Here is another example of just how far off the rails the Ecumenical Church of Deceit actually is and why the deception of the neo-liberal cult of the Emergent Church is going to have catastrophic results upon the youth of our nation. Some of you might remember an article I did here at Apprising Ministries called The Emergent Road To Universalism which dealt with the book A Heretic’s Guide To Eternity by Spencer Burke of the Emergent Ooze. Frankly I dropped the story because I thought it was just too ridiculous even by substandard Emergent standards.

This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic.
(James 3:15, NASB)

Emerging Panentheism and “Christian” Universalism

Then a while back even Scot McKnight of Jesus Creed, a very capable theologian who is also very sympathetic to the Emergent rebellion was also apparently glad to be done with it as well because he said:

The more I ponder what Spencer does in this book, the more direct I have become–be glad I don’t have any more posts about this book.

Is Spencer a “heretic”? He says he is, and I see no reason to think he believes in the Trinity from reading this book. That’s what heresy means to me. Denial of God’s personhood flies in the face of everything orthodox. To say that you believe in the creedal view of God as Father, Son, and Spirit and deny ‘person’ is to deny the Trinitarian concept of God. (emphasis mine)

To give you a bit more background as to why Scot McKnight would state the above I point you to his post Heretic’s Guide to Eternity 4 where McKnight finishes his review of Spencer Burke’s book. And its not like we are dealing with a new convert with Burke who tells us, “I used to be a pastor” (Online source). McKnight points out that Spencer “doesn’t believe God is a ‘person’ (195): ‘I’m not sure I believe in God exclusively as a person anymore either…. The truth is that seeing God as spirit more than person doesn’t destroy my faith’ (195).” And then McKnight tells us further:

Instead, he is a panentheist — which means that “God is ‘in all,’ alongside my creedal view of God as Father, Son, and Spirit” (195). He emphasizes immanence, “radical connectedness” and “relational theology.” [Again, this is flat-out wrong: “panentheism” is not the view that God is in all but that all is in God, and there’s a big diference.]

[I will confess to you when I read that God is not a person, my blood boiled. To deny personhood to God, the hypostasis or “person”hood, denies the essence of Christian orthodoxy and the sole foundation for our personhood and the essence both of what the gospel is — restoring cracked (person-ed) Eikons to God, who is person — and what redemption is. This genuinely is what theologians have always called “heresy.” When he says he accepts the creedal view of Father, Son, and Spirit and then says he doesn’t believe God is “person” but “spirit” — frankly, this last statement completely undermines the former. What are the FAther, Son, and Spirit but the persons of the Godhead?]

I share this with you as a further illustration of what has been happening to “scared of their own shadow” $evangelicalism$ now that this neo-liberal cult of pseudo-Christianity is being allowed to operate from within the Church of our Lord. Even my ol’ pal Dr. Andrew Jackson of SmartChristian.com, not one known to make much of a stand regarding the true historic orthodox Christian faith reports that: “Simply put, Scot concludes, based on Spenser Burke’s new book, that he is a universalist, a general panentheist, rejects the Trinity, and provides very little evidence that he believes in the New Testament “gospel.”

Alerted by the Spirit I have been telling the Church for a year now that this is exactly where Brian McLaren and Rob Bell and Doug Pagitt and Tony Jones–among others–have to go with their concept of the nature of God to make their inclusive interspirituality work. The absolute Truth is that long ago Emergent kicked out the Bible as the authority for its faith and practice and now they have no way to deal with spiritual deviants like Spencer Burke, a well respected figure within this highly divisive Emerging Church movement who is teaching foolishness like this in the Name of Christ to your young:

May a say up front I do not deny the Trinity as you quoted from the book… When Father is used in scripture and prayer, etc. I see God much in the same way as you would – personal, with the best characteristics of a father, Son the same – as a son of the father and the incarnational image of God here on earth as God in Flesh and Holy Spirit as personally guiding me, comforting me and leading / convicting me in truth. I assume this would fit (at least loosely) in your “creedal” view of the Trinity…

The context for the subsection of the book focuses not on a denial of the Trinity but the question of how do we deal with the passages where God is not identified with one of these personal roles (Father, Son or Holy Spirit) but only as God. Do you equate God as Father, as the default? That is the way I used to think of God, but now I see the potential of both a Trinitarian creed along with a panentheist view. What if when scripture refers to God as “God” we begin to see God not as anyone of the three but wholly and completely all three and other. I don’t believe there are 4 persons to the trinity but I do see 4 ways of looking at the person and work of God – Father, Son, Holy Spirit AND God.

The Lord be praised, you may recall that months ago I ran a series called Brian McLaren and Evangelical Panentheism, which I am updating and republishing. In fact, one could ask Roger Overton of the A-Team blog who rejected my conclusions as guilt by association. Well, it was only a matter of time folks before these deceivers start emerging out of their New Age closet. As I mentioned previously, the key to making their warped and toxic view of interspirituality a possible viable option for the Christian has to be panentheism. In this case all that would be necessary, in their the mind of Emergent, for the person who is a pantheist to become “a follower of Jesus” is to convince them that God is actually a Personal Being. You see, the pantheist already believes that all of creation is in god, as in all is god and god is all.

So leaders within the subversive Emergent Church have been working to convince people in the Body of Christ that there was sort of a universal atonement where Jesus supposedly redeemed the entire universe back into God. And then, to the Emergent initiated, consistent with Gnosticism’s “divine spark” and the Quaker “Inner Light,” as taught by Living Spiritual Teacher Richard Foster, we will have now have paved a way to for our very “Generous Orthodoxy” to work because mankind would already be in God. As such there would be no longer be any need for the “new birth,” and hence their blatant attack on Biblical and Reformed theology.

Men and women, I must tell you in the Lord the leaders in the Body of Christ need a serious wake-up call because we are in danger of allowing this kind of repugnant heresy to be considered as consistent with the historic orthodox Christian faith.