“And I tell you, everyone who acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man also will acknowledge before the angels of God, but the one who denies me before men will be denied before the angels of God. And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but the one who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.” -Luke 12:8-10
“For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” -1 Timothy 2:5
“A generation or two ago, defenses of Christianity that focused on human sinfulness were potent; a common metaphor showed God on one side of a diagram and a stick figure (you) on the other; the chasm between was labeled “Sin,” and the only bridge across was in the shape of Jesus’ cross. But emergents ask, ‘What kind of God can’t reach across a chasm?’ “ -Tony Jones, The New Christians, p.78
“But God is a being whose activity is, by definition, not contingent. God can forgive whomever God wants to forgive, whether or not the forgiven person has adequately confessed his or her sins.” -Tony Jones, The New Christians, p.99
A long standing debate among Christians is what is the role of the sovereignty of God over salvation versus the free will of man. A common way of getting to the heart of a person’s beliefs on this issue is the question of “how big is your God?” Someone who touts the free will of man to choose to be saved (loosely called an Arminian) would be said to have a small God, one incapable of saving man, whereas someone who believes in the sovereign election of God (a Calvinist) would be said to have a big God, one who irresistibly brings those who are to be saved to him. Yet, in this debate between Calvinists and Arminians, one thing is clear, that being that a person must confess and repent from their sins in order to be saved.
However, I believe the Christianity of the Emerging church movement, as pictured by Tony Jones in The New Christians, portrays a God that is even bigger then the God of the Calvinist (of which, by the way, I am one). In fact, it appears that the God of the Emerging movement is so big that he can’t even exist, and I think that this is quite possibly a big problem.
Why do I say this? Well, if we take Jones’ quotes from above we see that he, and by the premise of his book the Emergings, take God to be so big that there is nothing that can stop him from saving a person, not even sin! By the first quote we are told that God should be big enough that he can just pass over sin in order to bring us to him, without the necessity of the cross to connect us. But this is absurd! If we look at Romans 3 we see that there is only one way in which God is able to overlook our sins and justify us so that we may be in his presence (i.e. in heaven) and that is by the cross of Christ:
“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” (Romans 3:23-26)
So, the only way in which God is able to cross the “chasm” of sin is by the redemption which was purchased by Christ on calvary, i.e. the cross.
But maybe, if one wished to play devil’s advocate (I say that with tongue-in-cheek) they would claim that Jones is actually implying a Calvinist interpretation of salvation, that being that God is the only one capable of bringing us into a saving relationship with him. If this were the case then I would be happy and would welcome the Emergings to my team. However, I have good reason to believe this is not the case because of what Jones says in the second quote.
In the second quote above, Jones says that “God can forgive whomever God wants to forgive, whether or not the forgiven person has adequately confessed his or her sins.” Yet, if we look at the passage from Luke 12:8-10 (which is paralleled in Matthew 12:31-32 and Mark 3:28-30) we see that there exists a sin which God cannot forgive. And what exactly is that sin? As Jesus says, it is “blasphemy against the Spirit (Matthew 12:31).” But, what is blasphemy against the Spirit? Well, to understand that we must look at what the Spirit does. According to John 16:8, Jesus says of the Spirit that “he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.” Thus, if one is blaspheming the Spirit then they are opposing the one who convicts of sin, who longs to bring them into righteousness, and thus refusing to acknowledge or repent from their own sin. Therefore, God cannot forgive anyone he wants and maintain his righteousness, namely, he cannot forgive those who have not truly (or, in the purposefully ambiguous language, adequately) repented from their sin, since it is those who have blasphemed (rejected) the Spirit.
Then, lastly, why does this mean the Emerging God cannot exist? Because, if God were to cross the “chasm” of sin without going through the cross, and if God were to forgive the sin of those who did not seek forgiveness, then God would cease to be righteous and would be condoning the sin which in itself fails to uphold the glory of God’s name. Thus, in accepting his own name to be attacked, he is therefore denying himself, and so he is no longer God, “for he cannot deny himself (2 Timothy 2:13)”
