The Bible as Meta-Narrative

Saving the Theological Cat

http://newwaystheology.blogspot.com/2011/04/saving-theological-cat.html

by Mason Slater

April 28, 2011

If the bible is a story, or more accurately a library of storied testimonies which together tell a Story, that should shape how we study it, teach it, and live it. Right?

What would that look like though? Because it doesn’t seem like it would all that closely resemble the way we tend to approach the Bible today.

Sure, there are a few scholars who are trying to work out a storied approach to the Scriptures, and a number of pastors who are shifting the art of the sermon in response to this way of understanding the Bible. For that I’m thankful. They do seem to be in the minority though, and I’m not sure even those steps are enough to grapple with the paradigm shift this sets up.

See the concept of “story” is central to me for another reason as well, the role it plays in writing. As I’ve made my faltering attempts at putting down something worthwhile on paper or screen I’ve jumped at anything (books, blogs, disciplines) that could refine my writing. In the process I’ve noticed something.

People who tell stories professionally approach the task quite differently than (most) people who teach the Bible professionally.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing, each has its strengths and weaknesses, but it is worth noting. Much professional study of Scripture feels highly scientific, filled with lengthy footnotes, parsing Greek verbs, and charts (Oh the charts!). Those things are needed, and actually there is a science to storytelling as well.

The difference seems to be this: storytellers learn the method and then tell stories (or teach English to apathetic high schoolers), whereas theologians often learn the method and then spend most of their time talking about the method. This seems to somewhat miss the point.

I know I’m painting with broad strokes here, and there are plenty of exceptions in both theology and storytelling. But on the whole, it seems to fit.

So I’ve taken up reading books about storytelling. This began as a way to help sort out my writing, but it has ended up being a valuable theological practice as well.

Right now it’s Save The Cat! (thanks to a recommendation by Don Miller), which is directed at screenwriters and focuses on issues like plot, characters, and archetypes. Besides being a great read, it also has helped me as a reader and teacher of Scripture. Next up will be James Bell (the less heretical of the Bells) with Plot & Structure .

Theology matters, but it matters as a tool. As N.T. Wright puts it, theology is a convenient shorthand for different elements of the story. We need the shorthand to speak coherently, but we also need to be able to unpack the story itself.

How might a storied reading of Scripture change how we do theology?

What resources could be helpful in that shift?

Bonus unfiltered musing: Is it possible to do theology as story? Jesus seemed to in the parables...

Even God Does Not Break Our Will

http://rachelheldevans.com/god-break-will-elizabeth-esther

Rachel Held Evans
April 30, 2011

Today’s guest post comes to us from Elizabeth Esther—a mother of five, columnist, and blogger, who grew up in a strict fundamentalist environment and lived to write about it. She’s always got an interesting conversation happening on her blog, so be sure to check it out.

*****

In the fundamentalist church of my childhood, parents spanked their children until the “will was broken.” To achieve this, parents started spanking their babies at 6 months old. The idea was that if you broke the child’s will in infancy, you primed them to obey God for the rest of their lives.

I’m not here to debate whether spanking is right or not (I’ve seen it used both appropriately and abusively) because what really troubles me is the de facto assumption that breaking the human will is right and good. In my experience, that one belief was used as justification for all kinds of physical and spiritual abuse.

Even after leaving fundamentalism, I never really questioned the validity and necessity of breaking the human will. I simply concluded it was a good belief—just abusively misapplied.

It wasn’t until recently when I was reading about the persecution of Romanian Christians under Communist rule that something changed for me. According to the late Patriarch Theoctist of the Romanian Orthodox Church,

“Man has a very powerful will—so powerful that even God Himself does not break it. And by this [God] is actually showing that man is in the likeness of God. Without man’s will he could not make any progress on the way to goodness. So out of all the gifts that God grants the human being, we believe that freedom is one of the most important.” (Mysteries of the Jesus Prayer, p.126).

I found myself almost weeping with recognition at these words and their hard-won insight. It is a perspective born of suffering, an epiphany emerging from the ashes of an oppressive belief system. This man shepherded his beleaguered, persecuted church through the long, dark years of Communism and for those deprived of freedom, the gift of freedom becomes one of the most important.

Although the oppression I experienced was spiritual, not political; the dynamics of control were the same. By actively seeking to break a child's will, parents unwittingly engaged in an obliteration of their child's individual personhood and freedom. When humans attempt to break another human will, they desecrate the likeness of God in that person and violate their God-given gift of freedom.

