I find your paper very interesting. It is courageous and resourceful to interact with these leaders. May it continue and may we all engage others for the sake of the gospel.

In my experience, people who propound or at least practice other religions almost invariably have a personal story of mistreatment at the hand of someone who calls themselves a Christian. While they are accountable to God for using that as an excuse to reject him, we have to remember (shoa) our sins and weaknesses. We have to remember that the Church, through its magisterium, has acted as judge of what is “truth” and “error” (notice I did not write “right” and “wrong”), and through the office of inquisition, formalized and expanded a long-held practice of eliminating people who it held to be in error. Millions of peopl have suffered in this process. Crusades have been launched. Civilizations have been wiped out. So, no wonder the whole world see Christianity as a judge and policeman!

Unfortunately, Protestants do not continue the process of riformata riformanda to the point of eliminating this same mentality from its own practice (Lk. 9:51-56). We all have a long way to go to get to the point where people outside the Church see our good works as churches, the body of Christ, as well as individuals, and glorify our father who is in heaven.

Most of the “isms” that have grown up in the West are arguably Christian heresies: monasticism, medievalism, humanism, scholasticism, illuminism, empiricism, romanticism, modernism, national socialism, communism, existentialism, nihilism, post modernism, globalism, ecumenism, etc. They all stem from the same world view whether attracted to it or rebelling against it. The medieval synthesis takes the worst of what was Greek (“Greeks seek for wisdom”) and the worst of Judaism (“The Jews demand signs”), and Romanism in religious guise forces this on others. Whenever we teach a docetic gospel, buttressed by allegorical interpretation of Scripture, we end in moralism which is at its root an imposition of man over others.

An “open source” theology that attempts to acknowledge error and willingness to reform is a theology worth working towards!