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 Moving from Liberal to Progressive Theology: Longing for an Anti-Christ

By Viola Larson

 Recently, reading a book review which stressed the fact that the author had used the descriptive word progressive rather than liberal, I was startled into thinking about the differences in the words liberal and progressive. The difference between liberal and progressive involves two eras of history: the enlightenment and the romantic. The change from liberal to progressive is a move from rational disbelief to dark and radical heterodoxy. The liberal of yesterday clung to his rationalistic ideals insisting that the created order was void of mystery or miracles; the progressive theologian picks at the dark corners of romanticism, embracing not revelation, but simply the mysterious. Because of this bent toward irresolvable ambiguities, church leaders who seek to promote progressive theology are opening a door through which all kinds of religious entities may walk.

By welcoming progressive theology, too often the door is held wide for those longing for an anti-Christ, that is, those longing for something or someone to replace the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Tragically, in the Presbyterian Church USA, there are many examples of those in leadership inviting in those who, as Peter put it, exploit the church with false words as they “introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them …(2 Peter 2:1-2).” Increasingly many hands reaching for the doorknob belong to women working in leadership positions in various Presbyterian women’s ministries. So what is progressive theology and how is it being used by proponents to undermine the biblical faith of the church? How must the faithful Christian respond? 

There is, as I have suggested above, a historical context to the differences. When thinking of the word liberal one tends to look back to the nineteenth century, to the liberal theologian’s belief in the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of humanity. That was of course theism without the deity of Christ, without the bodily resurrection, without sin or the need for atonement, but it was still theism. However the progressive theologian is further down the theological road, she is in fact seeking esoteric solutions to what she defines as problems with biblical faith.  

Based on her denial of the deity of Jesus, the liberal often denies the Trinity, yet, holds to the transcendence of God. She agrees with scripture, God is other than creation. But the progressive often denies the transcendence of God and tends to equate creation with a part of God. The liberal rejects the work of Christ on the cross, grounding salvation instead in good works or simply a father’s love. The progressive rejects the work of the cross but goes further and offers some esoteric alternative means of salvation often based on the work of ‘spirit’ in nature. Often one can find bound up together in the progressive’s theological constructs varying versions of panentheism, Eastern philosophical assumptions and even some new age concepts. The divine can take on any sort of title and descriptive language such as force, godde (a supposedly neutral ground between God and goddess), spirit (without capital letter or holy), and even old names; ‘Asherah’ for example!1

As the theological stream of progressive thinking widens without any true boundaries it often becomes unrecognizable as biblical faith. However, it is often offered as a supposedly faithful witness, but with reinterpretations of Christian doctrine and new attempts to re-name and re-imagine God. At the same time, some Presbyterian official leadership, while supposedly still affirming orthodox theology, makes common cause with unorthodox organizations and their heretical beliefs. One example, Mary Elva Smith, Associate Director of the Women’s Ministry Area, chose to write an article for Voices of Sophia’s magazine Illuminations Oct. 2005. The title of the article, “Our Shared Ministries: Voices of Sophia & Women’s Ministries,” demonstrates her disregard for the orthodox of the church and her regard for those involved in progressive theology.

Smith writes about the “exciting new understandings and interpretations” of Christianity that are arising from theology done from a feminist point of view. Smith ends her article with the supporting words, “Take heart and continue in a spirit of confidence that Godde is calling you to be faithful in this new age to the call of Christ whom we follow.” Smith, who is one of the speakers for Voices of Sophia’s gathering this fall at Ghost Ranch, has helped open the door a bit wider for an organization which seeks to replace the Lordship of Christ with a different lord.

One illustration of Voices of Sophia attempting to provide women of the church with a different lord can be found in the speech given by Rita Nakashima Brock at the VOS breakfast at General Assembly. Her dreadful words were, “I want to tell you today that I am convinced that atonement theology is the deepest betrayal of Christianity ever perpetrated. It is not just one way to understand salvation, but a betrayal of salvation, a doctrine that abandoned the life and ministry of Jesus Christ for loyalty to Caesar and his legions.”2 In place of atonement by the cross of Christ, Brock posits an earthly paradise in which transfiguration is the means of salvation. But since Brock has in an earlier book written “We must find the revelatory and saving events of Christianity in a larger reality than Jesus and his relationship to God/dess or any subsequent individual Christ,”3

Jesus becomes simply a model for transfiguration. And transfiguration is turned into a mystical “spiritual ascent.”

In a 2004 Convocation Address for the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, Brock states, “The transfiguration was the story of the spiritual ascent, not just of Jesus, but of all who had been reborn into his church. Transfiguration saved the world.” She then puts forward a rather occultic view of the early Christian community, writing of a “gossamer golden curtain,” which she believes the early Christians saw as the veil of separation between the living and the dead. Brock writes that, “The living and the dead communed with each other through the veil, praying for each other. In this communion of memory and presence, everlasting life flourished.4

The door continues to open wider and those seeking another Christ find it easier to enter. The planning team for the Presbyterian Women’s Gathering featured another challenger to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. At the gathering, Kikanza Nuri Robins’ speech was entitled “Challenges to Being an Inclusive Community.” Not only did Robins insist that Christians should acknowledge the validity of other faiths, she also insisted Christians should acknowledge other paths as “plausible and wise,” and “integrate,” other faith’s “learning and practice” into their own Christian practices. Further, Robins explained her own faith as “being a Christian by birth, a Baha’i by reason, a Taoist in spirit, and a pastor in faith and vocation.5

