Another Gospel?: A Lifelong Christian Seeks Truth in Response to Progressive Christianity

by Alisa Childers

Feeding the hungry. Clothing the naked. Loving the outcast. This is what was modeled to me as genuine Christianity. It’s just what Christians did. They prayed, they read their Bibles, and they served. It wasn’t perfect, but it was the real thing.

progressive Christians view the Bible as primarily a human book and emphasize personal conscience and practices rather than certainty and beliefs. They are also very open to redefining, reinterpreting, or even rejecting essential doctrines of the faith like the Virgin Birth, the deity of Jesus, and his bodily resurrection.

There is no “my truth” when it comes to God.

it’s not enough to simply know the facts anymore . . . we have to learn how to think them through—to assess information and come to reasonable conclusions after engaging religious ideas logically and intellectually.

Kruger and Köstenberger demonstrate that the core canon was established as Scripture among Christians by the end of the first century.[12] This is such a powerful point because these supposed “other” Gospels weren’t written until the second and third centuries.[13] How could the later books compete with the four Gospels if those other books didn’t even exist yet?

much of the current evangelical culture has become a cult of personality.

the human race has a problem too . . . a sin problem. There is only one cure, and sadly, many Christians throw away the cure because of a bad church experience.

biblical faith is not a blind leap; it involves knowledge—that God has spoken and is trustworthy.”

Unbelief is a decision of the will, but doubt tends to bubble up within the context of faith.

I would later learn that biblical faith is trust—and that trust is based on good evidence.

Denying yourself does not mean tweaking your behavior here and there. It is saying “no” to your deepest sense of who you are, for the sake of Christ. . . .

Quote by Sam Allberry

Another fundamental aspect of critical theory is its approach to gaining knowledge and apprehending truth. Through intersectionality, it prioritizes “lived experience” and identity rather than rationality in discovering and determining what is true.[12] In this paradigm, people’s lack of privilege and their oppressed status give them greater discernment and a more complete view of the world.

the problem with critical theory is that it isn’t just a set of ideas that influences how someone thinks about oppression. It functions as a worldview, a way of seeing the world that answers questions like Who are we? Why are we here? What is wrong with the world? How can this problem be fixed? What is the meaning of life? When people adopt the tenets of critical theory, their answers to these questions are filtered through that lens. It’s no wonder, then, that critical theory stands in contradiction to Christianity at many points.

when someone accepts the ideas of critical theory, it can begin to erode their Christian worldview by taking their eyes off the fundamental truths of who God is and how he works in the world.

Historically, Christians have viewed good works and acts of justice to be a fruit of their convictions. Believing the right things about God produces right actions. However, the emergent church flipped this on its head. Things like community, friendship, justice, and unity became the foundation upon which one’s faith is built. In other words, what someone does became more important than what someone believes.

progressive Christianity is not simply a shift in the Christian view of social issues. It’s not simply permission to embrace messiness and authenticity in Christian life. It’s not simply a response to doubt, legalism, abuse, or hypocrisy. It’s an entirely different religion—with another Jesus—and another gospel.

“You ought to say plainly that you do not believe the gospel of Christ. For to believe what you please, and not to believe what you please, is to believe yourselves, and not the gospel.”

Quote by Augustine

These men falsify the oracles of God, and prove themselves evil interpreters of the good word of revelation. They also overthrow the faith of many, by drawing them away, under a pretence of [superior] knowledge, from Him who founded and adorned the universe; as if, forsooth, they had something more excellent and sublime to reveal, than that God who created the heaven and the earth, and all things that are therein.

Quote by Irenaeus, referring to self-professing Christians in 1st century. Gnostic heretics share a lot in common with progressive "Christians."

Like wheat and tares, true ideas and false ideas have grown together throughout church history, and it’s up to faithful Christians to be watchful and diligent to compare every idea with the Word of God and see if it lines up.

the topic of false teachers and false teaching is addressed directly in twenty-two of twenty-seven New Testament books. Encouragement to keep the true faith and to practice discernment is mentioned in every single one.

with their denial of the atoning work of Jesus on the cross, many progressive Christians take it one step further: Jesus is no longer our Savior but an example of how we can do good works in the world and forgive others. That has become the highest virtue, and all other truth claims are judged by it. Thus the progressive gospel is Jesus + social justice.

There are many striking similarities between old-fashioned Gnosticism and progressive Christianity. With its use of Christian language, sacraments, and Scripture, and its pursuit of self-acceptance, it thrives on viewing itself as a more enlightened and mature version of Christianity.

But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.

Gal 1:8

According to both conservative and liberal scholars, we have over five thousand manuscripts in Greek, the language in which it was written.

the New Testament has more copies and earlier copies than any work of ancient classical literature.

[Jesus] has the resources of heaven available, yet he fights by using the authority of the Scriptures. . . . His position is unequivocal: “You’re trying to tempt me, but the Scriptures have spoken. That’s the end of the conversation.”

It’s life apart from the love and goodness of God and under the complete control and domination of sin. Packer remarked, “It’s difficult to talk about hell because it is more awful than we have words for.”

hell is not some kind of divine torture chamber in which God sadistically enjoys the torment of those who reject him. It’s God giving them their way. Hell is a place for those who reject God. And God will not force anyone into his Kingdom who doesn’t want to be under his rule.

Despite the abundance of biblical testimony, the one thing that virtually all progressive Christian thought leaders agree on is that Jesus didn’t die to pay the penalty for our sin. He was crucified by an angry mob for speaking truth to power, and his love and forgiveness toward those who killed him is the example we all should follow.

The wrath of God means that there will be justice for the victims of the Holocaust. The wrath of God means that ISIS won’t get away with its atrocities. The wrath of God means that one day all evil and sin will be quarantined and that those who have put their trust in Jesus will be entirely separated from wickedness and safe from the clutches of suffering and corruption forever.

Progressive Christians assume they are painting God in a more tolerant light by denying the substitutionary atonement of Jesus. But in reality, they are simply constructing a codependent and impotent god who is powerless to stop evil. That god is not really good. That god is not the God of the Bible.

We don’t get to completely redefine who God is and how he works in the world and call it Christian. We don’t get to make the rules and do what is right in our own eyes and yet claim to be followers of Jesus. Our only option is to do it his way or not at all.