Over in Singapore at  his Reformata Et Semper Reformanda blog my friend Daniel Chew shares some comments about my piece A Conversation on the Emerging Church with Mike Clawson and Ken Silva. Chew is author of the book about semi-pelagian Purpose Driven Pope Driven Pope Rick Warren called Driven Away By Purpose, which I was honored to be asked to endorse.

In Driven Away Chew points out that:

In Semi-Pelagian theology, unlike pure Pelagianism, Man is born sinful. Thus, Semi-Pelagianism at least contains a veneer of Christianity. It likewise affrims that Jesus came to die for our sins. However, in pandering to the carnal mind, it proposes that Man can seek after God without God’s grace [preceding and bringing faith] and can seize hold of God’s grace through faith. God’s grace would then save the person by applying Christ’s workon the cross to him/her (113)

And then in the post at Reformata Chew shows us the illogical conclusion of this new evangelical false view of salvation when he writes:

The Emerging Church pastor Mike Clawson said this at the end of the exchange:  "Salvation is through the grace of God alone; by the faith alone given to us by God, in Christ alone. Another bit of irony (and perhaps more evidence of how you really haven’t understood what those in the EC are saying) is that I would completely affirm this statement as well. You hold this up as an example of the radical difference in our views – and yet I see no disagreement here."

I ‘agree’ with his statement … and pigs do fly, at least in the world of the Emerging Church movement. So salvation is both by grace alone and not by grace alone, by faith alone and also not by faith alone, and in Christ alone but not in Christ alone too. I’m sorry, I’m not ‘smart’ enough to get my mind around such strange doctrine (1 Tim. 1:6-7).

And a word to these man-loving semi-pelagian new evangelicals embracing  the neo-liberal cult of the Emergent Church like Rob Bell and Erwin McManus. Rephrasing what was mused elsewhere, when you start yakking on about being "culturally relevant,"  "missional," and "embrace mystery" etc. it’s like our brain converts anything you say after that into “blah, blah, blah … explore the human spirit, social reformer, rabbis say blah, blah, blah”, and our mind wanders to "why we don’t take you seriously."