Emergent Exegesis and the Slide Toward Revisionism

The Emergent Church died earlier this year. The voices which carried on the "conversation" at the dawn of the 21st century continue to reverberate, but their words have been exposed as little more than the recycled arguments of liberal Protestantism masquerading as the latest evangelical fad. Emergent leader Brian McLaren typifies the movement's swift slide down the slippery slope of theological revisionism. In his latest attempt to be "a new kind of Christian," he is joining with Muslims in the celebration of Ramadan. He hopes it will be something of a learning experience.

Ramadan is the Muslim holy month of fasting for spiritual renewal and purification. It commemorates the month during which Muslims believe Mohammed received the Quran through divine revelation, and it calls Muslims to self-control, sacrificial generosity and solidarity with the poor, diligent reading of the Quran, and intensified prayer.

This year, I, along with a few Christian friends (and perhaps others currently unknown to us will want to join in) will be joining Muslim friends in the fast which begins August 21. We are not doing so in order to become Muslims: we are deeply committed Christians. But as Christians, we want to come close to our Muslim neighbors and to share this important part of life with them. Just as Jesus, a devout Jew, overcame religious prejudice and learned from a Syrophonecian [sic] woman and was inspired by her faith two thousand years ago (Matthew 15:21 ff, Mark 7:24 ff), we seek to learn from our Muslim sisters and brothers today.

I will not address here the obvious question of syncretism, as others have already done so. Instead, I would like to focus on McLaren's reference to Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman (McLaren's inattention to correct spelling should not go unnoticed here), as it reflects the kind of shallow, agenda-driven exegesis which the Emergent movement has imported from liberal Protestantism.

It is Mark's account (Mark 7:24-30) in which the woman is identified as "a Gentile, a Syrophoenician by birth." But it is Matthew's more detailed account (Matthew 15:21-28) which lays bare McLaren's assertion that Jesus was, in this case, the student and not the teacher.

And Jesus went away from there and withdrew to the district of Tyre and Sidon. And behold, a Canaanite woman from that region came out and was crying, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is severely oppressed by a demon.” But he did not answer her a word. And his disciples came and begged him, saying, “Send her away, for she is crying out after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” And he answered, “It is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table.” Then Jesus answered her, “O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire.” And her daughter was healed instantly.

Jesus' seeming attitude of indifference toward the woman is not a reflection of "religious prejudice," as McLaren would have us think. Rather, it is a means by which he teaches his disciples an important lesson about perseverance and faith. The Syrophoenician woman has a faith that is ahead of its time. It is a faith that sees beyond the present animosities that exist between the Jews and Gentiles to the day when all of "the lost sheep of Israel" will be gathered in from all the nations.

McLaren claims that "Jesus, a devout Jew, overcame religious prejudice and learned from a Syrophonecian [sic] woman and was inspired by her faith." Jesus is indeed inspired by the woman's faith, but he has no "religious prejudice" to overcome. His unusual comments to the woman draw out her faith, proving it to be genuine. She is not just another curiosity seeker coming to Jesus for a quick fix to a distressing problem. By persevering, this Gentile woman demonstrates far better than many a "devout Jew" that she is a true daughter of Abraham.

McLaren sees his participation in a pagan religious festival as somehow emulating Jesus. But the Jesus he wishes to emulate is one who had to "overcome religious prejudice." To make himself appear more like Jesus, McLaren has to make Jesus appear more like himself.

The Friday Funnies: Lindsey's Exegesis by Current Events

Charles Spurgeon decried and belittled his contemporaries who engaged in what he called "exegesis by current events," the dubious practice of reading Scripture in the light of history rather than history in the light of Scripture, especially in the area of eschatology. Stephen Sizer has pointed out the danger of this novel approach to biblical interpretation in his recent volume, Zion's Christian Soldiers? The Bible, Israel and the Church. There persists within the evangelical Christian community a mistaken view of biblical prophecy which ignores the contemporary contextual significance of the prophetic writings and insists that the events foretold by Daniel, Ezekiel, and John of Patmos (just to name a few) apply primarily to the present generation.

The chief purveyor of "exegesis by current events" over the last forty years has been Hal Lindsey. His column published today at WorldNetDaily is yet another quintessential example of his hokey hermeneutics. After describing the events presently unfolding in the Middle East (where else?), Lindsey predictably observes:

Taking a step back and looking at the Big Picture, it is hard not to miss the fact that events are developing in concert with the ancient prophecies of Scripture.

The Prophet Isaiah foretold the "burden of Damascus" (Isaiah 17:1) in which the prophet predicts the overnight destruction of that great city in the last days: "At evening time, behold there is terror! Before morning they are no more. Such will be the portion of those who plunder us, and the lot of those who pillage us." (Isaiah 17:14)

The Prophet Ezekiel predicts an alliance between Russia and an Islamic confederacy headed by Iran, or Persia.

