Coming Out of the Canker Closet

I happened to be browsing the redoubtable Steve Hays' blog, Triablogue, the other day and came upon a post that was reproduced in its entirety from an Al Mohler article entitled "It Takes One to Know One - Liberalism as Atheism" . The article is about Gerd Ludemann, a one-time professing Christian scholar and theologian. Now, I wouldn't know Gerd Ludemann if I tripped over him at an apostates convention, but I was rather interested in what he had to say about his ex-associates in the liberal camp, and the implications for the rest of us. This is an excerpt from the article:

Having come face to face with his unbelief, Ludemann has now turned his guns on church bureaucrats and liberal theologians. Many church officials, Ludemann claims, no longer believe in the creeds, but simply "interpret" the words into meaninglessness. Liberal theologians, he asserts, try to reformulate Christian doctrine into something they can believe, and still claim to be Christians. He now describes liberal theology as "contemptible."

Looking back on the whole project of liberal theology, Professor Ludemann offered an amazing reflection: "I don't think Christians know what they mean when they proclaim Jesus as Lord of the world. That is a massive claim. If you took that seriously, you would probably have to be a fundamentalist. If you can't be a fundamentalist, then you should give up Christianity for the sake of honesty."

It's a real comfort to lowly and bumbling little sheep such as I to know that there are shepherd/theologians like Dr. Mohler who haven't sold out to liberalism and who can smell a rat and call it the verminous rodent that it is. And it's especially pleasing that he does it in this case by using the words of an apostate and heretic who had been lurking around in wolf's clothing gnawing on the sheep for years.

The point isn't Ludemann's former hypocrisy. He has, after all, come out of the canker closet - so to speak. The problem is not the rats that fall over the rail but the ones that stay behind and chew holes in the hull. Dr. Mohler masterfully calls attention to the sorry state of the fifth column of false professors that still inhabit the Christian clerisy. And he does it out of the mouth of one of their own. I was a tad worried about the tone of my own blogpost "Get a Real Job" , but I'm feeling a lot easier now that I've heard someone with real understanding make a similar point.

But the indictment is not just against the liberal theologians. It is against every member of the church from the theologians to the lowly laity who fails to not only adhere to, but also to defend vigorously the fundamentals of the faith.

Now, if we could just get the Pyromaniac to tell us what they are...