A while back there was a bit of a fuss over someones contention that one must assume that a self identified Christian would look to the Holy Spirit for guidance.
A few years ago I would have agreed. But now...?
I was perusing the blog of an ordained Minister of Word and Sacrament, ordained by a mainline Christian denomination. This gentleman self identifies as a progressive christian as well as a minister of his denomination. He wrote excitedly about a book that his congregation was about to begin studying. This book was written by another christian who is also ordained in a leadership position in a different mainline denomination. Now one would assume that being ordained in christian denominations might suggest a certain level of acceptance of what one might call historic christian doctrine.
Yet we have this list of "12 theses for a new reformation".
1. Theism, as a way of defining God, is dead. So most theological God-talk is today meaningless. A new way to speak of God must be found.
2. Since God can no longer be conceived in theistic terms, it becomes nonsensical to seek to understand Jesus as the incarnation of the theistic deity. So the Christology of the ages is bankrupt.
3. The biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense.
4. The virgin birth, understood as literal biology, makes Christ's divinity, as traditionally understood, impossible.
5. The miracle stories of the New Testament can no longer be interpreted in a post-Newtonian world as supernatural events performed by an incarnate deity.
6. The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God and must be dismissed.
7. Resurrection is an action of God. Jesus was raised into the meaning of God. It therefore cannot be a physical resuscitation occurring inside human history.
8. The story of the Ascension assumed a three-tiered universe and is therefore not capable of being translated into the concepts of a post-Copernican space age.
9. There is no external, objective, revealed standard writ in scripture or on tablets of stone that will govern our ethical behavior for all time.
10. Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way.
11. The hope for life after death must be separated forever from the behavior control mentality of reward and punishment. The Church must abandon, therefore, its reliance on guilt as a motivator of behavior.
12. All human beings bear God's image and must be respected for what each person is. Therefore, no external description of one's being, whether based on race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation, can properly be used as the basis for either rejection or discrimination.
If this is what we get from progressive Christians, can we assume that there is any shred of commonly held beliefs that identify a Christian?
It seems not.
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2 comments:
It doesn't appear that these people even read Scripture; they make all this stuff up and claim it is Christian. Just like all the other cults.
Glenn,
No argument here. 25 years ago I would have felt comfortable saying that there were a number of things that 95% of all self identified christians would have affirmed. Now,especially on the progressive side, it's pretty much all up for grabs.
Ultimately my problem is not that these guys believe this stuff, it's that the masquerade and christians and potentially cause harm to others.
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