Monday, November 27, 2006

I've just recently become aware of the Joseph Farah-Rick Warren situation as well as the Brian McLaren-Mark Driscoll online "debate," which is now very dated (you can get most of the text here). In any case, having read all of the article written by Farah and the short rebuttal by Warren, on the record I side with Farah. Being late to the McLaren-Driscoll situation, I don't know that I have all of the info but I've read the original post by McLaren, Driscoll's response, McLaren's response to that and then Driscoll's short, to the point question to McLaren. That's where I've stopped. If there is more, forgive me, I'm not aware.

Anyway, after reading this and doing a little more research on my man Driscoll (I've written here before how much I appreciated his book "Radical Reformission" and his thoughts on various topics), this info below from Wiki also hits right where I am at right now:

Brief association with Emerging Church movement:
Mark Driscoll describes his association with, and eventual distancing from the Emerging Church movement in his blog"In the mid-1990s I was part of what is now known as the Emerging Church and spent some time traveling the country to speak on the emerging church in the emerging culture on a team put together by Leadership Network called the Young Leader Network.But, I eventually had to distance myself from the Emergent stream of the network because friends like Brian McLaren and Doug Pagitt began pushing a theological agenda that greatly troubled me. Examples include referring to God as a chick, questioning God's sovereignty over and knowledge of the future, denial of the substitutionary atonement at the cross, a low view of Scripture, and denial of hell which is one hell of a mistake."

I like a lot of the questions the emerging network are asking and some of the paradigms they are changing, but their lack of foundational theology greatly troubles me for the exact reason Driscoll notes above.

3 comments:

edluv said...

"denial of the substitutionary atonement at the cross"

i haven't read all of driscoll's book, but i did notice that this seems to be his, well, cross to bear. the funny thing is, in radical reformission, he references a book by joel green and mark baker. i'm pretty sure that neither of these gents are in the emergent movement. (mark was one of my seminary profs., my mentor. i haven't asked him, but i think he wouldn't call himself emergent.)

again, i haven't read all of driscoll's book, but i find it interesting that he seems to think that this is the only interpretation of the cross event. throughout the history of Xianity, there have been several understandings of what happened @ the cross. yes, how you understand it may affect how you live out your faith. but, it may not.

in my opinion, my understanding of what actually happened @ the cross, substitution or otherwise, doesn't change what happened.

JPN said...

Interesting...I've heard solid arguments on substitution and covenent atonement, what are the others?

edluv said...

dang man, you're asking me to dig up my notes from either a history of Xianity or christian thought class.

but, i think i will. because, this isn't the first time i've had to refernce it. i should know this.

tomorrow.