There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to one hope when you were called—one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all (Ephesians 4:4-6).

A Shift Is Launched

This is a brief follow-up to the previous Emergent Church: The Shift To Panentheism. In this piece we take all this a little further as we more closely examine a continuing shift into the “New Light” of the growing panentheism of the Emergent Church. Below we will look at a bit from an e-book called Quantum Spirituality: A Postmodern Apologetic by the Emergent theologian Leonard Sweet. First, here is what we read about this work directly from Sweet’s own website:

Quantum Spirituality: A Postmodern Apologetic
Already called "a spirituality classic," Quantum Spirituality: A Postmodern Apologetic is the book that launched what today is called "postmodern publishing" as well as Len's ministry to postmodern culture. A book written in a circle, the reader is invited to begin anywhere, stop anytime, and end wherever. This was Len's "coming out" book as a postmodern disciple after his 1987 knockdown, drag-out Damascus Road encounter with God, who (as he describes it) "knocked me off my high academic horse and said, 'Sweet, are you going to get a mission for the world you wish you had or the world that's actually out there (http://www.leonardsweet.com/Quantum/ ,emphasis added).

Lighthouse Trails Research further tells us that “Leonard Sweet (endorsed by Rick Warren) thanks New Agers for helping him find this ‘New Light’.” For those who may not be familiar with Sweet, here is a little more background information from his website:

Currently the E. Stanley Jones Professor of Evangelism at Drew University, Madison, NJ and a Visiting Distinguished Professor at George Fox University, Portland, Oregon, Len has been Vice President of Academic Affairs and Dean of the Theological School at Drew University for five years, Previous to Drew Len served for eleven years as President and Professor of Church History at United Theological Seminary, Dayton, Ohio. Prior to 1985, Len was Provost of Colgate Rochester/Bexley Hall/Crozer Divinity School in Rochester, New York. Involved in leadership positions in the United Methodist Church, Len has been chosen to speak at various Jurisdictional and General Conferences as well as the 1996 World Methodist Congress in Rio de Janeiro. He also serves as a consultant to many of America's denominational leaders and agencies. He is a member of the West Virginia Annual Conference.

Founder and President of SpiritVenture Ministries (SVM), in 1995 Len launched Sweet's SoulCafe, a spirituality newsletter for postmoderns that was purchased by Broadman&Holman Publishing. His privately published notebook ChartNotes sold-out even before it was published. Current projects include a biography of Phoebe Palmer in the American religion biography series, a textbook on preaching entitled Giving Blood: The Art and Craft of Abductive Preaching, The Leadership Myth: Seven Emerging Modes and Codes (with Joseph R. Myers), and Seeing and Being Jesus: A Semiotics of Discipleship (with Dwight Friesen). Len is also working on his first novel (A Postmodern Pilgrim’s Progress), and a multi-media leadership resource yet untitled.

Len has served a term on the council of the American Society of Church History, was an associate editor of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion for ten years, and is a member of numerous professional groups. An honors and Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Richmond, he earned his Master of Divinity degree from Colgate Rochester Divinity School and Ph.D. from the University of Rochester. The recent recipient of honorary doctorates from the University of Richmond (Virginia), Baker University (Kansas), Otterbein College (Ohio), Coe College (Iowa), and Lebanon Valley College (Pennsylvania), Len has held distinguished lectureships at various colleges, universities and seminaries, and has presented academic papers before major professional societies. He is a frequent speaker at national conferences, state conventions, pastors' schools, retreats, and a featured columnist for REV. magazine (http://www.leonardsweet.com/biocv.asp, emphasis added).

The Buford And McLaren Connection

As you can plainly see it’s not like Sweet is some kind of novice theologian. He has had ample theological training and experience to understand what Christianity is, and has been historically, as evidenced by his various training and works noted above. One of Sweet’s other books is Carpe Manana, and those of you familiar with the Church Growth Movement will recognize the name of Bob Buford who is founder of Leadership Network. Of Sweet’s book Buford says, “I think of Len Sweet as the icebreaker for the 21st-century-church - breaking a path through frozen ideas and methods to the new realities that are shaping the world to come" http://www.leonardsweet.com/sweetened/books.asp, emphasis added

Another Christian leader more germane to our particular work here recently at Apprising Ministries is Emergent Church theologian and pastor Brian McLaren who has written with Sweet and endorses Carpe Manana as well. Emergent Church Guru Brian McLaren says:

"I am a better pastor and a better Christian because of Len's brilliant and stimulating work. Carpe Manana is a...valuable continuation of the conversation he has been having with the church in America for many years."

The Whole Of Creation Is The Body Of Christ

So now we turn our attention more specifically to the “brilliant and stimulating work” emerging through this “conversation Sweet has been having with the church in America for many years” that by his own admission has made Brian McLaren such “a better pastor and a better Christian.” The following comes underneath the subheading “With All of Nature: Priests of Creation”:

New Light embodiment means to be “in connection” and “information” with all of creation. New Light communities extend the sense of connectionalism to creation and see themselves as members of an ecological community encompassing the whole of creation. “This is my body” is not an anthropocentric metaphor. Theologian/feminist critic Sallie McFague has argued persuasively for seeing Earth, in a very real sense, as much as a part of the body of Christ as humans.65 We are all earthlings. Indeed, in the biblical view of creation human earthlings do not stand at the apex of God’s handiwork. Above us are the angels.

