To answer or not to answer - that is the question!

It is always interesting to engage with folks that differ from me, especially from a distance. At least I am safe at my desk from any possible cyber-attacks, I hope! Solipsists – let us all unite! Join me in the fight against the advocates of nauseating religious clap-trap.

The recent debate between David Robertson and Scott S. McKenna was interesting to say the least, but hardly seismic, leaving me with a few momentary shivers creeping down my sensitive spine, from which I have now thankfully fully recovered. Backbone is needed much these days! So I've got to stay strong!

In a neo-Kantian universe of ecclesiastical make-belief, dogmatic certainty has now become the unforgivable sin: Anythingism rules! So much is certain, of course! Anyone who says otherwise is a bigot and un-Christlike!

Robertson – the white man who does not speak with a forked tongue – does not need me to defend him, but on this occasion - notwithstanding his blunt manners (Luther has a lot to answer for) - I will make an exception! Robertson's position is clear; he is no chameleon theologian! That is rather refreshing! He likes everybody, so it seems, which is really nice! I hope that includes me, too! His Peter-Pan like zeal is endearing, though a touch naïve, but his courage I cannot match, as I don't mix in such distinguished circles! His motives, I have no doubt, are noble and sincere!

McKenna's kerygmatic pronouncements self-evidently bear little resemblance to apostolic Christianity and may well be symptomatic of a disorderly mind. For all his smooth talking, McKenna's grasp of the essential features of Christianity is woefully inadequate, to say the least. He would never have been admitted into the early church, let alone be let loose in a pulpit! He himself knows that, so I do not have to labour the point!

Did McKenna really subscribe to Calvinism with an honest conscience when he was ordained? Why does he not start his own church? Why do people pay this man who is peddling a Gnostic version of old-fashioned liberalism? If he has changed his mind, then he ought to go!

From the outset (in writing) I disagreed with Robertson's willingness to debate with a self-confessed Christian minister who has little regard for the Jesus of the Bible (another Christ is but a figment of the human imagination)! The decision to go ahead has no New Testament precedent.

Paul is more upsetting still than Robertson when he says, more bluntly, of course: “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.” (Galatians 1:8) Presumably, McKenna does not agree with Paul, either!

McKenna should, in the words of Bonhoeffer, adopt a 'religionless Christianity'! When Christ has been relegated to the periphery, in the name of religion, then it is time to come out again. Robertson has done just that! May he be spared to do just keep on doing that!

'When nations are to perish in their sins, 'tis in the church the leprosy begins'. And so it is also with the Church of Scotland these days. The McKenna's of this world have a lot to answer for; they are self-confessed enemies of Christ. We must not shy away from saying so, but do it with tears, or not at all!