Well.<\/p>\n
Y’all may recall that I pointed a few days ago<\/a> toward a news account of a Christian pastor and theologian who frankly acknowledges that the entire Original Sin schtick is nonsense. Albert Mohler, some of you will be comforted to know, is having none of that reprise of the Pelagian Heresy.<\/p>\n So far as he goes, Mohler is correct; what Chalke is arguing is a reprise of the Pelagian Heresy. Mohler is right about much else, too.<\/p>\n But there\u2019s a bigger lesson here for all of us. And it comes down to this, we have to understand that our theological worldview is not made up of a basket of beliefs. It\u2019s made up eventually of a rather consistent way of understanding the Bible and understanding the world. So it\u2019s not as if you can just take a doctrine, such as the substitutionary atonement, take it out of the basket and set aside without there being effects on the doctrines that remain. We shouldn\u2019t be at all surprised that two other doctrines are clearly implicated in this most recent announcement having to do with Steve Chalke. It\u2019s not just about original sin. It\u2019s about his previous denial of substitutionary atonement. Those two are very clearly linked.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Right. It all hangs together, and once you establish falsity in one part of the narrative, the rest falls apart.<\/p>\n That’s how we know that Christianity is not true. There was never an Adam and Eve, there never was a Fall, there is no such thing as Original Sin, and He didn’t sacrifice one-third of Himself (temporarily) to a different<\/i> third of Himself in order to propitiate the wickedness of His other one-third’s creation.<\/p>\n Part of me feels kind of sorry for Mohler. He isn’t a stupid man, but a second-rate man unable to leave behind the nonsensical, fairy tale-premises he was steeped-in from infancy. He reasons from a starting point that is childish and unsustainable; his theology is an elaborate what-if game not grounded in reality — and he lacks the wherewithal to chuck it off and stop making a fool of himself. That would be fine if he lived on a desert island; unhappily, he doesn’t. Here in the real world his failure of either character or intellect, or both, comes with a cost to others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Well. Y’all may recall that I pointed a few days ago toward a news account of a Christian pastor and theologian who frankly acknowledges that the entire Original Sin schtick is nonsense. Albert Mohler, some of you will be comforted … Continue reading \n