Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. (Jude 3-4)

Truth Will Now Be Decided By The People

The sinfully ecumenical Emerging Church, which has now blossomed into a full-blown neo-liberal cult that’s operating within mainstream evangelicalism itself, has proven to be a Trojan Horse unloading critical-thinking skills numbing Contemplative Spirituality/Mysticism under the guise of so-called Spiritual Formation ala Living Spiritual Teacher and Quaker mystic Richard Foster and his spiritual twin Dallas Willard. Apprising Ministries has told you the primary goal of the Emergent Church has been to attack the Biblical theology Protestant Reformation by specifically kicking out Sola Scriptura—the critical pillar of proper Christian spirituality. 

In his excellent post “Christians” Who Try To Poke Holes In Sola Scriptura Sandy Simpson of the respected online apologetics and discernment ministry Deception in the Church brings out:

There are a number of the leadership of the Emerging Church (EC) who do not believe that the Bible is the highest authority for the Christian faith.  Most do not believe that the Bible is inerrant in the original manuscripts and many do not acknowledge that the Bible is our highest revelation.  Yet this is a core doctrine over which true believers and false brethren must separate.  

Those who try to poke holes in Sola Scriptura make excuses like (1) we need to reinterpret the Bible through the lens of postmodern culture and religion (2) the Bible never uses the words “Sola Scriptura” therefore it is not a Biblical concept (3) there is new revelation for the church through the Holy Spirit apart from what is written and the precepts of the Bible and (4) the Bible just doesn’t address our postmodern situation therefore we cannot rely on it for the truth and answers for our problems today.  I will prove that all the above arguments, and more, from EC leaders and others is exactly what they are teaching.  I will give you quotes from their teachings, videos and books… (Online source)

Among those doing so is Doug Pagitt; and he as aspirations in the political arena as well. In a post at his blog called “I Hope I Can Count On Your Vote” he writes: 

Congratulations to President-Elect Barack Obama. I have many thoughts about this important election and all that has gone with it. At this exciting time I have my own announcement to make.

After two years of thinking, planning and dreaming I have mad a decision to add a new component to my work and service life – I am going to join the political field and run for public office.

So, today I announce that I am running for the Minnesota State Legislature in 2010.
(Online source)

In a related post concerning Emerging Church Pastor Doug Pagitt over at These Are The Voyages Tim Bertolet brings out Pagitt’s woeful misunderstanding of the purpose of “the Creeds of Christendom” as he discusses a recent in interview Pagitt did with Chris Rosebrough, which you can find more about in Fighting for the Faith Podcast: Doug Pagitt Transcript. The folks of Minnesota had best be praying Pagitt knows more about the legislature than he does theology and Church history.

As an example of what Simpson was talking about above, previously in Phyllis Tickle And The Emerging Church: It’s Not If Sola Scriptura Ends But When I brought to your attention an eyewitness report of the first Great Emergence Event (GEE), which was put on by Jopa Productions back in December of 2008, and featured Phyllis Tickle—the Empress of Emergence Christianity. For those who don’t know the Jo(nes)Pa(gitt) company,  specializing in “innovative learning events & social media consulting,” is actually Tony Jones, heretical progressive theologian and his equally heretical universalist pastor Doug Pagitt. You may remember this dubious duo—two-thirds of the unholy EC trinity with guru Brian McLaren—also gave us the apostasia-palooza I told you about in Christianity 21: Emerging Voices Of A Pseudo-Christian Faith.

Emergent “author, coach, speaker, and consultant,” Jonathan Brink—whom the Emergent Village website tells us was live blogging GEE—reported that Phyllis Tickle said, “there are forty-four specific events that underline the move away from Sola Scriptura.” What is more Tickle opined, “The final subject in the turn away will be how we address homosexuality in the church.” Then Brink informed us Tickle “reiterated that it’s not if Sola Scriptura ends but when”[1]; instead, she now “suggests that [authority and truth] arises out of community, conversation, and a new way of knowing.”[2] Before you’re tempted to dismiss this as just Tickle’s speculation, you need to know what Doug Pagitt, General Editor, emersion: Emergent Village resources for communities of faith, tells us in Tickle’s book The Great Emergence.

