Jahaziel: Thank You for no Longer Pretending

The legendary Christian rapper, Jahaziel has renounced his Christian faith and I for one am very pleased he did. See the story HERE.

Now, please let me explain what I mean. Jahaziel has given us several reasons for why he has left the Christian faith. Some people are in shock that such a central figure in Christian entertainment (oxymoron) would just walk out on their faith in such a matter-of-fact way. I am not the least bit surprised with this story. In fact, after reading Jahaziel’s reasons for leaving, I am glad he left but not glad he is gone. Puzzled? Keep reading.

Jahaziel tells us, “When I first joined Christianity, I was told 'you must believe this book is God's infallible word' ... Before I'd even read the book!! How can one decide for themselves whether a book is accurate and true BEFORE they have even read & investigated the book thoroughly?!” Here is a most profound confession on Jahaziel’s part. What is sad is that many modern Christians will read this and think, so what! I don’t believe all the bible either but I love Jesus and I am a Christian. If that is your position, I think Jahaziel is far more honest that you are. At least Jahaziel that believing in Christ and believing the bible go hand in hand. At least he was honest enough to say if that is what being a Christian is, then I am not that. So thank you Jahaziel for at least admitting that you were not one of us. I wish everyone that professes to be a Christian would wake up tomorrow and either place their faith in Christ and believe God’s word or do what you did and stop identifying with the God whose word they reject when and where it is convenient.

Regrettably, Jahaziel did not stop with this reason for leaving Christianity. It seems clear from my perspective that someone must have spit in Jahaziel’s Wheaties. He offers this torrent of criticism about Christianity: I would like to take some time to be equally vocal about the negatives I have found. Christianity and its controlling dictatorship, its historic blood trail, its plagiarized Bible stories, characters and concepts, the many human errors of the Bible and its contradictions, the brutal nature of its God, its involvement in the slave trade, the crusades, the inquisition, the witch hunts, its second-class view of women, its masculinization of God, its emasculation of men, its financial corruption.

Christianity has a controlling dictatorship? I am not sure what he means by that remark. It sounds more like a compliant against how he has been treated by someone than anything else. Christianity has a historic blood trail? So Jahaziel is leaving Christianity because some people professing to be Christians behaved in a way that is contradictory to the Christian ethic? Christianity nowhere teaches that we should be shedding anyone’s blood. The Bible’s stories are plagiarized? Which ones? And what is your evidence? The brutal nature of God? Christianity was involved in the slave trade? Christianity is a system, a belief system centered around the person and work of Jesus Christ. By its nature it cannot be involved in the slave trade. But it does have something to say about how slaves should be treated in those circumstances where they exist. The bottom line is that Jahaziel is a bitter man and I think that in due time, we will discover what precipitated that bitterness. My guess is, it has little to do with years of intellectual reflection on the teachings of Christianity and much more with a incident or series of incidents that Jahaziel perceives as wrong and immoral. And I am guessing that these wrongs were committed by professing Christian(s).

You see, we live in a culture and an era where being a Christian really isn’t saying much about a person any more. Christians, professing Christians live however they please. They ignore God’s law. In fact, most Christians understanding law-keeping as legalistic these days. They have no interest in understanding God’s law let alone loving it and keeping it. They do not realize that an indifferent toward God’s law betrays an indifferent attitude toward God. The problem is that we do not force people out of the Christianity community after they have demonstrated that there is no evidence that their faith is real. We shrug our shoulders, mumble something about no judging, and completely ignore the purity of the church and refuse to show these people the love of God by confronting them with with the truth. The truth is, modern American Christianity is lawless. The modern gospel is without law. It is a thoroughly antinomian Christian culture that dominates American society.

Now, are Christians asked to just accept the Bible as the Word of God before they have had a chance to read it, examine it, evaluate it, and make sure it is accurate for themselves? Yes, as a matter of fact, they are. Christians are never to elevate their rational arguments and science above the Word of God and then subject the Word of God to the standards of autonomous human reason and modern science to see if the Bible is worthy of our trust. Such an approach is utterly blasphemous and unfaithful to the text. The Word of God is not trusted because it passes the tests and standards of science and human reason. The Word of God is trusted on because of what it is, God’s Word. We believe it is reliable because, by faith we understand that it is the very Word of God. And we know that if it is the Word of God, it is completely trustworthy. If Christians conclude that the Bible is the word of God based on scientific investigation and rational argumentation, then the Bible can never be our final authority, our sole standard for truth and knowledge. Whatever we use to test the Bible necessarily has more authority than the Bible.

