McLaren's Generous Orthodoxy.

Well Brian McLaren is continuing to spread his postmodern, "emerging" church confusion. Confusing in that he (along with many others in the “emergent” movement) distort the teaching of Scripture. You may ask, “What do you mean by distort?” or “In what way?”. He does this by intermingling his warped philosophies with elements of truth. Most of his writing tends to engender more questions than it does answers and often leads the reader to begin to doubt key essential doctrine. Like many others in this postmodern movement, he uses the noxious practice of deconstruction to undermine the plain teaching of Scripture, allowing them to reinterpret Scripture in whatever way they desire.

One of his recent books, a work entitled “A Generous Orthodoxy”, is an unfortunate hodgepodge of different theological traditions, often taking the worst elements from traditions such as Orthodox and Roman Catholicism and advocating that we incorporate them into our own worship “experience”. Tim Challies has an excellent review posted on his site, Challies.com.

Albert Mohler, President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has also addressed McLaren’s so-called “generous orthodoxy”.
http://www.crosswalk.com/news/weblogs/mohler/?cal=go&adate=2%2F16%2F2005

McLaren was recently invited to speak to the Kentucky Baptist Convention. Thankfully, the invitation was withdrawn when Dr. Bill Mackey and Dan Garland reviewed McLaren’s view of Salvation revealed in “A Generous Orthodoxy”. In the book, McLaren leaves the door wide open for the possibility of salvation outside of faith in Christ. McLaren claims that it might be profitable in certain situations “to help people become followers of Jesus and remain within their Buddhist, Hindu, or Jewish contexts”. The problem is that you cannot be a follower of Jesus and remain affiliated with false religion.

Some may argue – especially those within the emergent church movement – that McLaren is merely saying that people can remain in and be part of their traditional culture, as long as those elements of the culture do not conflict with biblical teaching. If that were the case, I could agree. However, McLaren’s view that essentially sends the message that Christians should not conclude that Jesus is the only way to salvation, really sums up his underlying aberrant theology.

Hopefully more Christians will begin to exercise discernment and see this stuff for what it really is – hideous “ooze” retrieved from the sewer of heresy.