Evangelicals Accused of Heresy

http://www.anglican-mainstream.net/2011/07/21/evangelicals-accused-of-heresy/

Evangelicals accused of heresy

July 21st, 2011 Posted in Evangelicalism, Heresy | Comments Off

From CEN

“EVANGELICALISM TODAY has become the hotbed for error and heresy,” claimed the Rev David Phillips in his final editorial for Crossway, the magazine of the Church Society.


In a series of outspoken comments, Phillips attacked ‘open evangelicals’ for abandoning the inerrancy of scripture, the doctrine of eternal punishment, the biblical condemnation of homosexuality, and the practice of ordaining only men to the Church’s ministry.

Pointing out that whatever their views on the subject, very few open evangelical churches have appointed women as incumbents, Phillips claimed that he could not see “any evidence that the innovation of ordaining women has strengthened the Church, arrested its decline, or led to benefits in family life in our churches or communities. What it has done is foster division.”

He criticised those evangelicals who think there are aspects of St Paul’s teaching that do not carry weight today because they are ‘culturally conditioned’ and argued that in relation to both the ordination of women and homosexual practice arguments were being put forward to justify change which would have been “laughed out of court by our forebears”. Many people, he concluded, have friends or family members who are homosexual and this seems to cloud their judgement.
Referring to the controversial book Love Wins by Rob Bell, Phillips confessed that in his years at the Church Society he had been irritated by having to buy and read the latest theological nonsense but that in this case he was relying on what others had written. Bell’s book, he claimed, is confused. Bell seems to be pushing a universalist line but when challenged has said he is only exploring ideas. “When pastors write books to share their ignorance, you know the Church is in trouble,” Phillips concluded.

At the root of the problem he saw the readiness of too manyevangelicals to make idols, not idols of wood and stone but of ideas. “We construct idols in our minds. People decide that there are certain things in the Bible which they like and certain things which they do not like. God must be what we like and so we construct a picture of God not based on the fullness of what the Bible teaches, but on those bits that fits our thinking. This is idolatry, intellectual idolatry.”