Finally, it is impossible to conclude that the Bible is the Word of God apart from trusting Christ. The traditional arguments all fail to establish the truthfulness of the claim that the Bible is the Word of God. It does not follow that just because there were miracles and fulfilled prophecy that this book was written by God. No human argument will ever get you to that conclusion apart from faith. We believe the bible is God’s word because we have been born again, and having received the gift of faith, and we know that what the Spirit is testifying to us is true. This is biblical Christianity. If you cannot accept that, find Jahaziel and swap stories over a beer, because it is very likely that your faith is nothing more than an intellectual assent, a wink and a nod to the man on the cross. But do yourself and us a favor: like Jahaziel, either embrace God’s Word for what it is, or get out. Have a little integrity.

Final Thoughts

The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ is located in Genesis three. But the most explicit promise given that a new community was coming and what the instrument of shaping that new community would be is located in Jeremiah 31. I pick it up at v.33, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. But modern, American Christianity seems to find any mention of law legalistic and repugnant and for some reason, antithetical to grace and faith. I have to ask what American seminaries are producing exactly if these are the kind of leaders they are giving us. Do they deserve our financial support and endorsements? Jeremiah continued in 32:38-40, “They shall be My people, and I will be their God; and I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear Me always, for their own good and for the good of their children after them. “I will make an everlasting covenant with them that I will not turn away from them, to do them good; and I will put the fear of Me in their hearts so that they will not turn away from Me. God will work in the heart of His people to put His fear in their heart. The redeemed of the Lord, those whose lives are governed by the New Covenant, have a profound fear of the Lord that God, through faith by grace has given them. If you are a Christian and you have negative thoughts or emotions when you hear the Law of God mentioned or when someone says you must keep the commandments, perhaps you need to revisit what biblical Christianity actually is.

Assuming that Jahaziel has actually defected from the faith, and committed apostasy, it is because he was never a member of the New Covenant. He never had God’s law written on his heart. He never had the fear of God in his heart.

Stop romanticizing personalities and elevating men to the status of idols. God is pleased when you worship and elevate only Him!

The Obstinacy of Christianity and the Pliant Apostate

Recently, I had an encounter with a man we shall continue to call “Ted.” If you look back at my last three or four blogs, in the comments you will find a lengthy exchange between “Ted” (he goes by a different name in the com box) and I, mostly on the subject of the nature of Scripture. Ted represents many modern western and especially American professors of Christ. These people have gathered into groups that have been springing up all around the Church for a variety of reasons. False versions of Christianity, competitors if you will, have presented themselves from the very beginning of the Church. Personally, I think one of the more common reasons for this modern phenomenon in evangelical churches is due to the complete lack of emphasis on what it means to be in communion with the Christ of Scripture and with His Church. Another reason is because what we have as “pastors” in most Churches in 2015 is simply indescribably appalling.

Long ago these men (pastors/leaders) abandoned the basics of Christian catechism and for decades now they have focused most of their time on building their little kingdoms. Program after program and curriculum after curriculum has focused, not on Biblical aptitude, godly living, and Christian service but rather on relationship building, social causes, self-esteem, marital bliss, parenting, positive thinking and a plethora of subjects that are simply a mirror of American culture. As a result, we stopped making converts and disciples and started enlisting club members with common interests. To be specific, we have filled our churches with unconverted, unregenerate, good moral people. And now, the chickens are coming home to roost in the likes of men like “Ted,” Rob Bell, the gay-Christian movement, an essentially Pelagian message they call the gospel, and many, many other heresies. The solution, albeit a painful one, is nevertheless, in my opinion, really quite simple. We must return to our true faith. We must once again get back to being a confessing community, affirming the truth of the gospel by way of stated creeds and confessions that embody the essence of what it means to say, “I am a Christian.” It goes without saying that such a confession and creed must reflect the highest views of Scripture, God, Christ, and must themselves reflect the hard work of exegesis so as to reflect the essential one and only faith handed down by Christ to us through apostolic tradition.

The Obstinate Nature of Christianity

            Christianity is the movement established by Jesus Christ, the long-promised Jewish Messiah, redeemer and deliver of the entire world. Jesus Himself claimed to be the way, the truth, and the life. (John. 14:6) That is a staggering claim. Of all the religious teachers in the world, Jesus Christ made the most incredible claims of any of them. Moreover, Jesus also claimed to be the only way to God. If a human being wants a relationship with the Father God of all that was, is, or will ever be he or she will have to go through Jesus Himself in order to experience it.

