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