1 Brian McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy, 293.
2 Ibid., 198.
3 I highly recommend the book Heresies: Heresy and Orthodoxy in the History of the Church by Harold O. J. Brown (Peabody MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1998).
4 One of the major writers on postconservatism is Roger E. Olson, Reformed and Always Reforming: The Postconservative Approach to Evangelical Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2007). A conservative response to Olson is the book Reforming or Conforming? by Gary L. W. Johnson and Ronald N. Gleason (Wheaton, Il: Crossway Books, 2008).
5 Evangelicals Engaging Emergent: A Discussion of the Emergent Church Movement (Nashville TN: William D. Henard and Adam W. Greenway, eds., B & H Publishing Group, 2009) is a fair and balanced critique of the emergent idea in the evangelical church.
6 Brian McLaren’s book The Secret Message of Jesus—Uncovering the Truth That Could Change Everything (Nashville: W Publishing Group, 2006) deals with this subject.
7 R. Albert Mohler, Jr., back cover of Reclaiming the Center: Confronting Evangelical Accommodation in Postmodern Times, by Millard J. Erickson, Paul Kjoss Helseth, and Justin Taylor, (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2004).
8 Millard J. Erickson, Paul Kjoss Helseth, and Justin Taylor, 17.
9 McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy, 19–20, 22–23.
10 David F. Wells, No Place for Truth: Or Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology?, 104.
11 David F. Wells, Above All Earthly Pow’rs, Christ in a Postmodern Word, 265.
12 This is the issue of epistemology or the theory of knowing.
13 Brian McLaren in his book “A New Kind of Christian” (Jossey-Bass, 2001) undermines much of evangelicalism. It is what I call postevangelicalism because it is no longer evangelical.
14 Rationalism—the methodology that reason unaided by revelation can come to truth.
15 Wells, No place for Truth and God in the Wasteland: The Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Co, 1994).
16 In his first chapter Bob DeWaay in The Emergent Church: Undefining Christianity (Saint Louis Park, IL: Bethany Press International, 2009) says that emergent church thinkers can be traced back to Jurgen Moltmann, and his thinking goes back to dialectical presuppositions. Some of these emergent disciples of Moltmann are Barry Taylor, Dwight J. Friesen, and Stanley Grenz. In chapter nine DeWaay shows that Ken Wilber is the source for the emergent idea. Wilber roots his ideas in dialectical thought. It is striking that Wilber is a pantheistic Buddhist. His ideas are neo-pagan. McLaren reveals in Chapter 19 of Generous that Wilber had significant influence on him.
17 Contrary to popular thinking, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel did not believe in the dialectic model of “thesis, antithesis, synthesis.” Gustav E. Mueller made this clear in “The Hegel Legend of ‘Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis,’” in The Journal of the History of Ideas (June 1958). Winfried Corduan also concurred with this understanding in “Transcendentalism: Hegel” in Biblical Errancy, An Analysis of its Philosophical Roots, Norman L. Geisler, ed. (Zondervan, 1981). Thanks to Drs. William E. Nix and Norman L. Geisler for calling my attention to this faulty understanding of Hegel.
18 Truth is not fixed but is constantly open to a new antithesis, which in turn forms a new thesis, which again forms a new thesis. Truth is always on the move; no one can find it for sure.
19 McLaren, “Emerging Values,” Leadership Journal (Summer 2003), http://www.christianitytoday.com/le/2003/summer/3.34.html
20 Ibid.
21 Wells, No Place for Truth, 135.
22 Obviously, many verses describe the trinity or imply the trinity.
23 Most of society is not philosophically postmodern, but it is culturally postmodern. In other words, people do not know why they are postmodern but they accept the prevailing opinion.
24 This is what is called the a posteriori approach to truth. It is an inductive approach. However, if mankind is finite, there is no possibility of coming to an infinite truth because one would have to examine all reality of all time, both potential and actual, qualitatively and quantitatively equally. The only hope for certainty or absolute truth is an a priori approach.
25 That is, a presupposition. A presupposition is the most foundational, basic belief one has for finding truth.
26 “Americans Are Most Likely to Base Truth on Feelings,” (February 12, 2002)
www.barna,org.