Jesus also claimed that unless we believe that He is the Son of God, God Himself, the Messiah promised from long ago, we would die in our sin. As God, Christ is also the infinite unchanging one. The writer to the Hebrews pronounced that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. (Heb. 13:8) James tells us there is no variation or shifting shadow in God. (James 1:17) God does not change. God is not pliant. Christ is not pliant. Christianity is the entire submission of the human person to the Christ of Scriptures. This submission means a complete faith acceptance of His teachings and His ethic top to bottom, end to end, every jot and tittle. Because Christianity is the living out of Christ in the world by the individual and the community, Christianity is also fixed, inflexible, immoveable, and obstinate. The one and only faith handed down by the apostles of our matchless Savior is the basis for the existence of the Christian community. Hence, Christianity resists any and all efforts to change it, even slightly and for any reason. Christianity resides in the culture, in the world, but is cannot be absorbed into the culture so as to become a culturalized faith. Christianity is in the culture but not of the culture.

The Autonomy of Apostasy

            I realize there are legitimate reasons for cutting fellowship with a professing community of Christians. Communities do themselves commit apostasy. But the apostate never has legitimate reasons for doing so. It is the apostate that changes or wishes to change the community itself. It is that one that we are typically concerned about. Christians are called to submission. First, we are called to submission to Christ. Second, we are called to submission to the Scriptures of the Christ. Third, we are called to submission to those faithful elders of Christ that are over us in the body. These elders are elders that are faithful to Christ as shepherds and as such are equally faithful to Scripture and faithful in their care of Christ’s sheep. Fourth, we are called to submission to the body, the local church in which we fellowship in Christ, our magnificent Savior.

            Apostates are those who have spent some time in the body, but who, in God’s own time, eventually begin to develop ideas, beliefs, and practices that contradict the stated beliefs of the body. (I will deal with the basis of belief in the body in a later section.) A good example is the Christian view on the nature of Scripture. By the way, there is such a thing as a Christian view on the nature of Scripture. An apostate will begin to question even this very basic view, somewhat softly at first. This questioning will usually come in the guise of humility. Eventually, the apostate will challenge the long-standing view of Christian orthodoxy on the nature of Scripture and begin to challenge others and attempt to win supporter from the community for his view. If he is successful, the apostate and his friends may decide to go out and form a church of their own. John deals with such apostates in his first epistle. He says they went out from us because they were never really of us. So much for growing up Baptist or Presbyterian or whatever.

            Now, the apostate, and the emergent apostate in particular, love to destroy the Christian tradition by supposedly calling its most basic tenets into question. My recent discussion with “Ted” is a perfect example of this tactic. They think, foolishly I might add, that all they have to do is question a teaching and that is enough. This is a reflection of their uncritical subscription to postmodern thought. “The Bible never says the Bible is the Word of God.” To the uncritical thinking, shallow, unconverted churchgoer this argument may seem profound. But to such a mind, Madonna and Justin Bieber songs probably seem profound too. But what has not been considered is that with every negative or skeptical claim, there must be a positive claim underneath it in order for the claim to pass logical muster. If I claim that the Bible is not the Word of God because it does not itself state that the Bible is the Word of God, then I have to defend my negative claim with a positive one. This argument, so popular among this crowd of apostates, rests upon the premise that the Bible must claim that the Bible is the Word of God in order for it to be the Word of God. But such a premise is entirely without logical defense. The standard itself is arbitrary to begin with. Second, it does not follow logically that a document has to contain specific words about its own self, that it is such a thing, for one to be justified in believing it to be that thing. The conclusion of the apostate argument is simply false and we can reject it prima facie.

It is illegitimate to call into question or oppose a long-standing practice without having some positive framework that casts suspicion on the practice or belief. Apostates must offer a positive case for their desertion rather than merely a negative one. You cannot logically challenge the authority of Scripture and the teachings of orthodoxy unless you can provide positive counter evidence for your action. What is the basis for calling the basic tenets of Christianity into question? Quite simply, it is a the uncritical acceptance of postmodern thought which has at its foundation the unbridled, and retrained autonomy of man.

