Podcasts

Can a person be postmodern and a Christian at the same time?

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Can a person be postmodern and a Christian? Not for long
Can a person be postmodern and a Christian? Let’s look at their leader

Wow. Postmodern “Christian” Brian McLaren has completely abandoned traditional Christianity. McLaren, you may already know, spear-headed the “emergent church” movement – an attempt to fuse postmodern relativism with liberal Christianity.

Greg Koukl and Kevin DeYoung analyze his latest book “A New Kind of Christianity”.

The MP3 file is here.

Details:

Kevin DeYoung – Brian McLaren’s New Kind of Christianity
Host: Greg Koukl

Guest: Kevin DeYoung – Brian McLaren’s “New Kind of Christianity” (00:00:00)
Commentary: Reality vs. Religion? The Modern Upper Story Leap (00:56:39)
Guest: Dennis Prager – Reality vs. Religion (01:52:25)

We’re interested in the first hour of the three-hour show.

Topics of hour one:

  • What is Brian’s view of Creation?
  • What is Brian’s view of the Fall?
  • What is Brian’s view of Scripture?
  • What is Brian’s view of Truth?
  • What is Brian’s view of sin and Hell?
  • What is Brian’s view of the Fall?
  • What is Brian’s view of atonement?
  • How did Brian’s leftist political views infect his theology?
  • How did postmodernism affect Brian’s epistemology?
  • How faithful is Brian in interpreting the text?

There’s also a nice blog post about Brian McLaren by Melinda from Stand to Reason, too.

Excerpt:

McLaren doesn’t think the Bible is to be taken literally. For instance, the Garden of Eden story isn’t about sin and the Fall, rather it’s a “compassionate coming of age story.”  Consequently, the whole idea of sin and Hell is a horrible overreaction and has caused the church to offer a violent message and image all these years.  It follows from this interpretation then, that there is no need for the cross and Jesus’ death and resurrection.  Those are violent ideas resulting from a bad reading of the Bible.

And a couple of longer reviews are linked.

Tim Challies and Kevin DeYoung have written excellent and more in-depth reviews of McLaren’s new book and I highly recommend them.

I highly recommend you listen to this podcast and if you know anyone who is being influenced by the (non) religious left, take a look at the articles, especially the DeYoung article, which is quite good.

A generous “orthodoxy”?

And finally, here is a review of another much earlier Brian McLaren book by Biola University professor of philosophy Doug Geivett – one of my absolute favorite people. This is back when McLaren was just starting to leave orthodox Christianity behind.

Excerpt:

Brian McLaren’s book A Generous Orthodoxy (Zondervan, 2004) has been called a manifesto of the “emerging church” — a movement that is rethinking Christianity against the backdrop of postmodernism. McLaren is the founding pastor of Cedar Ridge Community Church in Spencerville, Md.

[…]In using the term “orthodoxy” for his position, McLaren is making a political move to subvert traditional evangelical theology. “Orthodoxy,” as he uses it, is whatever happens to be in vogue and culturally dominant. Also, an important theme among postmodernists has to do with the nature of belief — they doubt that people have, or need, good reasons to believe as they do, so they emphasize behavior over belief. (This probably explains why McLaren’s book relies less on evidence and argumentation and more on rhetoric.) However, in de-emphasizing the importance of belief, McLaren and other postmodernists overlook three things.

First, belief is the engine that drives behavior. The best way to cure wrong action is to identify false beliefs. Second, all people — even postmodernists — have definite beliefs about the things that matter most. They can’t help it. While McLaren resists the invitation to state clearly what he believes — for example, about the eternal destiny of nonbelievers — surely he has some view of the matter and that view influences his approach to the proclamation of the gospel. (As a pastor, he should have good ideas about this and a host of other issues of theological significance.) Third — though postmodernists sneer at the idea of evidence — evidence matters because it’s how we determine what’s true and is crucial to ordering our lives according to truth. In this respect, the postmodernist is out of step with the culture because human beings are by nature evidence-gatherers.

Very important to understand where these postmodern “Christians” are coming from, and where they end up when they’ve worked their mystical anti-realism through to its conclusions.

Videos

Is apologetics a waste of time in a postmodern culture?

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Air Force TACPs confirm target locations with their map
Air Force TACPs confirm target locations with their map

One thing that I noticed while growing up in youth groups and campus clubs is that most of the young unmarried ladies don’t have much interest in making a case for Christian truth claims that are reasonable and supported by evidence. Is it that they are just too lazy to do the studying? Well, no – they do very well in school and get decent jobs after they graduate. So they are able to learn and work on things they like, just not defending their faith. Is it that aren’t able to communicate? Well, no – they are able to talk and talk about things they are interested in, like clothes, television, movies, food, fitness, etc. So what’s the real problem here? I think the problem is that women (more than men) have accepted a postmodern worldview. Postmodernism reduces questions of religion and ethics to personal preferences, divorced from reason and evidence. In postmodernism, everyone is equally right about whichever religion or morality they prefer. And you choose what you like – what resonates with you. For postmodern “Christians”, it causes them to lose all motivation to study and engage in debate in areas like religion and ethics.