27 David F. Wells, Losing Our Virtue (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans
Publishing Co, 1998), 3.
28 They are dialectical in method.
29 Note the writings of the recently deceased Robert E. Webber.
30 Erickson, Helseth, and Taylor, Reclaiming the Center, 53.
31 Stanley Grenz, Renewing the Center: Evangelical Theology in a Post-Theological Era, (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000), 245.
32 D. A. Carson, “Faith a La Carte,” Modern Reformation Magazine (July/August 2005, Vol. 14): 4.
33 Ibid.
34 Leonard Sweet, Brian D. McLaren, and Jerry Haselmayer, A is for Abductive: The Language of the Emerging Church, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003) 31.
35 D. A. Carson, Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005) 104–105.
36 Webber, The Younger Evangelicals (Grand Rapids, Baker Books, 2002) 68.
37 Ibid., 48, 49, 52, 185, 199.
38 McLaren, Generous Orthodoxy, Footnote, 147.
39 Ibid., 290.
40 Ibid., 291.
41 Ibid.
42 Ibid., 260.
43 Ibid.
44 Ibid., 291.
45 Ibid., 293.
46 Ibid., 293–294.
47 Ibid., 294.
48 Ibid., 295.
49 Ibid., 294, 295.
50 Ibid., 297.
51 Millard J. Erickson, Paul Kjoss Helseth, Justin Taylor (editors); Reclaiming the Center (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2004), chapter by Stephen J. Wellum, Postconservatism, Biblical Authority, and Recent Proposals for Re-Doing Evangelical Theology: A Critical Analysis (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2004) 192.
52 McLaren, Generous Orthodoxy, 278.
53 Ibid., footnote 282.
54 Ibid.
55 Ibid., 285.
56 Ibid., 286.
57 Ibid.
58 Ibid., 287.
59 Ibid.
60 Ibid., 289.
61 Ibid.
62 Ibid., 290.
63 Ibid., 290, 291.
64 McLaren, Generous Orthodoxy, 290.
65 Ibid.
66 Ibid., 291.
67 Ibid., 28, 29.
68 Ibid., 29.
69 Wells, No Place for Truth, 96.
70 Ibid., 117.
71 Ibid., 127, 128.
72 Ibid., 129.
73 Ibid., 130.
74 Ibid., 131.
75 Ibid., 188–189.
76 Ibid., 132.
77 Daniel Taylor, The Myth of Certainty (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992).
78 D. A. Carson, The Gagging of God (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996) 35.
79 Millard J. Erickson, The Evangelical Left: Encountering Postconservative Evangelical Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1997) p. 86.
80 McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy, 133.
81 Ibid., 133.
82 Ibid., 133–134.
83 Ibid., 134.
84 Ibid., 136.
85 Ibid.
86 Ibid., 294.
87 The battle is between the coherent view of truth and the correspondent view. (Facts must correspond to truth asserted.)
88 Dialectical reasoning.
89 R. Albert Mohler, Jr., “Standing Together, Standing Apart: Cultural Co-belligerence Without Theological Compromise,” Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity, (July/August, 2003) http://touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=16-06-070-f.
90 Wells, No Place for Truth, 66.
91 Grenz, Renewing the Center.
92 Wells, No Place for Truth, 101.
93 Ibid., 259–60.
94 Grenz, Renewing the Center, 242.
95 McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy, 19–20.
96 Ibid.
97 Ibid., 30.
98 Ibid., 198.
99 Ibid.
100 Ibid., 210.
101 Ibid.
102 Ibid., 24.
103 Ibid.
104 Ibid., 23.
105 Ibid., 210.
106 Carson, Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church, 234.
107 McLaren, Generous Orthodoxy, 143.
108 Douglas Groothuis, Truth Decay (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 2000), 105.
109 Ibid., 108.
110 McLaren, Generous Orthodoxy, 11.
111 Ibid., 28.
112 Ibid.
113 Groothuis, Truth Decay, 206.
114 Erickson, Helseth, and Taylor, Reclaiming the Center, 77.
115 Douglas Groothuis, “Truth Defined and Defended, in Reclaiming the Center, 79.
116 McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy, 254.
117 Carson, Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church, 137.
118 Ibid.
119 Ibid., 138.
120 Ibid., 69.
121 Ted Koppel, 1987 commencement address at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, May 10, 1987. Time in partnership with CNN website, Monday, June 22, 1987: 64745-1,00.html. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,9122 McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy, 225.
