This is late coming because I forgot how to log on. It has been that long since I blogged (and the worlds wonders why I have returned). Thanks to BAT this dinosaur of a blog keeps rollin for some reason, so why not finish my lesson on it. Since Bruce so graciously cut me off Sunday morning I wanted to leave the XM class with some concluding thoughts from our study.

First, a brief summary. One must judge any new Christian movement based upon what they do with Scripture. It is helpful if they tell you what they think about Scripture, but how they actually use it tells the real story. Conservatives (good, healthy evangelicals) allow Scripture to be the true, absolute, inerrant, UNIVERSAL source for truth. The sliding scale of healthy theology moves from there in terms of how you modify what Scripture says in relation to what science, culture, tradition, or whatever says. Key question: What is denied or modified by the pastor/theologian using some other source? Ex: Evolution is a fun test case. What you do with gluttony or homosexuality may be more telling because effects are evident.

I criticized PM/emergent views of revelation and Scripture for thinking they have given a final correction to modern theology, when really I think all they have done is worked out the anthropocentric starting point to its most logical conclusion, i.e. they are hyper-moderns, not beyond-moderns. Second, they have overemphasized their critiques of Modernism so that all universal truth claims are abandoned. Since they buy into the beginning point without God (faith seeking understanding), they lose all ability to make claims on reality. This effects the heart of the gospel and everything the church is and should be doing. Third, they tend to separate the works of the Triune God. The early church fathers recognized the deity of the Spirit and the Son because they were working with the Father and about his and one another’s business. The person work INSEPARABLY. The Spirit is blowing with the Word, not through other religions, but at and against them. Fourth, the theologians I chose are outside of Reformed/Protestant/post-1517 theology because they deny sola Scriptura. It is one source among many. Fifth, God is muted and impotent in their theology because he is not able to speak a clear, universal Word of truth in the church. (Not one of these critiques is original to me I simply repeated what I learned from others). That was a summary of the class, now what I need to add…

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