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Title: Across the Spectrum: Understanding Issues in Evangelical Theology by Gregory A. Boyd, Paul R. Eddy ISBN: 0-8010-2276-2 Publisher: Baker Academic Pub. Date: 01 May, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 2.53 (17 reviews)
Rating: 1
Summary: Violates letter & spirit of historic creeds and confessions
Comment: If an author's plot is worthy, it will stand on its own merits.
In this case, the plot is unworthy. It totters on its demerits.
What Mr. Kuruzovich is innocent of is the crucial fact that historic evangelical confessions were clear in affirming cardinal truths while rejecting heretical alternatives in the same document. Never did they use the approach of this book in placing Right and Wrong side by side with no verdict. They always boldly declared (even at the risk of life & limb) this is right/acceptable; this other is wrong/unacceptable.
Essential doctrines encompass much more than the skeletal Nicene or Apostles' Creeds. Anyone like myself, a student of Reformation History, only has to look at the documents and see how the Protestant churches contrasted Biblical truth with the heterodox positions. Orthodoxy was upheld as correct. Unorthodoxy was condemned and rejected as invalid and incorrect in no uncertain terms.
For one of the few times in church history, a book like this has dared to place Orthodox and Heterodox on the same pages and label both/either correct. Nothing is flagged as incorrect. It's fine to affirm or reject an error-free bible? Both will fly across the sky in Heaven's eye?
What would the Church Fathers and Reformers think of us watering down their unambiguous stand for Jesus' own truth? How far have we fallen?
Rating: 2
Summary: Pastor Boyd
Comment: Excellent book detailing the four main viewpoints of foreknowledge/predesitnation. Easy to read and comprehend. For that I give it two stars. Recommended for those studying the topic. It really does not get overwhelming for the lay person.
One warning: Pastor Boyd's "open theology" viewpoint leaves me absolutely awestruck that such a learned man could be so in error.
Pastor Boyd is selling a man-centered viewpoint of God that plays perfectly into the selfish, "Me-First" generation of growing evangelical Christians. It sure has translated into large crowds in his church. His mantra is: "I have choice... and God doesn't know who is going to be saved." Ultimately, such teaching leads a "seeker" or an immature Christian to have a far too small picture of a sovereign God and a much too large sense of human control and power than the bible teaches. Christians are merely the clay. God is the potter. (2 Cor. 4 and Romans Ch. 9)
Boyd lifts sections of Old Testament scripture where God rhetorically asks questions such as "I didn't know man could be so wicked" and "I never imagined man could do this" and builds a theology around non-literal speech. See Isaiah 4:4-5 for an example that Boyd likes to use: God said He didn't expect bad grapes to grow where he thought good grapes would grow. Boyd's conclusion: God doesn't know the future. Baloney. The author of the Bible, the Holy Spirit, is merely getting the reader to think. By taking isolated verses out of context, Boyd fails to accept the bible's consistent message of how God has revealed His complete omniscience, if no other place, through continual, countless examples of fulfilled prophecies. If God doesn't know the future, how did Zechariah know that the Messiah would ride into Jerusalem on a donkey? (Zechariah 9:9) 450 years before it happened !! There are hundreds of more examples in the bible of God detailing history before it happens and the events happening. Daniel Chapter 11 was exactly fulfilled in the years before Christ's first coming. Boyd chooses to ignore the obvious lessons of prophecy and pick on the Holy Spirit's poetic speech upon which to build his doctrines.
Boyd is growing a mega-church here in the Twin Cities area ala... Rick Warren and Bill Hybels. Like Saddleback and Willow Creek, the church growth is through worldly seekers attracted because of an incomplete picture of God and a drastically superinflated picture of man. (These mega-pastors know that a solid, true biblical message will be largely ignored so they have gone off and invented an approach that will play to the crowd. They are more like used car salesmen than biblical pastors!! )
This distorted approach to evangelism fits perfectly with Revelation Ch. 3 and the Church of Laodicea which is neither hot nor cold. These kind of churches hold a form of godliness but deny the power thereof. Such messages tickle people's ears but are rubbish, dung. Paul warned against such teachers who preach to people with itching ears. (2nd Timothy 4:3-5).
Buyer beware of Open Theology. Broad is the way that leads to destruction. Few find the narrow way.
Rating: 1
Summary: It seems to treat Christian Faith like an academic subject
Comment: This book made for interesting reading. I am a college student and this reminded me of reading one of my assigned textbooks. It gave me lots of information I was not aware of before. It also gave the liberal and convervative perspectives on issues leaving the student to choose.
While this might work for college ethics or philosophy, I am not comfortable with treating the Christian faith like one of these academic subjects. When the conservative view is God knows for certain all our free futures in detail and the liberal view is God does not, how can these divergencies be reconciled with the Bible? I guess I'm just not scholarly enough to figure out how.
The book comes across as too much a product of academia and not teaching explicitly what the Bible says in some pretty important areas like afterlife, inerrancy, who will be saved and God's foreknowledge.
I would not recommend this book to my friends. It sends too much of a mixed message that may be a stumbling block to some.
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Title: Is God to Blame?: Moving Beyond Pat Answers to the Problem of Evil by Gregory A. Boyd ISBN: 0830823948 Publisher: InterVarsity Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: God of the Possible: A Biblical Introduction to the Open View of God by Gregory A. Boyd ISBN: 080106290X Publisher: Baker Books Pub. Date: 01 April, 2000 List Price(USD): $13.99 |
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Title: The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God by Clark H. Pinnock, Richard Rice, John Sanders, William Hasker, Clark Pinnock ISBN: 0830818529 Publisher: InterVarsity Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 1994 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Four Views on Eternal Security by J. Matthew Pinson, Stanley N. Gundry ISBN: 0310234395 Publisher: Zondervan Publishing Company Pub. Date: 01 May, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.99 |
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Title: Bible Doctrine by Jeff Purswell, Wayne Grudem ISBN: 0310222338 Publisher: Zondervan Publishing Company Pub. Date: 01 July, 1999 List Price(USD): $29.99 |
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