Theology of Andrew: Emerging Church

Saturday, November 1, 2008

Why I Fear The Emerging Church

What happened to Classical Evangelicalism? Oswald Chambers? Charles Spurgeon? Billy Graham?

I was reading this post: http://highergroundonline.wordpress.com/2008/01/31/evolution-of-the-creeds/ , and feeling very glad that I'm still becoming Catholic. It is a great image of the destruction that happens when you abandon ecclesiology - the doctrine of the Church - (Catholic and Traditional Protestant alike). At least if you're a Baptist you can accept what the Baptist Church has decided and accepted (like the Trinity), if you're Emerging, suddenly everything can be thrown out. I love Rob Bell and lots of self-described Emergents, but I don't like this theological liberalism. In my opinion, when you ask the hard questions of theology you can do one of 5 things:

1. Become a Liberal, doubt everything and have no faith at all.

2. Stop asking questions, reject all philosophy and logic and base everything on feelings and emotions.

3. Become a Presbyterian/Calvinist.

4. Become a Catholic/Orthodox/Traditional Anglican/submit to apostolically succeeding bishops and Tradition and actually believe the catholic faith.

5. Stay Evangelical

Quotes For Thought

"If baptism is the beginning of my life, and the day of regeneration is the first of days, it is obvious that the words spoken when I received the grace of adoption are more honorable than any spoken since....Through this confession I was made a child of God, I, who was His enemy for so long because of my sins. May I pass from this life to the Lord with this confession on my lips." - St. Basil the Great, On the Holy Spirit, par. 26.

"To know Jesus and Jesus crucified is the sum total of my philosophy." - St. Bernard of Clairvaux

"Oh the extraordinary goodness of God toward man? The just of the Old Testament thank God in the weariness of long years; but that which they obtained, by means of a long and heroic service pleasing to God, Jesus gives to you in the brief time span of an hour. Indeed, if you believe that Jesus Christ is the lord, and that God had raised him from the dead, you will be saved and you will be introduced into heaven by the same one who introduced the good thief." - St. Cyril of Jerusalem

"He made us to believe in Christ, who made for us a Christ on whom we believe. He makes in men the beginning and the completion of the faith in Jesus who made the man Jesus the beginner and finisher of faith" - St. Augustine

"Nor must we trust in holiness of origin, in forefathers, or in
the gifts of God which we enjoy. We must look to the Word alone and judge thereby. Those alone who truly embrace the Word will be as immovable forever as Mount Zion. They may be few in number and thoroughly despised by the world, as were Noah and his children. But God, through these few, preserved to man the truth of that promised mastery when he had not even room to set his foot upon the earth." - Bl. Martin Luther "Commentary on Genesis"