If Robins is a Baha’i by reason, by reason she longs for an anti-Christ. The Baha’i faith teaches that God is one but he reveals himself through many manifestations including Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad.6 The Baha’i tenets insist there are many more manifestations to come. Mike McMullen writes of their basic belief, “Baha’is’ vision of global unity includes the claim that all of the world’s major religions are only evolutionary stages in God’s plan to educate and unify the whole planet – in effect, there is only one religion, but it is revealed by God in distinct historical stages.”7 Each new manifestation fulfills earlier manifestations so that the Baha’i prophet Baha’u’llah fulfills “the return of Christ for Christians.”8

The Tao, or Dao as it is often called, is a Chinese religious term meaning “the cosmic and controlling principle, according to which all nature functions.” It is also understood by adherents as a passive and peaceful means of attaining “oneness with the natural world.9 C.S. Lewis used the term Tao in his book The Abolition of Man to express what he called, “the doctrine of objective value, the belief that certain attitudes are really true, and others really false, to the kind of thing the universe is and the kind of things we are.” If a person holds to the essentials of Christianity and holds Jesus Christ as the only Lord, as C.S. Lewis did, it is possible to use the term Tao in that manner, however, if one insists that all faiths are valid expressions of God, as Robins does, the concept of Tao will simply under gird their unfaithfulness.

At the same Presbyterian Women’s Gathering, past General Assembly Moderator, Susan R. Andrews’ speech was entitled, “Out of Chaos.” She insisted that “Chaos is as central to our scriptures as is creation and covenant.” After calling life, the world and the church chaos, Andrews states that chaos is where “God lives and moves and expresses being …” Going further with her theme, she refers to Mary’s womb as being in “turbulent confusion” and a place where “God most emphatically spoke—confronting chaos, celebrating chaos and using chaos for good.”  Finally Andrews even refers to God as “our chaotic, creative God.”10

The most striking thing about Andrews’ unbiblical view of the being and work of God, that is, her valuing a chaotic god, is her theological descent toward dark romanticism. Early romanticism valued nature and the sublime. But pursuing a wild romantic god in nature, late romanticism descended into a dark period that ended with Nietzsche and finally the glorification of death, chaos and evil. Diversity became racism; a nature based morality turned to abject decadence. One thinks of the late romantic works, for example Edgar Allen Poe’s horror stories and Goya’s painting, “Saturn eating his children.” Andrews has posited an unbiblical god who lives in chaos, celebrates chaos and is himself chaotic. This is a dark god, related to the fallen world that is often chaotic. With such a god celebration will soon turn to despair.

Andrews aligns her chaotic god with Jesus. She states, “And Jesus—far from resisting chaos—entered it joyfully, creatively, compassionately, knowing that chaos is the womb of possibility. Knowing that chaos, and not order, is where God lives most of the time.” But here, in the reference to Jesus and his joy, is the crux of the matter, here is the answer to the progressive re-interpretations of the biblical God. The author of Hebrews encourages believers as they put away sinful lifestyles and continue faithful in their Christian journey  to look to Jesus Christ “who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has set down at the right hand of the throne of God (Heb 12:2b).” (My italics) Jesus’ joy was not because of the possibilities coming out of the womb of chaos; rather, it was the sure knowledge that he was doing the Father’s will; that by the offering of his self on the cross, he was redeeming fallen sinful people.

His disciples have followed both preaching the cross and taking up, with joy, the cross. We must continue to do so. The Apostle Paul implicitly “preached Christ crucified.” (1 Cor 1:18-25) While this offended many, Christ became God’s power for salvation for those God called. Leon Morris in the Tyndale New Testament Commentaries, I Corinthians writes that “the cross is ‘the weak thing’ of God that is stronger than anything man can produce (47).” As more and more radical theology comes out of progressive theology, whether under the name feminist or process or simply progressive, the church must hold up the cross of Christ, preaching, teaching and witnessing with the cross central. The truth that Jesus Christ died to save sinners, that we have been redeemed, “with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ,” (1 Peter 1:19) is the great hope of the church.

With the message of the cross, the early confession of the church that Jesus Christ is Lord is of utter importance. That Jesus Christ is the one unique Lord is the crème de crème of all confessions. The sacrifice of Jesus on the cross and the Lordship of Christ are intertwined and the one demands the other. To deny one truth is to deny the other. Paul writes in Philippians:

Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross. For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Phil. 2:8-11)

One can find no place or eternal purpose where Jesus Christ is not Lord. He is the ultimate One of and in Christianity. Paul explains that not only were all things created by Jesus Christ but also all things were created for him. “For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. (Col. 1:16)  

Paul writes of the church speaking God’s wisdom to rulers and authorities in heavenly places and he explains that this act of speaking is through the Lordship of Jesus Christ. “This was in accordance with the eternal purpose which He carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord in whom we have boldness and confident access through faith in Him.” (Eph. 3:11, 12) It is not always popular or even in some cases safe to acknowledge the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Wilhelm Niemoller, one of the members of the Confessing Church, wrote of what it meant to confess Christ as the only Lord under that Nazi regime: "One of my friends concluded a sermon of his in 1934 or 1935 by saying: 'O Lord, Thou alone art our hope, apart from Thee, I know none!' He was arrested, put on trial, and later released. The enemies that listened to him had noticed that the Third Reich was put in a difficult position wherever the 'One Word of God' made its appearance.”11 We are all in a difficult position when the Lordship of Christ is preached. We must either reject him or obey him. Now!, in the midst of unfaithfulness, the church that knows Jesus Christ as crucified, risen and the only Lord must speak words of life to those who are unraveling the faith with progressive theology. Jesus Christ is Lord.