Listen to Dr. Francis Schaeffer, warning us nearly forty years ago of the dangers of neoorthdoxy! Now neoorthodoxy's stepchild, the emerging church, is doing exactly what Dr. Schaeffer predicted:
"Neoorthodoxy...uses words that have strong connotations, as they are rooted in the memory of the race -- words like resurrection, crucifixion, Christ, Jesus. These words give an illusion of communication. The importance of these words to the new theologians lies in the illusion of communication, plus the highly motivated reaction men have on the basis of the connotation of the words. That is the advantage of the new theology over secular existentialism and the modern secular mysticisms. One hears the word Jesus, one acts upon it, but the word is never defined. The use of such words is always in the area of the irrational, the non-logical. Being separated from history and the cosmos, they are divorced from possible verification by reason downstairs, and there is no certainty that there is anything upstairs." [emphasis added]
Even more uncanny is the fact that Dr. Schaeffer warned us about men such as John Armstrong for whom words no longer have any fixed or inherent meaning so that only "experience" is left:
"The evangelical Christian needs to be careful because some evangelicals have recently been asserting that what matters is not setting out to prove propositions [from Scripture, ed.]; what matters is an encounter with Jesus. . . . [emphasis added]
The Truth:
"I will worship toward thy holy temple, and praise thy name for thy lovingkindness and for thy truth: for thou has magnified thy word above all thy name." (Psalm 138:2)
(HT Herescope)
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