Over the past few years, my father has moved from being a critic of the Emerging Church, to a friend. Not an outright fan, but someone who understands what the EC is trying to achieve. A few months ago, he read Carson's horrific book on the emerging church, and he has now written a response. I think it's great, and give it to you here, with Dr Reg Codrington's permission.

Some thoughts on
The Emerging Church Movement
after reading D A Carson’s “Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church”.

INTRODUCTION


I have spent the past several months reading various works by writers from the Emerging Church Movement. These have included Brian McLaren’s “A Generous Orthodoxy”, Leonard Sweet’s “Carpe Manana” (which I am re-reading for the 2^nd time), McLaren’s “The last word and the word after that”, Reggie McNeal’s, “The Present Future”, and Shane Claiborne’s mind-blowing book, “The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an ordinary radical”. I have also surfed the Web and been the recipient of several “blogs” and related emails on the subject.

With certain reservations, I enjoyed “A Generous Orthodoxy”, since I believe it raised some important issues about failures in the contemporary evangelical church, even though McLaren tended to slide over a number of issues I could have wished he had dealt with in more detail. He also introduced what I see as side-issues which diminished the effect of his bigger questions.

“Carpe Manana” needs a second read, but I found it fascinating, with Sweet putting his finger on problem areas in the modern church with unerring skill. He was forthright, yet gracious, and I found the entire book challenging and helpful.

McLaren’s “The last word” was troubling and unsatisfying. He left me with the impression that he was tackling an area which has many unanswered questions for the Bible-believing Christian (hell and eternal punishment) only to leave us with a different set of unanswered questions and a stance on penal substitution and universalism which I personally find unacceptable and unbiblical.

McNeal’s “The Present Future”, by contrast, put a finger on crucial issues which the church needs to confront, without introducing the kind of red herrings which McLaren did.

My favourite book of the decade was Claiborne’s challenging “Irresistible Revolution”, which put in writing a summary of all that has been occupying my mind and study time over the past few years. This is a must read!

It was against the background of all these books that I read Don Carson’s book, “Becoming conversant with the Emerging Church”. Having read with appreciation some of his other writings, I expected this scholar to approach the subject in a balanced and unbiased way. I was deeply disappointed!

NEGATIVES ABOUT CARSON’S BOOK

1. The Big Issues

At a macro level, my biggest disappointment with Carson’s response to the Emerging Church Movement is that he spent so little time discussing the important issues being raised. He seems to devote an inordinate amount of time telling the readers why what he calls the “confessional church” is getting it right, instead of picking up on the areas of failure which need to be addressed. In fact he accuses Emerging Church thinkers of “a distortion of confessional Christianity under modernism”. Now maybe Carson has been fortunate to move in circles which are getting it all right, but I sincerely doubt if this can be true. Surely, if McNeal can see need for massive change in the Southern Baptist Convention churches, so can Carson?

Carson tries to defend the modern church by (for goodness sake!) a prayer from SPURGEON, who died more than a century ago! (p60-62) Spurgeon is virtually my patron saint (does that sound too “emergent”?) but to quote him as an example of the “modern church” is laughable!

What I would have loved to see would have been an admission that there is much in the modern church which needs reformation. If Luther had to confront the church of his day because they had moved Scripture out of centre-spot and were making it say what they wanted (plus adding to it where it suited them!), are we not facing a similar situation today in the majority of our churches? When was Biblical literacy last at such a “low”? When were church structures with apostolic leaders and autocracy so in evidence? What is happening when the Church of England in South Africa considered court action against one of its own bishops in 2007? Where is truth when the Anglican Church in the UK has to be questioned by Anglican bishops in Africa on its commitment to Scripture? Where is the desire for relevance when the Baptist Union of South Africa can disband its Youth Department? Surely something is wrong … and Carson glosses over the shortcomings!

This leads him to make some amazing statements! Having noted that mission is at the heart of the Emerging Church Movement, with a concomitant desire for relevance in a changing society, he states that “it is easy to predict that the priorities of the contemporary emerging church movement will, unless they change, seem strangely dated in twenty years.” (p 82) I hope not, for if so, the church will have TOTALLY lost its way, and will no longer be being obedient to the Great Commission!

