I don't have time to listen to Doug's lack of articulation, but judging by the site and that you linked back to it, they will soon come and hunt you down.

This CRN is quite the boondoggle. A handful of intellectual lightweights out to be thought police for ODM (online discernment ministries).

A quick search revealed that they had no posts on "Remonstrans" or "dissidens." I'm certain that they will be anxious for another faux trophy to hang on their wall.

Let me get this straight. They don't believe that I have the right to argue against another person's position, but they reserve the right to critique me for doing so? This is like playing Monopoly with an eight year old (I've got one). Urchins of this age often operate by a different sets of rules or abruptly change the rules for their on advantage.

Are we to believe that this wacky application of post modernity is merely a premature arresting of intellectual development?

Naaa...Na.Na...Naaa...Naaaah! (I suppose they would understand this argument better.)

Yep. Under "How We Seek To Be Different" they list this as their prime directive:

1. refrain from using terms of condescension

Too bad they didn't send a copy of that to Doug.

exlibris:

They don't believe that I have the right to argue against another person's position, but they reserve the right to critique me for doing so?

Actually, if you read CRN.Info, you would know that the characterization you've made is untrue. There is a big difference between "arguing against another person's position" and "arguing against another person" - one is conversation and the other is character assassination. What CRN.Info primarily deals with (when addressing ODM's) is denunciation of: slander, uncharitable characterization of other Christians, legalistic focus on externals and gross hypocrisy. (See their mission statement)

It is one thing to "argue against another person's position" and something completely different to a) uncharitably declare individuals or large groups of Christians "apostate" for specious reasons; and then b) trash them at will because they're "no longer Imago Dei".

So, while I disagree with a number of articles I've read on Remonstrans in the past, I've not seen the amount of gross nastiness as displayed by Slice of Laodicea, CRN, Apprising "Ministries", etc.

Chris L.,

Try this syllogism on for style:

All Hypocrites act in contradiction to their stated beliefs.

CRN acts on their "Glossary" page in contradiction to their "How we seek to be different" page.

Therefore CRN is hypocritical.

Your little Glossary (yes, I know these are not your definitions - but they are the caricaturization of ODM views) , and a good bit of the rest of your site demonstrates that in your crusade against the condescending, arrogant and escalating you have come what you supposedly abhor. Now, isn't that special? Your own license to be self-righteous.

You have your own ODMoODM (Online Discernment Ministry of Online Discernment Ministries). Please put away the pretensions.

If only I could live in a world not devoid of humor...

exlibris,

Your argument is unsound, which should be embarrassing for you.

All A's (hypocrites) are B's (act in etc.)

C (CRN's etc.) is B.

Therefore, C is A.

Your conclusion does not follow. Your A should be B, and your B should be A, in order for you to conclude that C is A.

Perhaps for homework you can figure out which fallacy you committed.

It helps when make snarky comments involving syllogisms to actually offer a sound argument, else it turns your snarkiness into something comic.

Pfft.

Victor shall I rebuff your statement about snarkiness for your lack of subject verb agreement? But, I understood what you meant to say. I'm sorry about the syllogistic faux pas.

Yes, when you are not being careful in stating the syllogism, the undistributed middle can sneak in there. Turn my argument around to its intended sense, and you should have little difficulty in seeing the point.

CRN violates their own journalistic style sheet with their publication of the glossary.

Go ahead Chris, and think that you got let off on a technicality. Your(?) site is full of contradictions. It is beside the fact that your response does not abide by CRN's stated operating procedure. Your first was appropriate, but your second response was . . . what was that? arrogance, or condescension??? Take your pick.

Apparently, the use of condescension, arrogance, and escalation is no vice in the war against condescension, arrogance and escalation.

Isn't this sheer ideology?

arrgh!..actually, Victor, you forgot the participial form for "make". . . my bad.

I must need to get a full-time editor for my posts.

Right. I should have had "making" or "you," but such errors on blogs perturb me not.

I do think, rendered valid, your argument is sound. I was simply objecting to its form.

I have not kept up here, partly b/c I see Dissidens focus of late as a sheer waste of time and attention.

Well, I do need to do more of the exercises in Copi and Cohen. That way I can work out on the intellectually heavy stuff like CRN and Doug P.

It was really nice of you to pop by and set a few things straight, Victor.

Do you have a list of interesting things we ought to be paying attention to instead? What is your personal opinion of Cafe Perplexa?

