FROM FUNDAMENTALISM TO ECUMENISM: A WARNING ABOUT THE EMERGING CHURCH FROM THE LIFE OF ROBERT WEBBER
Pastor Dale Morgan
FROM FUNDAMENTALISM TO ECUMENISM: A WARNING ABOUT THE EMERGING CHURCH
FROM THE LIFE OF ROBERT WEBBER*
July 2, 2008
By: David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service
The following is from the new book we are finishing up entitled What
about the Emerging Church?
____________________
Robert Webber (1933-2007) was a professor at Wheaton College for about
30 years and taught at Northern Seminary in Chicago for the last seven
years of his life.
He is one of the fathers of the contemplative movement and a very
influential voice in the emerging church. In his book Common Roots
(1978) he argued that the early church era of A.D. 100-500 has "insights
which evangelicals need to recover." Those "insights" included monastic
"contemplative spirituality."
Webber continued this line of thinking in Evangelicals on the Canterbury
Trail: Why Evangelicals Are Attracted to the Liturgical Church (1985),
Ancient-Future Faith: Rethinking Evangelicalism for a Postmodern World
(1999), Younger Evangelicals: Facing the Challenges of the New World
(2002), and The Divine Embrace: Recovering the Passionate Spiritual Life
(2006).
Webber promoted a very broad ecumenism:
"This search for a common heritage allows for the emergence of a new
understanding of unity and diversity. ... So while we are all
Christians, some of us are Roman Catholic Christians, Eastern Orthodox
Christians, Reformation Christians, twentieth-century Christians, or
some other form of modern or postmodern Christians" (Ancient-Future
Faith, pp. 16, 17).
"A goal for evangelicals in the postmodern world is to accept diversity
as a historical reality, but to seek unity in the midst of it. This
perspective will allow us to see Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant
churches as various forms of the one true church..." (p. 85).
"We evangelicals need to turn our backs on the old separatist model" (p.
86).
FROM FUNDAMENTALIST TO ECUMENIST
To get to this radical ecumenical position, Webber traveled far from his
roots. In the books Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail and The Divine
Embrace he described the move away from a strict biblicist position.
Webber grew up in a fundamental Baptist home. His father, who was born
in 1900, was involved in the fundamentalist-modernist controversy and
was a separatist. He left the liberal American Baptist Convention and
joined the Conservative Baptists. Webber's parents were missionaries in
Africa for the first seven years of his life. They moved back to the
States when one of their children became seriously ill and his father
pastored the Montgomeryville Baptist Church, located about 25 miles west
of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After high school Webber attended Bob
Jones University.
Describing his childhood he says:
"I was the kid who couldn't go to the movies, the kid who had to keep
Sunday as a holy day (no sports), the kid who had to watch everything I
did and said. But I wasn't just a preacher's kid. I was also a
fundamentalist Baptist. From an early age, it was thoroughly ingrained
within me that I was both a fundamentalist and a Baptist. Being
Christian wasn't enough. ... Catholics were pagan. Episcopalianism was a
social club. Lutherans had departed from the faith. Presbyterians were
formalistic. And Pentecostals were off-center" (Evangelicals on the
Canterbury Trail, p. 13).
"One central conviction of my parents was that our fundamentalist way
was the only faith that stood in continuity with the New Testament. All
other viewpoints were distorted at best and some, especially Roman
Catholicism, contained no connection with New Testament Christianity
whatsoever" (The Divine Embrace, p. 199).
What he was taught about Rome was true. How did he get from there to the
point where he considered the Roman Catholic Church a genuine church and
the Protestant Reformation "a tragedy"? Amazingly, he describes the
steps in his books.
Lack of Clarity about Personal Salvation
One thing that is missing in the biographical account of his youth is a
biblical testimony of salvation. Never does he give a biblical,
life-changing testimony of being born again and walking with Christ in
sweet fellowship through faith in God's Word. The closest he comes is a
description of an event that occurred when he was 13. His father talked
to him about the need to be baptized. He did not seek baptism because he
had experienced a born again conversion; rather, his father talked him
into it.
"I remember going out on the back porch that night, looking up into the
stars, and asking myself whether or not I really believed, whether or
not I was willing to take up my cross and follow after Christ. The
prospect of my own baptism caused me to choose Christ again in a more
intense way, to determine once more to follow him" (pp. 45, 46).
