MacArthur on Emerging

This interview with Dr. John MacArthur has stirred up a lot of controversy. MacArthur is quite direct in his assessment of the emerging church movement.

Let me just cut to the chase on this one: [Doug] Pagitt is a Universalist. What he was saying is real simple. He was saying when you die your spirit goes to God and judgment means that whatever was not right about you, whatever was bad about you, whatever was substantially lacking about you, gets all resolved. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a Buddhist, a Hindu or a Muslim—doesn’t matter whether you’re a Christian really; we’re all going to end up in this wonderful, warm and fuzzy relationship with God. That’s just classic universalism.

I think you know it’s most helpful, Paul, to go back and kind of recast how we view these people. He’s not a pastor; he’s not a Christian; that’s not a church. When you call yourself a Christian and you call yourself a pastor and you say you have a church, all of that has to be—to be legitimate—defined biblically. And if it’s not, that’s not a church and you’re not a pastor and you’re not even a Christian.

Not to be missed is Pagitt's "response" to MacArthur's interview. The comments (they read in reverse chronological order, so you'll have to scroll to the bottom of the page and read up to see them in sequence - guess that's how it's done in a "conversation") are quite interesting to read.