My take on the Rob Bell controversy over at my other blog. Here’s an excerpt:

When the current Love Wins hype is over and the book completes its guaranteed run as a bestseller, Rob Bell will be able to release a book twice as controversial in the future and receive less than half the fanfare. HarperOne should enjoy the flood of free publicity from the power writers of the Evangelical blogosphere this time around. Next time out the bait will be a much tougher sell.

Read the rest here.

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The “other blog” that features only my longer pieces of writing, some of which have been published in print and others that are waiting to be published. The post frequency is about once a week. So, if that’s the kind of thing you’re looking for…

Go and take a look at the new site here.
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Enjoy!

Forget those other “discernment” websites, always looking for groundless and specious accusations against popular teachers.

Here, Kevin DeYoung carefully articulates and then deconstructs an argument made by Miroslav Volf based on a section of writing by Augustine. He begins with this “Never forget this: sometimes even very smart people make very bad arguments.” Indeed.

“Clearly,” Volf maintains, “Augustine believed, it is worse for concrete deeds toward neighbor to be misaligned with the character of God than for thoughts about God to be misaligned with the character of God” (147). Actually, though, the line from Augustine never prioritized deeds over thoughts. In the quote he simply states that right thoughts, devoid of the right deeds, are not pleasing to God.

Volf goes on to use this bad argument to make an even worse argument: “If Augustine is correct in his assessment, the consequence for Christians’ relation to non-Christians are astounding: non-believers or adherents of another religion, if they love, can be closer to God than Christians notwithstanding Christians’ formally correct beliefs about God or even explicit, outward faith in Jesus Christ! The elevation of deeds above beliefs is the consequence of the claim that God is love” (147). The path from Augustine’s homily on 1 John 4:7 to Volf’s logic is far from obvious. Augustine said faith without works is dead; Volf concludes that works without faith is a sign of spiritual life. The one does not imply the other.

What’s more, the real Augustine clearly disagrees with Volf’s version of Augustine. In Homily 10 the Bishop of Hippo argues that works apart from belief, though “they seemed good, were nothing worth.” When the non-Christian does good deeds it is like running, but not in the right direction. “[B]y running aside from the way thou wentest astray instead of coming to the goal…He that runs aside from the way, runs to no purpose, or rather runs but to toil.” And “What is the way by which we run?” Augustine asks. “Christ hath told us, ‘I am the Way.’” In other words, the only deeds that please God are the ones done through faith in Christ. Deeds apart from creeds are nothing and worse than nothing. For, “He goes the more astray, the more he runs aside from the way [Christ].”

It’s well worth your time to read the entire flow of DeYoung’s deconstruction here.

Also from the “very smart people who sometimes make very bad arguments” files,  I heard similar reasoning from Brian McLaren at a conference I attended a few years back at which he said, referring to a young Muslim who also spoke at the conference:

And I think that Fatmire [Muslim peace activist] working for peace, is an agent for peace, and I’d much rather her be working for peace being who she is than… becoming a person in a church worrying about the list over there on that wall.

You can read the full text (and hear the audio) of that post here.

Discuss?

(part 3 of a miniseries on the emerging church – see part 1 and part 2)

Unfortunately, both sides (Emerging and mainstream) suffer from rejecting the other. Some of the old guard resists new life, ensuring the continuation of their own slow death. The emerging generation discounts the contribution of the previous generation – largely on the basis how little life change it sees – and thereby denies itself access to a great repository of solid theology and a heritage of belief.

One side needs to talk more about global issues while the other side needs to guard their theology a bit more.

I had the wonderful opportunity about a year ago to be at Brian McLaren’s “Why Everything Must Change” conference one weekend and being in Minneapolis at John Piper’s “Desiring God” conference the next. There was something at both that wasn’t at the other; there was something missing at both that the other addressed.

At WEMC, belief in the gospel was either buried under a torrent of concern for global humanitarian issues, or redefined as being the concern for those issues. These are not inappropriate or unimportant concerns.

At Desiring God ‘08 there was no mention of a current global issue at all. It was all gospel, all theology, all talk. I left there with my theological beliefs strengthened, which is a good thing. But where is the concern for global suffering and injustice? Connect the dots for us: how does this theological clarity lead us into a biblical concern for the poor and the action that must follow?

In my opinion, the best thing an organization like DG can do to stem the flow of young people going to the theologically unsteady regions of the EC is to talk more about practical application of the great truths they teach. In Piper’s own words, he does not “aim to be immediately practical but eternally helpful.” I think he should reconsider this and try for both.

A full gospel is both theological and social; it is belief and action.

The winds of reconciliation are blowing through the stratum of Christendom of late.

First, Steve “Shake Me to Wake Me” Camp made a heartfelt apology to long-time nemesis and current All-American Calvinist poster boy Mark Driscoll.

Then, in an equally heartfelt – though expletive peppered – post,  Chief Executive Senior Pastor of New Spring Church, Perry Noble, admits that he actually likes John Piper.

Now, it’s being reported that John MacArthur and Brian McLaren will co-author a book together to be released on the new Tony Jones/Emergent Village approved Baker imprint Fundamergent.

