John Franke begins by asking and answering the question, “Do you believe in truth?” He allows that the easiest thing for emergents to do is to just say yes, in order to reassure everybody. But then he gets into his explanation of why he thinks this is an odd question, and all the reasons why …
Macedoine Salad Without the Bowl
The next book that I shall blog through, Lord willing, will be John Franke’s new book, Manifold Witness. This first post will consist of two parts — the first being a quick take on the cover, title, blurbs, foreword and preface. The second will consist a brief statement of my presuppositions in conducting a review …
A Deficient Sense of Humor
Have you ever been taking a nice, hot shower when a friend with a deficient sense of humor heaved a bucket of cold water over the top of the curtain? Christianity Today asked a number of Christian leaders to provide the hot shower, and then (apparently) asked me and another guy to provide the cold …
Killing and Dying
Just a quick note on a nagging problem in hermeneutics, a problem that pomo monkeyshines help serve to highlight. To the extent that pomo thinking robs us of an authoritative word, the more it tries to leave us with a series of bad choices, all of them arbitrary and capricious. Here is the dilemma: As …
Geez Louise
So, a friend informs me, Brian McLaren is observing Ramadan this year. I was minding my own business, see, and my friend sent me this link. Check it out your own self here. He sent me the link, I am convinced, to see if I would go off like a bottle rocket, all the while …
Pomo Goopy Thought
Justin Taylor links to an article by Kevin DeYoung on how it is the the new Calvinists are overwhelmingly complementarians. For those unfamiliar with the jargon, complementarian is the name of the position that resists the ordination of women, while egalitarians support that ordination. There are other issues involved, of course, but that is the …
A Very Brief Summary
By “emergent,” I do not refer to those who have fallen away from the faith entirely. We have always had apostates. By emergent I mean those who want to retain some kind of recognizable connection to the evangelical movement, but who want to do the hep cat thing. The emergents are kids from the junior …
The Tyranny of Relativism
I ran across this great observation in the latest edition of The New Criterion. The issue was a symposium on what Pope Benedict called, shortly before his election as pope, the “dictatorship of relativism.” That pregnant phrase almost says it all. At any rate, William Stace said, and I would echo it with bells on, …
A Protean Shape-Shifter Takes Office
It has been a while since I went off on postmodernism, which is clear proof that I have been being good, so allow me this oblique observation. With the election of Barack Obama, we now have in the White House the kind of protean shape-shifter ideally fitted for the pomo ethos. This provides us with …
Judaizer! Hebraist!
One of my pet theological peeves is a distortion of the value of “emphasis.” Heresy is a matter of right or wrong, affirmation or denial. Someone can be imbalanced by being . . . imbalanced, but damnable error involves more than being half a bubble off. On top of that, critiquing “emphases” lends itself to …