DOWN WITH SOLA SCRIPTURA!

 

…because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved. For this reason God will send upon them a deluding influence so that they will believe what is false. (2 Thessalonians 2:10-11, NASB)

No Matter How Intelligent You Think You Are You Are Not In Control Of Being Deceived 

It’s really pretty simple, the soteriology to come emerging: Christian Universalism (CU); but that said, it’s not:

the liberal anti-biblical form such as that associated with the unitarian universalists. Contrary to false charges from our critiques we do not teach that God forgives sin without the blood of Christ. We insist that only through faith in Christ may any be saved. We do not deny that there will be many who must first suffer the pains of hell before they ascent to heaven.

we simply deny that hell is of endless duration and that there is no possibility for repentace and receiving Christ for the lost in hell. Contrary to critical opinion, we hold to the plenary, verbal inspiration of Scripture. We teach that the Bible alone is the standard for all faith and practice. (Online source)

Apprising Ministries does note that this website referenced above is not, to the best of our knowledge, formally aligned with Emergence Christianity. Well, at least not for now. As we pointed out in Rob Bell And Christian Universalism CU is also sometimes called Universal Redemption (UR), or even Evangelical Universalism as Gregory MacDonald (a pseudonym) wrote in the 2006 book The Evangelical Universalist.

It; er, “he” even has a new work due out in the next year or so. Now the aforementioned site also refers us to an interesting post at Tentmaker.org called Tracing Universalist Thought…Through Church History… where we read:

Like a golden thread woven through the Bible, so runs the doctrine of the restoration of all things. While not immediately apparent, once visible, it stands out as a central doctrine of both Old and New Testaments. In the same way, universalist thought also runs like a stream throughout church history; sometimes flowing strong and clear, other times running mostly underground… (Online source)

We’ll return to this universalist stream of spiritual sewerage another time, but for our purposes here, I’ll only draw attention to the name Jurgen Moltmann (1926- ), which is found next to last in the column running down the left side of the page cited above. As we click on his name we’re taken to an interview where, among other things, Moltmann is asked:

How is hell considered, if at all, in your theology of hope?
I believe in Christ’s Descent to hell. He came back and declared: “I have the keys to death and hell!” What does He do with these keys? He opens them up of course! When you think of hell, you should never think about it in the context of the question whether you yourself or someone else is going there,… (Online source) 

Moltmann is also known for his “theology of hope,” a liberation theology; and based on the below, we can even see strains of it within the twisted teachings of e.g. Emerging Church icons Rob Bell and Shane Claiborne:

In the late 1960s a new approach to theology emerged… The Christian is to be seen as a “hoper,” who is impatient with evil and death in this present age. The church is seen as a disquieting entity, confronting society with all its human securities, empires, and contrived absolutes… The church awaits a coming city and, therefore, exposes all the cities made with hands. This form of theology exists in dialogue with other visions of the future, especially Marxism,…

Undoubtedly a central figure of this new theology is Jurgen Moltmann. The most influential work by Moltmann is his Theology of Hope, published in English in 1967… Eschatology is not to be seen as the last chapter in a theology textbook but the perspective from which all else is to be understood and given its proper meaning. For Moltmann eschatology is the key or central concept from which everything else in Christian thought is set…

The church is to be seen as the people of hope, experiencing hope in the God who is present in his promises. The coming kingdom gives the church a much broader vision of reality than a “merely” private vision of personal salvation. The church is to contest all the barriers that have been constructed by man for security;… (Online source)

So we shouldn’t really be surprised to find that Moltmann is essentially a Christian universalist, nor should it come as any real shock when I tell you that he’s also a darling of the Emergent Church. In his new book The Emergent Church: Undefining Christianity Bob DeWaay tells us about his meeting with Emergence Christianity theologian “Tony Jones of the Emergent Village.”

DeWaay explains that “the goal” was to attempt “setting up another debate”, which would have been similar to the one he’d done already done with Jones’ Emergence Church pastor Doug Pagitt. However, DeWaay then informs us:

It  turned out that [Emergent Village] did not want another debate, but Jones offered to answer any of my questions about Emergent. I respomded by email asking abut Stanley Grenz, Wolfhart Pannenberg, LeRon Shults, and Jürgen Moltmann and their influence on Emergent theology.

Jones replied that Grenz (who,…praises the theologies of both Pannenberg and Moltmann) was influential and that Jones himself was studying under a professor named Miroslav Volf who had studied under Moltmann. Also, he helped me with his comment that their hope-filled belief generally leads them to reject eschatologies that “preach a disasterous end to the cosmos.” (16, 17)

Now we consider the following entry at the Emergent Village blog concerning an upcoming September 2009 event:

In what has become the hallmark event of Emergent Village, JoPa Productions is thrilled to welcome Jürgen Moltmann as the dialogue partner for the 2009 Emergent Theological Conversation. Moltmann, one of the premier theologians of the 20th century, is known as the “theologian of hope.” This will be a unique opportunity to sit in conversation with a renowned theologian who has shaped the theological landscape. (Online source)

As we can also see in his post Fuller Seminary Offers D.Min. Credit… at his Beliefnet blog Tony Jones, “professor of record” for Fuller Cesspool at this event, is pretty excited about it all as well. And watching the slide down further away from anything resembling orthodoxy by Tony Jones is a very good indicator of just where this Emergence rebellion against Sola Scriptura—with their growing deceptions—is headed in their mystic man-love: “All-ee; all-ee, in free—everybody’s going to be saved!”

So now you have a better idea what Rob Bell means when he says it’s our “duty” to “hope and long and pray for somehow everybody to be reconciled to God” (Online source). It won’t be long before other notables in Emergence Christianity finally come out of their CU closets and publicly join Spencer Burke. But Jesus would say to you — “Leave them; they are blind guides. If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit” (Matthew 15:14).

See also:

ROB BELL SAYS “ALL-EE IN FREE…ALMOST”

HEAVEN AND HELL COME TO EARTH FOR ROB BELL

DOUG PAGITT AND CHRISTIAN UNIVERSALISM

PASTOR CHAD HOLTZ EXPLAINING CHRISTIAN UNIVERSALISM

SPENCER BURKE: I’M A UNIVERSALIST WHO BELIEVES IN HELL

RICHARD ROHR: ROMAN CATHOLICISM AND CHRISTIAN UNIVERSALISM

IF YOU TRULY LOVE “JESUS” THERE ARE NO BOUNDARIES FOR THE “CHRIST-FOLLOWERS”