In my Journal entry earlier this month, New heights of absurdity in Episcopalia, I wondered what Dr Redding’s bishop had to say about her outright heresy. I have long given up hoping that cases like hers are just an isolated example of straying from the Path, and so it was no real surprise to read later that her bishop, the Rt. Reverend Vincent Warner of Seattle, calls her declaration of being both a Christian and a Muslim to be exciting in terms of interfaith understanding.

Exciting? I often hear that word these days and am beginning to recognize it as one that postmodernists find so useful when they can no longer describe something in terms of truth and remain credible. In these exciting days when anything goes… everything mixes with everything else… and exciting new ideas capture the imagination… it is exciting to discover that the boundaries we thought existed need no longer reign us in. Our excitement knows no bounds!

Where Bible literacy has been abandoned, people are ill-prepared to recognize heresy and challenge the basis of it. Also, where people fail to use any skills of critical thinking, then again they do not recognize error. And beyond that some more, where there is ignorance of both the Bible and the essentials of critical thinking, deception has a very easy path.

To me there are glaringly obvious incompatible and irreconcilable beliefs being entertained when someone describes herself as both a Christian and a Muslim, to the extent that a well read and intelligent being is compartmentalizing and alternately denying basic facts to contain them simultaneously. But yet it doesn’t seem to be glaringly obvious to those who support this woman’s position, and I must therefore have grave doubts about either their understanding of, or their belief in, the propositional truths of Scripture …and that includes academics and supposedly learned theologians. It also brings me to question what is understood generally concerning critical thinking. Consider Aristotle and his law of non-contradiction…

“The theological beliefs are irreconcilable,” said Mahmoud Ayoub, professor of Islamic studies and comparative religion at Temple University in Philadelphia. Islam holds that God is one, unique, indivisible. “For Muslims to say Jesus is God would be blasphemy.”

Frank Spina, an Episcopal priest and also a professor of Old Testament and biblical theology at Seattle Pacific University, puts it bluntly. “I just do not think this sort of thing works,” he said. “I think you have to give up what is essential to Christianity to make the moves that she has done. The essence of Christianity was not that Jesus was a great rabbi or even a great prophet, but that he is the very incarnation of the God that created the world…. Christianity stands or falls on who Jesus is.”
Source

Surely it is obvious that “Jesus is not God” (Muslim) and “Jesus is God” (Christian) does not work together? Are people not able to see that? Has postmodernism blinded folk that much?

But moving on a little…

This pluralism has sneaked in through the gate opened by the liberal theologians. It seems it is not uncommon these days to find clergy who are open to the beliefs of other faiths and ready to make claim for themselves to a mix of Christianity and other. It is in open defiance of our Christian God, but as Bishop Warner of Seattle is purported to have said… it is exciting in terms of interfaith understanding. Pluralism is certainly not possible if one holds to a traditional Biblical faith where a plain reading of Scripture does not involve interpretations bent towards a modern secular agenda. But liberal theology is not so much about Christian belief, but Christian unbelief instead.

Here is an interesting comment by Gerd Lüdemann, a prominent German theologian and Professor of New Testament at the University of Göttingen, Germany - as reported by Dr Albert Mohler Jr, here:

{clip} Many church officials, Lüdemann claims, no longer believe in the creeds, but simply “interpret” the words into meaninglessness. Liberal theologians, he asserts, try to reformulate Christian doctrine into something they can believe, and still claim to be Christians. He now describes liberal theology as “contemptible.”

Looking back on the whole project of liberal theology, Lüdemann offered an amazing reflection: “I don’t think Christians know what they mean when they proclaim Jesus as Lord of the world. That is a massive claim. If you took that seriously, you would probably have to be a fundamentalist. If you can’t be a fundamentalist, then you should give up Christianity for the sake of honesty.”

Professor Lüdemann reveals much about the true state of modern liberal theology. One core doctrine after another has fallen by liberal denial—all in the name of salvaging the faith in the modern age. The game is now reaching its end stage. Having denied virtually every essential doctrine, the liberals are holding an empty bag. As Lüdemann suggests, they should give up their claim on Christianity for the sake of honesty.

Lüdemann himself is a non-believer, having become “post-Christian”. But interestingly, personal unbelief and honesty has not yet given him the inclination to step down from his positions of employment. He has given up his claim on Christianity by no longer calling himself one, but he remains a Professor of New Testament at the University of Göttingen, Germany, and a teacher of those who will study under him, supposedly students with a mind to one day becoming ordained Christian clergy.