Phyllis Tickles Many Emerging Ears With Her New Book

Apprising Ministries pointed out in Who Is Phyllis Tickle? that she has likened Emergent Church Guru Brian McLaren to Martin Luther. Self-proclaimed “progressive Presbymergent” Adam Walker Cleaveland who was at the 2006 joint annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature and American Academy of Religion where Tickle made the comment fills us in:

I finally made it to a session, “What is Emergent?” Brian McLaren, Phyllis Tickle and Pete Rollins…led a lively and packed discussion about Emergent and its role in the church and in theological discourse… Phyllis Tickle gave a wonderful introduction to Emergent and its place within the history of Christianity.

She talked about how every 500 years, the church has gone through a dramatic revolution and reformation (1517: Protestant Reformation; 1054: East/West Split; 500…something about popes…I was never great with history). She believes that Emergent is the new movement of reformation for this 500 year period. She also is so bold to say that Brian McLaren is to this new reformation what Martin Luther was to the Protestant Reformation. (Online source)

So it’s little wonder that over at the Emergent Village website Emerging Church quasi-universalist Doug Pagitt literally gushes in his praise for Phyllis Tickle and her new book:

“Phyllis Tickle is the best friend the emergent movement could ever have,” said Doug Pagitt, series editor for ēmersion. “She’s a keen observer of the American church scene. She’s also gracious and wise. Her books, from The Divine Hours to her memoirs, are essential reading. We look forward to the release of The Great Emergence with much anticipation.” (Online source)

And then in an interview last year at Out of Ur called “The Future of the Emerging Church” Tickle expands a bit on her belief “that Emergent is the new movement of reformation for this 500 year period” as she informs us:

We are seeing the start of a post-Protestant and post-denominational era. Just as Protestantism took the hegemony from Roman Catholicism and Roman Catholicism from the East at the Great Schism, so the emerging church is now taking hegemony from Protestantism. (Online source)

Out With Sola Scriptura In Favor Of Mystic Musings Of The Nebulous “Community”

Still don’t see this Emergent front of the overall Emerging postevangelical rebellion against Sola Scriptura for the seducing spirits which they are with their doctrines of demons? Well for those who don’t know what “hegemony” means consider that the dictionary defines it as:

1: preponderant influence or authority over others DOMINATION hegemony in Asia> 2: the social, cultural, ideological, or economic influence exerted by a dominant group hegemony over American culture as a whole — Mary K. Cayton> (Online source)

Now it should become clearer why the Emerging Church was so anxious to usher into evangelicalism the Contemplative Spirituality/Mysticism aka Spiritual Formation of Living Spiritual Teacher and Quaker mystic “Roshi” Richard Foster and his spiritual twin Dallas Willard. The result of this return so-called “Christian” mysticism is to shift the “influence or authority” away from the Scriptures and onto the subjective musings of “community.” But Bob DeWaay is dead on target when he says this is essentially the same position as the apostate Roman Catholic Church and an outright repudiation of Sola Scriptura.

And as I said in Rob Bell Evangelical? the reason for this is that these mystical neo-Gnostics, in the throes of their deluded spiritual pride, think their interspiritual meditation powwows of Contemplative/Centering Prayer will eventually unite all religions. But don’t say you haven’t been warned because over at his fine Critical Issues Commentary website DeWaay gets right to the heart of the matter about just how spiritually dangerous this Emergent “reformation” will be concerning how mankind is to approach a relationship with God:

There are restrictions. The question is, “Who determines them?” The options are that individuals determine them for themselves, church traditions determine the restrictions, or the Scriptures determine the restrictions. I argue that if individuals determine the restrictions for themselves, there are no restrictions. A good example is Morton Kelsey, the most prolific writer among twentieth century Christian mystics. Kelsey, open to any religious practice that will help in the “inner journey,” writes, “The inner journey is as individual as our thumbprint. We need to guide others on their way and never impose our way upon them.”

Many Christian mystics opt for the second option – church traditions. They find that mystics and their practices existed from the very early days of church history. It is surprising that contemporary evangelicals sometimes cite Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions to justify their practices. But many do. They usually try to also find Biblical support, but such support cannot be found without twisting the Scriptures.

I believe that Scripture alone determines the valid means of coming to God. The Scripture reveals one obvious restriction: “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but through Me’” (John 14:6). The Bible not only reveals the only way to salvation, but it also provides the means of grace for living the Christian life. God does not leave this up to man’s ingenuity. He has not left us to sift through the religious practices of the cultures of the world in order to choose which ones to “Christianize.” Those who do are modern day Jeroboams who will not grant to God the right to tell them how God will be worshipped. (Online slource)