The Unbreakable Truth

            The Christian tradition is a tradition going back to the Jewish Messiah, Jesus Christ Himself. Jesus Christ came to show us the Father. Jesus has explained the Father to us. (John 1:18) He has revealed God to us in greater detail than any revelation given in the history of redemption. The revelation of Jesus Christ was not correcting previous revelation but was an expansion of what was already revealed. Jesus brought the Father into much greater focus than previous revelations. Think of the revelation of God in Christ as moving from 17^th century bifocals to the top microscope used in the best scientific labs the world over. That is the revelation of God we have in the New Testament record of the life and teachings of Jesus the Messiah. And that is precisely what the New Testament writings are: all of them.  

            The Christian community has to purge itself of American postmodernism. I am not talking about the emergent Church, or those groups that have clearly apostatized from the faith by denying such basics like the divinity of Christ, the atoning work of Christ, the depravity of man, the holiness of God, the reliability, infallibility, and authority of Scripture and so forth. I am talking about genuine communities of faith that have been weak and far too influenced by American ideologies. Personally, I think that applies to almost all of us to one degree or another. What I am saying that the Church is in desperate need of a reformation that takes her back to the confessions of the unbreakable truth of Scripture. We cannot afford to invite apostate men and even unbelievers to join us in our conversation about sacred matters. The Church is a holy community called to a holy life. What place do men like Rob Bell, Matthew Vines, and others have in the congregation of the Lord?

            Christian churches have to return to the confessions and creeds of the past. We must test those who wish to be members. Potential members must openly affirm the basic tenets of Christian dogma and adhere to the Christian ethic. When we fail to live up to the standards of Scripture, we hold each other accountable. We lovingly correct one another. We confront one another. We restore one another. Today, you may need rebuke but tomorrow it is my turn. We will each take our turn in the seat of needing correction and forgiveness. And our Lord is just the kind of God that lovingly forgives and restores. But we must also be ready to identify and dismiss or excommunicate if you prefer, those who refuse to confess the faith or to live up to its standards. There can be no middle ground. For far too long now, I fear this has been ignored by even the best of churches.

            We need more shepherds that are going to take a stand and not be afraid to lose members. We need more shepherds that are not very interested in making people happy but extremely interested in making them holy. We need shepherds less concerned with an image, with a kingdom, with having just the right “kind” of people in their churches so that they can have just the right kind of music, and just the right kind of worship, and just the right kind of programs to inflate their already overblown ego. We need shepherds that care about truth and pour themselves into preaching and teaching and defending it. We need shepherds to connect Scripture with culture so that their congregation becomes better thinkers, better evangelists and apologists. We need shepherds to care enough about their members to return to the old days where they called them on the phone and even, wait for it, wait for it, made personal visits to their homes. It is not enough to pour yourself into the text. You must pour yourself into your people. Not only is this loving them, it puts you in a wonderful position to know where they are and what they need from their pastor. And finally, it puts you, Mr. shepherd, in a position to hear and know if your parishioner is being influenced in a poor direction. After all, Paul was intimately familiar with the goings-on in the churches. Do you think he obtained that information by having lunch once a year with the local elders, who in turn hardly ever had a meal with those under their care? Think about it.     

The Apostate Emergent: Friend or Foe

Before I talk about the appropriate treatment of men like “Ted” I think I should say a little more about his views. As a presuppositional, reformed, covenantal, Baptist Christian, I subscribe to the view that there are really only two worldviews. There is the Christian worldview that involves complete submission of the intellect, the will, and the emotion to God in all things. All-embracing submission to God is the central concern of this worldview. The Summum bonum of the Christian worldview is the glory of God alone. Then there is the non-Christian worldview. This worldview demands, at all cost, the defense and elevation of autonomous man regardless of the shade of that specific cloak. One cloak comes in the shade of atheism while another in agnosticism and another in pagan religion, and so on and so forth. Regardless of the number of shades the non-Christian worldview comes in, it has the same principle beating in its chest when you remove the cloak: human autonomy. While the shade of the worldview changes to the eye, some lighter, darker, and of various colors, the fabric itself is all of the same essence: human autonomy. Essentially, the two worldviews available to man are summed up either in the total acknowledgement of the divine sovereignty and Lordship of Christ or the intrepid and supercilious claim of the unconditional autonomy of human reason. There is no middle ground. In fact, when examined through the proper lens, the entire process of Christian sanctification is the purging of human autonomy from the Christian life. The mark of the true Christian is the struggle against his own autonomy, his actions to eliminate the ungodly idea from his daily life.