“With the winds of reconciliation blowing so hard,” MacArthur said when reached at his home this afternoon, “I felt led to approach Brian in a spirit of correction significantly less stringent than I had previously experienced. There was a moment there, as we were posing for our picture together, that I almost caught myself saying – out loud – that he might be a Christian, but cooler heads prevailed.”

In response, McLaren was equally effusive in his praise of MacArthur. “John is not such a bad guy,” McLaren said, “He and his kind really do have something to add to the conversation, even if it is just to tell the rest of us how wrong we are.”

The book, currently being written with a working title of “The War on Velvet Heterodoxy”, will feature alternating chapters written by McLaren and MacArthur, with McLaren writing first and then MacArthur picking apart verb tenses and voice intonations, and keeping and eye on McLaren’s particular word order.

The book is slated for release April 1, 2010.

***SEE ALSO: Tony Jones Finds Audience, Loses “Religion”

Emboldened by the added attention of a liberal-leaning audience since he moved his blog to Beliefnet, Tony Jones today announced a plan to review the Apostles’ Creed and put forward a controversial position on each one.

Since blog posts questioning gender roles and the doctrine of original sin have been so popular, Jones has decided it’s time to “question everything.”

“I mean, some of that stuff in the Apostles’ Creed looks a little outdated to 21st century eyes. What I’ll write in these posts may or may not represent my actual opinions, but depending on the comments for each post, you may or may not find out,” he clarified in a press release and email sent out last night.

“The change in the demographic of my audience has allowed me to explore just how deep the rabbit hole goes,” Jones said this morning when interviewed on the front steps of Solomon’s Porch, the “church” whose “pastor” is Doug Pagitt, a co-Emergent and close friend of Jones.  Pagitt’s take on Jones’ plan was predictably affirmative: “Listen, all Tony and I are trying to do is show people what A Christianity Worth Believing looks like.”

“In addition,” says Jones, “since shedding my role as National Coordinator I’ve felt less obligated to appear ‘orthodox’ on at least a few of the big issues in order to maintain loose ties to less progressive evangelicals like Scot McKnight and Dan Kimball.  With my new, larger audience at Beliefnet, that kind of catering is no longer necessary.  And besides, Kimball has the most un-Emergent hairstyle I’ve ever seen.”

Jones, a pioneer and central figure in what is known as the “Emerging Church” movement, stepped down as National Coordinator of Emergent Village late last year amid fears that one person coordinating a national organization might lead to too much organization – a predicament those in the Emerging Church movement are keen on avoiding.

“You can expect more huge announcements from me in the next few months,” Jones continued, “with my newfound freedom and a growing Beliefnet audience, who knows where this could go! I consider my blog posts Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier and I plan on making a lot of New Christians as a result,” Jones added with a wink and a nod to his latest book.

“Mark Driscoll can have the New York Times and Nightline – I’ll take Beliefnet over those shows any day!” Jones added with some swagger, making reference to former Emerging Church kingpin Mark Driscoll, who has made two high-profile appearances in the national media in the last month.

(FYI – this is a satirical examination of events, some of which are fictional…)

Ok, I’m done now… I told Anne Marie not to let me go out again.

Here’s the academic stack:

…and the other stack. You’ll notice I out the Bell and Pagitt books between some more solid theological works.  I tried to put them closer to MacArthur but there were sparks.

By the way, we’re going Rob Bell’s church (Mars Hill) tomorrow morning. I’ll put up a post about that sometime next week.

This town is a gold mine. I bought the stack below at a mall -  A MALL! And I only went through half of what they had so I’ll be going back today. I didn’t pay more than $4.99 for any of these.

 Top book is by Ratzinger (BXVI).  I’ve skimmed it and his writing is fantastic.

There are three in the stack by Erwin McManus… I picked up another of his last week in London so I’m pretty close to have all of his.

“The Sacred Way” is by TonyJones. We’ll see about that one.

“Favorite Psalms” is by John Stott

Bottom book (“The Sprit of Revival”) is by R.C. Sproul and is subtitled “Discover the Wisdom of Jonathan Edwards”

Stay tuned… I’m going to Baker Books today.

Scot McKnight provides more of his trademark clarity in a recent article in Christianity Today:

I maintain a crucial distinction between two related streams: emergent and the broader emerging movement. Emergent is crystallized in Emergent Village and its leaders Brian McLaren, Tony Jones, and Doug Pagitt. Emerging is a mix of orthodox, missional, evangelical, church-centered, and social justice leaders and lay folk. When I think of this broader emerging movement, I think of Dan Kimball at Vintage Faith Church in Santa Cruz, Dave Dunbar at Biblical Seminary in Hatfield, Pennsylvania, Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch and their book The Shaping of Things to Come, and Donald Miller’s Blue Like Jazz. Some of this was anticipated by Lesslie Newbigin’s many writings and is now sketched in Tom Sine’s The New Conspirators. Furthermore, I see emerging trends in megachurches like Willow Creek Community Church and Saddleback Church.