The medieval great chain of being preserved this emphasis by placing humans at the midpoint, not at the peak. The world of nature has an identity and purpose apart from human benefit. But we constitute together a cosmic body of Christ.66(124, emphasis added)

If you turn to page 324 and check this footnote 66 you will see this idea originates from Matthew Fox, in his book The Cosmic Christ: The Coming of the Cosmic Christ: The Healing of Mother Earth and the Birth of a Global Renaissance. Here’s a little bit of interesting information about A New Reformation the latest book by Fox which will give you a little bit better indication what all of this New Light of the New Christianity is emerging into:

In Fox's new book called "A New Reformation!" he proclaims that we are in fact confronted with two churches: one expressed by the image of the Punitive Father, personified by a rigidly hierarchical church structure, repression of the feminine, spreading of homophobia and the elimination of internal dissent; and the other expressed by the feminine figure of Wisdom, personified by a Mother/Father God of justice and compassion. It is time for Christians to choose whom it will follow: an angry exclusionary god or the loving open path of wisdom (http://www.matthewfox.org/sys-tmpl/door/, emphasis added).

The Global Family Of New Christianity

Anyone who has been following the whole of the seeker sensitive Church Growth Movement and its various sects recognizes that language. So what we have here with Leonard Sweet in particular is a Christian theologian referencing a coming healing of our mother the Earth and the birth of the global family of God in agreement with a teacher of New Age spirituality. Again we see clear reason why the vicarious penal substitutionary atonement would be of no concern to men like Sweet and McLaren as in a panentheistic world view all of creation—including the earth itself—is already all part of God anyway. Then Leonard Sweet, our postmodern Emergent “Christian” theologian, goes on to inform us:

In an ecological model of the church, the earth is not separate from us; indeed, we are in symbiotic relationship with the earth. Creation spirituality is of tremendous help here in weaning us from this homocentric warp...[so] woven together are the destinies of heaven and earth that it is impossible for us to sin against one part of the body without doing damage to the whole body. No one suffers alone, as Pythagoras perceived when he said that if there is but one suffering soul in the universe, all other souls will be affected with suffering until that one suffering soul is restored to health.69 An ecological model of community is something on which even sociobiologists can agree with Christians.

God, you are my God, I pine for you; my heart thirsts for you, my body longs for you, as a land parched, dreary and waterless. Wilderness sojourner/psalmist David

Quantum spirituality bonds us to all creation as well as to other members of the human family. New Light pastors are what Arthur Peacocke calls “priests of creation”70--earth ministers who can relate the realm of nature to God, who can help nurture a brother-sister relationship with the living organism called Planet Earth. This entails a radical doctrine of embodiment of God in the very substance of creation. The OxfordDictionary of the Chnctian Church (sic)(1974) identifies the difference between pantheism and panentheism: Pantheism is “the belief or theory that God and the universe are identical”; panentheism is “the belief that the Being of God includes and penetrates the whole universe, so that every part of it exists in Him, but. . . that His Being is more than, and is not exhausted by, the Universe.”77 New Light spirituality does more than settle for the created order, as many forms of New Age pantheism do. But a spirituality that is not in some way entheistic (whether pan- or trans-), that does not extend to the spirit-matter of the cosmos, is not Christian. A quantum spirituality can in no way define God out of existence (124,125).

And then finally on page 261 Sweet finishes up his description of the New Light panentheism of the Quantum shift in theology of the Emergent Church when he tells us:

Quantum spirituality is nothing more than your “new account of everything old”--your part of the “I Am” that we are.

No Need For A New Birth

As this antichrist doctrine is taken to its logical conclusion, there is now no need for the New Birth because if all creation is already a part of God, then at best Christ’s sacrifice on the cross simply reconciled the global family of the cosmos to back to God. For this would have to be the interpretation forced upon verse 6 of our opening text by the panentheistic world view — one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. But this text is only speaking to those believers who have been born again by the will of the Father through acceptance of the true Gospel of Jesus Christ and now are indwelt by God the Holy Spirit.

In fact, if we have one verse alone from the Bible that destroys this whole panentheistic New Light argument it would be Romans 8:9 — You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. We see here that this is a conditional statement, if the Spirit of God lives in you. Simple logic tells you that the possibilty then exists for the truth of the b part of this verse — if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. Therefore one is not in Christ, and if one is not in Christ then God is not in him.

No, this New Light Quantum shift to panentheism by Emergent Church theologians is nothing new, it is not light, and certainly isn’t Christian theology because it simply cannot be supported by the Bible. And I again draw your attention to the Zondervan National Pastor’s Conference 2006 where men who hold to eastern philosophy—or worse—this kind of panentheistic denial of the true nature and saving work of our great God and Savior will be teaching your pastors and youth ministers under the cloak of orthodoxy.

And yet it seems The New Downgrade No-Controversy continues with nary a voice raised in opposition.