Emergent Viewpoints

“What I told you was true, from a certain point of view. . . . Luke, you’re going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.”— Obi Won Kenobi, to Luke Skywalker, in The Return of the Jedi (1983)

I loved the Star Wars movies, but even when I saw that scene in Return of the Jedi, I knew that Obi Won's statement was flawed, and on some level, a reflection of what was going on in our society. It didn't fly then, and it doesn't fly now. It was just George Lucas' clumsy way of tying up his plot lines. It is, however, a nutshell example of the approach to truth in postmodernist thinking. It seems to be just the latest ism to come around. I wonder how many "isms" the world will endure before Jesus comes back?

They never seem to completely die out, particularly because they are nothing new. They are just repackaged and "gussied" up to sound like something new. They've been around in one form or another since the Garden of Eden. The deconstruction"ism" of the current "emergent" church movement started there. Somebody becomes dissatisfied with something and comes up with a "new" way of thinking. Books get written. Followers pop up.

A friend asked me the other day, what the emergent church was. I told him that it depends upon who one is talking to. In my mind, those in the forefront of the emergent church movement were dissatisfied with the way they viewed the modern church. They sought to improve in their minds, upon the way that church is done. The central flaw in that plan is the emergent understanding of sin and soteriology. There seems to be little understanding there, biblically speaking, and because of that, they have gravitated to universalism.

The concept of a God who is wrath-filled toward sin just a little too harsh for the god they want to believe in. The "New Perspectives On Paul" of an N. T. Wright fit right into the kind of wishy-washy, morally relativistic thinking that is so pervasive in the emergent church.

Mr. Wright's writings tend to have an ecumenical bent that embraces universalism, diminishing Jesus' role as Savior. He seems to have a casual attitude toward sin. That much is evident in his attitude toward eternal punishment. One has little choice but to conclude that he believes God is pretty casual toward sin because of that too. Wright's contention that biblical scholars and theologians have misinterpreted Paul's view of justification for hundreds of years has caused him to fall into the trap that "believing in Jesus - believing that Jesus is Lord, and the [that] God raised Him from the dead - is what counts"

There's a problem with that position. If that were all there was to it, the demons would be saved. Mr. Wright I think, fails to regard the need for repentance. He fails to regard the weight and ruinous nature of sin, or the need to be saved from the wrath of an infinitely righteous, good, holy and just God. I would like to see Mr. Wright regard Jesus as not only the God/man who died on the cross for the sins of the world, but as the Redeemer of the repentant, who turn to Him in faith.

I don't know Mr. Wright, and I haven't read everything he has written, but I don't think that is necessary to see where he stands. I would like to see him come out and say what sin is, and how it affects man eternally without Jesus. I would like to see him state clearly that man needs to be justified, perfected through the atoning blood of Christ. Right now, as it stands, what I have read of his writing merely states that Jesus took the punishment for the sins of all mankind. While He did do that, that only makes salvation universally available, not universal.

Mr. Wright needs to come to grips with the foundational teachings of the Bible, and quit being so evasive and wordy about this stuff. Until then, in my mind, whether he knows it or not, Mr. Wright is the unofficial founder of the emergent church movement and their errant doctrine.