Unk,

I don't spend much time online, so I'm not really up on Cafe Perplexa or whatever/whoever you're referencing.

I have interesting books I'm reading, but I'm not sure that other people should pay attention to them.

victor eremita:

I have not kept up here, partly b/c I see Dissidens' focus of late as a sheer waste of time and attention.

You might think otherwise if Emergent elements were working their way into your church.

danofsteel,

I interact with people who are influenced by contemporary theology. Few people read the crap that Dissidens is looking at; how many articles have you read that cite Tony? There are more credible academic and theological sources to draw from if one wants to defend to espouse some form of postmodern theology.

Moreover, Dissidens's style and tone of address will help no one interested in the ideas he is attacking; it will turn them off instantly, and he has no problem with that. And he clearly is not interested in substantive theological critique because, as he has rightly noted, the object does not deserve or merit such attention. So I highly doubt that there is some "pastoral" much less theological value to what Dissidens is doing. He's tickling himself and his fans while venting his spleen on a bunch of theological embarrassments.
I would be deeply concerned if any leader of my church consulted remonstrans for info on and critiques of the emergent church and/or postmodern theology.

Substantive essays might interact with academically credible defenders of post-modern theology and/or the emergent church.

victor,

I never heard of Tony (et al) before dissidens mentioned him. I know no followers of the emergent movement.

However, I see a lot of the elements of the emergent movement in mainstream neoevangelism as well as fundamentalism. They may both repudiate the more blatantly idiotic aspects of the emergents, but both groups are headed in the same direction.

I have no idea whether dissidens agrees with me on that assessment.

dan:

Yes and no.

I think Wells makes a helpful point: “Modernism adapted Christianity to high culture. Emergents are adapting it to popular culture.” [Courage, p. 20]

So there is a legitimate continuity here. Fundagelicals never understood culture. Fundagelicals made the crooked straight and the rough places plain and for the Emergents. In a very real sense fundagelicals have populated this movement by producing a generation of philistines.

But there is still a huge discontinuity. We began our discussion of Emergence with a reading of Carson, Campolo, McLaren and Conder. If you read Wright and Marshall you see there is a very real tear in the notion of truth.

This is something I brought to Remonstrans when I dragged in some Journey folk. They resented the fact that I took their claims at face value--as though they were objectively falsifiable. Notice they did not take exception to the content of my criticism, they took me to task mostly for “totally eschewing any attempt at dialouge [sic] with the subjects in under observation”, and by dismissing their subjective assessments and “variants of the Christian faith”. It doesn't matter if the sermonette makes no sense so long as they could tell me how meaningful it was to them.

http://remonstrans.net/index.php/2008/04/07/my_journey

This is where the sofas come in. The sofas are important. The sofas are the engines that produce dialogue. I realize dialogue was a favorite refrain of neo-evangelicals, but they at least had an objective goal, wrong though it was.

It is a very different thing to hear people tell you that you didn’t understand what you saw at church because you didn’t ask them how they felt about it. Truth is not contained in a text or a liturgy, truth emerges from clashing narratives.

I never let that happen.

As for fundagelicals helping populating this new movement . . .

If I had a dime for every time I criticized some p(r)ogram*, schtick, or stunt in my corner of the fundamentalist enclave and was told by some sideways glancing jut-jawed fundamentalist that he didn't like my attitude or it was quietly intimated that I should be a team player; well, let's just say I'd make an offer to buy Schloss Remonstrans (or was that Schloss dissidens?)for a handsome price.

Ya' think those Wilde productions are helping us produce a crop of emergents?

*I just adore the way pomo's use parentheses. It's sooo intertextual.

Not only the Wilde productions, not even all their other dilettante performances, but their entire liturgy taken as a corpus. What was lost with Crosby, Garlock, Sunday and Bell will not all of a sudden be missed because we’ve fallen into a sofa.

If we had a generation that had an understanding of and an affection for permanent things, Emergents would have no scam to offer. God and truth did not change when we flipped over our calendars. Human nature has not changed. The eschaton has not been redefined. The eschatological hope has not been amended. The church still exists to minister to fallen, tempted and suffering saints. If this had been the preoccupation of fundagelicals for the last century, Emergents would be laughed from the room.

I think every passing year exposes the stupidity of ignoring Machen.

Emergent philosophical pretentions are implausible, Emergent leaders are laughable and the alternative they offer is parochial. This can be overlooked only by the gullible, humorless and provincial.

By which I mean our kids.