Despite what some critics assume, Brian McLaren, the most controversial of emergent leaders, does not represent all things emerging. But he does represent the more progressive wing, and his latest books offer a glimpse of where that movement might be heading.

(read entire article)

I spent Friday night and all day Saturday in Oakville, Ontario at the “Why Everything Must Change” conference.  I’ll post more audio and observations in the coming days but the following was the immediate hot-spot for me.  I should mention that there were many great things about the conference and I’ll be sharing those too.

The question for the panel at the end of the conference was “What is the Good News?” Brian McLaren was the only one to answer (link to audio below):

“I think this is where it gets interesting because one of the ways that what we do becomes colonization, when we’re going to represent a religion and trying to make converts to a religion… but the good news isn’t the good news of Christianity, it’s the good news of the Kingdom of God.  And I think that Fatmire [Muslim peace activist also present at conference and sitting next to him on the panel] working for peace, is an agent for peace, and I’d much rather her be working for peace being who she is than… becoming a person in a church worrying about the list over there on that wall.  [on "the list" are things non-essentials like speaking in tongues, etc.)

So, to me there’s something we really have to grapple with about whether the border of a religion is the border of the kingdom of God.  And I think that’s a question we’d be wise to raise.  I liked what you said about there not being despair when you’re among the extremely needy people.   Wouldn’t it be interesting if we found out that God is present wherever there’s suffering because God is there bringing healing and God is really present wherever people are working against injustice because that’s the work of God, wherever people are working for peace. And then the we find that the place that God isn’t is where you have a bunch of affluent people who are self-absorbed… and that wouldn’t surprise me why they would get depressed, because, in some way, it’s not that God isn’t present but they’re snoring through the presence of God.”

So basically, is he saying that a Muslim peace activist is doing the work of the kingdom of God?  And would he really prefer that she not first find true peace in Christ? (Mark 1:15 ”The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”) 

“I’d much rather her be working for peace being who she is than… becoming a person in a church worrying about the list…” As if there are only two choices: remain a Muslim and continue to pursue a peace apart from Christ or waste your time becoming a Christian and bickering about non-essential things that make no difference to the world.

It’s quite a dichotomy to lay out, but it’s an incomplete scenario and it seems that Brian believes that Fatmire would be no further ahead with Christ as the source of her peacemaking efforts.  That bothers me.  Does it bother you?

Download audio file (2008-09-20%20WEMC%20Conference%20-%20Wrap-up%20Q%26A%20-%20What%20is%20the%20Gospel.mp3)
(You can listen to the audio here)

Willow Creek is inviting Brian McLaren to speak at their upcoming Shift conference. This post will be very odd because I love what I hear from D.A. Carson and I dislike most of what I hear from Brian McLaren very much.

It is indeed sad to see Willow inviting McLaren to influence their flock. I do believe this is a mistake. Part of me fears that they are afraid of losing market share and are just trying to get on board with the hot new trend.

The question has been asked (at a blog called The Gospel Driven Blog) “How can a man who denigrates substitutionary atonement have anything helpful to say to the church?” Quite easily – he understands other aspects of the church quite well. He will no doubt say many helpful things at this conference, but I would still not invite him to speak to my leaders. Ditto Rob Bell – many of the Nooma videos are completely appropriate and helpful growth tools, but I wouldn’t endorse them to my leaders because the trajectory of interest would lead them to other of his materials that are, shall we say, considerably less orthodox.

Regarding D.A. Carson – his book on the Emerging Church has been rightly criticized (by Scot McKnight for one) as being far too narrow in focus for its title. This, I believe, is fundamentally a marketing issue. The book is not so much about the Emerging Church as it is about Brian McLaren. The problem is that the Emerging Church is about far more than McLaren. McLaren is a major player, but only on one side of the movement.

Rather than reading Carson’s book, I would direct you to two articles written by Scot McKnight. McKnight has the rare position of being accepted by the Emerging left while maintaining an appropriate critique of it.

In the article “Fad or Future”, McKnight describes his own discovery and early experience with the movement and in “Five Streams of the Emerging Church” he offers a follow-up and a couple of strongly worded cautions to Emerging leaders including the following:

“So I offer here a warning to the emerging movement: Any movement that is not evangelistic is failing the Lord. We may be humble about what we believe, and we may be careful to make the gospel and its commitments clear, but we must always keep the proper goal in mind: summoning everyone to follow Jesus Christ and to discover the redemptive work of God in Christ through the Spirit of God.”

Here’s the other half of the quote (read the first half here):

“The Irony of this is that in Revelation 19 where
Jesus comes on a white horse there’s a small detail that
people tend to miss, and that is that the way that Jesus
slays the nations is by a sword that comes out of his mouth.
That small detail deserves some more attention. To have a
view of Jesus coming on a donkey with a message of peace
versus Jesus coming on a horse with a message of war are two
very different pictures of Jesus and I’m trying to bring
that out. I really think that deserves some conversation.”

This is Brian McLaren quoted in an interview posted at Emergent Village last week.  I am not an escahtology buff so unpack this for me.  What is the irony in in Jesus slaying the nations with a sword that comes out of his mouth?