2. The narrow backgrounds

Again and again throughout his book, Carson makes snide comments about McLaren coming from a “twig”, referring to his hyper-fundamentalist background. Carson maintains that this probably explains many of McLaren’s perspectives, implying that they are reactions, and perhaps over-reactions, to his upbringing. While there may be a small measure of truth in this (and who if us can claim that such an accusation would not be true of us?), it is simply not honest to extrapolate that to be true of all thinkers in the Emerging Church Movement. There are many who have come out of what I would call mainline evangelical churches, many with quite balanced social programmes and certainly with Biblical preaching, who would likewise express concern about where the church is going in the 21^st century.

It is almost as if Carson WANTS this to be true of this Movement, since it helps him “explain it away”. He uses the image of a pendulum again and again, hinting that this has swung from early narrowness almost all the way to what he calls “hard postmodernism” and that, in all likelihood, it will find middle ground in due course.

I happen to agree with him that some of McLaren’s writings DO seem to represent a very radical swing, and I sincerely hope Brian will have a rethink on some of them! But once again this is no excuse for disregarding the concerns being raised. Even if the one raising them has had a background in the most extreme of Christian backwaters, it would not change that person’s right to ask serious questions of the mainstream!

And if Carson thinks that all Emerging Church thinkers are just post-modernists in disguise, let him hear McNeal state categorically: “The last thing we need is a postmodern church. We need a church for postmodern people.” (p141)

3. The truth

Carson’s major problem with the Emerging Church Movement is how he sees them dealing with truth. Almost cavalierly, he accuses all of them of refusing to accept that any objective truth is possible. In fact, he states as much when he writes, “emergent writers do not handle the truth claims of Christianity very well”. (p131) Now he may have come across some like that, but this to me seems to be an exaggeration of note! What I read from most Emerging Church thinkers is that they have a higher view of Scripture than ever, but that they are seriously questioning whether or not the church is interpreting it correctly. The mere fact that a particular interpretation has stood for centuries does not make it necessarily correct, any more than the church’s view on a sun circling round the earth was true, just because it was believed for more than a millennium!

At this point, it seems to me that Carson is setting up a straw man and then burning it! There is NOTHING of this in Sweet’s writings, or on websites I checked, or in McNeal’s book. McNeal is seriously calling the church back to the Word, but he does warn (quite rightly, I feel) that, “If our Bible study does not show up in a life that looks increasingly like Jesus’ …, it is merely a head trip, a point of pride, and an idolatrous substitute for genuine spirituality.” (p144)

To cite Steve Chalke’s book, “The Lost Message of Jesus”, and his apparent abandonment of penal substitution as the epitome of Emerging Church thinking in the UK is a huge over-statement and I would certainly contend that this does not represent the mainstream view of the movement.

4. Red herrings

Carson’s book, as I have stated, disappointed me for its bypassing of the big issues. It also fell into the trap of dealing quite fully with side issues. I must return to the homosexuality debate just now, but I was concerned that, having accused McLaren and others of nitpicking, he proceeded to do likewise.

For example, he did not enjoy the suggestion that the Lord’s Table might be opened to unbelievers on the basis of “belonging” before “becoming”. I happen to agree on the one hand that, to me, I Corinthians 11:27 and 28 restrict Communion to believers, but I also strongly support the move away from the notion of “membership” (which finds no support in Scripture) towards a more open “belonging” wherever possible. Carson misleads when he links access to the Lord’s Table with access to the Passover, for Numbers 9:14 clearly invites “aliens” to this feast, provided they kept to the rules.

He also accuses the Movement of being “sectarian” (p155) and seems almost annoyed that thinkers within the Emerging Church should dare to warn that the modern church is in serious danger of becoming obsolete. These, he declares, are “the shrill cries of sectarians.” What utter nonsense! The cries I am hearing are from dedicated Christians who see the church moving further and further away from its God-given calling and mission and who FEAR for its obsolescence, not desire it, any more than Luther desired to break away from Rome in his earlier days.