I find it remarkably beautiful that we actually need our intact, unbroken wills to “make progress on the way to goodness." Indeed, the road to holiness requires strong, powerful wills. It’s such a different thought than the kind of thoughts from my childhood. The difference is a yielded will versus a broken one. When your focus is breaking the will, the only obedience you can ever really expect is obligatory, perhaps even begrudged. But when your focus is winning the heart, obedience becomes a joyful love offering—a heart and will freely given.

In other words, I don’t obey God because He broke my will. I obey Him because His love pursued me and won my heart.

That is the kind of love I want to demonstrate to my own five children. By God's grace, I will.

Adam, Sin and Death - Part 2

http://musingsonscience.wordpress.com/2011/04/28/adam-sin-and-death-oh-my-2/

by rjs5

April 28, 2011

The first post in this series, Adam, Sin, and Death - Part 1, opened with a question that asked how we learn to think about new challenges in a Christian manner. You could say how we think “biblically,” but that term often seems to be used for rules and prescriptions, extracting the commands from scripture and following them. When faced with new challenges, ones foreign to the original writers and original audience, rules and prescriptions are not enough.

The challenges raised by the age of the earth, evolutionary biology and common descent were not in play for the original audience. These are truly new issues. The original authors and audience had a different cosmology, a different understanding of biology, and a different understanding of human history. The text of scripture reflects the ancient near east cosmology, to a certain extent it reflects an ancient near east understanding of origins, but it takes that understanding to teach about the one true God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, creator of heaven and earth. The question becomes identifying the dividing line between the incidental inclusion of an ancient understanding of the world and the revelation of God.

For many the most profound problems raised by evolution relate to Adam, the sin of Adam, and sinfulness in all of mankind. The issues are not raised by Genesis as much as they are raised by Paul. This issue was brought up again in the context of the post last week Test of Faith – Does Science Threaten Belief in God?. The comment, slightly edited, is given below.

I still, however, have trouble with the method Christians who believe in evolution use to mesh science and faith. For instance, do any of you who accept evolution believe “Adam” was a real person, our first parent, from whom we all descend?

If not, then I see a real problem because:

....

3. Paul certainly believed Adam was a real person in Romans 5 — as real as Christ.

4. The doctrine of original sin, and Paul’s main argument in Romans 5 are lost if we accept not that Adam is a real person.

5. Many would say it is heresy to deny any of scripture’s three imputations (a. the imputation of Adam’s sin to us. b. the imputation of our sin to Christ. c. the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to us.). In fact, they would say the Gospel is at stake on this issue. A literal Adam is essential, which I tend to agree with.

6. The whole Bible unfolds as a plan of redemption based on the Adam and Eve story. Serious issues are at stake if this story is called a myth.

So I guess my question is can you believe in a literal Adam whom we all descended from and still believe in evolution. If not, I find it virtually impossible not to reject evolution. Thanks again for all the thoughtful comments.

The question of Adam is a particularly important place to learn how to think about questions in a Christian manner. Theology plays a role that is more significant than in the question of the age of the earth and the presence of death in deep time raised in the post on Tuesday.

Are these serious problems – serious enough to warrant the rejection of evolution?

The points brought up by the commenter are good points – these are not issues of inerrancy or genre in scripture, these are issues of theology and anthropology and they impact some key doctrines of the church. As we think through the problem we may in fact find that aspects of our understanding of sin in creation will have to adjust to new understandings of the world. Here is a place where science may force a rethinking of theology.

The idea that theology may need to be reshaped in response to what we learn about the world is something of a worrisome idea for many. The comment ends with a statement that reflects the sentiment of many. If evolution is not compatible with certain propositions or components of our theology then evolution must be rejected. The evidence for evolution is irrelevant. No evidence can possibly be sufficient because the issue is not God’s mechanism of creation, it is the rock bottom foundation of orthodox Christianity. Or so it seems. This leads to an ultimatum – either faith or science, Christianity or apostasy. The stakes are enormous and the questions can seem overwhelming.

There are still ways to think through the issues of Adam and sin. The most helpful involve considering carefully what is foundational and what is incidental to the biblical narrative and to our theology and doctrines. Here are three possible approaches to the question of Adam.

• Paul teaches that sin entered through Adam, original sin poisoned the human race, and the sin of Adam is imputed to all making us (1) guilty before God in our own right and (2) guilty before God because we are human. Therefore Adam must have existed as a unique individual. The Genesis story is easiest to follow as history. Evolution is not true. Or, 
• Paul teaches that sin entered through Adam, original sin poisoned the human race, and the sin of Adam is imputed to all making us (1) guilty before God in our own right and (2) guilty before God because we are human. Therefore Adam must have existed as a unique individual. Science demonstrates that man evolved in common descent with the rest of life. This also constitutes part of what we know of God’s work. Therefore one of the proposals put forth by people like John Stott, Denis Alexander, or Henri Blocher accommodating both evolution and Adam must be correct. Or, 
• Adam did not exist as a unique individual, progenitor of the human race. The human population was never less than several thousand individuals. Therefore perhaps we misunderstand the nature of original sin and the imputation of Adam’s sin to all of mankind. These are not universal understandings in the church and we must reconsider and rethink our doctrine.

