From a netfriend: prompted by the article on Liberalism and Frances Macnab (look up the relevant articles under keywords McNab or Macnab and/or liberalism, mainline churches).

****

Somewhere in all of this there was a reference made to Schleiermacher. He was one of the first names that came to mind while researching McNab.

I completely disagree with the idea that he would have been better suited to introduce his heresy 100 years ago. The "New Faith" is just slick "New Age" extruded through Christian terminology.

It all comes back to sola scriptura. In a recent personal debate with a university psychology grad student, I couldn't help but have this doctrine re-enforced as a foundational / fundamental of the Christian faith. This is the fundamental doctrine on which the Reformation built its case for sola fide and the resultant requirement to separate itself from the Catholic organization.

Christianity is a faith. Faith is always based on knowledge. And depending on the authoritative veracity of that knowledge, faith will be either strong or weak accordingly. As I have stated many times, if have no absolute integration point by which to judge Truth from error, then you are only left with self as the final arbitrator. THAT is not biblical faith. No means of verification. No safeguard against error.

What McNab proposes is totally unacceptable to the historic Christian position. Two of the last three churches which we have left have been over this very issue. When these assemblies remove scripture as being the final authority, or merely a marginal authority, then my experience has been the congregations are little more than spiritual nurseries. The assemblies are easily swayed this way or that if what is being sold is something which pleases them. McNab's ideology is nothing short of what Paul warned against in 2 Tim 4:1-4. "Tickle their ears" is exactly what the whole "New Faith" idea is all about.

The "Evangelical" churches have fallen into this as well. Over the last 20 yrs the emphasis of feeding flock has evaporated while "seeker" sensitivity has all but filled the pulpit's ministerial philosophy. "Oh we don't want to offend someone." Which leads right into "easy believe-ism" which is nothing less than the broadway to destruction.

The question boils down to this, in McNab's venue, why should anyone feel led to repent? If there are no moral absolutes, then there is no guilt. If there is no guilt then there is no need to be saved from the wrath of an angry God. If you don't need to be saved then you surely don't need a Savior. As Peter wrote, such paradigms are the products of "unreasoning animals." Jude also uses this language, aloga, i.e. operating without truth. The Jewish terminology is yester hara. 2 Pet 2 and Jude 10 simply state that "by these things they are destroyed" the Greek being literally defined as "to ruin," "to be damned," "to go to the devil," "to be corrupted" all the while the Christian is called to be putting on the incorruptible. This is all characteristic of an apostate teacher.

I really fear for those who follow or even entertain such men as McNab. Jude states that they enter into the assemblies covertly, Peter that they will "secretly introduce (smuggle) destructive heresies." Peter contrasts them to such "men moved by the Holy Spirit speaking from God."

A simple question: Why is it that not just individual "christians" but whole denominations so oppose the Reformation's fundament of sola scriptura? The only reason I can see is that such men/denominations wish to retain their independence, their sovereignty, to ultimately be the final arbitrator. But what is this other than what Paul describes in antithetical terms in both Romans and Galations as the "mind" or bias of the flesh vs the bias/orientation of the Spirit?

I just don't understand why so many are so blind as to the degeneration of True Truth, i.e. the Scriptures, for some warm fuzzy, offend no one, subjective easy believe-ism. I just don't understand why other than the hard thing that the remnant is really, really small. The Scripture's are all about antithetical thinking. McNab is all about synthetical unrealities.

"My sheep know My voice." It appears that McNab (or is it MacNab?)

disregards not only His voice, but His reality.

How illogical is McNab's paradigm, which from my investigation places "what works" or the experiential over Bible/Church doctrine when the Biblical reality is that doctrine produces "what works" (not in the short term but the eternal term) i.e. practice and application.

In various encounters on the street, how often have I heard, "Well *my* Jesus isn't like that." Jesus is Himself, not what me or you make Him to be. There is no such reality as "my" Jesus. He is exactly as He has been revealed to be by the Spirit in the Scriptures.

Christianity is a radical faith. You MUST accept it as it is presented in the Scriptures or you stand outside the camp. There is no more exclusive faith than Christianity. It will not submit to synthesis. "Many in that day.... but I will say, depart from Me. I never knew you." (we never had real communion -you operated solely from your own bias).