In his almost blinkered desire to defend the status quo, Carson maintains that the evangelical church (or “confessional Christians” as he calls them) are “more likely to give generously, serve in rough places, build hospitals and schools, run shelters for battered women, and much more of the same than their liberal counterparts.” (p161) Perhaps this is true in the USA and in the parts of South America which he seems to know well, but it was certainly not true in South Africa throughout the 20^th century. Social programmes were few and far between in evangelical churches (with a place like Rosebank Union Church being a happy exception), who placed emphasis on saving souls rather than “sending a well-fed sinner to hell”. Liberal churches, and especially the Roman Catholics, left denominations like the Baptists, the Church of England and the Pentecostals woefully far behind. They still are!!

POSITIVES ABOUT CARSON’S BOOK

Somewhere round about page 162, I began to find statements by Carson with which I could identify wholeheartedly. When he began to give reasoned arguments against specific points of issue, I found it easier to be positive. Here are some of them:

1. Jesus

Like Carson, I found McLaren’s list of seven Jesuses interesting reading, but not very helpful and a tad confusing. I have to agree that, in trying to show how various groups or “traditions” have given helpful perspectives on Jesus (no problem there), it sounds as if he has “constructed his own Jesus from disembodied slips of presentations he happens to have stumbled across within these various traditions.” (p162) To me, if one wants a fresh look at Jesus (apart from re-reading the Gospels with an open mind), one cannot do better than read Philip Yancey’s remarkable book, “The Jesus I never knew”.

Yancey, too, had to deal with a church in his youth which prescribed behaviour and caused hurt which took him years to recover from, but he responded without bitterness and searched the Scriptures instead. Whether he would call himself an emergent thinker I have no idea, but he is certainly asking the same questions about the church. Yancey has also found something of value in other traditions, like Catholicism, and the writings of Henry Nouwen, but he has pegged himself unflinchingly to Scripture and the result is a mind-boggling book (among other wonderful books he has written).

2. Atonement

I have already stated that Chalke’s view of atonement almost certainly does not reflect mainline emergent thinking. However, Carson is right (p167) that McLaren doesn’t help when he puts all sorts of options into Neo’s expositions (“The Story We Find Ourselves In”) about the Atonement, which include options which patently have no Biblical support. If he wants to rap with a bunch of students about possible alternatives, let him feel free, but when he goes into print providing these as REAL alternatives, I’m afraid I am less than happy … not because it’s affecting my comfort zone, but because to me Scripture is very clear on this issue. Both I Peter 2 and Isaiah 53 say something that is clearly different from Neo (and therefore, McLaren).

3. Hell and eternal punishment

I have already stated that I found McLaren’s book, “The Last Word”, deeply troubling and the furthest I have found him to be from clear Biblical exegesis. Sure, there are aspects of eternal punishment which God has seen fit not to reveal to us, but McLaren does not play fair here. He finds an area of Christian theology about which there are many questions and proceeds to attack those questions. Having done so, he puts nothing in their place and therefore sets up a NEW set of questions to which there are no clear answers.

This may be fun for him and a bunch of theological students, but I read his book as a teacher and as a preacher. As a fulltime Bible teacher, my role must surely be to be as clear as possible and to confuse as little as possible. As a preacher, I can be clever in the pulpit and stun people with my wonderful knowledge of the intricacies of theology, with all its big words, or I can bless them with a clear statement from the Word of God. Obviously, good Biblical teaching and preaching include theological content, but I took my model as a young man from Spurgeon’s preaching and that of my own father, which any primary-school child could understand.

I fear that McLaren, in his quest to question EVERYTHING, may not have too much to tell his children or grandchildren about what the Bible REALLY says about ANYTHING! Certainly, I believe he lost the plot when it comes to eternal punishment. And, by the way, if the doctrine of hell provides us with some problems, universalism provides us with even more!

4. Homosexuality

I had to get to this sooner or later, since there is no doubt that this is one of the most non-peripheral of the Emergent Church’s peripheral issues! It just keeps coming up! Like McLaren, I do not want to condemn what the Bible does not condemn, but I find the explanations for some of the Old Testament passages tortured at best, and I have yet to hear a good exposition of Romans 1 convincing me that God does not find homosexual behaviour abhorrent and deviant.

