There’s a common straw man concerning those of us Jesus has sent into the mission field of online apologetics and discernment ministry—which He’s continuing to develop—erected by many of those whose doctrine we criticize; and that would be, we are haters who’re striking out in anger. Nope; sorry about that chief. I happen to know most of the major ministries, and while covering the first waves of this tsunami of apostasy that is washing over squishy evanjellyfish, we most often write in sadness. I told you before here at Apprising Ministries that I’m essentially just documenting these things so people will have no excuse.

A case in point is my writing concerning the sinfully ecumenical neo-liberal cult of the Emerging Church—a veritable Trojan Horse full of heresy—headed by, among others, the unholy Emergent Church trinity of apostates, Living Spiritual Teacher and EC guru Brian McLaren, universalist Emerging Church pastor Doug Pagitt, and his friend Tony Jones, the progressive “theologian in residence” at Solomon’s Porch.

I’ve told you that part of their loathsome legacy is their bringing into the mainstream of rapidly apostatizing evangelicalism a new postmodern form of “big tent” Progressive Christianity—a Liberalism 2.0—sometimes referred to by these rebels against the final authority of God’s Word as Emergence Christianity. Their doctrine has about as much to do with the historic, orthodox, Christian faith as the Dalai Lama, whom EC rock star pastor Rob Bell bowed before last year and called: His holiness.

Sad indeed. Which brings us now to the spiritual blackhole known as Fuller Theological Seminary (FTS), who as you’ll see below, sponsor Previous Doug Pagitt Radio Program Podcasts in order to make sure that we’d be able to listen to them. But wait, now that that I think about it, considering Heretical Emerging Church Progressive/Liberal Theologian Tony Jones To Join Staff Of Fuller Seminary I guess this isn’t too unexpected at all. We shouldn’t really be surprised to see:

(Online source)

So thanks to FTS, for example, we’d been able to come to know that Doug Pagitt Points Us To Michael Dowd. Who is Michael Dowd you ask? Well, you probably don’t want to know; and if it weren’t for apostates like Doug Pagitt being sponsored, published, and supported by ostensibly evangelical seminaries, publishing arms, and churches, you’d likely never have heard of him.

At his Evolutionary Christianity.TheOoze.com website “Rev.” Michael Dowd tells us:

(Online source)

Did you catch that; Dowd is “an evolutionary Pentecostal,” yeah, and I enjoy a tall glass of dry water on a dark sunny day too. Ok, strap on your mud gear because we’re about to go off-roading into postmodern Wonderland of Humpty Dumpty language. I’ve said before that what Dowd does with Christian terminology borders on the criminal; and any Christian supporting this man should hang their heads in shame. O, Rev. Dowd also wants us to know he’s written such inspiring pieces as the below:

(Online source)

Ah yes, Biblical Christianity Is Bankrupt; very nice. And thank you FTS, and Doug Pagitt, for making sure we’d know this “important” information. In Michael Dowd And Science Fiction Christianity I gave you the transcription of Dowd’s sermon “Evolutionize Your Life: Heaven Is Coming Home To Reality,” which was given at another spiritual blackhole called C3 Exchange.

Actually the transcription itself comes from a review of this sermon by Christian apologist Chris Rosebrough, host of the Fighting for the Faith program on Pirate Christian Radio, which really does prove most, er, enlightening. You’ll hear the pretending to be Pentecostal “Rev.” Dowd dream:

[F]rankly, I don’t know of any Christian, Muslim, or Jew, that is genuinely appreciative of their sinful nature; and yet, that’s what an evolutionary understanding gives us. Is we can have appreciation [of it]… And you’ve got these hundreds of differing, competing, contrdictory, stories about what God said or did; that if you interpret God as a Person, you can’t make sense of those.

But when you understand, from an evolutionary perspective, that all cultures have personified Reality; either Reality as a whole—or some significant aspect of Reality. And personification is one of the things that our brains do…when we remember that “God” is a sacred, meaningful, personification—not a person—all of a sudden, not only does that make sense of all the world’s religious traditions—and their differences—but it also allows us to see that there’s no conflict between science and religion… Nothing is driving young people away from God—away from a right relationship with Reality—faster, and further, than the Bible.

Returning from our quick foray into Mystery Science Theatre, you read that right; our evolutionary Pentecostal preacher just told us the sinful nature’s good, God is not a person, and the Bible drives people away from him/her/it. Ooookay, excuse me for a moment I need to check on the stew I’m currently cooking on ice. Alright; I’m back…because I never really left, right. Now, as I first showed you in Doug Pagitt Agrees With Evolutionary Evangelist Michael Dowd, we now consider the below from one of these previous podcasts—sponsored by good ol’ FTS—where Doug Pagitt announces:

Michael hasn’t called in yet,…here’s what I’d like to talk to him about: I like what he’s up to…he’s written a book called, Thank God for Evolution and his argument is that there’s this big thing going on in the larger story of the cosmos and that it’s not at all inconsistent with Christianity; it’s not all inconsistent with the Hebrew faith, it’s not at all inconsistent with the other great faiths of the world.

Interesting; Pagitt likes “this big thing” Dowd’s teaching, which is supposedly the deeper and “larger story of the cosmos”; O, and furthermore says Pagitt, “it’s not at all inconsistent with Christianity.” *Furiously wiping the mud off our windshield* Huh; sin is good, and God is an impersonal force—Luke, I am your father! This is consistent with the Christian faith; a faith anchored in the Biblical revelation of the one true and living God, Who by His grace sent the Person of God the Son, Who in turn offers forgiveness of sins so we can be regenerated by God the Holy Spirit and worship our Lord.

Perhaps in the alternate postmodern universe this Emerging Church 2.0 is cruising through at warp speed; but not in the real, and only, world. But we shouldn’t find this surprising as we remember that in Toxic Theology Of Doug Pagitt I pointed you to a review of Pagitt’s book A Christianity Worth Believing, appropriately entitled A Simple Review of “A Christianity Worth Believing.” There we read:

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)

Yeah, “Hi, I’m Doug Pagitt; I’m a Christian, though I don’t believe virtually anything Christians believe.” Um, and I’m another one of those underweight fat guys who enjoys a robust walk while sitting in front of the TV. Well, let me fill you in concerning this “larger story of the cosmos” from Michael Dowd & Spencer Burke—Integrity And Evolutionary Christianity (Part 2), which contains my interaction with his appearance on Think:Fwd with EC luminary Spencer Burke. Among other things, Dowd informs us:

We are neither stewards, nor cartakers, nor anything else that assumes we are seperate from nature. We have no existence apart from the living Earth. We are Earth. We are the self-conscious and spiritually aware organization of elements of this living planet.[1]

God,…can be understood as…the One Creative Reality that is not a subset of some larger, more comprehensive creative reality. God is that which sources and infuses everything,…[the] Ultimate Reality and our relationship with Him/Her/It… With an understanding of “God” as no less than a proper name for Supreme Wholeness, prayer can be understood analogously as a cell in deep communion with the larger body of which it is part.[2]

Well, holy Deepak Chopra Batman! “Um helloooo, is this thing on; Earth to FTS; we’ve now left, not only the building, but the whole of the Christian faith!” But even so, “Christian” pastor Doug Pagitt likes this science fiction pantheism preached by Starship Captain Dowd. On that same radio podcast I mentioned earlier, Doug Pagitt also says of Dowd’s mythology:

I think whatever facts there are, however God reveals God-self to humanity isn’t done in secret. This is what I like about what Michael’s getting at, I think he’s getting at that there’s this really long story (as he calls it the “fourteen million year story of what God’s up to) and I think that that’s far more interesting and this idea that, well, no there’s these certain people who have access to the truths of God that are special and other people don’t have access to those…that’s something that’s always made me uncomfortable.

You do realize that these “certain people” with “access to the truths of God” would, yeah, be Bible-believing Christians; which Pagitt is certainly not. Then he goes on to confess what we’ve known all along; Doug Pagitt is a universalist who believes the entire cosmos itself is in God:

We’re going to talk about this universalism thing…that’s where I wanted to go with Michael…or I’m going to play the role of Michael. I don’t need Michael to make my point today. I’m going to make my point today, I’m going to tell it the way I want to tell it because I think there’s a bigger story. Universalism isn’t even big enough because the universe isn’t big enough. We gotta’ get into the entire cosmos.[3]

This is a patent denial of what Jesus said here — “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many” (Matthew 7:13); in fact, in this same program Doug Pagitt literally tells us that he doesn’t believe what Jesus said when Pagitt muses:

I do think this is the story that we ought to be telling and that’s why I think what Michael Dowd is doing in his book, Thank God for Evolution… I do think this is the story that ought to be told is that the story of Christianity is not the narrow way and I know people are going to go, “But Jesus said it’s the narrow way.”

That wasn’t what he was getting at. He was getting at something else and we can get into that some other time, ‘Cause we need another show…[4]

Whoa! *Digging us up out of the mud bog we’re now waist deep into* O no, of course Jesus wasn’t saying the path was narrow; we know that was coded language for us enlightened neo-Gnostics. Didn’t you know silly grasshopper, Jesus was actually saying: You need to see the bigger story that we are Earth and God is that which is Ultimate Reality; and so, we then come into a right relationship with Him/Her/It as God-self when we realize the path that we’re all cells in deep communion with the larger body of which we are part.

I don’t know about you, but I’m really having a hard time understanding why any seminary that would claim to be Christian would sponsor this campy Star Trek theology. But to put this into proper perspective for you; Fuller Theological Seminary is sponsoring, not Christianity, but pagan universalism.

________________________________________________________________________________
Endnotes:

[1] Michael Dowd, Earthspirit: A Handbook for Nurturing an Ecological Christianity [Mystic: Twenty-Third Publications, 1991], 93.

[2] Michael Dowd, Thank God for Evolution!: How the Marriage of Science and Religion Will Transform Your Life and Our World [Council Oak Books, 2007], 108, 112.

[3] September 19, 2010 Segment 5 – Universalism is too small Doug Pagitt Radio, transcript on file.

[4] September 19, 2010 Segment 6 – Universalism is too small Doug Pagitt Radio, transcript on file.

See also:

DOUG PAGITT AND HOMOSEXUAL SIN

DOUG PAGITT, THE EMERGING CHURCH, AND AFFIRMING HOMOSEXUALITY

DOUG PAGITT AND CHRISTIAN UNIVERSALISM

DOUG PAGITT AND JOHN SHELBY SPONG

BIG TENT CHRISTIANITY IS A POSTMODERN PROGRESSIVE LIBERALISM

THE EMERGING CHURCH AND THE NEW PROGRESSIVE THEOLOGY ON OTHER RELIGIONS 

THE EMERGING CHURCH AND THE NEW PROGRESSIVE THEOLOGY ON CHRIST