Richard Rohr says in his blog here why he believes in original blessing instead of original sin. He also comes against substitutionary atonement in this blog. He doesn’t want to start with a problem, i.e. original sin….he wants to start with a positive. He talks about how Original blessing is the start of the story here.
I would say in response to Rohr that you can’t call a movie the first five minutes of it.
You have to tell the whole story.
Rohr says “Beginning with the positive instead of a problem is the healthiest and most hopeful way to find wholeness. We must now rebuild on a foundation of original goodness, and not on a foundation of original curse or sin. “
I hope you’re catching that.
People might be like “Teresa, why do you care about the doctrine of original sin, substitutionary atonement and hell?” Because everyone has their own narrative. And if you take away original sin…the “problem” then there really doesn’t need to be an answer or punishment for that sin….i.e. hell. You live a fiction story rather than a true story. I have never really been much into fiction…just give me the real.
Like progressives say “It wasn’t your sin that separated you from God, it was your shame.” So you just think you are separated. You aren’t. You just THINK you are. You are walking in a positive story….at least the first few sentences of it.
Alisa Childers, apologist against Progressive Christianity says here how Progressive Christianity and New age are kind of the same thing.
Several years ago I heard a Progressive pastor teach on Genesis 3, the famous passage in which Eve was tricked by the serpent into eating the forbidden fruit. Rather than reading the account as historical fact, he was unpacking the moral “truth” we could all learn from this creation story. He made the point that when this first couple took that fateful bite, it was their shame, not their sin, that separated them from God. In other words, they failed to recognize their belovedness…their inherent goodness and worth. If they were “separated” from God, it was they who were distant….not God. Progressive writer Brian McLaren describes it this way: “They lose their fearlessness in relation to God.”(4)
Notice the similarity of language. Without original sin we are all good, and we are only distant from God in our own minds when we forget that. ~Alisa
Alisa write about Original Sin and Original Blessing here.
Often, progressive Christians teach that our sin isn’t what separates us from God, but it’s our shame that makes us feel separated from him.
This is what Richard Rohr refers to as the “small self.” He teaches that mature faith is practiced by finding the “True Self,” and learning to “consciously abide in union with the Presence within us.”
According to progressive Christianity, sin doesn’t separate us from God. We just need to understand how loved and good we already are. This idea is antithetical to Scripture and runs contrary to what we experience in our fallen world.