That in no way excuses me from inviting them into the church and seeking to minister to them in any way I can, but I agree fully with Carson that the liberals’ so-called “compassion” for gays sounds “more like unbelief and willful defiance of what God has said.” (p172)

It pains me that a Movement which has the potential to change the face of the Christian church for good in the decades ahead may just become sidelined and seen to be irrelevant because they pounded this drum against what many would regard as clear Biblical teaching.

5. Fundamentalism

Again, I have to go along with Carson’s critique of McLaren’s description of what the “fundamentals” are and what it means to be Fundamental. Having been at the centre of debates concerning the Bible all my adult life, I think I am fairly sure of what I mean when I write about the “fundamentals of the faith”. For someone who claims full adherence to the Apostles’ Creed, as McLaren does, it is difficult to comprehend how he can then proceed to water down the fundamentals as he does into a nothing! Even if he is NOT soft on Scripture, as Carson accuses him of being, he certainly lays himself open to this criticism when he diminishes the core of our faith to such an extent.

6. “The Lost Message of Jesus” and closing questions

Having made my comments about Chalke, I will not comment on Carson’s section (pp 182-187) except to say that I concur with it entirely. I like Carson’s definition of “orthodoxy” as including “biblical fidelity” (p208) and believe that the Emerging Church thinkers must come out more clearly on what appears to be one of the major concerns about them. If they want their questions to be heard, I think they need to respond to the kind of question which Carson asks on page 210: “Is the emerging movement, wittingly or unwittingly, abandoning great swaths of biblical content, including some of Jesus’ most sobering teaching?”

CONCLUSION

Having watched the progress of the church and its various denominations from a position of at least some knowledge over more than four decades, I would firmly concur with the Emerging Church Movement that in many areas the evangelical church has lost its way. The six major questions that McNeal asks require an answer from any pastor or church wishing to be both Biblical and relevant in the 21^st century. Likewise, Sweet’s definition of the modern church as being largely “offline” is both prophetic and devastatingly accurate, and his solutions need to be heard and implemented. Dr Graeme Codrington’s assessment of the state of the Youth Department in the Baptist Union several years ago was listened to at their big gathering at Gariep Dam and politely ignored. The rest is history. His regular emailed “blogs” are continually raising issues that cry out for a response from those within what Carson calls the “confessional church”. And, I have to say, McLaren, for all his over-the-top challenging of the status quo, has many questions which the 21^st century church, operating as it does in an overtly post-modern world, simply HAS to answer!

I found Carson’s book a strange mixture, but for me it was well worth reading. I hope my reflections may be a help to others.

Dr Reg Codrington D.Ed, Lic.Theol.(Hons)
Hilton, South Africa
1^st May 2008

Graeme isn't 'horrific' a little strong? I thought your father's critique was quite fair for the most part - I might differ with him on one or two issues about the book, but by and large we'd come out in the same place. What I didn't enjoy was your opening description which sounds awefully polemical.

Ever since the book was published people have been jumping up and down making noise for fear that Carson's book would demonize the EC in the minds of many uninformed readers. Let's just make sure that in response we don't demonize one of the top Christian scholars of our age.

Anyway, just my feeling on the issue - take it or leave it.

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Posted by: Stephen 03 May, 2008 - 09:22:25

Stephen,

Thanks for your comment. maybe "horrific" was a bit strong. But I am not sure what else I must say. Both Carson and McArthur ("The Truth Wars") have knowingly published lies and half truths about EC. I have seen correspondence between Emergent - and some EC individuals - and Carson/MacArthur, and it is horrific. There is no other word for it.

You can also see my blog about Gary Gilley (http://www.futurechurch.co.za/item/a-response-to-gary-gilley-s-seminar-on-the-emerging-church...). He was worse than horrific.

These men attack EC authors, call their salvation into question, lie about them and delude the Christian church. They do this on the back of their reputations as "Christian scholars".

I agree with MacArthur's main thesis: we are in a war for Truth. And I don't see why narrow minded fundamentalists are allowed to make all the plays.

