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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.

Tags: emergent church

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