These approaches and variations on them represent those taken by many people in the conversation, both scientists and theologians. The are not exhaustive of all possibilities, nor are they intended to be. The first approach starts with a doctrine, and understanding of the faith, and holds tight to that understanding rejecting evolutionary biology. The second starts with science and the doctrine of sin and looks for a solution accommodating both. In some way science must conform to the theology. The third approach starts with science and seeks to conform theology and doctrine to the science.

• Which approach outlined above seems more appropriate? Why?
• Is there some other approach you would suggest?
• What is your starting point when asking questions and searching for answers?

I’ll come back to these questions and more in future posts. They are not simple questions with short, five point answers deliverable in a sermon, a lecture, or a blog post. But today I would just like to throw it open for comments.

Adam, Sin and Death - Part 1

http://musingsonscience.wordpress.com/2011/04/26/adam-sin-and-death-oh-my-1/

by rjs5

April 26, 2011

Several weeks ago (here) I posted on the book by Karl Giberson and Francis Collins The Language of Science and Faith: Straight Answers to Genuine Questions and posed a few questions… specifically What arguments against evolution do you find convincing? Why? and What arguments would you like to see discussed on this blog (in future posts)? A number of comments asked questions and made requests for future posts.

The questions raised could be grouped into two general categories – theological questions and scientific questions. The theological questions centered primarily on sin, death, and what it means to be human. These are not scientific arguments against evolution. In fact evidence for or against evolution is purely secondary in the discussion.

If death was a part of the evolutionary process from the very beginning, how do Xians reconcile the biblical account that death (at least as it relates to homo sapiens) is a result of the [choice] against God and not for Him.

I’ve heard responses that the consequence of the fall was a spiritual death and separation and nowhere in the creation narrative is there necessarily any promise of eternal physical human life. But that seems purely theoretical.

Any suggestions? And a related question:

I’m open to an evolutionary theory of species origins, but a few theological issues arise for me: the fall of humankind (who actually set the stage for us to be born in sin?) and the subsequent “groaning” of creation (I was taught growing up that human sin affected this world causing earthquakes, etc.). So this would be my vote for an added discussion for the future.

The two who posted the comments above are asking serious questions with an openness for conversation to explore the possibilities. These are not new questions, but they are questions that must be dealt with seriously. If evolution is true (and I think the scientific evidence is quite clear on the matter) then some aspects of our theology, anthropology, and understanding of scripture may need to be rethought and approached from a slightly different angle. Some of the things we thought we knew and understood from scripture must be wrong.

When is it appropriate to let our observation of the nature of the world influence our understanding of theological ideas?

When is it dangerous?

One of the key issues here is the approach to theological questions. As Christians we are taught what to think about key questions and doctrines. We are taught this in sermons, in books, in lectures, and in classes … by experts and authorities we trust. But we are seldom taught why these positions are taken and almost never taught how to think through hard questions. The average Christian in the pew expects answers and timeless truths, not explanations, questions, and puzzles. To an outsider it appears that even seminary education emphasizes the right answers more than the right approach. As a scientist I must admit that most in the church seem to have little idea how to approach a new problem that challenges what they were taught, … other than holding tightly to “truth” and dismissing or fighting the challenge.

Don’t get me wrong – at times it is very important to hold on to what we believe. Statements and affirmations are important. The Apostle’s Creed, distilled from scripture, passed down from the beginning of the church provides a good example.

I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.

And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord; who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; he descended into hell; the third day he rose again from the dead; he ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Ghost; the holy catholic Church; the communion of saints; the forgiveness of sins; the resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting. AMEN.

Even here though we need to know why as much as what. Why is this creed a central affirmation of the church? Life, both in the church and outside the church, isn’t answers and prescriptions, it is process and progress. Each generation wrestles afresh in a new context and surrounding. It often appears that what we are taught to think is incompatible with our increasing knowledge of creation, of scripture, of human history and being. In this case learning how to think as a Christian is as important and perhaps more important than learning precisely what to think as a Christian.

The questions raised by scientific evidence for the method of God’s creation provide an excellent case study to explore how to think as a Christian in the context of why we believe what we believe. For example, here are two possible approaches to the question of the age of the earth and the presence of death in deep time.