123 Ibid.
124 Bob DeWaay, The Emergent Church: Undefining Christianity, (Saint Louis Park, MN: Bethany Press International, 2009), 18.
125 Ibid., 162.
126 Ibid.
127 Ibid., 100.
128 Wells, Above All Earthly Pow’rs, 156.
129 Eddie Gibbs and Ryan K. Bolger, Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2005), 131.
130 The Merriam-Webster Dictionary of Quotations. (Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1992)
131 Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christian (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001) 17, 52, 55.
132 McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy, 22–3.
133 Ibid., 261.
134 Ibid., 293–4.
135 McLaren, The Secret Message of Jesus, 7.
136 John MacArthur, “Brian McLaren and the Clarity of Scripture,” http://www.gty.org/resources.phpsection=articles&aid=231584
137 McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy, 155.
138 G. K Chesterton, “Orthodoxy,” in The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton, David Dooly, ed. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), vol. I, 211.
139 John R. Franke, preface to A Generous Orthodoxy, by McLaren, 10.
140 Ibid.
141 McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy, 293.
142 Ibid.,, 87.
143 Ibid.
144 Ibid., 88.
145 D.A. Carson, “Domesticating the Gospel, A Review of Grenz’s Renewing the Center,” in Reclaiming the Center, 46.
146 Ibid., 47.
147 Ibid.
148 McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy., 69.
149 Ibid.
150 Ibid., 76–77.
151 Ibid., 70.
152 Wells, Above All Earthly Pow’rs, 155.
153 Ibid., 152.
154 McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy, 155.
155 Ibid., 151.
156 Ibid., 178.
157 DeWaay, The Emergent Church, 51.
158 David Wells, Above All Earthly Pow’rs, 133.
159 McLaren, A New Kind of Christian, 162.
160 Stanley Grenz, Revisioning Evangelical Theology: A Fresh Agenda for the 21st Century (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1993), 94.
161 R. Albert Mohler, Jr., “The Integrity of the Evangelical Tradition and the Challenge of the Postmodern Paradigm,” The Challenge of Postmodernism, David S. Dockery, editor, (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 2001) 67.
162 Ibid.
163 Groothuis, Truth Decay, 265.
164 Wells, No Place for Truth, 127.
165 Ibid., 127–128.
166 Ibid., 131.
167 D.A. Carson in Erickson, Helseth, and Taylor, Reclaiming the Center, 45.
168 Ibid., 45–46.
169 McLaren, Generous Orthodoxy, 155.
170 Ibid.,156.
171 Ibid., 157
172 Ibid.
173 Ibid., 162.
174 Ibid., 253.
175 Ibid., 160.
176 McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy, 224.
177 Ibid.
178 Ibid., 225.
179 Ibid.
180 Ibid., 230.
181 Ibid., 32.
182 Ibid., 30ff.
183 Ibid., 61.
184 Ibid., 66.
185 C. F. H. Henry. God, revelation, and authority. (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 199) 3:457.
186 McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy, 286.
187 Wells, No Place for Truth, 131.
188 Robert P. Setters, “A Baptist View of Mission for Postmodernity,” Review and Expositor 100.4 .(2003; 2004) 645.
189 Doug Pagitt, Church Re-Imagined: The Spiritual Formation of People in Communities of Faith (Grand Rapids: Zondervan , 2005) 166.
190 Erickson, Helseth, and Taylor, Reclaiming the Center, 50.
191 Ibid., 130.
192 Ibid., 131.
193 McLaren, Generous Orthodoxy, 164.
194 Ibid., 165.
195 Ibid., 166.
196 Ibid., 166.
197 Ibid. 167.
198 Ibid., 170.
199 Ibid.,171.
200 Carl R. Trueman, The Wages of Spin, (Glasgow: Mentor Imprint, 2004), 92.
201 This is best represented Brian McLaren’s The Story We Find Ourselves In (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003).
