Eddie Dutra

Echoes of Eden Eddie Dutra

The neoliberal theologians, who intend to 'repaint' Christianity, say they are reacting to the errors and abuses within the church, against the false promises of the Prosperity theology and the modern Pharisees, who use legalism as a means of oppression and control. The truth, however, is that they incur in the same mistakes of them. Those of the Prosperity Gospel or those of the postmodern church philosophy lead the ministry according to people's desire, not according to God's interests or the true spiritual need of people. The Prosperity theology adapted to a greedy society that sees Jesus only as the multiplier of loaves and fishes and a free healer; therefore, it gave them what they wanted. The postmodern Christians changed the speech and emphasis, but reproduced the same pattern of ministry. When we compare them, both groups are alike - they all use pragmatism as foundation for ministry, thus, their teachings are unbiblical, their practice unethical and its results, devastating to the Christian faith.

The new painters take advantage of the mistakes of some groups of the evangelicalism, with this, they find the opportunity to throw out the baby with the dirty bathwater - they throw away the true Gospel along with the errors of the church. Such opportunism is clearly detected in their effort to establish a stereotype to represent historic Christianity as a group of ignorant and devoid-of-love Fundamentalist fanatics, while they pose as open-minded good-boy- preachers, and love givers with no trace of prejudice.

By opposing legalism, these men went to the other extreme - they became libertines. Thus, their offered antidote became worse than the poison itself. The neoliberal theologians came not to bring healing to the church's problems, rather, they aggravated it. They are opportunists who are creating a neo-Christianity under the perspectives of this new postmodern world.