• The world is ca. 4.5 billion years old, animal death, earthquakes and tsunamis existed long before man. Therefore the death referred to in Genesis 3 and Romans 5 cannot be biological death and sin did not introduce natural disaster and disease to God’s creation. We must dig into scripture and wrestle with God’s revelation.
• Or, 
• Genesis and Romans teach that death, disease, and disaster entered into creation through the sin of Adam. This is a foundational doctrine of Christianity. Therefore, the evidence not withstanding, an old earth, ancient disasters, and evolution must be illusory. We must wrestle with the science and search for evidence consistent with our understanding of scripture.

These approaches and variations on them represent those taken by many people in the conversation, both scientists and theologians. The are not exhaustive of all possibilities, nor are they intended to be. But I would like to use them to start a conversation. The first approach starts with science and seeks to conform theology and doctrine to the science. The second approach starts with a doctrine, and understanding of the faith, and holds tight to that understanding.

• Which approach outlined above seems more appropriate? Why?
• Is there some other approach you would suggest?
• What is your starting point when asking questions and searching for answers?
• What questions are fair game?

What is an Emerging Church?

Like me, some of you may be asking "What does it mean to be an emergent Christian?" And so I thought I might provide a few select articles back in the "olden days of discussion" as to emergent Christianity's attraction to today's younger generation of Christians. Too, it's always nice to be reminded of the foundations of any movement or trend and Scot's article does just that... it emphasizes exactly what the initial attractors have been among early embracers of emergent Christianity.

skinhead

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http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/february/11.35.html

Five Streams of the Emerging Church
Key elements of the most controversial and misunderstood movement in the church today

Scot McKnight
January 19, 2007

It is said that emerging Christians confess their faith like mainliners—meaning they say things publicly they don't really believe. They drink like Southern Baptists—meaning, to adapt some words from Mark Twain, they are teetotalers when it is judicious. They talk like Catholics—meaning they cuss and use naughty words. They evangelize and theologize like the Reformed—meaning they rarely evangelize, yet theologize all the time. They worship like charismatics—meaning with their whole bodies, some parts tattooed. They vote like Episcopalians—meaning they eat, drink, and sleep on their left side. And, they deny the truth—meaning they've got a latte-soaked copy of Derrida in their smoke- and beer-stained backpacks.

Along with unfair stereotypes of other traditions, such are the urban legends surrounding the emerging church—one of the most controversial and misunderstood movements today. As a theologian, I have studied the movement and interacted with its key leaders for years—even more, I happily consider myself part of this movement or "conversation." As an evangelical, I've had my concerns, but overall I think what emerging Christians bring to the table is vital for the overall health of the church.

In this article, I want to undermine the urban legends and provide a more accurate description of the emerging movement. Though the movement has an international dimension, I will focus on the North American scene.

To define a movement, we must, as a courtesy, let it say what it is. Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger, in their book, Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures (Baker Academic, 2005) define emerging in this way:

Emerging churches are communities that practice the way of Jesus within postmodern cultures. This definition encompasses nine practices. Emerging churches (1) identify with the life of Jesus, (2) transform the secular realm, and (3) live highly communal lives. Because of these three activities, they (4) welcome the stranger, (5) serve with generosity, (6) participate as producers, (7) create as created beings, (8) lead as a body, and (9) take part in spiritual activities.

This definition is both descriptive and analytical. D. A. Carson's Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church (Zondervan, 2005) is not alone in pointing to the problems in the emerging movement, and I shall point out a few myself in what follows. But as a description of the movement, Carson's book lacks firsthand awareness and suffers from an overly narrow focus—on Brian McLaren and postmodern epistemology.

To prevent confusion, a distinction needs to be made between "emerging" and "Emergent." Emerging is the wider, informal, global, ecclesial (church-centered) focus of the movement, while Emergent is an official organization in the U.S. and the U.K. Emergent Village, the organization, is directed by Tony Jones, a Ph.D. student at Princeton Theological Seminary and a world traveler on behalf of all things both Emergent and emerging. Other names connected with Emergent Village include Doug Pagitt, Chris Seay, Tim Keel, Karen Ward, Ivy Beckwith, Brian McLaren, and Mark Oestreicher. Emergent U.K. is directed by Jason Clark. While Emergent is the intellectual and philosophical network of the emerging movement, it is a mistake to narrow all of emerging to the Emergent Village.

Emerging catches into one term the global reshaping of how to "do church" in postmodern culture. It has no central offices, and it is as varied as evangelicalism itself. If I were to point to one centrist expression of the emerging movement in the U.S., it would be Dan Kimball's Vintage Church in Santa Cruz, California. His U.K. counterpart is Andrew Jones, known on the internet as Tall Skinny Kiwi. Jones is a world-traveling speaker, teacher, and activist for simple churches, house churches, and churches without worship services.