This is a works orientation to salvation. A determination to follow
Christ is not the same as acknowledging one's utter sinfulness and
surrendering oneself into His care and trusting Him exclusively as one's
Saviour.
Webber described many experiences he had with his students, but he
doesn't give any examples of counseling them about personal salvation.
Consider something that happened to him in 1968, during his first year
of teaching at Wheaton. As Webber was giving proofs for the existence of
God, a student raised his hand and said that he didn't believe that God
exists and that the proofs didn't mean anything to him (Evangelicals on
the Canterbury Trail, p. 27). When Webber asked the class if anyone else
agreed, "several other hands slipped into the air." What is even more
amazing than the fact that several Bible college students were atheists
or agnostics was Webber's response. He asked them what they wanted him
to teach and allowed them to guide him in a "search for a more profound
and deeper meaning in life" by "tuning into the questions of meaning
asked by the artists of our generation." Pathetically, he even says, "I
can't say we came to adequate conclusions" (p. 28).
What he did not do is question these students' salvation and try to lead
them to Christ, which should have been the very first thing he did.
Webber even warns that it is possible to "overstress conversion." He
describes how that in 1983 Jon Braun of the Evangelical Orthodox Church
spoke to Webber's class at Wheaton on his pilgrimage into Orthodoxy.
"He was speaking about his upbringing in a Christian home and the fact
that as a young person he had always believed but had had no dramatic
experience of salvation. His parents, anxious for him to have a dramatic
conversion experience, began to push him toward a decision. 'This,' he
said soberly, 'actually pushed me out of the church and made me think
for a temporary period of time that I was an unbeliever.' He then went
on to say that placing too much emphasis on a dateable experience of
salvation can be dangerous if we do not take into account that many who
grow up in Christian homes grow into faith without such an experience"
(Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail, p. 76).
Jesus said that salvation is something you are supernaturally born into,
not something you grow into. Webber should have encouraged parents who
want their children to have a clear new birth experience, but instead he
casts aspersion on such a thing and even says that it might be
dangerous. To say that "I have always believed" is an unscriptural
testimony. You might not know the exact date, but you certainly should
know when and where it happened and how that it clearly changed your
life (2 Corinthians 5:17). You should be able to testify how that you
acknowledged your sin against God and repented of it and put your faith
in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, which is the
gospel, and called upon Him for salvation (1 Corinthians 15:1-4; Romans
10:12-13; Acts 20:21). That is the only type of "conversion" that is
described in the New Testament.
Lack of clarity about personal salvation is a foundational error of the
emerging church.
Rejection of Separatism
Webber's first step to ecumenism was in rejecting the biblical doctrine
of separation. He describes how that at Bob Jones University he heard
the accusation that "Billy Graham is the greatest tool of the devil in
the twentieth century" (Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail, p. 70).
They argued that Graham was flirting with modernism and compromising the
gospel through cooperative evangelism, which is absolutely true, but
Webber rejected that argument in his heart.
He mislabels the call for separation from disobedient compromisers like
Graham as "second degree separation." In fact, it is not second degree
but first! The Bible warns God's people to "mark them which cause
divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned;
and avoid them" (Romans 16:17). That is exactly what Billy Graham has
done throughout his ecumenical career. He has taught a generation of
evangelicals to downplay doctrine and to fellowship with heretics, and
that is directly contrary to the doctrine that we learned from the
apostles. Paul exalted doctrine and taught us to be very strict about it
(1 Timothy 1:3) and he condemned heretics in the boldest, plainest
manner (e.g., 1 Timothy 1:18-20; 2 Timothy 2:16-18).
Rejection of a Pure Church
Another thing that occurred when Webber was at Bible college was his
rejection of the doctrine of a pure church.
"Why, I wondered, were we always so busy defining the perimeters in
which truth and a right relationship to God were accurately defined? Was
it really possible, I wondered, to have a pure church? The more I
thought about this the more I felt that to be truly pure was an
impossibility. ... How can anyone except God himself be pure and
uncontaminated from false belief, ethical error, and incomplete
judgment? For me the so-called concept of the purity of the church was a
strait-jacket that made me increasingly uncomfortable" (Evangelicals on
the Canterbury Trail, p. 71).
