Does the Church Have a Future?
"Does the church have a future in our generation? ... I believe the church is in real danger. It is in for a rough day. We are facing present pressures and a present and future manipulation which will be so overwhelming in the days to come that they will make the battles of the last forty years look like child's play.""The liberal theologians in their stress on community speak and act as though we become Christians when we enter the horizontal relationship of community. But this is totally the wrong starting-point. If this were so, Christianity would have no more final value than the humanistic community."
--Francis Schaeffer, The Church at the End of the 20th Century--1970
posted by kennyo at 10:43 PM
5 Comments:
Schaefer is jewel, thanks.
Would that the church had heeded the warnings of Schaeffer and Machen and others!
We are now reaping the harvest of those years and planting new and more invasive weeds.
The good news, though, is that the church DOES have a future and one that God has ordained and will sustain infallably.
We must pray for revival that comes from Him alone.
Kim,
Yes, you're right. Remember what Schaeffer said the watershed (dividing line) was? He said that those who embraced the inerrancy of Scripture would end up much differently than those who denied it.
Now we have fallen to a new low. The new watershed is whether nor not we actually believe in truth or its importance at all. Hence, the Emergent confusion. Their argument is we are being pugnacious and stubborn when we insist on doctrinal truth. We are "arrogant" in the terms of McLaren. (Of course, he thinks he's right, too, so that makes him...uh...oh, yeah...arrogant. But that's another metanarrative.)
Hi to Kenny O.
In Christ,
Phil Perkins.
"The liberal theologians in their stress on community speak and act as though we become Christians when we enter the horizontal relationship of community."
This sounds he's talking about like Campolo, McLaren and Rob Bell. The words above were and are so relevant to today's neo-liberals (as Ken Silva would call them). And that is what they are, new liberals but of the same stuff as the old ones, just with different packaging.
KCO
Kenny and friends:
It appears that the Left today is not too much different from the Left in the past, except for cosmetic differences. They embrace such trendy concepts as equality and community. However, the vertical relationship has been ignored because of such emphasis on horizontal relationships. Interesting to note how those who got away from absolute Truth have defaulted into 'community' stuff.
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