Following are five themes that characterize the emerging movement. I see them as streams flowing into the emerging lake. No one says the emerging movement is the only group of Christians doing these things, but together they crystallize into the emerging movement.

Prophetic (or at least provocative)

One of the streams flowing into the emerging lake is prophetic rhetoric. The emerging movement is consciously and deliberately provocative. Emerging Christians believe the church needs to change, and they are beginning to live as if that change had already occurred. Since I swim in the emerging lake, I can self-critically admit that we sometimes exaggerate.

Our language frequently borrows the kind of rhetoric found in Old Testament prophets like Hosea: "For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings" (6:6). Hosea engages here in deliberate overstatement, for God never forbids Temple worship. In a similar way, none in the emerging crowd is more rhetorically effective than Brian McLaren in Generous Orthodoxy: "Often I don't think Jesus would be caught dead as a Christian, were he physically here today. … Generally, I don't think Christians would like Jesus if he showed up today as he did 2,000 years ago. In fact, I think we'd call him a heretic and plot to kill him, too." McLaren, on the very next page, calls this statement an exaggeration. Still, the rhetoric is in place.

Consider this quote from an Irish emerging Christian, Peter Rollins, author of How (Not) to Speak of God (Paraclete, 2006): "Thus orthodoxy is no longer (mis)understood as the opposite of heresy but rather is understood as a term that signals a way of being in the world rather than a means of believing things about the world." The age-old canard of orthodoxy versus orthopraxy plays itself out once again.

Such rhetoric makes its point, but it sometimes divides. I hope those of us who use it (and this critique can't be restricted to the emerging movement) will learn when to avoid such language.

Postmodern

Mark Twain said the mistake God made was in not forbidding Adam to eat the serpent. Had God forbidden the serpent, Adam would certainly have eaten him. When the evangelical world prohibited postmodernity, as if it were fruit from the forbidden tree, the postmodern "fallen" among us—like F. LeRon Shults, Jamie Smith, Kevin Vanhoozer, John Franke, and Peter Rollins—chose to eat it to see what it might taste like. We found that it tasted good, even if at times we found ourselves spitting out hard chunks of nonsense. A second stream of emerging water is postmodernism.

Postmodernity cannot be reduced to the denial of truth. Instead, it is the collapse of inherited metanarratives (overarching explanations of life) like those of science or Marxism. Why have they collapsed? Because of the impossibility of getting outside their assumptions.

While there are good as well as naughty consequences of opting for a postmodern stance (and not all in the emerging movement are as careful as they should be), evangelical Christians can rightfully embrace certain elements of postmodernity. Jamie Smith, a professor at Calvin College, argues in Who's Afraid of Postmodernity? (Baker Academic, 2006) that such thinking is compatible, in some ways, with classical Augustinian epistemology. No one points the way forward in this regard more carefully than longtime missionary to India Lesslie Newbigin, especially in his book Proper Confidence: Faith, Doubt, and Certainty in Christian Discipleship (Eerdmans, 1995). Emerging upholds faith seeking understanding, and trust preceding the apprehension or comprehension of gospel truths.

Living as a Christian in a postmodern context means different things to different people. Some—to borrow categories I first heard from Doug Pagitt, pastor at Solomon's Porch in Minneapolis—will minister to postmoderns, others with postmoderns, and still others as postmoderns.

David Wells at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary falls into the to category, seeing postmoderns as trapped in moral relativism and epistemological bankruptcy out of which they must be rescued.

Others minister with postmoderns. That is, they live with, work with, and converse with postmoderns, accepting their postmodernity as a fact of life in our world. Such Christians view postmodernity as a present condition into which we are called to proclaim and live out the gospel.

The vast majority of emerging Christians and churches fit these first two categories. They don't deny truth, they don't deny that Jesus Christ is truth, and they don't deny the Bible is truth.

The third kind of emerging postmodernity attracts all the attention. Some have chosen to minister as postmoderns. That is, they embrace the idea that we cannot know absolute truth, or, at least, that we cannot know truth absolutely. They speak of the end of metanarratives and the importance of social location in shaping one's view of truth. They frequently express nervousness about propositional truth. LeRon Shults, formerly a professor of theology at Bethel Theological Seminary, writes:

From a theological perspective, this fixation with propositions can easily lead to the attempt to use the finite tool of language on an absolute Presence that transcends and embraces all finite reality. Languages are culturally constructed symbol systems that enable humans to communicate by designating one finite reality in distinction from another. The truly infinite God of Christian faith is beyond all our linguistic grasping, as all the great theologians from Irenaeus to Calvin have insisted, and so the struggle to capture God in our finite propositional structures is nothing short of linguistic idolatry.

