of hell, saying universalism is okay for Christians, denying the need for penal substitution at the cross and suggesting that would be child abuse, declaring all language to be indefinite and incapable of transmitting objective truth, and all “truth” to be discursive (which undermines the usefulness of Scripture, and flies in the face of what Jesus and Paul taught). So, I believe McLaren is a bad player, and I’m not surprised to see the top evangelical thinkers here and abroad finally critiquing his stuff.

One of their own, Mark Driscoll, has broken with them over their increasingly extreme theology. He was one of the original leaders of the movement gathered by Leadership Network. He participated in their leadership councils for a decade and knows exactly what they think. He mentions the following serious problems in his critique:

1. Scripture. This includes the divine inspiration, perfection, and authority of Scripture.
2. Jesus Christ. This includes his deity and sovereignty over human history as Lord.
3. Gender. This includes whether or not people are created with inherent gender differences, whether or not those gender roles have any implications for the governments of home and church, and whether or not homosexual practice is sinful. This also includes whether or not it is appropriate to use gender specific names for God, such as Father, like Jesus did.
4. Sin. The primary issue here is whether or not human beings are conceived as sinners or are essentially morally neutral and are internally corrupted solely by external forces.
5. Salvation. The issue is whether Jesus Christ is necessary for salvation and whether or not salvation exists for people in other religions who do not worship Jesus Christ.
6. The Cross. The issue here is the doctrine of penal substitution and whether or not Jesus died in our place for our sins or if He went to the cross solely as an example for us to follow when we suffer.
7. Hell. The issue is whether or not anyone will experience conscious eternal torment, or if unbelievers will simply cease to exist (annihilationism) or eventually be saved and taken to heaven (universalism).
8. Authority. This issue is perhaps the most difficult of all. Much of this conversation is happening online with blogs and chat rooms. However, as the conversation becomes a conflict, the inherent flaw of postmodernism is becoming a practical obstacle to unity because there is no source of authority to determine what constitutes orthodox or heretical doctrine.

With the authority of Scripture open for debate and even long-established Church councils open for discussion (e.g. the Council of Carthage that denounced Pelagius as a heretic for denying human sinfulness), the conversation continues while the original purpose of getting on mission may be overlooked
because there is little agreement on the message or the mission of the Church.

I think there is a range of views represented within the group calling themselves emergent. You can see this range if you read the book, “Listening to the Beliefs of Emerging Churches” (Zondervan) which ranges from Driscoll at the conservative end to Paggit and Ward at the liberal end. In between, you see Kimball and Burke, who are not that bad, whereas Paggit sounds like a non-believer. Driscoll’s views are no more liberal (probably more conservative) than ours. McLaren is at the liberal end of this continuum, in my opinion.

Keith mentioned their problems with evangelism, which are acute. Even one of their own leaders, McKnight, acknowledged that he sees a huge problem here — and it’s not just because they are ineffective at reaching non-Christian postmoderns (which would be a major problem, considering that their literature implies that they are the ones who know how this should be done) but that they are increasingly unwilling to witness at all! This is because they don’t want to be arrogant in asserting that Christians are right and everyone else is wrong. So you just witness with your life, not your words. McLaren is in the vanguard of this view as you can see in his treatment of other religions in “A Generous Orthodoxy.” I can only say, my Bible does not take the same view of other religions that McLaren does. Rather than respecting them and learning from them, refusing to view what we teach as superior, Paul says the gods people worship are in fact demons (see 1Cor. 10). Both New and Old Testaments agree on this.

Why Navpress would have no problem with McLaren, or Zondervan, or Baker, is a baffling question. The only answer I can imagine is 1. they have no idea what he teaches, or (more likely) 2. Dollars and cents mean more than being faithful to God’s word.

I think Bruxy Cavey should consider removing his endorsement in a new edition of his book. McLaren’s Secret Message was a more innocuous book. Also read his more inflamatory stuff like Generous Orthodoxy, and some of the careful and fair critiques by many of the leading thinkers in the Christian world today, such as D. A. Carsen, Millard Eriksen (editor of RECLAIMING THE CENTER:
CONFRONTING EVANGELICAL ACCOMMODATION IN POSTMODERN TIMES, which includes a dozen of our best theologians writing essays about why they are so worried about the movement), and many others. Groothius’ book, Truth Decay is good.

Amazingly, it has taken over ten years for the evangelical church to realize what we are dealing with in the emergent movement, and they are still partially asleep on this. But I do believe that finally we will see in the next few years the believing church mobilize against the extreme liberal wing of this movement.