I respect Greg, but he put that out there on the blog to be read, and I’m sure he understands it was provocative and generated reaction.

1. The assumption that he picked up Crossan or some other “liberal” writer, swallowed it whole, and then churned out this post without much more thought. First off, Greg is quite critical of Jesus Seminar-related scholarship, so that’s off the mark already. But one needs to have been acquainted with his blog, his story, and his real influences (Barth, Yoder, and the Wesleys mainly) for some time in order to see how he got here. This isn’t an emergent thing. He only officially became associated with emergent (after a much longer period of questioning and critique) within the past year or so.

2. The reaction to his Ghandi comment along the lines that God doesn’t consider “being nice to poor people” to be all that important. The one BHT poster’s explanation of Matthew 25 is incredibly off base and can only be read his way through thick preconceived lenses. It is plainly about caring for the “least of these,” i.e., the hungry, the sick, the imprisoned. If that isn’t enough, consider the hundreds of verses spanning the entire Old Testament calling Israel to care for the poor. Consider the prophets repeatedly telling Israel that God doesn’t care about worship and sacrifices; that God wants justice and mercy and care for the widow and orphan much, much more. Micah 6:8 says, “What does the Lord REQUIRE of you but to do justice,” etc. Consider James’ criticism of people who say to the hungry, “God bless you” without dealing with their physical needs. Why is the so-called “social gospel” still considered so anathema in some Christian circles when it is so plainly Biblical?

As an addendum. Similiarly to the argument about signs/Pentecostalism, this is where extreme forms of inerrancy can lead – by insisting on a uniform view of how God’s inspiration is played out through the different types of literature in the Bible, disillusionment will always get played out this.