Praxis-oriented

The emerging movement's connection to postmodernity may grab attention and garner criticism, but what most characterizes emerging is the stream best called praxis—how the faith is lived out. At its core, the emerging movement is an attempt to fashion a new ecclesiology (doctrine of the church). Its distinctive emphases can be seen in its worship, its concern with orthopraxy, and its missional orientation.

Worship: I've heard folks describe the emerging movement as "funky worship" or "candles and incense" or "smells and bells." It's true; many in the emerging movement are creative, experiential, and sensory in their worship gatherings.

Evangelicals sometimes forget that God cares about sacred space and ritual—he told Moses how to design the tabernacle and gave detailed directions to Solomon for building a majestic Temple. Neither Jesus nor Paul said much about aesthetics, but the author of Hebrews did. And we should not forget that some Reformers, knowing the power of aesthetics, stripped churches clean of all artwork.

Some emerging Christians see churches with pulpits in the center of a hall-like room with hard, wooden pews lined up in neat rows, and they wonder if there is another way to express—theologically, aesthetically, and anthropologically—what we do when we gather. They ask these sorts of questions: Is the sermon the most important thing on Sunday morning? If we sat in a circle would we foster a different theology and praxis? If we lit incense, would we practice our prayers differently? If we put the preacher on the same level as the congregation, would we create a clearer sense of the priesthood of all believers? If we acted out what we believe, would we encounter more emphatically the Incarnation?

Orthopraxy: A notable emphasis of the emerging movement is orthopraxy, that is, right living. The contention is that how a person lives is more important than what he or she believes. Many will immediately claim that we need both or that orthopraxy flows from orthodoxy. Most in the emerging movement agree we need both, but they contest the second claim: Experience does not prove that those who believe the right things live the right way. No matter how much sense the traditional connection makes, it does not necessarily work itself out in practice. Public scandals in the church—along with those not made public—prove this point time and again.

Here is an emerging, provocative way of saying it: "By their fruits [not their theology] you will know them." As Jesus' brother James said, "Faith without works is dead." Rhetorical exaggerations aside, I know of no one in the emerging movement who believes that one's relationship with God is established by how one lives. Nor do I know anyone who thinks that it doesn't matter what one believes about Jesus Christ. But the focus is shifted. Gibbs and Bolger define emerging churches as those who practice "the way of Jesus" in the postmodern era.

Jesus declared that we will be judged according to how we treat the least of these (Matt. 25:31-46) and that the wise man is the one who practices the words of Jesus (Matt. 7:24-27). In addition, every judgment scene in the Bible is portrayed as a judgment based on works; no judgment scene looks like a theological articulation test.

Missional: The foremost concern of the praxis stream is being missional. What does this mean? First, the emerging movement becomes missional by participating, with God, in the redemptive work of God in this world. In essence, it joins with the apostle Paul in saying that God has given us "the ministry of reconciliation" (2 Cor. 5:18).

Second, it seeks to become missional by participating in the community where God's redemptive work occurs. The church is the community through which God works and in which God manifests the credibility of the gospel.

Third, becoming missional means participating in the holistic redemptive work of God in this world. The Spirit groans, the creation groans, and we groan for the redemption of God (see Rom. 8:18-27).

This holistic emphasis finds perfect expression in the ministry of Jesus, who went about doing good to bodies, spirits, families, and societies. He picked the marginalized up from the floor and put them back in their seats at the table; he attracted harlots and tax collectors; he made the lame walk and opened the ears of the deaf. He cared, in other words, not just about lost souls, but also about whole persons and whole societies.

Post-evangelical

A fourth stream flowing into the emerging lake is characterized by the term post-evangelical. The emerging movement is a protest against much of evangelicalism as currently practiced. It is post-evangelical in the way that neo-evangelicalism (in the 1950s) was post-fundamentalist. It would not be unfair to call it postmodern evangelicalism [or, post-conservative evangelicalism, sic. Roger Olson - sh]. This stream flows from the conviction that the church must always be reforming itself.

The vast majority of emerging Christians are evangelical theologically. But they are post-evangelical in at least two ways.

Post-systematic theology: The emerging movement tends to be suspicious of systematic theology. Why? Not because we don't read systematics, but because the diversity of theologies alarms us, no genuine consensus has been achieved, God didn't reveal a systematic theology but a storied narrative, and no language is capable of capturing the Absolute Truth who alone is God. Frankly, the emerging movement loves ideas and theology. It just doesn't have an airtight system or statement of faith. We believe the Great Tradition offers various ways for telling the truth about God's redemption in Christ, but we don't believe any one theology gets it absolutely right.