No, I stand by my one word analysis of Carson's book. BECAUSE he is a Christian scholar it is horrific. He created straw men and gloried in burning them to the ground. He has made no attempt to engage with those he attacks (proving to me that his intent was not to correct, but rather to provoke). His book is filled with misquotes, deliberate twisting of the facts and intentional hype. He has refused to retract any of even the most glaring errors in his book.

It is horrific.

Not every word is horrific. And not everything he says is wrong. I think my father's analysis is fair. But I do not agree with his conclusion. I do NOT think that Carson or MacArthur's books are worth reading.

Unfortunately, a large portion of evangelical Christians, lulled into slumber by their pastors, will only read Carson and MacArthur, and not read the source material of EC authors at all. On that basis, they will see EC as a vile threat to orthodoxy, and will close their minds even more. They will continue to sleep walk to their own destruction.

Carson, MacArthur, Gilley and others have a lot to answer for. And I will not apologise for saying so.

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Posted by: Graeme 03 May, 2008 - 11:21:24

Excellent review, analysis and synthesis. I have read all the authors but not all of these books so it is great to hear your father's thoughtful, passionate response. May there be more pastors like him.

I was directed here by Andrew Jones's recommendation.

http://tallskinnykiwi.typepad.com/tallskinnykiwi/2008/05/dr-reg-codringt.html...

Andy Rowell
Doctor of Theology Student
Duke Divinity School
Durham, North Carolina, USA
Blog: http://www.andyrowell.net/

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Posted by: Andy Rowell 03 May, 2008 - 16:26:34

Hello!

I was directed here by Mr Jones as well.

I truly appreciated your thoughts here and reviews as I haven't read every one of these books yet.

I enjoy your perspective.

thanks for sharing!

brad

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Posted by: Bradley Grinnen 03 May, 2008 - 19:28:41

I got here from Andrew Jones's recommendation. The review was really balanced and helpful, clarifying but saddening, this whole situation is rather saddening.

Reading against a diagonal hatch makes my eyes feel funny, glad to have found your blog, though possibly I will now read it through a feeder.

Phil.

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Posted by: Phil 04 May, 2008 - 10:57:41

Graeme,
I agree with you and your father, Carson's book was certainly not his finest. It was the first I read on the EC and was influenced enough to read more and what I discovered was that Carson's book was inadequate and at times inaccurate.

But I agree with Stephen you are in danger of demonizing those with whom you disagree. I must say I found your reply rather ironic in that your tone seems to be the same as those whom condemn for their attitude. I agree with you that Carson and others should be held accountable for their work but I cannot agree with the manner in which you do it. It is one thing to point out inaccuracies and errors of judgement but to know the motives of another's heart so that you can omniciently say that "he glories" in burning straw men is to go too far.

Thanks for your father's original post - it was really good!

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Posted by: John 04 May, 2008 - 15:20:40

For those who are reading all these comments, I am sure you will realise that it would be simple for me at this stage to just say, "OK, you guys are right, I shouldn't have said 'horrific'", and that would be that. My father's post is the issue, not my intro to it.

So, there's an easy way out available to me here.

But, I am not going to take it. Not because I am belligerent. Nor because I am pig headed.

I won't take the easy route, because I have seen what Carson and MacArthur are doing to Christians. They are deliberately and conciously deluding them! They are trying to defend the truth by telling untruths. That is excusable, and should not be dealt with lightly.

I also won't back down, because I have seen how EC authors have attempted to engage with Carson and MacArthur (and others) - both publicly and privately. I have seen how Carson and MacArthur refuse, at every attempt, to reply or even be gracious. I have seen the vicious ad hominem attacks they dish out. And I am tired of it.

So, I absolutely apologise for taking the focus away from my father's excellent article. But I do not apologise for calling out Carson and MacArthur for the damage they are doing, and I don't know why I need to be nice to them in anyway.

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Posted by: Graeme 04 May, 2008 - 17:12:45

Graeme,

Thank you for posting this article by your Father, its wonderful to see an honest opinion of several books. I love how he's just frank and honest in his approach.

I'm doing my dissertation on the emerging church and its effect in Ireland, particularly looking at its effect on Irish young adults.

