Pensees: False Humility - The Mood of the Emergents

False Humility - The Mood of the Emergents

False teachers have always made a show of humility. Lately, however, humility seems to be in vogue. It’s almost over the top. And who are the purveyors of the new humility? Only those people who are shaking to the core the foundational teaching of the Church of Jesus Christ and basic, fundamental Biblical doctrine. The new humility may be found among the authors from the Emergent Village and the theorists of the New Perspectivism. Bedfellows, I think.

Don’t be duped. This is the modus operandi of those who are acutely conscious of the fact that they are insinuating a radical contrast while all the while pretending loyal conformity. There is nothing more sheep’s-clothing-like as humility. And the wolves know this.

In Preaching Re-Imagined, Doug Pagitt, one of the leaders in the Emergent Village, meekly tucks his tail between his legs and gives the equivalent of a verbal puppy-dog look with these words:

I am sitting inside the Open Book writing center in Minneapolis on a summer day in 2004. My head is full of wonderings. I wonder who you are. I wonder what kinds of people will read a book about preaching in the emerging church. I wonder if I have anything to say on the topic. I wonder if I have written a single line of any value. I not only wonder, but I also worry. I worry about the opinions of people who don’t think a pastor and author of a book about preaching should worry about things. I worry about people reading my sometimes-uncertain thoughts about preaching. I worry about coming across as someone who thinks of himself as an expert – someone who knows more than you and will tell you how to preach. So please, as you read, keep your worried, wondering author in mind.

Poor thing. One can hardly suppress the urge to give the poor, uncertain soul a hug. But, hold on! The puppy is wolf-like. His double-speak throughout the whole volume is a classic example of getting your message across without actually saying it lest you be accused of saying it. Though Pagitt begs his readers to be kind to him, he misrepresents the doctrine of preaching by building a straw man and then brutally misrepresents D. Martyn-Lloyd Jones; not only by poisoning the well before he quotes him, but by pretending that Jones is promoting something he is not. All the while, Pagitt clearly has issues with what Jones really believes; he just lacks the courage to say it.

Pagitt’s hero (mentor?), Brian McLaren is just as “humble.” Even the sub-title of one of his books seems so humble.

Why I am a missional, evangelical, post/protestant, liberal/conservative, mystical/poetic, biblical, charismatic/contemplative, fundamentalist/calvinist, anabaptist/anglican, methodist, catholic, green, incarnational, depressed-yet-hopeful, emergent, unfinished Christian.

How generous. How humble. And yet this same depressed-yet-hopeful, emergent, unfinished Christian claims that the book of which this was the subtitle, along with all the other books he has written, was the build-up to his real message, “The Secret Message of Jesus.” Apparently, the world has been in darkness for nearly two millennia until McLaren came to enlighten us. Again, for a guy who doesn’t know what he is (one who is everything is nothing), this is a very confident thing to do!

But then McLaren feels a kinship with N.T. Wright, the most well-known proponent of New Perspectivism. N.T. Wright along with Dallas Willard is the one of the authors who has had the most influence on McLaren according to an interview at Relevant Magazine. “N.T. Wright’s books and lectures have helped me so much,” says McLaren. “They sent me back to the gospels and to Paul’s writings. In a way, when I’ve heard N.T. Wright speak or when I’ve read his books, it’s just been very, very radical. And even though people may argue about a detail here or there, I think that virtually everybody agrees that he is saying things that have to be reckoned with and that they push the message of the kingdom as the central message of Jesus” (emphasis mine).

Very, very radical. Interesting. But N.T. Wright is almost hurt, wounded by criticisms, by the strong reaction from orthodox theologians toward his proposals, his “modest proposal,” as he would say. He meekly mentions his grief, but Ligon Duncan is right to find it “funny” and he says so in the following lengthy quote from his excellent exposition on New Perspectivism.

Ligon Duncan

Two Funny Reactions On the one hand, he’ll say, “I don’t know what all the fuss is about. This is not a big deal. I’m just trying to be faithful to the Bible’s teaching and to Paul. I’m not saying that everything Protestantism has said in connection with justification is wrong. If you adopt my view you can keep the best of what the traditional doctrine of justification gives you, with a whole lot more thrown in for no extra charge.”15 In other words, he sometimes tries to downplay the contrast between his reading of Paul and that of the Reformers, and complains that the traditional camp is just making a mountain out of a molehill in its reaction to his new articulation of Pauline theology.

On the other hand, you can find him speaking of the doctrine that Luther called the article of a standing or falling church, and which Calvin identified as one of the two keys of the Reformation, as “a second order issue.” To boot, he throws in that “imputation” is a pious fiction, and that justification isn’t about soteriology, it’s about the eccesiology [sic]. Indeed, he comes close to claiming to be the only person who has ever understood Paul.

But when he is in either of these modes he is defensive, a little hurt and seemingly uncomprehending at the vehemence with which some have met his proposals. He is “shocked” at the reaction of Lutheran, Reformed and conservative evangelicals who see his views as undermining the Gospel and the Reformation principles of salvation by grace alone and through faith alone.
Now, I have to say, I find this amusing in the extreme. Were I a Roman Catholic scholar, doing a little groundbreaking exegetical work on Mary, in which I question the deliverances of the nineteenth-century Roman Catholic church after Vatican I regarding her status in the workings of mediation, and assert that the idea of the co-mediation of Mary has not a shred of exegetical basis in the New Testament - I would not be surprised when the church’s hierarchy responded with deep displeasure. When the reaction came, I would not plead with tremulous voice, “I just don’t understand what the fuss is.” It seems to me that I would have to be fairly dense about what my church had believed for a long period of time to respond in such a way. So, it’s an interesting kind of response from Wright when he acts a bit amazed and offended at the vehemence of the rejoinder to his “modest proposal.”

Surely he knows better. One of his first published pieces was done for the Banner of Truth Trust. He’s an Anglican Bishop who is supposed to know just a little bit about the Thirty Nine Articles. He was Canon Theologian of Westminster Abbey, where they once-upon-a-time had a little gathering of theologians who produced the most important post-Reformation Confession of Faith, a monument of Protestant Orthodoxy — a document that had a little to say about justification. Surely he knows that to monkey with justification is to touch the primal nerve of Protestantism. I would understand an quasi-Athanasian response from Wright to his orthodox critics — “of course you are upset, I’ve just said you’ve been dead wrong for five hundred or fifteen hundred years, on a doctrine that you think is the difference between heaven and hell, and you are wrong, but I don’t care, because I’m right, and it’s important for the church that we get Paul right.” That response, I can understand. But the reaction of “you chaps are making a storm in a teacup” is just downright thick.

How typical of teachers who are undermining the truth. They will simultaneously feign shock that there is even a reaction to their teaching and play the wounded puppy-dog for being criticized when they were merely daring to question and voice their fears.

Pheh!

You don’t have to be a brilliant theologian, folks, to see through the hypocrisy. Paul warned the Colossians about “false humility” and those things that merely give a “shew of humility.” The humility spoken of by Paul is “will-humility.” It’s put on. The winsome and charming way of these “humble” teachers will dupe many, but my prayer is that most will realize that their interest in our good is really nothing more than what Paul accused the Jews of in Galatians 4:17:

They make much of you, but for no good purpose. They want to shut you out, that you may make much of them.