Hence, a trademark feature of the emerging movement is that we believe all theology will remain a conversation about the Truth who is God in Christ through the Spirit, and about God's story of redemption at work in the church. No systematic theology can be final. In this sense, the emerging movement is radically Reformed. It turns its chastened epistemology against itself, saying, "This is what I believe, but I could be wrong. What do you think? Let's talk."

In versus out: An admittedly controversial element of post-evangelicalism is that many in the emerging movement are skeptical about the "in versus out" mentality of much of evangelicalism. Even if one is an exclusivist (believing that there is a dividing line between Christians and non-Christians), the issue of who is in and who is out pains the emerging generation.

Some emerging Christians point to the words of Jesus: "Whoever is not against us is for us" (Mark 9:40). Others, borrowing the words of the old hymn, point to a "wideness in God's mercy." Still others take postmodernity's crushing of metanarratives and extend that to master theological narratives—like Christianity. They say what really matters is orthopraxy and that it doesn't matter which religion one belongs to, as long as one loves God and one's neighbor as one's self. Some even accept Spencer Burke's unbiblical contention in A Heretic's Guide to Eternity (Jossey-Bass, 2006) that all are born "in" and only some "opt out."

This emerging ambivalence about who is in and who is out creates a serious problem for evangelism. The emerging movement is not known for it, but I wish it were. Unless you proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ, there is no good news at all—and if there is no Good News, then there is no Christianity, emerging or evangelical.

Personally, I'm an evangelist. Not so much the tract-toting, door-knocking kind, but the Jesus-talking and Jesus-teaching kind. I spend time praying in my office before class and pondering about how to teach in order to bring home the message of the gospel.

So I offer here a warning to the emerging movement: Any movement that is not evangelistic is failing the Lord. We may be humble about what we believe, and we may be careful to make the gospel and its commitments clear, but we must always keep the proper goal in mind: summoning everyone to follow Jesus Christ and to discover the redemptive work of God in Christ through the Spirit of God.

Political

A final stream flowing into the emerging lake is politics. Tony Jones is regularly told that the emerging movement is a latte-drinking, backpack-lugging, Birkenstock-wearing group of 21st-century, left-wing, hippie wannabes. Put directly, they are Democrats. And that spells "post" for conservative-evangelical-politics-as-usual.

I have publicly aligned myself with the emerging movement. What attracts me is its soft postmodernism (or critical realism) and its praxis/missional focus. I also lean left in politics. I tell my friends that I have voted Democrat for years for all the wrong reasons. I don't think the Democratic Party is worth a hoot, but its historic commitment to the poor and to centralizing government for social justice is what I think government should do. I don't support abortion—in fact, I think it is immoral. I believe in civil rights, but I don't believe homosexuality is God's design. And, like many in the emerging movement, I think the Religious Right doesn't see what it is doing. Books like Randy Balmer's Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America: An Evangelical's Lament (Basic Books, 2006) and David Kuo's Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction (Free Press, 2006) make their rounds in emerging circles because they say things we think need to be said.

Sometimes, however, when I look at emerging politics, I see Walter Rauschenbusch, the architect of the social gospel. Without trying to deny the spiritual gospel, he led his followers into the social gospel. The results were devastating for mainline Christianity's ability to summon sinners to personal conversion. The results were also devastating for evangelical Christianity, which has itself struggled to maintain a proper balance.

I ask my fellow emerging Christians to maintain their missional and ecclesial focus, just as I urge my fellow evangelicals to engage in the social as well.

All in all, it is unlikely that the emerging movement will disappear anytime soon. If I were a prophet, I'd say that it will influence most of evangelicalism in its chastened epistemology (if it hasn't already), its emphasis on praxis, and its missional orientation. I see the emerging movement much like the Jesus and charismatic movements of the 1960s, which undoubtedly have found a place in the quilt called evangelicalism.

Scot McKnight is professor of religious studies at North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago, Illinois. He is author of The Jesus Creed (Paraclete, 2004) and, most recently, The Real Mary: Why Evangelicals Can Embrace the Mother of Jesus (Paraclete, 2006 ). This article is condensed and adapted from a lecture given at Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, in October 2006. See the blog JesusCreed.org for more of McKnight's emerging musings.

Backtracking & Catching-Up

Like me, some of you may be asking "What does it mean to be an emergent Christian?" And so I thought I might provide a few select articles back in the "olden days of discussion" as to emergent Christianity's attraction to today's younger generation of Christians. Too, it's always nice to be reminded of the foundations of any movement or trend and Rachael's article does just that... it emphasizes exactly what the initial attractors have been among early embracers of emergent Christianity.

skinhead

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http://rachelheldevans.com/article-1207544015
Why I've joined the "emerging conversation"

Rachel Held Evans
April 7, 2008

By now, those of you who have known me for many years may have noticed that I think a bit differently than I used to. Like a lot of twenty-somethings who grew up in the conservative evangelical subculture, I’ve been increasingly drawn to the emerging church movement.