Gen. Ed. Pagitt postulated:

She serves as a “wise sage” as well as a prophet calling communities of faith participation in what God is about in the world.[3]

And what else does Pagitt’s prophetess Phyllis tell us God is calling us to; a new form of authority nx truth in these “communitites of faith,” which were once called churches:

Always without fail, the thing that gets lost early in the process of a reconfiguration is any clear and general understanding of who or what is to be used as the arbitrator of correct belief, action, and control… The Reformation,…was to answer the question… Sola Scriptura, scriptura sola… While we may laugh and say the divisiveness was Protestantism’s greatest gift to Christianity, ours is a somber joke. Demoninationalism is a disunity in the Body of Christ and, ironically, one that has a bloody history…

Now, some five hundred years later, even many of the most die-hard Protestants among us have grown suspicious of “Scripture and Scripture only.” We question what the words mean – literally? Metaphorically? Actually? We even question which words do and do not belong in Scripture and the purity of the editorial line of decent of those that do. We begin to refer to Luther’s principle of “sola scriptura, scriptura sola” as having been little more than the creation of a paper pope in place of a flesh and blood one. And even as we speak, the authority that has been in place for five hundred years withers away in our hands.[4]

This is a recipe for spiritual disaster; and yet, mainstream evangelical churches long ago made the horrible decision to use their Young Adult and Youth ministries as spiritual guinea pigs and feed them with this receipe from apostate EC leaders. And you seriously can’t see the coming tsunami of apostasy being pushed along by the Spirit as Jesus sends 1 Peter 4:17 judgments  upon spiritually spineless evanjellyfish? Yesterday in Remembering The Awful Reality Of Hell I told you that Emerging Church progressive/liberal theologians such as Tony Jones, and his friend Dr. Philip Clayton of the Transforming Theology network, continue cobbling together the new postmodern version of Progressive Christian theology—aka “big tent” Emergence Christianity—now being spread by the upgraded Emerging Church 2.0.

As I’ve been showing you just some of what makes up its spiritually bankrupt theology, as well as looking at a few of the spurious sources this Liberalism 2.0 is drawing from, you should be able to see why it is they’re so interested in “finding our God in the other” faith traditions.[5] Progressive Christian Hal Taussig, who is Visiting Professor of New Testament at the uber-liberal Union Theological Seminary and highly recommended by Philip Clayton, told us that progressive Christians are pleased to offer “their support of the complete validity of other religions.”[6] The Center For Progressive Christianity puts it this way when they announce that they are Christians who, “Recognize the faithfulness of other people who have other names for the way to God’s realm, and acknowledge that their ways are true for them, as our ways are true for us.”[7]

Universalism Underlies New Syncretistic Religion Of Big Tent Progressive Christianity

Quite obviously then, if for these neo-liberals—i.e. postmodern progressive Christians—the other religions comprise “complete validity,” and if “their ways are [as] true for them, as our ways are true for us,” we’re dealing with forms of Christian Universalism. A soteriology sounding similar to the following from Rob Bell, the Elvis-like rock star pastor of the Emerging Church rebellion against the final authority of the Bible:

So this is reality, this forgiveness, this reconciliation, is true for everybody. Paul insisted that when Jesus died on the cross, he was reconciling “all things, in heaven and on earth, to God.” All things, everywhere. This reality then isn’t something we make come true about ourselves by doing something. It is already true. Our choice is to live in this new reality or cling to a reality of our own making.[8]

You’ll see in Doug Pagitt And Christian Universalism that Bell’s friend Doug Pagitt holds a similar view; and this is why not long ago Dr. John MacArthur would say:

Let me just cut to the chase on this one: [Doug] Pagitt is a Universalist. What he was saying is real simple. He was saying when you die your spirit goes to God and judgment means that whatever was not right about you, whatever was bad about you, whatever was substantially lacking about you, gets all resolved. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a Buddhist, a Hindu or a Muslim—doesn’t matter whether you’re a Christian really; we’re all going to end up in this wonderful, warm and fuzzy relationship with God. That’s just classic universalism.
(Online source)

In that aforementioned post I included the pertinent portion in the transcript from the Todd Friel interview of Doug Pagitt to which MacArthur refers; so here, I’ll just show you that when Friel asked Pagitt about how God will deal with a practicing Muslim when he dies Pagitt reveals his own universalism:

there’s going to be no difference between the way God going to interact with you when you die and the way God’s going to interact with a Muslim when a Muslim dies…  the way God’s going to interact with you is the same way that God’s going to interact with everybody. The same experience of all of humanity. God will… God will interact with all of humanity in judgment the same, no matter who you are, or what your parents have taught you, or what you believe. (Online source)

On the May 16, 2007 Crosstalk Radio program Doug Pagitt talks with host Ingrid Schlueter about the postmodern progressive idea that the Gospel is also found in other religions; he tells her he doesn’t think  there is any “culture or religion which holds God in complete isolation or purity.” Then, after this definite denial of Gospel of the Jesus Christ, Schlueter asks Pagitt how he believes “the Gospel [is] present within Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism—all of the different religions of the world?” Pastor Pagitt replies:

Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, those are not—I me—they are the right way to say ‘em. They are “isms,”right; so they are a school of thought, and they are also embedded in a particular cultural setting. And so I think someone could say, “yes, I can see how God—how God is expressed, talked about, understood, through these schools of thought.” Which I find to be quite helpful and they’re not all in contrast with my Christianity.[9]