From my studies, I can see where your getting your conclusions from, and personally, I might not use the word horrific, as I would try to avoid a reaction from Carson and others, (at least a procoked reaction) particularly because as a refroming thinker, I would not want to give them ammunition to fire against an honest movement of reform. This falls in line with your fathers coment on the homosexuality issue. I would not like to see the emergent movement suffer on such small arguments. (which are usually useless and pointless)

It is a known fact that in dividing lines of Christian thinking, you get most writers taking extremes mainly because they took to defending their topic, and now they defend it viciously. Its difficult to make them come to a good middle that is honest and right to both. (or at least a peaceful middleground for discussion.

The ermeging issue is no different, and unfortunately extremes are cropping up. Carson/McClaren is becoming a fine example of this stupidity in Scholarly writing and study.

I hope emergent thinkers and writers can truly be on higher ground, and fight for beliefs without the fistful of vivious behaviour that can happen when apoligetics goes too far.

I hope I've been clear... Thanks so much for posting this. There is most certainly a quote or two from it going into my Dissertation.

Kind Regards,

Kieron Kelly
(Degree Student in Applied Theology)

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Posted by: Kieron Kelly 17 May, 2008 - 21:09:58

Not in any way to justify my comments, but rather just to add to the discussion, I want to quote from James Smith's brilliant (!!!) book, "Who's Afraid of Postmodernism?". He comments (page 74) on people who believe that Christianity can be reduced to "just another collection of propositions", and who think that our beliefs can be neatly summed up in "a list of statements about God, Jesus, the Spirit, sin, redemption, and so on. Knowledge is reduced to biblical information that can be encapsulated and encoded."

In a footnote to this paragraph, he then says the following:

"This can be seen in a quite remarkable way in D A Carson, 'Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church', chap 7: 'Some Biblical Passages for Evaluation'. The chapter is a collection of lists of proof texts that are supposed to have the self-evident force of criticizing 'hard postmodernism' just by documenting the texts - a sort of miniconcordance of Bible verses that use the word 'true' or 'truth'. Carson's critique of McLaren on this score, particularly on questions of narrative (ibid., 163-66), is an epic adventure in missing the point."

I could not agree more.

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Posted by: Graeme 22 May, 2008 - 20:02:39

A fair critique.

I want to draw out a question I've had for a while though...something mentioned in this article.

Reg says that his role as a Bible teacher/pastor is to create as little confusion as possible...perhaps through limiting the scope of questions.

Is this really the role of a Bible teacher though? When is it better to leave people confused so that they may wrestle with the tensions than to neatly package things in such away that people resist the questions?

I've been even more uncertain of how to negotiate this "tact" within my own spiritual journey. The reality is that there are actually questions which require attention...and that there are many people walking around with much confidence that they are "right" while they hold only a tiny piece of a puzzle(perhaps a tiny piece about evolution/homosexuality/sexuality/hell).

Is it correct for us to let people be, to not disturb their pattern of thinking? Surely growth and change is the product of wrestling/disturbance/discontent with the answers which no longer seem to suffice?

I realise that all things are contextual and whether or not to disturb may very well just depend on the situation we find ourselves in...though i tend to think(feel?) more often than not the things which people have left unquestioned affect their lived theology...how do I respond to ethical dilemmas of today? how do i make sense of my sociopolitical context?

The duty of the pastor is the care of souls? perhaps....but is allowing someone to continue in a path which may be unhealthy really caring? i guess that depends on how we define health and care.

Dr Reg...any wise words for a young theologian?

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Posted by: Ashley Visagie 06 Jul, 2008 - 20:13:04

Ashley,

I think that the Bible is clear about different roles and functions within the church. I probably go along with Reg's view of the role of the teacher.

The issue is that there are other roles. The role of the pastor, for example, is one of care, emotional support and community. Paul seems to indicate that teaching must always be done in the context of caring community when he refers in his list of gifts to the pastor-teacher.

But, there is also the role of the king. This is the leader, the judge, the pronouncer and the ruler of the rules.