(If you are unfamiliar with the emerging church, you might want to check out this article from Christianity Today, written by Scot McKnight. The movement is hard to define, but I think McKnight does a good job of addressing its major characteristics.)

Some of you will probably identify. You might have read some Dan Kimball or Tony Jones or Brian McLaren and found yourself thinking, as I did, “Yes! That’s exactly how I feel; I’m so glad someone else is asking these questions!” Others of you may think I’ve gone off the deep end, that I’ve rejected Christian orthodoxy, embraced relativism, and will probably run off to some Indian ashram to mediate for a few years with my fellow hippies.

I can assure you that the latter is based more on popular misrepresentations of the emerging church movement than on the actual thoughts and attitudes of most of those who consider themselves a part of it, including myself. However, I understand why there are some concerns about the emerging church, as I myself have experienced some of its problems. So I want to address not only what I love about the emerging church, but also what I see as its potential pitfalls.

So, what is so appealing to me, personally, about the emerging church? A few things:

1. Freedom to ask hard questions. What first attracted me to emerging church writers and speakers was their willingness to confront difficult theological issues and even challenge traditional evangelical doctrine. For years I struggled with doubts about my faith, and through the emerging church movement, I found people who were asking the very same questions-about religious pluralism, the Problem of Evil, inerrancy, the notion of absolute truth, etc. Rather than resorting to the same old answers I’d heard over and over again from Christian apologists, emerging church writers were taking new approaches, approaches that particularly appealed to me as an avid reader and writer with a postmodern bent.

The problem “emergers” may run into is that, while deconstructing is a valuable and important part of bringing about reform and making the Church better, tearing down is always easier than building up. I find myself spending a lot of time picking apart fundamentalism, when I ought to be focusing on building bridges and seeking common ground.

2. Embrace of postmodernism. For years I was told by Christian apologists that postmodernism was evil and that it represented an enormous threat to Christianity. However, once I actually started reading what postmodern theorists had to say, their ideas made a lot of sense to me. One of my biggest frustrations with conservative evangelicalism right now is that many of its leaders tend to oversimplify and misrepresent postmodernism. I feel like writers and speakers in the emerging church have done a better job of explaining postmodernism and exploring how it can actually enrich and contribute to Christianity.

Of course, postmodernism has its problems. For example, while I love the fact that many in the emerging church have embraced a more inclusive attitude toward religious pluralism, we don’t want to follow the postmodern tendency to ignore or gloss over the significant differences that exist among the world’s religions. Claiming that all religions are more or less the same and equally truthful is just creating yet another metanarrative that fails to represent the very real religious convictions of people around the world.

3. Emphasis on orthopraxy over orthodoxy. I love how the emerging church movement has encouraged me to focus more on following Jesus Christ and less on being right about theology. I think that in this way, the emerging church is seeking to correct what has been a bit of an over-emphasis on apologetics and doctrine within the conservative evangelical community in recent years. I personally have felt challenged by emerging church writers to more faithfully follow Jesus in caring for the poor, ministering to the sick, exercising spiritual self-control, and being more cautious about passing judgments on others.

Some say that the danger here is that the emerging church will throw theology and doctrine out altogether. I don’t think that’s going to be a problem because, despite arguing that right theology doesn’t necessarily lead to stronger faith, a lot of us emergers still love to talk about it. To me, the more looming danger is hypocrisy. Daily I find myself slipping into those same old habits of judging people based on their theological positions and spending more time reading and writing about Jesus than actually building relationship with Him and loving “the least of these.” If “emergers” are going to emphasize the importance of Christ-likeness, it is imperative that we treat everyone (including those with whom we disagree) with the kindness, humility, and graciousness of our Lord.

4. It’s not about who’s “in” and who’s “out.” For years I struggled with the idea that conservative evangelical Christians had a monopoly on truth and that everyone else in the world faced likely damnation. I like that many in the emerging church movement seem to recognize that God is at work among all people and that we should respect and be open to learning from people with other ideas and beliefs.

However, it sometimes seems like this is an attitude that “emergers” apply to everyone except fundamentalists. The tone of our blogs and books can get a little testy when criticizing our more conservative brothers and sisters. We have to be careful not to apply a kind of reversed legalism toward those with whom we disagree.

Those are just some of my thoughts about the emerging church. I’ll definitely be posting more about it in the future. What do you think? What have your encounters with the emerging church been like? Positive or negative? A little bit of both?