Mike Wittmer

Category: Theology

  • Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity, Question 5, Part 1

    What is the gospel? In this section Brian reveals how liberalism grows in orthodox churches.  He says that at the beginning of their movement, he and his friends were “peace-loving people” who didn’t “want to needlessly upset anyone,” so they thought, ‘Maybe this new understanding can simply be added to what we already have, gradually,…

  • Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity, Question 4

    Who is Jesus and Why is he important? Brian begins this section with a good reminder that we must beware of the temptation to remake Jesus into our own image.  I wish he had followed his own advice, for his Jesus ends up looking a lot like a beefed up Brian McLaren.  This section reminded…

  • Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity, Question 3

    Is God violent? Brian begins this section by admitting that he has a big problem.  It helped his new kind of Christianity to assert that the Bible is our cultural library rather than authoritative constitution, but he still has to wrestle with the fact that this library contains many bloody books.  In Brian’s words, he…

  • Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity, Interlude

    The Defining Issue Before I examine Brian’s next question, I think it is important to interact with the foundational thesis which grounds everything else he says in this book.  Brian’s underlying point is that what Christians call the Creation-Fall-Redemption narrative actually starts with Plato and was adopted later by imperial Rome.  It is this “Greco-Roman…

  • Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity, Question 1

    What is the overarching story line of the Bible? Kuyperians such as Al Wolters (Creation Regained) Neal Plantinga, (Engaging God’s World), and myself (Heaven is a Place on Earth) have argued rather persuasively that the evangelical church can free itself from Platonism by recovering the biblical story of creation, fall, and redemption.  So I was…

  • Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity, Introduction

    I read the introductory three chapters of A New Kind of Christianity, and so far it’s an updated version of the Brian we’ve seen before.  He claims to be “a mild-mannered guy” who is only looking for a new way to be a Christian that will boost the declining numbers in our churches, and he…

  • this I believe

    I am doing some theological consulting for a church that is revising its doctrinal statement, and I’m collecting samples of solid or strange statements of faith.  If your church’s doctrinal statement makes you cry for either of these reasons, would you mind emailing it or its weblink to me? (mwittmer@cornerstone.edu). By the way, it is…

  • evangelical philosophers

    I’ve been teaching apologetics for the past two weeks, and the experience prompted me to reflect on the current state of evangelical philosophy.  I write this as an outsider—I took a few doctoral classes and passed a comp in philosophy, but my expertise is in historical and systematic theology.  These are only general observations, written…

  • chicken s*** for the soul

    I’ve been reading Victor Stenger’s new book, The New Atheism, and found his eschatology to be interesting if not exactly inspiring.  He writes: “Atheism offers no promise of salvation or eternal life.  This life is all we have.  Most people consider that depressing and unappealing…If you accept atheist materialism, then you have to learn to…

  • who is carrying who?

    English majors:  should this title end in “who” or “whom”?  My initial thought is “whom,” but then I think that this is one of those cases where the right answer is the opposite of what you think, unless I’m out-thinking myself.  I’d be happy for any help here, either with the grammar or the more…