I read the @TGC hit piece on progressive Christianity & atheism on a plane yesterday, & I have absolutely no desire to dunk on it. Where is the fun in taking down an intellectually dishonest grade school book report (w/requisite out of context, cut & paste block quotes)?
While it is irksome to spend any effort refuting such brazenly lazy work, I nonetheless would like to offer a counter witness as a Pentecostal who is more in love with Jesus than ever before—in a season in which I see so many people around me coming to faith, not losing it.
First: The petty, punitive god of John Piper et al is not sovereign, but arbitrary, & to borrow a phrase from Wesley regarding the popular Calvinism of his time, a god like that “is worse than the devil.” If people stop believing in such a being, I rejoice in that.
If the god you’ve been taught to worship is not revealed in the Jesus who is “the image of the invisible God,” you are right to be disillusioned with such a being, & need to stop believing in that god right now. In fact, I’d encourage you to become that kind of atheist
Second, contra the histrionics about inerrancy, the trouble with the TGC crowd is not that their view of Scripture is too high, but that it is not high enough (this is no mere rhetorical device). Lacking a pneumatology, they have word without Spirit & thus a disenchanted text.
(with intentional nod to @cb_johns’ great work on scripture & enchantment here)
Abandoning the dynamic movement of the God of the Exodus who inspired the text for a static, fixed, rationalistic head religion instead of a transrational, mystical relationship with the triune God, there is no longer a lively Trialogue between Spirit-Word-Community.
Scripture was not intended to be a tool for certainty, but to destabilize us in such in such a way as to make trust in the God who breathed into it necessary. If my understanding of the text is the ultimate object of faith rather than God, my relationship w/the text is idolatrous
One person’s idea of a falling away is my idea of a revival in the making. A generation is waking up to the hard reality that the religion they were handed is the kind of religion that crucified Jesus, rather than the kind that worships him as God.
What I see over & over is disciples who, like the two on the road to Emmaus, are walking away from “Jerusalem” (the temple/institution) after experiencing trauma there—what once was a safe & sacred space is now desecrated, the place where their faith died.
But God walks with these disillusioned disciples, on what is ostensibly the walk away from God. If religious folk aren’t seeing God on the the road they are walking, I would suggest they stop looking in the temple, & go outside the gate where God is.
Some folks are praying for revival, but I’m like @JOHNNYSWIM, “I’m already living in one.” I would suggest that people aren’t so much walking away from God, but from religious systems that do not work. If the Holy Spirit has moved on...perhaps you should, too.