Hamas continues to attack Israel with rocket attacks for the sheer joy of the violence of it all. Related to this, the Prophet Obadiah pronounced this verdict against Edom, who is one of the forefathers of the people of Hamas, saying, "Because of violence to your brother Jacob, you will be covered with shame, and you will be cut off forever." Interestingly, the word translated as "violence" in this Scripture is the Hebrew word, chamac, pronounced "hamas."

Of all the generations in history, it is to this generation that the prophecies of the last days are addressed. Previous generations looked for the signs given by Scripture, but only this generation can truly see them all come together at one time – which is itself a key fulfillment of prophecy.

The Prophet Daniel predicted these conditions: "And I heard, but I understood not: then said I, O my Lord, what shall be the end of these things? And he said, 'Go thy way, Daniel: for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end.'" (Daniel 12:8-9) We are witnessing the "unsealing" of the end-times prophecies.

The fatal flaw of "exegesis by current events" should be obvious to any serious student of the Bible. It violates one of the basic rules of biblical interpretation, namely, that Scripture is its own best interpreter. The prophecies of Daniel which were "closed up and sealed till the time of the end" were, in fact, unsealed in the final book of the New Testament. As I have written before:

In the grand narrative of the Bible, Daniel and Revelation are two parts of the same whole. When John begins to "weep loudly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it," he is consoled by one of the elders around the throne of God, who says to him, "Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals" (Revelation 5:4-5).

The book that Daniel had been instructed to seal is now unsealed. The fullness of God's plan for the redemption of the world has been revealed in Jesus Christ. He is "the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David" who "has conquered" the forces of sin, death, and hell through his life, death, and resurrection "so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals."

Just what part of "Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals" does Lindsey not understand?

More Laughs from Lindsey

Fridays are not complete without Hal Lindsey's weekly foray into the world of current events and biblical prophecy. This week, he has really outdone himself. For example:

For the first time in 1,600 years, there exists a modern version of the old Roman Empire, although, as Daniel predicted, "partly strong and partly weak," compared to the iron of Imperial Rome.

There exists, for the first time since before the prophet Daniel was born, a geopolitical entity called "Israel." Neither existed until this generation. Israel was reborn in 1948. The Benelux Treaty that kicked off the unification of Europe was signed in 1948.

That same year, Bell Labs introduced the transistor, whose invention marked the birth of the Computer Age.

The angel told Daniel his vision would be unintelligible to generations other than the one to whom it was addressed, a generation whose hallmark would be that of ever-increasing knowledge.

Thanks to Bell Labs' 1948 invention, Moore's Law of Computer says that today's computers get twice as smart every 18 months to two years. That means we get twice as smart.

The angel also identified the generation of the time of the end as one in which "many would go to and fro" – the generation that witnessed the birth of rapid mass transportation.

This kind of harebrained hermeneutics certainly mitigate against Lindsey's contention that we are living in a generation that is seeing an increase in knowledge.

It appears Lindsey has some kind of fixation over the year 1948. Two decades ago, he and his fellow "prophecy experts" were telling their followers to get ready for the "rapture," as 1988 would mark forty years, supposedly the biblical length of one generation, since that benchmark year. Since then, they have revised their calculations so that a "generation" equals seventy years, leaving them now with about ten more years to build up the hype for the next scheduled flight to heaven in 2018.

The flaw in Lindsey's logic (and I use that term loosely) is the presupposition of a "gap" between the sixty-ninth and seventieth weeks of Daniel's prophetic vision. The whole dispensational system of eschatology stands or falls on the theory that the first sixty-nine weeks (483 years) foreseen by Daniel went off without a hitch from the time of the return of the exiles from Babylon to the appearance of John the Baptist. But from that time until now, the final week has been put on hold. The "church age," as the dispensationalists understand it, is a "divine parenthesis" unforeseen by Daniel or any other Old Testament prophet. The seventieth week cannot begin until after the church has been "raptured" to heaven and God is free once again to deal exclusively with Israel, which will apparently have to contend, also, with a "revived Roman Empire."

Implicit in this whole scenario is the failure of Jesus in his Messianic mission of redemption. The Jews' rejection of their Messiah was, apparently, unforeseen by God when he revealed the "seventy weeks" prophecy to Daniel. Hence, the necessity of the "gap" between the sixty-ninth and seventieth weeks and the subsequent need to remove the church from the scene to give Israel a second chance. Just where this leaves the cross in God's overall plan is unclear. Was Jesus the perfect Lamb of God, offered once for all to take away the sins of the whole world, or was his sacrifice merely God's "Plan B" after the Jews rejected him as Messiah? Most dispensationalists, I would venture to say, have never fully thought out the implications of their over-active prophetic imaginations.