Nothing places human autonomy on greater display than the manifest willingness of men to call into question the authority of “thus says the Lord.” Human autonomy was launched in the garden when Eve willingly called into question the Word of God. She placed herself over the Word of God in an arrogant attempt to judge the holy edict itself. The key to eliminating the ungodly attitude of human philosophy is situated in the purifying power of Sacred Scripture. Scripture is the only source by which human autonomy can be purged. Outside of Scripture, there is no hope for man, no escape from the godless attitude of man’s absolute, unconditional independence.

Yet, my detractor “Ted,” along with the Rob Bells of the world have much more in common with men like Sartre and Locke and the pagan philosophers of the world than they do with Peter, Paul, James, and John or any one of the prophets. Ted wants to place reason in the position of determining whether or not revelation has occurred, which is precisely reflective of Locke. At the same time, he argues for a radical freedom in man not unlike that of the philosopher Sartre. The move that has to be made if you wish to stand in judgment of the Bible is that you must replace the Bible as your final source of authority for what is and is not true knowledge with some alternative. The moment you make that move, you have now demonstrated that it is your conviction that there is another source that is more reliable, more dependable, and more authoritative to determine what is true knowledge than the Bible. Moreover, this is true even if you want to create an unholy mixture of the Bible + Science + human reason. Anything other than the sufficiency of Scripture and the authority of Scripture alone is the obvious removal of Scripture from its proper place as judge of humanity and final arbiter of true knowledge. This move results in the obliteration of biblical Christianity. Hence, anyone making this move is an opponent, an enemy, and a hostile foe to traditional, historic, biblical Christianity.

Now, what is interesting is that the philosophical move here is the exchange of one criterion for true knowledge for a different criterion for true knowledge. And this has been where I have pressed Ted on several occasions without must result. Like Rob Bell, Ted only wants to talk about what he denies rather than what he affirms. He seems to operate under the delusion that it is possible to deny claims without also, at the same time, affirming counter-claims. Such a tendentious approach is fatal to his philosophy. The reason is that unless Ted can come up with defensible criteria for how he knows the things he must know if he is to call into question orthodoxy, then he really isn’t demonstrating anything at all. And that is precisely what we have seen from Ted from the start. It almost feels like Rob Bell has his hand in a puppet’s back when we read Ted’s views.

The basic problem is Ted’s criteria. This is the core issue in his approach and it is one you should point out to anyone like Ted that dares to make these kinds of arguments. Ted has developed a certain set of criteria, albeit undisclosed as of yet, by which he judges whether or not Scripture is authoritative, binding, inspired, and inerrant. Now, the problem with any criteria is that it requires certain presuppositions in order to get off the ground. Suppose your job is to pick and process apples. Good apples make it in the basket and bad apples get tossed into the applesauce sack. In order for you to determine that an apple is good or bad, you must have previous knowledge of what a good apple is. How else would you be able to judge it? In order for us to decide upon a criterion for true knowledge, we must already have in mind what true knowledge is. And if we already know the answer to the question prior to asking the question, then why should we bother with the question to begin with? If we already think we know what true knowledge is, then how can we possibly establish a supposedly objective standard for how to judge the truth-value of any proposition? It seems that whatever criteria we invent it will be viciously circular in nature designed only to prove what we think we already know to be true. This is a serious defect in Ted’s argument and for whatever shade of the non-Christian worldview we are evaluating.

The second problem is Ted’s inability to justify his non-Christian system. Yes, I am employing a very specific kind of rhetoric and yes it is intentional. No, it is not intellectual bullying. It is forcing someone to face the full force of a logical argument. Every system rests upon what we call self-justifying beliefs. Alvin Plantinga calls them properly basic beliefs. A properly basic belief is a belief that does not rely on another belief in order for it to be the case. That is to say, a properly basic beliefs requires no argument. The reasons for believing them are self-evident and self-sufficient. “Christian belief in the typical case is not the conclusion of an argument, or accepted on the evidential basis of other beliefs, or accepted just because it constitutes a good explanation of phenomena of one kind of another.” [Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief] Ted seems to want to subject Christian dogma to the pagan philosophical principle known as verification. This view states simply that every belief must be verified by other more basic or more obvious beliefs. But how does the pagan philosophy justify his principle of verification without eventually ending up in an infinite regress? That has yet to be seen.