His question is answered plainly and simply in Scripture. Paul wrote to
the church of Corinth and reproved and corrected them for their sins and
errors. He urged them to be pure. He instructed them put the fornicator
out of their midst (1 Corinthians 5) and to deal with the false teachers
(2 Corinthians 11). Paul said:
"Your glorying is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth
the whole lump? Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new
lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed
for us: Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither
with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread
of sincerity and truth" (1 Corinthians 5:7-8).
It is God's will that the churches be pure, and even though we don't
live up to this in a perfect manner in this present world, that must
always be the goal. We are to continually purge out the old leaven.
The doctrine of a pure church is not a strait-jacket for those who love
Christ and want to please Him. Christ addressed seven of the churches in
Asia in Revelation 2-3 and He reproved them for their sin and errors and
called upon them to repent. He warned that He would reject those that
did not repent (Revelation 2:5). This is the standard for the entire
church age. It is not the will of Christ that we ever grow complacent
about sin and error in the churches.
The doctrine of a pure church is only a strait-jacket to those who want
to be careless about doctrine for the sake of pursuing an ecumenical agenda.
Attending the Wrong Schools
Though he was raised in fundamental Baptist doctrine, Webber pursued
theological graduate training in non-fundamentalist and non-Baptist
schools (Reformed, Lutheran, Episcopal). This is a sure recipe for
turning out of the right way. While attending Protestant seminaries he
rejected the Baptist faith and became a Protestant. That is not a surprise!
It was at these seminaries, as we shall see, that Webber was taught
about ecumenism and sacramentalism.
It was at these seminaries, too, where he also learned to think and
write and speak in a complicated, philosophical manner. He writes far
over the head of the ordinary Christian. His books could not help the
simple village people in Africa that his parents helped by preaching
simple Bible truth. He has complicated the simplicity of the faith (2
Corinthians 11:3). He forgot that God has revealed His truth to babes
(Mat. 11:25), that God has chosen to confound the wise of the world
through the simple preaching of the cross (1 Corinthians 1:17-29).
Falling in Love with Calvin
First Webber fell in love with John Calvin.
"I was particularly attracted to John Calvin. ... At the Reformed
Episcopal Seminary in Philadelphia. I studied under Robert K. Rudolf, a
master teacher and a walking encyclopedia of Calvinist theology. By his
magnetic personality and his deep devotion to logically consistent
truths I was soon drawn into the teaching of John Calvin" (Evangelicals
on the Canterbury Trail, p. 60).
Calvin came out of Rome, but he clung to many of Rome's errors,
including infant baptism, sacramentalism, the priesthood, church
statism, and amillennialism. He did not understand properly the doctrine
of salvation or the church or Bible prophecy, among others. Calvin did
not have a personal testimony of salvation other than his infant baptism
and he was an avowed enemy of Baptists. He imprisoned them and put them
to death, burning one of them at the stake. Calvin's allegorical
interpretation of prophecy does away with the imminency of the return of
Christ, which is a very important doctrine and has a great impact on
Christian living.
To fall in love with Calvin is a definite step away from the simple New
Testament Christian faith and church and a definite step toward Rome.
Studying the Church Fathers
Another stepping stone that Webber took toward ecumenism was when he
studied the Church Fathers. Many of those who have converted to Rome
have testified that the Church Fathers helped them in this venture. In
reality, most of the so-called church fathers of the early centuries
were tainted with heresies such as sacramentalism, sanctification
through ascetism, infant baptism, sacerdotalism (priestcraft),
hierarchicalism, inquisitionalism, and Mariolatry. They represent a
gradual falling away from the apostolic faith and a preparation for the
formation of the Roman Catholic Church. (See the article "Who Are the
Church Fathers" at the Way of Life web site.) Webber said that he
stopped looking back on church history in a "judgmental manner"
(Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail, pp. 61, 62).
Attending an Ecumenical Prayer Fellowship
Another turning point in Webber's life occurred in 1965 when he attended
an ecumenical prayer community in seminary, invited by one of his
professors. Benedictine monks formed half of the group. Instead of
obeying Romans 16:17 and 1 Corinthians 15:33 and many other Scriptures,
Webber agreed. He says, "As time went on my prejudices against the Roman
Catholics began to fall by the wayside. I had encountered real people
who were deeply committed to Christ and his church" (Evangelicals on the
Canterbury Trail, p. 64). Dedicated Roman Catholics are obviously real
people who are committed to Christ, but what Christ? Rome teaches that
the consecrated wafer is Christ.
