All Christians are called to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. But before we charge off to do this, we need to distinguish between catholicity and mush. A catholic or ecumenical spirit is not an optional add-on extra. But there is a vast difference between Christians who love each other in Christ, despite various doctrinal differences (known and acknowledged), and a “lower common denominator” unity which has been a modern evangelical specialty for a generation or so. This problem has grown considerably as the “denominator” has gradually broadened, and now takes in all sorts of “communities of faith.” And this has been heightened in the last few years as postmodernist evangelicals (an oxymoron, by the way) have taken this dictum, called, and raised it ten. In A New Kind of Christian, Brian McLaren now addresses the problems of ecumenicity across different faiths, and not just different denominations of trinitarian Christians. He deals with this issue by saying that it is none of our business who goes to Heaven and who goes to Hell. Besides being an obvious dodge, it invites the next obvious question — is it any of our business if there is a Heaven or Hell?
J. Gresham Machen was right in his classic book Christianity and Liberalism. Liberalism was not a variant of the Christian faith, it was another faith altogether. The liberalism of Machen’s day constituted nothing more or less than than simple unbelief. The same thing is true of postmodernism in our day. It is nothing but unbelief, and unbelief and orthodoxy mix about as well as kerosene and sherry. This may be dismissed by some as “irasibility,” but there it is. Someone will ask if I am willing to drop the H-bomb — is postmodernism heresy? Of course it is. It is another religion, and other religions decked out in Christian garb is what genuine heresy actually is.
And this is one of the central problems that I have had with the sectarians of the Reformed world — those TRs who glibly use the epithet heresy to describe denominational differences. Having been on the receiving end of that treatment, I am loathe to do unto others what has been done unto me. It is unbiblical for one thing, and stupid for another. And one of the reasons it is stupid is that the Christian faith is facing a momentous challenge in postmodernism, which is another worldview and faith altogether. And this is the moment that some have chosen to declare war on fellow Christians for bringing children under the age of eight to the Lord’s Table. They are not fighting heresy — they are actually refusing to. In the meantime, postmodern mush masquerading as catholicity is rampant in the broader Church.