202 Carson, Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church, 172.
203 McLaren, Generous Orthodoxy, 146.
204 Ibid.
205 McLaren, Generous Orthodoxy, 151.
206 Ibid.
207 Ibid., 152.
208 Rollan D. McCune, “The New Evangelicalism And Apologetics,” Detroit Baptist Seminary Journal, Vol. 6, (2001; 2004): 100–102.
209 A. Duane Litfin, “1 Timothy” in The Bible knowledge commentary: An exposition of the Scriptures, eds. J. F. Walvoord, R. B. Zuck, & Dallas Theological Seminary, Volume II, 729 (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1983–c1985).
210 C. Ryan Jenkins, “Faith and Works in Paul and James,” Bibliotheca Sacra Vol. 159 (2002; 2003): 65–66.
211 Erickson, The Evangelical Left, 58.
212 M. W. Holmes, The Apostolic Fathers: Greek texts and English translations (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1999) 75.
213 McLaren, Generous Orthodoxy 261.
214 Most postmodern thinking rests on the dialectical method. Truth is always changing from a thesis to antithesis to synthesis. The new synthesis forms a new thesis, which forms a new antithesis and synthesis. On and on it goes without an ultimate conclusion or absolute.
215 Because God is absolute, he has sole authority for truth and knowledge. When humans try to find truth apart from God, we distort absolute truth (Romans 1:21–25; 1 Corinthians 1:18–25). The gravest epistemological error people make is to assert their autonomy for finding truth apart from God. Autonomy makes the individual the ultimate standard for finding truth. They will never find infinite truth as finite beings.
216 Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1975), 40.
217 Francis A. Schaeffer, The God Who Is There (Toronto: Hodder and Stoughton, 1968), 48.
218 Carson, Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church, 122.
219 Incommunicable attributes have no analogy in mankind. God cannot share infinity or omnipresence. He can share love and mercy (communicable attributes).
220 Robert L. Reymond, The Justification of Knowledge (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1976) 30.
221 McLaren, Generous Orthodoxy, 133.
222 Ibid.
223 Ibid., 164.
224 Ibid., 153.
225 Dockery, The Challenge of Postmodernism, 86.
226 Reymond, The Justification of Knowledge 79.
227 Groothuis, Truth Decay,109.
228 McLaren, Generous Orthodoxy, 152, 153.
229 Ibid., 152.
230 Ibid., 184, 185.
231 Ibid., 184.
232 Ibid., 191.
233 Ibid.
234 Ibid., 191, 192.
235 Ibid., 192.
236 Ibid., 193.
237 T. S. Eliot “The Rock,” http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/show/28556.
238 John M. Frame, Apologetics to the Glory of God, An Introduction, (Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1994) 80.
239 R. C. Sproul, “The Internal Testimony of the Holy Spirit,” Inerrancy, Norman L. Geisler, Ed. (Grand Rapids: The Zondervan Corporation, 1979), 344–347.
240 John M. Frame, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, (Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1987) 397.
241 Wells, No Place for Truth, 101–102.
242 Ibid., 481.
243 Postmodernism is rationalistic reductionism; therefore, the postevangelical view is that evangelicals are guilty of theological reductionism and uncritical biblicism. By the way, postevangelicals are in an epistemological reductionism themselves!
244 Roger Olson, “Reforming Evangelical Theology,” in Evangelical Futures: A Conversation on Theological Method, ed. John G. Stackhouse, Jr. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2000) 201.
245 Erickson, Helseth, Taylor, Reclaiming the Center, 43.
246 Ibid.
247 Ibid, 45.
248 Wells, No Place for Truth, 134.
249 R. Albert Mohler, Jr., “Reformists Evangelicalism: A Center Without a Circumference,” in A Confessing Theology for Postmodern Times (Wheaton: Crossway, 2000) 146.
250 D. A. Carson, The Gagging of God (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1999) 481.
251 R. Albert Mohler, Jr., “Standing Together, Standing Apart: Cultural Co-belligerence Without Theological,” Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity (http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=16-06-070-f).