Look at this clip of William Lane Craig:

He’s also written a response here.

Personally, I don’t even see how you can BE a Christian and accept postmodernism.

When I was an undergraduate, there was a girl I attended IVCF with named Kerry. Although she was doing a STEM degree and graduated #2 in her class, she just preferred not to study anything related to the real questions that atheists ask. Why not? Because some male youth pastor she had a crush on had convinced her that postmodernism was true, and that it was a waste of time to argue about cosmic fine-tuning. She was more than happy to discover that (thanks to postmodernism) religion was all about feelings and intuitions. No need to waste time reading anything to learn how to give an answer for the hope within you. I would repeat to her verbatim questions I had got from atheists students in high school and university, and she just refused to do anything to come up with an answer. For her, Christianity was about feeling good and being liked, and God would never ask her to do anything (study, debate) that would cause her to be unhappy.

Another woman I worked for told me that she had enough trouble in her day-to-day life to take on any trouble in her religion. She was a leader in a program called the “Calvinettes” – girls interested in Calvinism, I guess. I asked her if she was teaching these Calvinettes anything that would help them when they were confronted by relativism and naturalism in the university. She said no, and that studying science and history was not desired by her Calvinettes, because people who study are nerdy and unpopular. Although she claimed to be in a two-way relationship with God, she never saw any responsibility to defend his honor when it was called into question.

I guess I have trouble understanding postmoderns who It would be like me marrying, and standing there silent when people spoke lies about my wife. Sharing my opinion is not what is needed here, you have to defend your wife and prove her goodness by making a factual case that overrides the other person’s opinions.

One thing is for sure: postmodern Christians don’t treat God very well. It’s almost as if embracing postmdodernism is done precisely because it relieves a person of having to do any studying and having to do any battling. When it comes to defending God’s reputation and honor when it’s called into question, we have to do what works. Not what makes us feel good. Not what makes people like us.

Videos

Jerry Walls lectures on objections to Reformed theology

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Sherlock Holmes and John Watson are going to take a look at the data
Sherlock Holmes and John Watson are going to take a look at the data

WARNING: This lecture is a very sharp and pointed critique of Calvinist theology. Viewer discretion is advised. 

In Protestant Christianity, there is a division between people who accept Calvinist doctrines and those who don’t. Both groups think that the other group are genuine Christians, but the debate has more to do with the human free will, human responsibility and who God loves.

About Dr. Jerry Walls:

  • BA in Religion and Philosophy, Houghton College
  • MDiv, Princeton Seminary
  • STM, Yale Divinity School
  • PhD in Philosophy, Notre Dame

He is a professor at Houston Baptist University.

Dr. Walls is Protestant (like me). He is a substance dualist (like me). And he believes in a real eternal Hell (like me). And he is very, very assertive. Definitely no confidence problems here. And you’re not going to have a problem keeping your attention on this lecture!

Note that I do not agree with or endorse Dr. Walls on all of his views.

Here’s the lecture: (64 minutes)

Summary:

  • What are the main doctrines of Calvinism? (TULIP)
  • A look at the Westminster Confession
  • The nature of freedom and free will
  • Calvinist doctrine of freedom: compatibilism
  • The implications of compatibilism
  • Who determines what each person will desire on Calvinism?
  • Who does God love on Calvinism?
  • The law of non-contradiction
  • Does God make a genuine offer of salvation to all people on Calvinism?
  • Does God love “the elect” differently than the “non-elect” on Calvinism?

He quotes at least a half-dozen Calvinist theologians in this lecture, including John Piper, J.I. Packer and D.A. Carson. And he also mentions 3 videos at the end of the lecture where he goes over specific Bible verses that seem to support Calvinism (part 4, part 5, part 6 are the ones he mentioned).

This lecture is very strong stuff, and I think that he could have been nicer when presenting it, but he hit on every single objection that I have to Calvinism, and he worked through my reasoning too! So I really liked that he validated all of my concerns about Calvinism. I’m not as bothered about the problems with Calvinism as he is, though. I don’t think it’s a big divisive issue. I almost always read Calvinist theologians when I am reading theology. I just conjoin Calvinism with middle knowledge and resistible grace, and it’s fine. You get divine sovereignty AND human responsibility, and without having to swallow determinism and double-predestination (doctrines which cannot be separated from 5-point Calvinism). Calvinists are some of the best theologians, but I think that they are just wrong on the things he discusses in his lecture.

Calvinists who are interested in this issue would do well to read a book on the other side of the fence, like “Salvation and Sovereignty” by Kenneth Heathley. That’s a good defense of the middle knowledge perspective.