Now retired, the famous civil rights pastor Bishop John H. Adams in a recent Web article notes that progressive Christianity is not limited to a single theology. Dr. Douglas Ottati of Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Va., speaks of progressive theology as a conglomeration of theologies, among which are process, liberal, Christian realist, liberationist, feminist, black, womanist and Minjung, a Korean philosophy that is a radical re-interpretation of Christianity. However, while it is named progressive Christianity, it is in no way committed to the traditional creeds and expressions of Christian faith revealed in Scripture. In fact, it is considered a sign of your “maturity” if you leave all that behind and make up your own mind.
Christian heritage and tradition is merely a starting point and the impression from the progressives is that the sooner you move on from it the more enriched in spirituality you will be. Of course, it has great appeal because it reflects completely the “spirit of the age” in which all truth is relative and we are the arbiters of truth. It is a form of neo-Gnosticism (the Gnostics were an early anti-church group that the apostles and early church fathers denounced as being in serious error). Their teaching is that we do not have any authority that has the right to demand our loyalty, including the word of God.
The website for the Canadian Centre for Progressive Christianity lists eight belief points. Number three states: “We are loyal only to our own spiritual conclusions that comes from 'diverse sources of wisdom, regarding all as fallible human expressions open to our evaluation of their potential contribution to our individual and communal lives.'” Point four continues, saying that they “find more meaning in the search for understanding than in the arrival at certainty, in the questions than in the answers.”
This is perhaps the greatest distinction between the worldview of the traditional Christian teaching and the resurrected old Gnostic point of view of these progressives.
The evangelical view is found in Living Faith. In Chapter Five (“The Bible”) we read:
“The Bible has been given to us by the inspiration of God to be the rule of faith and life. It is the standard of all doctrine by which we must test any word that comes to us from church, world, or inner experience. We subject to its judgement all we believe and do. Through the Scriptures the church is bound only to Jesus Christ its King and Head. He is the living Word of God to whom the written word bears witness.”
It is important to recognize that an examination of the faith, and even some forms of doubt (see Living Faith 6:2) are a legitimate form of spiritual questing. That is a very long way, however, from saying that the meaning of life is found in the question and not in the answer. This reminds me of the vain philosophies St. Paul rejected in his day. They are vain because, as he said, they are always seeking but never coming to an answer. It is not in the seeking that we find meaning but in Christ who is the YES, in Christ who is the answer — the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
The progressives scold evangelicals for being too sure of their faith, too outdated in their values and out of step with modern understanding, while evangelicals find the progressives' continual questioning of the lordship of Christ, the efficacy of Jesus' atoning death, and the rejecting of the Bible as the final authority for the believer to be disconcerting at best and a dangerous attempt at undermining the faith at worst.