According the model, experience of a certain sort is intimately associated with the formation of warranted Christian belief, but the belief doesn’t get its warrant by way of an argument from the experience. [Plantinga] He goes on to say, “In the typical case, therefore, Christian belief is immediate; it is formed in the basic way.” What we have with Ted’s approach is similar to what we have with so many rationalists who think themselves genuine Christians. Every Christian dogma is subjected to the criteria of either modern science or human reason or a mixture of both for verification and testing. This method has not only proven to be philosophically fantastic, it represents the non-Christian method of thought at its core. It relies on the absolute, unconditional autonomy of human reason. How do we know we are the children of God? The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are the children of God. (Rom. 8:16) How did the disciples finally come to understand the Scriptures about Christ? This profound statement is recorded by Luke: τότε διήνοιξεν αὐτῶν τὸν νοῦν τοῦ συνιέναι τὰς γραφάς· Then he opened their mind to understand the Scripture. The work of God is necessary for genuine Christian belief. This is the system of biblical Christianity. Rational argumentation and evidence without the work of God on the heart, as we have seen, produces shallow, rational, faithfuless profressors of Christ that inevitably end up challenging the most precious and basic of Christian tenets. They will tare Christianity apart from the inside out if we allow it. Ted is an excellent representation of this sort of Christian.

The final problem is Ted’s reliance on a form of literary criticism that is not appropriate for the literary type found in the Scripture. Ted believes that the Jewish authors of Scripture wrote exactly as did their ANE counterparts ~500 BC and earlier. The OT is filled with the same sort of legend and myth employed by other ANE writers. First, Ted is employing the methods of higher criticism in his evaluation of OT literature. Well, perhaps what Ted is likely doing is adopting the conclusions of these pagan literary critics more than he is actually doing literary criticism himself. Suffice it to say, a word about higher criticism is in order, albeit a very brief one.

The Historical-Critical Method typically embraces the following tenets: 1) that reality is uniform and universal; 2) that reality is accessible to human reason and investigation; 3) that all events historical and natural occurring within it are in principle interconnected and comparable by analogy; and 4) that humanity’s contemporary experience of reality can provide objective criteria by which that could or could not have happened in the past can be determined. It seems obvious to me that (4) is especially problematic for the would-be student of OT studies. For that matter, it is problematic for anyone approaching the sacred text of Scripture. Eta Linnemann tells us, “For that reason, no one who reads this book should feel obligated any longer to heed the suppositions of biblical criticism just because it makes the claim – without justification – to convey scientific results. Its arguments were tested at hundreds of points, and not one of them passed muster. The colossus of historical-critical theology has clay feet. [Eta Linnemann, Biblical Criticism on Trial]

Any approach to the interpretation of Scripture is grounded in a system. I think I have said enough about the impossibility of the contrary to that argument. The question is whether or not that system is pagan or Christian in nature. What are the basic beliefs and presuppositions that serve as the foundation of that system? It is Christ-centered, God-centered, submissive to the divine revelation that is Scripture or it is at core, pagan, humanistic, autonomous, and faithless. Ted’s approach is pure postmodern in its method. “What the postmodern discovers behind various worldviews are political interests and power levers. For these postmodern disbelievers in knowledge, philosophy is not about truth but about power, rhetoric and ideology.” [Vanhoozer, First Theology] Often enough we hear similar arguments from the younger crowd as they fearlessly challenge tradition, practice, and even the most basic of Christian tenets. What is the ground of their challenge? What serves as the foundation of their own worldview from which these attacks are launched? Human autonomy? Postmodern philosophy? Goldsworthy writes, “In the end, it becomes human reason that judges what is reasonable evidence about the nature of the Bible. As soon as we admit this, then we see that it is choice of two opposing circular arguments: one that assumes the ultimate authority of God and his word, and the other that assumes the ultimate authority of unaided human reason.” [Goldsworthy, Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics]

In the end, the emergent apostate, while sounding humble, and seeming to be kind, turns out to be a ravenous wolf seeking to turn men away from the faith that has been handed to the elect from the hand of Christ through His Apostles. We must understand that apostates among us is a serious matter. We can ill afford to take them too casually. They are in hot pursuit of the destruction of biblical Christianity even though they tell us that all they want is to recover it. 

Clever are the ways of the wolf, seemingly harmless at a distance, a majestic site to behold, even beautiful ...until he has driven you to the ground and is standing over you, with saliva running out of his mouth dripping onto your bloodied face just before he begins to rip your throat out with his massively powerful and razor sharp incisors.  

When you see a wolf, you can either see a cute cuddly furry animal or you can see the truth!

See the truth and react accordingly