Over the course of the next two years Webber's thinking completely
changed (The Divine Embrace, pp. 199, 200).
He finally concluded, "God has his people in every expression of the
faith--Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, fundamentalist, evangelical,
Holiness, charismatic" (Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail, p. 64).
In October 1972, Webber preached a sermon at Wheaton College entitled
"The Tragedy of the Reformation."
The Mystical Mass
Having become sympathetic to Roman Catholicism, he disobeyed God's Word
to separate from heresy and attended a Catholic Mass where he had a
life-changing mystical experience. This occurred at a Catholic retreat
center. He said he was "surprised by joy" and "never had an experience
like that in my life" and "was surely the richer for it" (Signs and
Wonders, 1992, p. 5). At another mass at St. Michael's Church in
Wheaton, Webber said he experienced "something deeper than anything else
I had been through" (Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail, p. 39).
The Mass is at the heart of Rome's occultic mysticism, and many converts
to and sympathizers with Rome have testified that the Mass had a part in
breaking down their resistance.
Lou Ann Elwell, counselor of students at Wheaton College, is quoted by
Webber as saying, "In the sacrament of the Eucharist I feel close to the
Lord, almost like he's saying, 'I'm here'" (Evangelicals on the
Canterbury Trail, p. 43).
David DuPlessis, who was instrumental in breaking down the wall of
separation between Pentecostals and Rome, described an experience he had
during Mass at the Vatican. He said that his heart broke and he
literally wept during the performance of the Mass at a session of the
Vatican II Council. By this mystical experience he purged entirely from
suspicion about Catholic doctrine and thereafter he could readily accept
Catholic priests as brothers in Christ without any judgmentalism (A Man
Called Mr. Pentecost, pp. 215, 216). It was certainly not the Spirit of
Truth who met DuPlessis in the Mass and taught him not to judge doctrine
and practice.
Webber developed a craving for sacramentalism. He says: "I felt a need
for visible and tangible symbols that I could touch, feel, and
experience with my senses. This need is met in the reality of Christ
presented to me through the sacraments" (Evangelicals on the Canterbury
Trail, p. 15).
Instead of being satisfied with faith in God's Word, Webber wanted signs
and symbols. He wanted a physical experience. But the Bible says, "For
we walk by faith, not by sight" (2 Corinthians 5:7). Faith comes by
God's Word (Romans 10:17). Faith is the "evidence of things not seen"
(Hebrews 11:1).
Webber joined the Anglican Church, but some of his former students have
followed the sacramental path he blazed all the way to Mother Rome.
Contemplative Practices
Another thing that brought Webber into a radical ecumenical philosophy
was his involvement with the Catholic contemplative practices, such as
centering prayer and the Jesus Prayer. He recommends resting the chin on
the chest and gazing at the area of the heart and repeating the Jesus
Prayer ("Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner")
"again and again." He says, "I feel the presence of Christ through this
prayer" (Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail, p. 83). Mysticism is an
attempt to experience God, and it is never satisfied with a faith walk
based on God's Word. Further, Christ forbade repetitious prayers
(Matthew 6:7-8). When we go beyond the Bible and get involved in
practices that are forbidden in Scripture, the devil is always ready to
meet us in his guise as an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14).
Anointing with Oil by a Charismatic
Another turning point for Webber was in 1974 when a charismatic
Episcopal deaconess named Leanne Payne anointed him with oil and prayed
over him and healed his memories. This occurred when he was deeply
troubled over his future church affiliation.
"Starting in my pre-school years through high school, college, and
seminary, we prayed through my spiritual journey, asking God for a sense
of direction. I began to feel a sense of release from the past. To this
day the effects of that prayer are still with me. For the confusion
about my spiritual identity was laid to rest, and my feeling of being
drawn into the Episcopal church was conformed. ... For more than an hour
Leanne prayed for me as I brought back to mind the wounds I had received
by those who attempted to malign my faith pilgrimage and by those who
sought to impede my journey into a wider, more inclusive sense of the
Christian faith. After prayer, I felt free, even delivered"
(Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail, pp. 44, 45, 65).