252 Ibid.
253 Ibid.
254 Jack Rogers and Donald McKim, The Authority and Interpretation of the Bible:
255 John D. Woodbridge, Biblical Authority: A Critique of the Rogers-McKim Proposal (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982).
256 Paul Jewett, Man as Male and Female (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1975).
257 Erickson, The Evangelical Left, 77.
258 Clark Pinnock, The Openness of God: A Biblical Understanding of God (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1994).
259 Carson, Gagging of God, 347–67.
260 Wells, No Place for Truth, 132.
261 This would include people such as Alister McGrath, Kwame Bediako (Ghanaian theologian), Thomas Oden, Michael Cooper, Wilbert Shenk, Lesslie Newbigin, Oliver Davies, David Cornick.
262 Alister McGrath, Evangelicalism and the Future of Christianity (Downers Grove, Il: Intervarsity, 1995) 55–56.
263 Kwame Bediako, Theology and Identity: The Impact of Culture upon Christian Thought in the Second Century and Modern Africa (Oxford: Regnum Books, 1992) 251–252.
264 “Q&A: Francis Beckwith,” Christianity Today, http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/mayweb-only/119-33.0.html.
265 Ibid.
266 Associated Baptist Press, “Baylor prof Beckwith becomes Catholic, resigns as head of evangelical society,” http://www.abpnews.com/content/view/2252/120/.
267 Evangelical Theological Society, “ETC Constitution,” http://www.etsjets.org/about/constitution.
268 David S. Dockery, Southern Baptists and American Evangelicals (Nashville: Broadman, 1992).
269 Carl F. H. Henry, Evangelicals at the Brink of Crisis (Waco: Word, 1967) 111.
270 Wells, No Place for Truth, 209–210.
271 Wells, Above All Earthly Pow’rs, 5–6.
272 Wells, No Place for Truth, 217.
273 Ibid., 135.
274 Ibid., 136
275 Tim Keller, “The Gospel in All its Forms,” Leadership Journal (2008), http://www.christianitytoday.com/le/2008/spring/9.74.html.
276 Wolfhart Pannenberg, “How to Think About Secularism,” First Things 64 (June/July 1996): 27–32, http://www.leaderu.com/ftissues/ft9606/articles/pannenberg.html. An Historical Approach (New York: Harper, 1979).
277 Erwin Raphael McManus, “The Global Intersection,” in The Church in Emerging Culture: Five Perspectives Leonard Sweet, Ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003), 225.
278 Ibid. 248.
279 Carson, Becoming Conversant, 42, 44.
280 E. R. McManus, “The Global Intersection,” 247.
281 Ibid.
282 Ibid.
283 E. R. McManus, Soul Cravings, (Nashville: Nelson Books, 2006) unnumbered page.
284 McManus, “The Global Intersection,” 245.
285 Ibid.
286 Ibid., 256–57.
287 Al Sergel interview with Erwin Raphael McManus, “Soul Cravings, Q&A,” Relevant Magazine, http://www.relevantmagazine.com/godarticle.php?id=7241.
288 E. R. McManus, Barbarian Way (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2005) 60–61, 109.
289 Mark Devine, “The Emerging Church: One Movement—Two Streams,” in Evangelicals Engaging Emergent: A Discussion of the Emergent Church Movement, eds. William D. Henard and Adam W. Greenway (Nashville: B & H Publishing Group, 2009) 17, 20.
290 Ibid., 33.
291 Dean Kelley, Why Conservative Churches Are Growing (New York: Harper and Row, 1972).
292 Robert E. Webber, “Out with the Old,” Christianity Today (February 19, 1990) 17.
293 Wells No Place for Truth, 9–10.
294 Brian McLaren, in A New Kind of Christianity, tries to shift the paradigm of evangelicalism into a new social gospel, a kingdom that does not represent an accurate picture of the biblical kingdom. He picks and chooses verses for his own purposes. As well, he downplays the book of Romans and justifies it by an unjustified hierarchy of placing the gospels over the epistles.
295 Josh McDowell, “Teaching the Truth So Others Will Know and Live It,” Veritas, Vol. 5, No. 3, (July 2005): 1–2.
296 Ibid
