Brian McLaren recently posted some comments on, you guessed it, homosexuality, and, as might be expected, he was strong on the need to be what he was pleased to call “pastoral,” and weak on what was known, in another day and time, as “biblical.” He was asked by a young couple what his church’s position …
Isn’t the Prefix “Post” Modern?
There are problems, but reading Stanley Grenz is not at all like reading Brian McLaren. In his book A Primer on Postmodernism, Grenz begins by giving us a general survey of the intellectual landscape, which he does competently. It is when we get to the “and therefore we shoulds” that I start to object. Even …
Humor Is Resistance
Malcolm Muggeridge, who knew his totalitarians (and the liberals who loved them) once said, “To laugh is to criticize . . . Humour, that is to say, is a kind of resistance movement, which is sometimes indulgently tolerated, sometimes barely tolerated, and sometimes not tolerated at all.” George Orwell, who also knew something about the …
Blowing Bubbles At the Moon
The thoughts of man are vain. The thoughts of man are carried around in a bone case, five or six feet above a couple of ground pounders (with ten pink toes splayed on the ends of them) that pack those thoughts around from place to place. In order to keep those thoughts going, a man …
Pomo and Puddleglum
One of my daughters just pointed out a helpful illustration from Narnia on the postmodernism business. A reasonable question that many might ask about the postmodernism jag that I am currently on is, “Why all the fuss?” Okay, already. We agree, for the most part. Why can’t we just keep our distinctives and have a …
Brian McLaren and Chuck Colson
This evening I read Brian McLaren’s open letter to Chuck Colson. Colson had apparently done a radio spot on his view that postmodernism is on its last legs, and that now would not be a good time for Christians to clamber on board. This is a reasonable point, in my mind, but the radio spot …
Tentative or Not?
I was pleased that Andrew Sandlin dropped the label postmodernism recently. But it is not enough to just change the label on the bottle. In a recent post, found here, Andrew continues to advance some of the most problematic aspects of the pomo agenda, as it continues to work its way into the Church. Andrew …
The Pomo Wrecking Ball
I just finished reading a review of D.A. Carson’s Staley Lectures. The review was by David Mills (no, not the David Mills of Touchstone), and can be found here. The lectures were apparently the basis for Carson’s subsequent book Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church, which is also worth reading. David Mills shares some of …
My Favorite Papist
A friend took the trouble to write me privately with some encouraging quotes from Chesterton’s Orthodoxy. One of the most exasperating things about McLaren’s book was his attempt to appropriate Chesterton for himself, and so I thought I would just pass those citations on to you. I believe they are all from from chapter 3, …
Humility and Heresy
There are many destructive things to be found in Brian McLaren’s “generous orthodoxy,” but as I bring this review to a close, I want to summarize some of the clearest problems here. I then want to offer a few thoughts on the subject of humility and heresy. McLaren does not show us a way to …