Observe that he considered himself "wounded" by fundamentalist types who
had tried to warn him about the ecumenical, sacramental direction he was
going, and this Episcopal deaconess healed him of the "wounds" inflicted
by those mean-spirited Biblicists. In fact, it was not wounds that they
had given him but treasures. When someone cares enough to reprove us for
sin and error, that is a great gift, but he rejected their kindnesses
and sought healing from them through an occultic ritual that has no
support in Scripture.
There is nothing like the "healing of memories" in the Bible. Christ and
the apostles and prophets of the early churches did not teach anything
about this.
Webber describes how that his ecumenical activities broadened his
thinking and made him more tolerant and accepting of all the denominations.
Rejecting the Bible as the Sole Authority for Faith and Practice
Eventually Webber came to the place where he was no longer satisfied
with the the doctrine that the Bible is the sole authority for faith and
practice. He was no longer satisfied with a faith walk with Christ based
on Scripture. He wanted an experience that went beyond this. He had been
led astray through ecumenism and sacramentalism and contemplative
spirituality.
The following is a very frightful thing and is a warning for those who
are tempted to flirt with ecumenism.
He said that in 1969 he was preparing a sermon for Wheaton College
chapel. He decided on a two-part message. The first part would be an
evaluation of contemporary culture, and the second would be the biblical
answer. In the second part he wanted to answer the question, "What can
we tell a world of despairing people?" (Evangelicals on the Canterbury
Trail, p. 28). His outline began with the fact that God created the
world and that the world, therefore, is meaningful, that God made man in
His own image, that man fell away from God, and that Christ came to
redeem men from their sins. That is precisely the answer given in the
first three chapters of the epistle of Romans, but suddenly Webber
became dissatisfied with these foundational Bible truths.
As I continued to redefine the answers, I asked myself, 'Webber, why
don't these answers do anything for you?' ...
The next morning I dragged my tired and weary body, mind, and soul to my
office. I sat there at my desk and looked at those yellow, legal-sized
pages of notes. ... I said to myself, 'Webber, you've got to be honest
about those answers. You can't preach that with integrity.'
I stretched my arm across the desk, picked up the sermon manuscript and
separated the two parts of the sermon. ... Then, in a moment of
conviction, I stood to my feet, grabbed the answer part of my sermon in
both hands, and vigorously crumpled the papers. Raising my right hand
and arm high above my head, I tossed those answers with all my power
into the wastebasket. I dropped back into my chair and sobbed for
several hours. I had thrown away my answers. I had rid myself of a
system in which God was comfortably contained. ... 'God,' I cried,
'where are you? Show yourself to me. Let me know that you are.' I was
met by an awful silence. But it was not an empty silence. It was the
silence of mystery--a silence that closed the door on my answers and
broke the system in which I had enslaved God. I wept and I wept. ...
The next day I stood before the student body and delivered the first
part of my sermon. Then I closed my notebook, looked at them directly,
and told them what had happened to me. I told them that the answers
don't work, that what we need is not answers about God, but God himself.
And I told them how God was more real to me in his silence than he had
been in my textbook answers. My God was no longer the God you could put
on the blackboard or the God that was contained in a textbook, but a
maverick who breaks the boxes we build for him (Evangelicals on the
Canterbury Trail, pp. 28, 29, 30).
This is one of the saddest, most frightful testimonies I have ever read.
How unwise to say that what we need is not answers about God, but God
himself. How can we possibly know God apart from the revelation He has
given in Scripture? Anything beyond that is blind mysticism rather than
biblical faith. We need sound doctrine based on the Bible, and we need a
living walk with God through Christ based on that doctrine. Countless
Bible believers have found deep satisfaction and a fruitful spirituality
in this. To set the one against the other is heresy.
God has not revealed Himself in silence; He has revealed Himself in the
Bible. And the Bible never exhorts us to try to experience God in
silence. We are to meditate on His Word day and night (Psalm 1:3). We
are to walk in fellowship with Him by praying without ceasing. Christ
taught His disciples to pray by saying words, not by sitting in silence.
In his epistles Paul described many of his prayers for an example to us,
and they were always prayers of words. God is known by His own
infallible revelation, and biblical faith is believing that revelation
and knowing God through that revelation.
God is not contained in the Bible, but God is revealed in the Bible. God
cannot be put on a blackboard, but God's Word can be written on a
blackboard and believed in the heart.
To accept the Bible as the sole authority for faith and practice is not
enslavement; it is freedom from deception. It is a lamp unto my feet and
a light unto my path.