And there is a prophetic role. Today, many churches have hi-jacked the prophetic role, often turning it into a pantomime of guesswork about the future. Whilst there are those prophets who have the gift of future-sight, the gift of prophecy in the Bible is largely one of insight. Not foretelling, but forthtelling. The "thus saith the Lord" stuff, that tells people that God is displeased with them, and that they need to change their ways.

This always shook people up (either to change, or to kill the prophet) and disturbed greatly. I think we have not enough prophets these days.

Prophets, teachers, pastors and kings/leaders all work together in God's economy.

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Posted by: Graeme 19 Sep, 2008 - 15:32:05

Blogs are good for every one where we get lots of information for any topics nice job keep it up !!!
______________

http://www.dissertation-help.co.uk/...

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Posted by: dissertation 06 Dec, 2008 - 07:33:26

Hello Graham
Having just come across your cavalier dismissal of Don Carson's work on the Emergent Church, I would suggest that even a cursory glance at his earlier work The Gagging of God (Appollos 1996) and his latest book Christ and Culture Revisited (Eerdmans 2008) not to mention Telling the Truth: Evangelizing Postmoderns (Zondervan 2000) would make your critique more nuanced. Having grown up in a Baptist manse yourself and experienced the constraints of the sub-culture perhaps you would appreciate Carson's moving tribute to his Baptist pastor father in Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor

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Posted by: Alan 16 Jan, 2009 - 11:33:13

Alan,

Thanks for your recommendations. You will understand that amidst the thousands of books available to be read, Carson is going to battle to find his way back into my "to read" pile.

How about you giving us a brief summary of the books you recommend, and let me know why you think Carson is worth engaging with.

My approach at the top of this blog may have seemed flippant, offhand and "cavalier". I concede that there may have been a better way to make my point. But, I still think my point is valid. Carson's book sets up a complete straw man, and then delights in burning it down. The thing that makes me most upset is that - without doing any work themselves - thousands of people and pastors around the world have simply accepted Carson's thesis as given. And now they feel no need to engage with new thinking.

Carson has done great damage to Christianity. I know he is a great man, with an awesome legacy. But he has done great damage, too. (He therefore fits into a long and prestigious line of people who have my support and admiration, including King David, Peter and Paul, Martin Luther and more).

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Posted by: Graeme 16 Jan, 2009 - 12:58:26

I have only recently been exposed to the EC. I have found that it has its tentacles in the New Age Movement. Leonard Sweet describes New Agers such as Matthewe Fox, Ken Wilber, M. Scott Peck, etc as "New Light Leaders" (his book Quantum Spirituality: A Postmodern Apologetic).

Mc Clarens views on homosexuality cannot be justified from the Bible, unless a person re-writes the Bible. This then would not be the Word of God that Christianity was founded on. I find the EC humanistic, where man wants to define a religion that suits him, where he ca dictate what the values of the congregation should be. Fir instance, McClaren states that Buddhists, Hindu's, Jews, etc all can become Christians, without forsaking their original belief.

The Roman Catholic Institution features for to prominent in this movement. Could it be that their aim would be RCC=EC.

Rob Bell's Nooma DVD's, The Shack, Ken Wilber's book on Integral Spirituality are all works that in small increments leads a person away from Christ.

Regards in Jesus Christ.

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Posted by: Etienne Pienaar 23 Feb, 2009 - 13:27:06

Etienne,

Thanks for taking the time to comment on this blog. If you're following the conversation here, I'd love to know which EC books you've actually read through. Please let me know and we chat about your concerns.

Graeme

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Posted by: Graeme 23 Feb, 2009 - 18:55:01

How can Carson and MacArthur be accurate representations of evangelicals when they both support at least some major parts of the Calvinist ideology? It would be wise not to associate all (or even most) evangelicals with Calvinist (or Arminian for that matter) doctrines, wouldn't it?
It may be practical but not accurate to pigeonhole and stereotype groups of people according to popular writers who are somewhat associated with the group about whom they write.
Thank you for offering this blog in an endeavor to keep the "main thing" the main thing: scriptural integrity as illuminated by the Holy Spirit's teaching.

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Posted by: still learning 01 Dec, 2009 - 17:33:53

I believe in God so god is control and what happens here is only the smallest glimpse of something far greater that He has in mind for us..

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