Cage Stage Provisionists
Soteriology 101 w/ Dr. Leighton Flowers
Leighton Flowers
4.8 • 826 Ratings
🗓️ 19 July 2023
⏱️ 52 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Dr. Leighton Flowers talks about the tendencies of every group to produce "cage-stagers" and what we should do about it.
Often it’s #Calvinism accused of being marked by a cage-stage (convert others at all costs) but it exists everywhere: “Cage-staggers” in any discipline are marked by a greater love for the practice than the person.
Avoiding this stage only comes by means of patience and prayer.
We will discuss this post on social media by Brandon Smith: Much like “cage stage” Calvinism was a danger for us excitable young/future pastors and theologians 15 years ago, I hope we are careful to avoid a cage stage theological retrieval in the next generation.
Here are a few signs of cage stage theology from a former practitioner:
- A disdain for our spiritual and theological forbears/heroes/mentors. We are quick to critique or even slander those who came before us — those who taught us! — because we now feel we’ve moved beyond them.
- Relatedly, we create disciples who are also cynical of their heroes and think that decades of faithful ministry are now, or always have been, worthless and have no benefit to the academy/church. They begin to question their own pastors, parents, etc. for being too “shallow.”
- We narrow orthodoxy to a particular set of categories that we neatly define, creating a type of fundamentalism that eschews generous orthodoxy for a select “in” crowd reminiscent of a high school clique.
- A tendency toward personal brand-building that makes us self-appointed saviors of orthodoxy. To protect said brand, we start creating history in our own image, anachronistically and/or shallowly argued that past theologians agree with all of our little pet nuances.
- We divide the church rather than unite the church, all under the guise of defending “orthodoxy.” As Paul said to a divided and quarreling church: “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” 1 Cor. 13:
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome back to Sociology 101. |
| 0:13.6 | We're going to be talking about cage stagers. |
| 0:16.8 | What does that mean? |
| 0:17.7 | What does it mean to be a cage stager? |
| 0:19.5 | Well, I've already been getting comments from those of you on the side chat. |
| 0:23.0 | And so if I look at some of those comments, matter of fact, Samuel Carter already gave us kind of a good working definition here. |
| 0:28.2 | A cage stage is you're so abrasive with your opponent right off the bat from your recent disillusionment that damage control demands you isolate in a cage. |
| 0:40.0 | And yes, I know that Calvinism is more known to be the cage stager because it's known as cage stage Calvinism. And that's |
| 0:46.1 | kind of where the term originated. And matter of fact, I put this tweet out not long ago, |
| 0:51.7 | which said this, well, this is actually last year. This is a tweet quite a while |
| 0:54.9 | ago, actually, March of last year. Often it's Calvinism accused of being marked by cage stage converts, |
| 1:01.5 | convert others at all cost, but it exists everywhere. Cage stages in any discipline are marked by |
| 1:07.3 | greater love for the practice than the person. Avoiding this stage only comes by means of patience and prayer. |
| 1:14.3 | And so the typical cage stager tends to be more about the practice of converting people into their newfound belief |
| 1:21.8 | than it is about a care for the person themselves. |
| 1:25.6 | And we all, including yours truly, fall into this at times |
| 1:31.5 | in our lives. This is just, this is, a matter of fact, if you don't think you've ever been |
| 1:36.2 | in a cage stage for one of these two perspectives in one way or another, you're probably not |
| 1:41.1 | very self-aware because this is just a tendency all of us can fall |
| 1:44.9 | into. And so this is not me preaching at you, telling you what you should and shouldn't do. This is |
| 1:51.4 | me talking to a mirror. I'm literally looking at myself right here on the screen and talking to my |
| 1:57.9 | fellow brothers and sisters and saying, here's tendencies that we as believers fall into |
... |
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