Here I agree that Pagitt is quite right; pagan religions are “not at all in contrast with [his] Christianity”; however, this is not even remotely close to the historic, orthodox, Christian faith once for all delivered to the saints. What is it going to take for people to finally realize that, by publishing books by these Emergent Apostates of Unbelief, supposedly evangelical publishing houses e.g. like Baker Books are actually aiding and abetting the spread of a different gospel; in fact, with its core syncretistism, this a different religion entirety. With all of this in mind, as I wrap this up for now, yesterday in The Kind Of Christianity Doug Pagitt Offers I pointed you to a review of Pagitt’s book A Christianity Worth Believing, appropriately entitled A Simple Review of “A Christianity Worth Believing.”

Being very familiar with Pagitt’s work I knew as I read the post that the author, whom I do not know, was dead-on-target taking apart the heretical quasi-Christian foolishness foisted upon us by him in that book, which is published by Jossey-Bass. The writer explains:

I first came across Doug Pagitt some years ago when I heard his interview on Todd Friel’s Way of the Master radio show (Parts 1 and 2). I was flabbergasted by the near complete inability of Doug Pagitt to answer even the most basic question in a straightforward manner… So when I came across his 2008 book A Christianity Worth Believing, I decided to sit down and see what it really was that worked in his personal theology. What I read made me understand his position on the radio interview on WOTM radio a little bit more…but nonetheless it was just as unbiblical and unorthodox as the radio interview had portrayed his theology to be. (Online source)

The post is well worth the read if you wish some more specifics concerning how Doug Pagitt, if he ever was a Christian pastor, has long ago left the building. What I highlighted in my prior piece was the following concise conclusion:

What Christianity has Pagitt presented us? We are taught that sin isn’t a serious issue, that Jesus was simply an example of what we’re meant to do, that the crucifixion wasn’t necessary in the long run, that the afterlife isn’t important, and that we can learn a lot more from holistic medicine than we can the Bible. At what point does this become Christianity? How can this be Christianity? The role of Christ is diminished and our role with God is simply played out in a post-modern ideal that borders along pantheism. You can call it spirituality, but you can’t call it Christianity. (Online source)

Um yeah, Iguess other than that, this would be a good book for your evangelical Youth and Young Adults to read, eh. Let’s see if I can make this crystal clear; God the Holy Spirit specifically told us through His inspired Apostle Paul:

I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed. (Galatians 1:6-9)

My question to squishy evanjellyfish leaders embracing rebels like Doug Pagitt: Do you really believe this? The only way one could possibly argue that Pagitt preaches the same Gospel is to head deep into the postmodern Wonderland of Humpty Dumpty language where words hold no fixed meaning. As I now leave you with the comment Doug Pagitt left at the post I’ve just told you about, and my response to him, it is interesting to note that he doesn’t deny he believes/teaches these things. No instead, you’ll see he only uses this as an opportunity to promote his radio program; and while doing so, Pagitt actually assures us that we “will get even more of what you found in the book.”  Like I’ve said before, you let wolves within the Emerging Church like Doug Pagitt into your sheep pens at their very real, and eternal, peril; or do you no longer believe in the Awful Reality of Hell:

(Online source)

(Online source)

________________________________________________________________________________

End notes:

[1] Brink’s original post is no longer online but Tickle’s statement is corroborated at the EV website here: http://tiny.cc/1c7bf, accessed 9/2/10.

[2] http://tiny.cc/d2wy6, accessed 9/2/10.

[3] Phyllis Tickle, The Great Emergence: How Christianity Is Changing and Why [Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2008], Editor’s Preface.

[4] Ibid., 45, 46, 47, emphasis mine.

[5] http://tiny.cc/6fc0b, accessed 9/2/10.

[6] http://tiny.cc/pizeg, accessed 9/2/10.

[7] http://tiny.cc/hpbh1, accessed 9/2/10.

[8] Rob Bell, Velvet Elvis [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005], 146, emphasis mine.

[9] http://tiny.cc/kkg7a, accessed 9/2/10.

See also:

DOUG PAGITT, THE EMERGING CHURCH, AND AFFIRMING HOMOSEXUALITY

DOUG PAGITT AND CHRISTIAN UNIVERSALISM

DOUG PAGITT EXCITED ABOUT EVENTS THROUGH THE LENS OF THE ENNEAGRAM

DOUG PAGITT, JOHN PIPER, AND KARMA KICK-BACK

DOUG PAGITT AND ARROGANCE OF LIBERAL/PROGRESSIVE CHRISTIANS

DOUG PAGITT AND JOHN SHELBY SPONG

THE NEW DOWNGRADE AND ITS APOSTLES OF UNBELIEF