Neo-Orthodoxy - Saving Jesus From The Church

Usually when I speak with Christians about neo-orthodoxy, I get a glazed look. So it is easier to talk about it in the context of a book I recently finished, Saving Jesus From The Church, (2009) by Robin N. Meyers, a pastor and a philosophy professor at Oklahoma City University. Dr. Meyers believes science rules out miracles and thus it is intellectually dishonest to believe in the Incarnation, the Virgin Birth, the miracles of Christ, Original Sin, the Blood Atonement forgiving sins, the Resurrection, the Ascension, eternal life, or to accept the Bible as truth on these points.

Yet Pastor Meyers passionately affirms the resurrection - the continuation of the teachings of Jesus in his followers. He promotes a faith in living the teachings of Jesus apart from beliefs. He urges a discipleship of sacrifice, disconected from worship. He pleads for a Christianity of compassion which says nothing about sin. He asks us to enter into a relationship with God and each other, though it is unclear if Meyers believes in a God beyond a great mystery - the wholly other - certainly not the infinite personal God of the Bible. As with other neo-orthodox, Meyers wants to use the historic words of Christianity and the Bible in a modern sense to trigger an experience leading to an authentic man in an existential sense.

Meyers finds nugets of the teachings of Jesus, the sage, in the New Testament, but they must be sifted out from the nonsense the Church threw in to make up the Christ, a false God to be worshiped. That is why Jesus must be saved, or rescued from the Church. Meyers finds the work of the Jesus Seminar especially helpful where liberal and neo-orthodox scholars voted with colored beads for which passages of the New Testament were true and acceptable, and which passages were made up by the Church and thus to be rejected.

Meyers does well to reject a dead orthodoxy that merely recites beliefs without sacrificial discipleship, and Christians should heed this. However, Meyers sets up a false dichotomy when he asserts that an intellectually honest living faith must reject miracles, doctrine, or worshiping Christ as God. Meyers ignores solid scholars who stand up for, and explain, an orthodox Historic Christianity.

While some Christians might be tempted to condemn Meyers, and those like him, it would be better to love them and be prepared to give an answer for the hope we have with gentleness and respect (1 Peter 3:15) by explaining how Christianity promotes reason and by living our Christian faith in such a way that wins others.