Thursday, July 16, 2009

Salvation of Souls as the Great Western Heresy?

Richard Mouw:
In her opening address to the Episcopal Church's recent General Convention, the Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, the church's presiding bishop, made a special point of denouncing what she labeled "the great Western heresy"—the teaching, in her words, "that we can be saved as individuals, that any of us alone can be in right relationship with God." This "individualist focus," she declared, "is a form of idolatry."
Read Mouw's response.

Update: See also R. Scott Clark's response, correctly labeling her view as "over-realized eschatology." And in a bit of an understatement . . . :
It’s not self-evident how failing to keep the new law of the environmentalist left constitutes denial of the doctrines of the holy Trinity, the two-natures of Christ, the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Christ and or the doctrine of his bodily return.