Thursday, July 2, 2009

emergents outfoxing themselves

Several weeks ago, I got in a bit of a row over at the blog at the Emergent Village website (the place where the name of this blog got it's name, in a sardonic way). The author of the particular entry was going on about something, and a few times he made mention of the name Matthew Fox, in a way that seemed rather approving and as a source for many of his or her thoughts. A bit of a scan of the internet for Fox's ideas was quite enough to show me this guy was poison, but being curious still more, a bit ago I found, at a used book store (for it's not worth the regular price), a copy of his work "The Coming of the Cosmic Christ".

I've been going through it, on and off, for a few weeks, sometimes reading parts straight through, others kind of skipping.

It is a source of amusing, of a rather sad sort I admit, that two names that have surfaced in this so-called emergent conversation have been Matthew Fox and Ken Wilbur, because despite difference in their ways of putting things, in the end they're both saying roughly the same thing.

Fox's book makes mention of something he calls the Cosmic Christ. What does he mean by that?

We are divine and human, animal and demon. We are Cosmic Christs.
Matthew Fox, The Coming of the Cosmic Christ, p. 138

The name "Christ" means "the anointed one." All of us are anointed ones. We are all royal persons, creative, godly, divine, person of beauty and grace. We are all Cosmic Christs, "other Christs."
p. 137


Yeah, that hissing sound you hear, it is the hiss of the serpent of the Garden, saying the same thing, "You shall be as God".

This guy misuses the Bible so badly, it's laughable. It's like he's emergent before emergents ever were.

Paul celebrates the theme of our being other Christs and our growing into other Christs when he says, "I live now not with my own life but with the life of Christ who lives in me" (Gal. 2:20)
p. 139


While Fox does give the reference, one can read it and rightly wonder, where the heck does he get anything he claims Paul is saying here???

Galatians 2, NIV
17. If, while we seek to be justified in Christ, it becomes evident that we ourselves are sinners, does that mean that Christ promotes sin? Absolutely not!

18. If I rebuild what I destroyed, I prove that I am a lawbreaker.

19. For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God.

20. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live it in the body I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

21. I do not set aisde the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing.


Someone, please tell me where in those verses Paul anywhere says anything about us "celebrating the theme or our being other Chirsts and our growing into other Christs"? Please, I beg of you, where is it?

And that statement is coming from a man emergents want us to look to?

Fox's statement is right up there with Rollins' about how disobedience is a good thing. Both are evil to the core, and are adequate reasons to reject emergents until they repent of their associations with such blasphemers.

No comments: