What is Theological Liberalism?

http://www.patheos.com/community/rogereolson/2011/07/14/what-is-theological-liberalism/

by Roger Olson

posted July 14, 2011

One of my biggest pet peeves is people throwing labels around when they don’t understand them. I teach at a seminary often accused by the ignorant of being “liberal” because it allows women to study for the ministry. I’ve been asked when I “became liberal” and started believing in women’s ordination and women as lead pastors. The first denomination to ordain women as pastors was the theologically conservative but socially progressive Free Methodist Church and it did that way back in the mid-19th century. (Quakers, or Friends as they prefer to be called) had women leaders before that but they didn’t exactly “ordain” anyone or have lead pastors in our modern sense.) I grew up in a very conservative denomination that ordained women. We had women pastors and evangelists. Both my birth mother and stepmother were licensed to preach.

People tend to throw the label “liberal” around without regard to history. Most of the time it means little or nothing more than something they don’t like or agree with and perceive to be too progressive. When someone says a person or church or institution or book is “liberal” I have no idea what they mean until I press them for a definition. Usually they can’t give a real definition; they can only say something about their disagreement or dislike.

Looking up “liberal” in the dictionary doesn’t really help. Most ordinary dictionaries don’t include theology among their definitions. You can look up “liberal” in most dictionaries and be enlightened about politics and society and perhaps philosophy. But you are unlikely to find anything there about liberal theology. Besides, it is a mistake to think words have essences. There is no “essence” out there corresponding exactly with the sound “liberal.” The label “liberal” has a history theologically and we should stick to that as closely as possible while recognizing flexibility.

Once again, as before here, I want to suggest a helpful distinction. This time between “liberalism” as a movement and “liberalism” as an ethos. (And now I am restricting my comments to theology.) It is anachronistic to refer to anything as theologically liberal before Friedrich Schleiermacher, the early 19th century “father of liberal theology.” Schleiermacher was certainly influenced by previous and contemporary thinkers in philosophy and theology, but he almost single handedly created “liberal theology.” On this most historical theologians are agreed. (Before Schleiermacher there were “free thinkers” and deists and unitarians but not liberals per se.)

But even Schleiermacher did not found a movement. In many ways he serves as the paradigm of a liberal ethos in Christian theology. But that ethos only began to breathe with him; even Schleiermacher was not consistently liberal. Compared to many later movement liberals such as Adolf Harnack he would be considered relatively conservative insofar as he strove to hold onto as much of Christian tradition as he thought possible in the modern world.

So, the liberal ethos pre-dates the rise of the Christian liberal theological movement that I call “classical Protestant liberalism.” The latter appeared first with German Lutheran theologian Albrecht Ritschl and his followers in the later 19th century. Ritschl founded a movement. His followers came to be called “Ritschlians.” Classical Protestant liberal theology is tied to the METHOD of the Rischlians (not necessarily to all of their conclusions). The leading Ritschlians were Harnack and Willhelm Herrmann. There were, of course, many others. They disagreed among themselves about many things, but they agreed on theology’s basic method which followed that of Schleiermacher but in a somewhat altered way.

After WW1 and the existentialist revolution in philosophy and theology in Europe classical liberal theology struggled as a movement. It didn’t exactly die out, but it underwent some significant changes so that historical theologians tend to call its mid-20th century heirs “neo-liberals” or “chastened liberals.” The main difference was the recognition of a tragic dimension to human existence and history that was lacking in the pre-WW1 liberals.

[Strictly as defined] the liberal theological movement has had its ups and downs and perhaps doesn’t really exist anymore although I have met and read people who seem to agree with it to a large extent. But, again, I would tend to call them liberal in the “ethos” sense. Some have come along and tried to breathe new life into the liberal community to restart the old liberal theological movement but with little success. There are many freelance liberal theologians running around, but I look in vain for an actual movement that includes all or even most of them.

------------------

So what is the liberal theological ethos started by Schleiermacher that defines theological liberalism (including the Ritschlian movement and the neo-liberalism of its post-WW1 descendents)? And where do we find it today? Who are its contemporary spokespersons?

Schleiermacher introduced into the stream of Christian theology a “Copernican revolution” in theological method that regarded it as necessary to adjust traditional Christianity to the culture of the Enlightenment–what we call “modernity.” To be sure, Schleiermacher did NOT do this uncritically. However, he clearly felt it necessary to rescue Christianity from the “acids of modernity” by redefining Christianity’s (and religion’s) “essence” so that it did not and perhaps could not conflict with the “best” of modern thought [(thus, liberalism was a reaction against modernism - skinhead)]. He redefined Christianity as PRIMARILY about human experience [(existentially - skinhead)]. That is, as he put it, doctrines are nothing more than attempts to bring human experiences of God (God-consciousness) to speech. Schleiermacher placed universal God-consciousness at the center of religion and Christ’s God-consciousness communicated to the church at the center of Christianity. All doctrines and all teachings of Scripture became revisable in the light of human God-consciousness.

What Schleiermacher accomplished was to separate religion (including Christianity) from the realm of “facts” discoverable by science and philosophy. He rescued religion and Christianity from the acids of modernity by reducing them and restricting them to an entirely different realm. Also, rather than objective divine revelation standing at the center or bottom of the theological enterprise, human experience was placed there. This was Schleiermacher’s “Copernican revolution” in theology. All liberal theology (whether by ethos or tied specifically to a liberal theological movement such as Ritschlianism) is defined by that move first made by Schleiermacher.

Ritschl borrowed heavily from the philosopher Immanuel Kant to distinguish between two types of propositions–facts (which belong to the sciences) and values (which belong to religion). Religion, including Christianity, has to do with the way things ought to be (the Kingdom of God) and not with the way things are. If Ritschl was right, religion (rightly understood) and modern philosophy and science (kept where they belong) cannot conflict.

Harnack is the paradigm of the classical liberal Protestant theologian. He reduced Christianity to a minimal ethical core–it’s true “essence”–which cannot be undermined by science or philosophy. The liberal theologians did not throw out belief in the Trinity or the deity and humanity of Jesus Christ, etc. They simply reduced their importance (they are not of the essence) and reinterpreted them non-metaphysically [(into existential terms - skinhead)].

The leading Ritschlian theologian in America (at the same time as Harnack in Germany) was Henry Churchill King, president of Oberlin College. His book Reconstruction in Theology was published at the same time as Harnack’s What Is Christianity? (1901) King’s “reconstruction” of Christianity theology was done under that influence (viz., Ritschl). The leading Ritschlian public figure was Harry Emerson Fosdick, Jr., pastor of Riverside Church in New York City and author of numerous books of liberal theology. Fosdick’s countenance graced the cover of Time magazine twice in the 1920s. He was widely considered THE leading spokesman for liberal theology in America.

After WW1 in Europe and after WW2 in America theological liberalism underwent some changes. The main one was the death of its historical optimism and adoption of a more realistic sense of human existence and history (largely under the influence of Reinhold Niebuhr). But it retained its basic attitude toward modernity as an authority for theology’s critical and constructive tasks. (This was often more implicit than explicit.)

Gradually the liberal theological movement associated with Ritschl and his followers died out. But the ethos it embodied remained–entering into the warp and woof of mainline Protestant life and thought. Today it is represented by public intellectuals such as Marcus Borg and John Shelby Spong. Several theologians are attempting to breathe new life into it. Among them are Gary Dorrien (perhaps THE leading scholar of liberal theology especially in America), Peter Hodgson, Donald Miller (of USC, not the author of Blue Like Jazz), and John Cobb.

So what are the usual, if not universal, hallmarks of true liberal theology or family resemblances among true liberal theologians? First, here are books you MUST read if you want to discuss liberal theology intelligently (read at least one of these):

• Alan P. F. Sell, Theology in Turmoil
• William R. Hutchison, The Modernist Impulse in American Protestantism
• Kenneth Cauthen, The Impact of American Religious Liberalism
• Gary Dorrien, The Making of American Liberal Theology (3 volumes)
• Peter Hodgson, Liberal Theology: A Radical Vision
• John Cobb, Progressive Christians Speak
• Donald E. Miller, The Case for Liberal Christianity

So what do all these people from Schleiermacher to Dorrien have in common? I think the liberal theological ethos is best expressed in a nutshell by liberal theologian Delwin Brown (a convert to liberal theology from evangelicalism) in his dialogue with Clark Pinnock in Theological Crossfire: An Evangelical/Liberal Dialogue. There Brown asks THE CRUCIAL QUESTION of modern theology: “When the consensus of the best contemporary minds differs markedly from the most precious teachings of the past, which do we follow? To which do we give primary allegiance, the past or the present?” Brown rightly gives the evangelical answer: “We ought to listen to the hypotheses of the present and take from them what we can, but ultimately the truth has been given to us in the past, particularly in Jesus, and the acceptance of that is our ultimate obligation. Everything the contemporary world might say must be judged by its conformity to biblical revelation.” (Of course evangelicals differ among ourselves about WHAT biblical revelation says, but all evangelicals agree that the revelation of God given in Jesus and the biblical message takes precedence over the best of modern thought WHEN THERE IS AN UNAVOIDABLE CONFLICT between them.)

Then, Brown speaks for all liberal theologians when he gives the liberal answer to the crucial question: “Liberalism at its best is more likely to say, ‘We certainly ought to honor the richness of the Christian past and appreciate the vast contribution it makes to our lives, but finally we must live by our best modern conclusions. The modern consensus should not be absolutized; it, too, is always subect to criticism and further revision. But our commitment, however tentative and self-critically maintained, must be to the careful judgments of the present age, even if they differ radically from the dictates of the past.” (p. 23)

(Now, a good illustration of the difference between fundamentalism and evangelicalism can be given in an anecdote about the Pinnock-Brown dialogue in this book. Some years ago I used the book as a textbook in an elective class. One of the students, a theology major, objected strenuously to having to read it. He argued vehemently that dialogue between liberals such as Brown and evangelicals has no value and that Pinnock’s attempt at it proves he is not a true evangelical. I would consider that an expression of a fundamentalist as opposed to an evangelical attitude.)

Pinnock well expresses ALL evangelicals’ response to Brown, this in the context of a disagreement about eschatology in which Brown expressed skepticism about belief in a final triumph of good over evil. Pinnock to Brown: “Here we are back to where we started in the book, back to the difference between us concerning the nature of the authority of the Bible. … You allow the Bible a functional but not a cognitive authority; that is, you will not bow to the content of Scripture but accept it only as a power that authors your life in some (to me) vague way. This means in the present case that you are not able to rest your hope on the revealed promises of God concerning eternal life in Christ beyond death. Usually I appreciate your modesty in the way you do theology, but when it comes down to your not affirming clear promises of God in the gospel, the modesty is being taken too far. Lacking guidance from the Scriptures and, as if to underline my anxiety, you are forced to resolve the issue rationally and then cannot do so. Thus is the problem of liberal theology highlighted.” (p. 249)

In a nutshell, then, the liberal theological ethos accords to “the best of modern thought” the weight of authority in theology alongside or stronger than biblical revelation (and certainly than tradition). This is what Yale historical theologian Claude Welch meant when he wrote that liberal theology is “maximal acknowledgement of the claims of modernity.”

What is ironic is that Pinnock has been labeled “liberal” in spite of his strong rejection of real liberal theology in this and many of his writings. Those who called Pinnock a liberal simply revealed themselves as neo-fundamentalists (who often if not usually use “liberal” as an epithet for anyone and anything they think deviates from their version of “the received evangelical tradition.”)

There are, of course, other family resemblances among theological liberals such as:

• a tendency to emphasize the immanence of God over God’s transcendence,

• skepticism about anything supernatural or miraculous (if not rejection of those categories entirely),

• out-and-out, open universalism (a true denial of hell as opposed to a hope for eventual ultimate reconciliation),

• an emptying of the “dogma” category and corresponding reduction of all Christian beliefs to the opinion category.

Someone like Pinnock is called a fundamentalist by those on the “left” and a liberal by those on the “right.” These are fallacious and invalid uses of these labels. They have NOTHING to do with history. Theological labels should not be torn away from history and used in such an informal manner as epithets to insult or marginalize people. That is why I have written this post and I hope it helps people who want to use labels with integrity to do so. I realize, of course, that many people don’t care about that; they just want to demean other people they don’t like by slapping negative labels on them.

In which I promise not to call myself fat

http://www.emergingmummy.com/2011/06/in-which-i-promise-not-to-call-myself.html

Sarah

June 26, 2011

Dear Anne and Evelynn,... Here are the lies, my dears:

You are only as good as you look.
You are only lovable if you have a rock hard body.
You can conquer your feelings of inadequacy by being skinny.
Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.
Everyone judges you by how you look and talks about you behind your back.
Beautiful is defined by your culture (and so it is beautiful to be frightfully skinny with bolted-on boobs and an identi-kit face).
You are not worthy of love if you are not beautiful.

I'm raising you in a world that thinks you're only as good as you look. And you're being raised by a woman who is still overcoming these lies herself.

The other day, I did an exercise video at home. You were with me, Annie, while the two littles slept and we leaped and kicked our way through jumping-jacks together. "Oh, Mum!" you glowed, "Even your tummy is having fun! Look at it jumping around!" and for a moment, oh, it stung.

I just gave birth to Evelynn two months ago and so yes, my tummy is "jumping around" when I jump around and part of me wanted to sit down and cry for the sudden cacophony of worthlessness and shame that rose up but then you were there. You were there, looking up at me, having fun exercising and I thought, no. No, I will not cry about how I look in front of you. Instead I told you that this was fantastic and yes, my tummy was having a marvellous time. When you asked me why we were exercising, I had to lock my lips tight against the "to lose weight because I'm fat because I just had a baby" that threatened to spill out and instead spoke of having fun exercising for energy and playing together to be healthy and strong and hey, later, did you want to go bike riding?

I am looking for the small ways to spare you just a few battles of body-image that seems to strangle and entangle so many of us in the war against women. Like the girls that post their supper every night on Facebook for "accountability" and the ones that over-exercise to punish their own bodies. The ones that starve themselves and so carve their own flesh with the word "Forgotten" and "Invisible." Like the ones that are apologetic to their husbands because they have a body marked by childbirth. The ones that are terrified of aging. The ones that feel like they are never, no, never not keenly aware of how they look or what they ate or what they will be eating, the ones chained to a scale or a number or a glossy Photoshopped-ideal.

Sure, I will talk and teach and train but I am learning this: you will sing my songs.

And so I will sing a song of wonder and beauty about womanhood for you to learn from my lips.

I will lead the resistance of these lies in our home by living out a better truth.

I will not criticise my sisters for how they look or live, casting uncharitable words like stones, because my words of criticism or judgement have a strange way of being more boomerang than missile, swinging around to lodge in your own hearts.

I'll wear a bathing suit and I won't tug on it self-consciously. I will get my hair wet.

I will easily change my clothes in front of your Dad, proud of my stretch marks that gave us a family, of breasts that nourished his babies.

I will prove to you that you can be a size 12 and still be sexier than hell.

I will prove to you that you don't have to be all angles and corners, that there is room for some softness because you all love to hug on my soft bits, burrowing into my arms and my breasts to rest for a while.

I will eat dessert and raise my glass and laugh my way to deeper smile lines.

I will celebrate your own beauty, my tall girls, but I will do my best to praise your mind, your heart, your motives as much as I praise your beauty.

I will not let the words "I'm fat" cross my lips - especially in front of you, my beautiful girls.

I will celebrate beauty where I find it, in a million faces uniquely handcrafted by a generous God with a big tent of glorious womanhood.

I will tell stories of women and surround you with a community of women who are smart and strong, crazy and hot-headed, gentle and kind, women who love and you will see that this is what is beautiful, that a generous love is the most gorgeous thing you could ever put on.

I love you.

Mummy

 

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The War on Women Worldwide

In which I am part of the insurgency
http://www.emergingmummy.com/2011/07/in-which-i-am-part-of-insurgency.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+EmergingMummy+%28Emerging+Mummy%29

Sarah

July 13, 2011

Sometimes I think that there is a war on women. It may be unofficial but oh, sisters, it's pervasive and horrible in some ways, culturally acceptable and mundane-but-devastating in others. The battles go from the rape tactics of war in Sudan to the sex trafficked of eastern Europe, from the pervasiveness of girlie-girl hyper-sexualised stealing of childhood to the proliferation and acceptability of pornography.

I am even beginning to wonder if the evangelical culture war about "biblical" womanhood - narrow stay-at-home vs. working, from complementarian vs. egaltarian (full disclosure: unapologetic egaltarian here) - is disingenuous at best and neutering half the church at worst and, to be honest, completely missing the point. And then when I wrote this small post of promise to my own glorious girls, I was surprised by the response, by the women that are still sharing and sending it and saying that they, too, will make that promise because we all feel the battles there on the scale, too.

I've always had my ear to the ground for women in the news but then when I read this piece about almost an entire generation of missing girls in India and China due to gender selection, the only word I could think of is holocaust because this attack on women, world-over, from womb to grave is truly a reckless slaughter and destruction of lives, in big and small ways, isn't it?

Forgive me the analogy if it offends. That is not my heart ever. But maybe our culture, our world, is the good German, just going along with the flow, keeping their head down and eyes on the work that applies only to them and their family.

If it is a war on women, I can't be Winston Churchill. I am not the one leading the charge and very few listen to my small voice with its strong Canadian accent. I may not be a Katie Davis or a Christine Caine or a Dorothy Day. I may not be a Nancy Alcorn, let alone a Mother Theresa or an Oprah Winfrey or any other well-known woman fighting some small or large battle in this war against our sisters, mothers and daughters, our friends. Our big voices of freedom and workers for the wholeness of women stand as the generals and governments, the tacticians and leaders are our Allied forces.

No, I am not that important. I am small.

And my life is a bit small.

So I will be the French Resistance.

I will be the small underground movement, the insurgency, the one taking every opportunity, however small, to strike a blow for the Kingdom's way of womanhood.

It's in the small ops then. The monthly cheque sent off to Mercy. The determination to value my daughters and sons for their intrinsic worth, their mind and hearts as well as their appearance. To give respect and honour to the stories of women around the world - and in my neighbourhood. The raising of my tinies to follow the example of Christ first. It's in the refusal to ignore the stories - however much I want to stick my head in the sand and act like it's not happening. It's even in the writing of the letter to a small girl in Rwanda who lost her parents to AIDS every month. Even in the honouring of my own gifts to give (ack! Such a hard one). It's in opening our homes with true hospitality especially to the lonely. It's in foregoing Christmas presents to buy a goat for a family overseas. It's in using my words to love us all.

It is making space for God behind enemy lines.

If the big moments, the opportunities to rise up for something bigger come up, I will be ready to jump in, to cast off my underground status, ready to leap to the front lines. (I hope. Who knows? Are you ever ready?)

In the meantime, the Allies depend on us, ma soeurs de coeurs, to dismantle the enemy from inside enemy lines. From inside of our own hearts, from inside of our daughters and sons, from our friends and then, lending our hearts, our hands, our ears and our voices for our sisters world over.

So friends, what is your role? What tactics are you using to undermine the enemy?


Places to get involved that I love:

Mercy Ministries of Canada (or the United States or the UK) - For women that struggle with life-controlling issues such as drug and alcohol abuse, physical and sexual abuse, depression, eating disorders and self-harm.

The A21 Campaign - fighting against sex-trafficking

SheLoves HalfMarathon for Living Hope - a local endeavour to raise funds for women who have had their faces cut off by the LRA to receive restorative surgery and therapy.

World Vision - sponsor a child or a family around the world.

Compassion - sponsor a child or a family around the world.

Watoto - an orphan and widow care ministry in Uganda.

Image source

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Christians should learn from Jews on Passover

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-faith/post/christians-should-learn-from-jews-on-passover/2011/04/20/AF4eJcPE_blog.html

Brian McLaren

April 20, 2011

I can understand why some Jewish leaders are concerned about Christians adopting (usurping?) the Passover seder and replacing its original Jewish meanings with Christian meanings. With nearly 2000 years of Christian anti-semitism in our shared history, this can easily be interpreted as yet another encroachment and attempt at conquest and assimilation.

But I wonder if something more helpful - for both Christians and Jews - could come from Christian engagement with Passover. Perhaps instead of importing Christian meanings into a Jewish holiday, Christians can important Jewish meanings into Christian faith, thus reframing our understanding of Jesus and the gospel. (This is one theme of my book “A New Kind of Christianity.”) Many of us are increasingly convinced that it’s a mistake for Christians to see Jesus as a Christian - especially in the modern sense of the word: he was a Jew, as were all the first disciples.

When we Christians reframe and rediscover our faith in light of its Jewish roots (rather than interpreting it in the alien categories of Greek philosophy and Roman politics of the second through fifth centuries), I think our faith is enriched - and we are confronted more deeply by the ugly and violent aspects of “Christian history.”

For example, the word “salvation” in the context of the Passover does not mean “atoning for original sin so the soul can go to heaven instead of hell after death.” No, the word “salvation” means “liberation from slavery and oppression.” So to speak of Jesus as Savior suddenly has less to do with one’s destination after death (as Rob Bell affirms in “Love Wins,” and as I also explored in my “A New Kind of Christian” trilogy) and more to do with one’s participation in and pursuit of God’s justice, reconciliation, and peace in this world, with Jesus - justice for all, reconciliation with all, and peace among all.

That’s quite an improvement over usurpation, encroachment, conquest, and assimilation. So instead of Christians telling Jews what the Passover really means, I propose that we Christians reverse roles and take the role of listeners for a while, learning with our Jewish neighbors forgotten or suppressed meanings that will challenge us all towards repentance and faith, love and good work.

BEST-SELLING AUTHOR AND INTELLECTUAL LEADER OF “EMERGING CHURCH”

Brian D. McLaren

McLaren is an activist, speaker, and author (most recently of Naked Spirituality and A New Kind of Christianity). He was a pastor for 24 years and is a leader in the global conversation about emerging Christianity.

For More Posts by Brian go to -

http://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/638929/12/08/ADmeN0B_page.html?type=panelist&blogId=on-faith&panelistId=brian_mclaren

Kingdom as a Participatory Eschatology

End times theology: an insider’s guide
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-faith/post/end-times-theology-an-insiders-guide/2011/05/10/AFCsXAiG_blog.html

Brian McLaren

May 10, 2011

I grew up in a Christian tradition (a young one, actually, having started in the 1830’s) called Dispensationalism. Although we shied away from predicting specific dates, we sang and preached and even made scary movies about the coming “Rapture,” Great Tribulation, coming of the Antichrist, and eventually the Second Coming. We had complex charts of our “end-time scenario” in which we could fit (or cram) every single verse in the Bible. It was impressive.

For a while. As I grew older and started reading the Bible more holistically, I realized that this kind of prognostication was a house of cards. Not only that, it had disastrous consequences. After all, why care about global climate change if you believe God is about to burn it up to a cinder anyway? Why worry about peak oil if the world will end before the oil economy collapses? Why address systemic injustice - economic, racial, sexual, political, environmental - if you assume it’s God’s will for things to get worse and worse so it all can be swept away in final judgment?

Now I, like many others, have migrated to a very different understanding of the future. More and more of us are calling it a “participatory eschatology” or a “participatory view of the future.”

Instead of assuming that the future is predetermined, that the script is written, that the movie is already filmed in God’s mind and is only “showing” in the theatre of the now, we believe the future does not yet exist.

We believe that we are called to work together with God’s Spirit - with creativity, for justice and peace, nonviolently, and both passionately and patiently - to create the kind of future that fulfills what Desmond Tutu calls “the Dream of God.” Of course, we can’t presume to know what that world looks like: we can’t presume it’s communist or capitalist or works on some as-yet undreamed-of economic system.

But we work with this confidence: that when we show love, when we seek God’s justice for all, when we care for the vulnerable and forgotten, when we try to take the logs out of our own eyes before working on the splinters in the eyes of others, when we care for the birds of the air, flowers of the field, and fish of the sea, when we admit our wrongs rather than hide or deny them, when we give rather than hoard, when we seek reconciliation rather than revenge ... we are nudging the world one small step forward in our journey towards that dream of blessing and peace.

Sadly, misguided predictions of the sort made by Harold Camping become distractions from that great calling. Although history suggests that people who are part of false predictions tend to double-down when their prophecies fail, perhaps on May 22, some of Camping’s disillusioned followers will be open to a new way of thinking.

BEST-SELLING AUTHOR AND INTELLECTUAL LEADER OF “EMERGING CHURCH”

 

Brian D. McLaren

McLaren is an activist, speaker, and author (most recently of Naked Spirituality and A New Kind of Christianity). He was a pastor for 24 years and is a leader in the global conversation about emerging Christianity.

For More Posts by Brian go to -

http://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/638929/12/08/ADmeN0B_page.html?type=panelist&blogId=on-faith&panelistId=brian_mclaren

The State of Contemporary Theology

http://forsclavigera.blogspot.com/2011/07/on-state-of-contemporary-theology.html

by James K.A. Smith

posted July 14, 2011

A friend who is a grad student in theology recently expressed some frustration with the proliferation of narrow "camps" in contemporary theology--and hence the lack of space for emerging theologians to engage in conversations which aren't just predetermined at the outset. What s/he has found is that most theological claims/discussions are judged beforehand by a kind of guilt-by-association: "Oh, you're working out of Camp X and are sympathetic to Theologian Y. I've already got a line/take/pigeonhole for that 'school,' and so I already know what you're going to say. Ergo, there's really no need for the conversation."

Not exactly productive conditions for common pursuit of truth.

So, my friend asked, is there some place where young theologians can engage in honest, forthright dialogue without all the posturing? Here's what I suggested, off-the-cuff (and slightly redacted):

**********

It's a good question, but I'm afraid I don't have a very good answer. I must confess I despair about the state of "professional" theology today. It just seems to me that we have increasing "balkanization," with everyone carving themselves up into smaller and smaller tribish enclaves, and then proceeding to both rail against straw men and preach to their own little choirs. In some ways, I think this is an effect of the loss of confessional and denominational identity. Instead of training to be Reformed theologians or Roman Catholic theologians or Lutheran theologians we have a generation who are training to become "ecclesiocentric" theologians or "apocalyptic" theologians or "radically orthodox" theologians, etc. Everybody's gotta have an "angle," a project, an agenda, a manifesto, a list of "Theses" that discloses the hitherto hidden truth of the world on the basis of their own ingenuity. Hence the most important words in our theological lexicons become "alone" and "only," as in: "Only [insert theological ideology here] can properly account for [insert favorite political and social issue here]."

All of this does weird things to theological identity and community, which then breeds a narcissism of minor differences. In some ways, this is a strange by-product of "ecumenical" theological education. (I think the blogosphere exacerbates this in important ways, but I would need more data to substantiate such a claim.)

I also think this state of the field is a by-product of the fact that many up-and-coming theologians right now are not what we used to call "churchmen" in any strong sense ("churchwomen" included): they are not tied to denominational identities, they are not participants in the specifics of ecclesiastical governance/teaching, they are not subject to ecclesial magisteria of any sort, they are not aspiring to chairs in their denominational seminaries, etc. From where I sit, freelancing does not seem very conducive to healthy theologizing.

In a lot of ways, this is why I have planted myself in a very particular, "thick" confessional location--not because it is the one, true perspective; or the temple that holds all the secrets; but because it is a good location (and a "good enough" location) which is both catholic and particular, and one to which I feel--if this doesn't sound too quaint--called. So I'm a Reformed thinker, and even more specifically, a Christian Reformed thinker. Far from being a recipe for sectarianism, I think that centering frees me up to engage selectively, critically, and generously (I hope). In a sense, thick confessional/denominational identity eliminates a certain insecurity that I think explains alot of the current fragmentation. So my theological and professional identity is not bound up with any 'school of thought' or sensibility. (Based on my books, people seem to think that I have some investment in being "postmodern" or "RO" or "Hauerwasian" or whathaveyou: but I don't own stock in any of these little cottage industries, though I have interest in all of them. My central investment is in this obscure little denomination where I'm planted.)

So in some sense, I just don't know if the sort of space you're looking for exists, sadly. Then again, maybe it's always been this way!

FWIW,

Jamie

Limited Universal Salvation

A Non-Universal Story

http://twofriarsandafool.com/2011/07/a-non-universal-story/

by AricClark

posted July 15, 2011

 

What is the best possible ending for the biblical story?

More specifically, does universal salvation provide a better ending for the story than the more common view of limited entrance into the eternal Kingdom of God?

I have to say at the outset that, despite my arguments against universalism, I feel the force of the question and at times find myself drawn toward a more universalistic anticipation of the future. Those thoughts are driven, not by a denial of how badly humans have gotten God’s story wrong here on earth, but by an affirmation of the largess of God’s saving grace: if saving some is good, how much better is saving all?

But when I step back from this, I consider that the better ending of God’s saving story is not numerically universal in scope. (If I use the term “universalism” in this discussion, it will mean “every human being who has ever lived entering into the eternal salvation, in resurrected bodies upon the new creation, that was accomplished in Christ.”)

I have two main thoughts about why a limited final salvation, which seems to me to be better attested in scripture than its alternatives, is a better ending to the story than universalism. Both of these thoughts have to do, in some respect, with the idea that stories are immanently more compelling when their scenes are connected and related to one another.

In the end, deus ex machina renders the antecedent story irrelevant.

Life Echoing to Eternity

Jesus’ first words of public proclamation are, “Repent, for the Reign of God has drawn near!” The Reign (or Kingdom) of God is sometimes depicted as what is arriving with Jesus’ advent, and sometimes as what we wait for in the restoration of all things.

With this, we catch a clear indication that the present as it has been inaugurated in Christ is inseparable from the future that God is bringing about through him. Or, in the words of Maximus the Gladiator, “What we do in life echoes in eternity.”

This connection between the works of this life and our eternal destiny is a consistent theme in the message of the New Testament in general and in Jesus’ teaching in particular. The famous sheep and goats scene of Matthew 25 speaks of a final judgment in which visiting the prisoner, feeding the hungry, and giving drink to the thirsty are indications, on earth, of being children of the kingdom—which means entering the kingdom of the king for all eternity.

Two things are worth pointing out here, as we’ll return to the second point in a bit. The first is the connection between this life and the next. The second is that despite the continuity the final judgment comes as a surprise to everyone

The idea that there is drastic, dramatic discontinuity is more Gnostic than Christian. In this particular discussion, I am presenting what is probably perceived by most as a more “traditional” or conservative position on the world to come. But the idea of continuity is one that folks to my right are guilty of as well. The idea that we are saved by faith alone has often borne fruit in a theology that says what we do while on earth does not matter for the final judgment—we are saved solely by the work of Christ. The idea that God introduces dramatic discontinuity between this world and the next has borne fruit in the notion that what we do to the earth we are on does not matter—the earth will have to be remade completely.

Both of these non-Christian ideas derive from a failure to recognize the continuity between this life and the next. And, the plea for universalism indicates a similar failure. The way the Christian story works, as all good stories do, is by a measure of continuity between one scene and the next – even when we recognize the presence of a hero who comes in and rescues people from what would otherwise be the natural course of their actions.

So reason one why I am not a universalist is because the story indicates a continuity between this life and the next such that there are those who demonstrate themselves to be children of the kingdom and those who are demonstrating themselves to not be so (re)born.

Freedom and Responsibility

A second reason I am hesitant to see universalism as the outcome of the story is that I see it coming together with one other popular idea to validate what I see as a typically western, especially American, mentality.

One of the foundational theological premises of popular western, especially American, theologizing, is the notion of free will. It doesn’t matter that the phrase “free will” is never spoken of as a determining factor in a person’s relationship with God in the entire Bible or that election and predestination are so invoked on numerous occasions, the basic premise of Bible-believing Christians is that we have free will and God doesn’t control us, make us puppets, etc.

I thus find it interesting that from the people for whom free will is a non-negotiable in all our dealings with God that universalism is an increasingly popular option. It seems as though we want to eat our cake and have it. After asserting that everything is entirely up to us, that God would never force anyone to choose God or love God, in the end we are not willing to accept that there might be grave, even eternal consequences to this act of freedom. In the end, we are asking for God to overcome our freedom by a mighty act of universal election.

If we are going to so stridently insist on a God who is willing that his creatures choose or reject God in freedom, I think we need to have the courage to posit a God who is willing to live with the consequences of that freedom—a God who, in the end, is willing to say to us who have rejected God, “Your will be done.”

We’re approaching this question of universalism by asking what makes for the best ending to the story. I think that we want our stories to have continuity. I have not focused on the issue of justice in the sense of avenging wrongs that go unpunished in the world.

One might also raise the question of whether it is our position as essentially empowered people that gives us the luxury of demanding a setting-of-all-things-to-rights by exclusion of some from God’s kingdom at the End. I do believe that is important, but that it is only one facet of a larger storyline that will issue forth in some sort of continuity between this age and the age to come.

Surprise

Having said all this, however, I want to return to a point I made above.

I anticipate that the end will be a time of surprise. Surprise endings are the stuff of good stories. Continuity does not entail predictability. The only thing I think we can predict with safety is that the actual playing out of “the End” will be unpredictable.

As a New Testament scholar, I am regularly made aware of how the first coming of Jesus caused his followers to reread the Old Testament and to provide new interpretations to the old texts. I anticipate that the same is in store for us in the future.

One such surprise, I think, will in fact be the breadth of those who are embraced into the quintessential human task of glorifying God. The appearance at the end of Revelation of the kings of the earth, bringing in the glory of the nations, perhaps provides a hint that the judgment will not leave behind anything so neatly circumscribed as “the church.”

About AricClark

Aric discovered he is religious and not spiritual in a Chan Buddhist monastery in Taiwan. These days he inflicts that religion on a congregation of Presbyterians in Fort Morgan, Colorado. He does this while fathering two wild heathens, writing everything but this week’s sermon, and husbanding the amazing Stacia Ann. He is a world-class Game Master, a pacifist, an over-activist, and a number 8 on the Enneagram. His influences include James Alison, Pomplamoose, Pema Chodron, Iain M. Banks, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Stephen R. Donaldson, Chipotle chicken burritos, John Howard Yoder, Cowboy Bebop, and the highland bagpipes. He still cannot grow a beard.

Dr. JR Daniel Kirk

Is a New Testament professor at Fuller Seminary in Northern California and the author of Unlocking Romans as well as Jesus Have I Loved, But Paul?, which is due to be released later this year. He brews his own beer, listens to the Mountain Goats almost obsessively, and blogs daily at Storied Theology.

HarperOne Response to Love Wins

Not long ago I wrote some brief comments about HarperOne's campaign to make money at Rob Bell's political expense within evangelical circles (http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2011/06/its-hard-to-put-into-words-my-initial.html). I still stand by these remarks and consider HarperOne's statement below to be shortsighted of the firestorm they knew would come. In effect, I consider this damage control by HarperOne for the benefit of HarperOne so that they do not lose additional money-making opportunities within the same evangelical groups they have disenfranchised by publishing Rob's book.

Though this "apology" comes a little late it seems to be more about HarperOne than their authorial protege, Rob Bell, whom they over-eagerly advised to write an inflammatory book that they knew would prove to be divisive to many Christians seeking clearer statements and not theological missiles thrown at them. And Bell, who is known to seek the lost sheep of God's in the wilderness of theological mis-statements and purgatorial guilt, believed that by distinguishing a clearer doctrine of hell and salvation would be a spiritual help to those lost sheep of God's. In the doing of this task he found himself alienating a group that had become locked in to its own salvific formulas and religious traditions rather than the more hopeful result of re-opening more expansive views of heaven, hell and God's love. It is to evangelicalism's ill-credit that they have responded so vindictively, so unlovingly, preferring to deem a godly man a charlatan rather than the God-gifted evangelist that he is. And all along HarperOne has been feeding the machinery of profits and burgeoning markets at Rob's expense and evangelical Christianity's even poorer response.

- skinhead

**********

http://www.newsandpews.com/2011/07/rob-bells-hell-by-mickey-maudlin-harperone-senior-v-p-executive-editor/

Rob Bell’s Hell
By Mickey Maudlin, HarperOne Senior V.P./Executive Editor

July 1st, 2011 by admin

Nothing makes me more proud than to see a book I edited reach a wide audience. By that measure, I should be beaming over Rob Bell’s Love Wins. And I am. Not only has it spent fifteen weeks on the New York Times bestseller list (as of this writing), Rob has personally heard from hundreds of readers about how his book has been “a cure,” “healing,” “a lifesaver,” or has allowed them to connect or reconnect with the church.

Still, I cannot shake a deep sadness about the book. Considering how corrosive the effects can be on those who have been told they are “special” or that they are “God’s voice for a generation,” I was pleasantly surprised at the beginning of our work together to discover Rob to be a great listener and partner, eager for feedback, a hard worker, fun, and deeply grounded spiritually. He knew what God wanted him to do, and not do, and what his priorities were. At heart he is a pastor and an evangelist whose ambition is to overcome barriers to the gospel. In that way, he reminds me of Billy Graham.

And so, as someone who has spent his entire adult life in the evangelical portion of the church, I cannot help but be sad at the reaction to the book by many conservative Christians. The Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution against Rob and the book. Bestselling author Francis Chan and Christianity Today’s Mark Galli have authored two of the six books opposing Rob. Leading evangelicals like Albert Mohler, David Platt, and John Piper have condemned him. Christian critics routinely use words like “unbiblical,” “heretical,” and worse to describe Rob. Most Christian bookstores refuse to carry the book. My heart goes out to Rob for having to endure this onslaught (which, in my view, he has weathered surprisingly well, thank God).

But why such hostility? Why would leaders attack as a threat and an enemy someone who shares their views of Scripture, Jesus, and the Trinity? What prevented leaders from saying, “Thanks, Rob, interesting views, but here is where we disagree”? When did “believing the right things” become equated with determining who is “saved” so that, as some have claimed, affirming Rob’s teachings might jeopardize one’s eternal destiny? (If salvation is dependent on having the right Protestant theology, how could the apostles be saved?) What exactly is so threatening about Rob’s expansive vision of God’s love and grace?

As a young evangelical, I was socialized to see the biggest threat to the church as theological liberalism. But now I think the biggest threat is Christian tribalism, where God’s interests are reduced to and measured by those sharing your history, tradition, and beliefs, and where one needs an “enemy” in order for you to feel “right with God.” Such is the challenge facing the church today and what the reaction to Love Wins reveals. So the success of Love Wins fills me with both hope and fear. But it has also made me thankful that I work for a publisher that is independent of these church wars and allows us to concentrate on books that offer hope and light. Because, with Rob, I really do believe that love wins.

Mickey Maudlin
Senior V.P. | Executive Editor | Director of Bible Publishing
HarperOne

Review: Norm Geisler "Emergence or Emergency?"

I have submitted  a review of an earlier course lecture given by the evangelical professor, Norm Geisler, in 2008, stating the perceived errors of the emergent Christian movement. This, and similar courses, may be found in one fashion or another throughout evangelical colleges and seminaries espousing similar arguments and innuendos. Further, the more popular books and articles in contemporary evangelical religious literature continue to play out to these erroneous fears, objections, beliefs, and barbed rhetorical volleys (sic, David Platt, Justin Thaylor, Kevin DeYoung, Mark Galli, Mark Driscoll, John Piper, Francis Chan, Albert Mohler, etc).


But because the Emergent movement had shortly begun in the late 1990s it is submitted by this writer that these fears seemed a legitimate treatment of the then current understanding of emergent Christianity in its interplay with a newer unrecognized cultural dynamic by modernistic evangelical Christians. And because we as Christians are so use to seeing sectarian and cultic error arise so frequently it was considered within evangelicalism that this new movement would be little different.


And this was my considered response as well and it wasn’t until emergent Christianity better proposed itself and enunciated its beliefs did I more fully understand their “alarming” doctrines as being less alarming and ringing more true than I had at first believed. But it took a decade to decipher this new branch of Christianity, known as Emergent Christianity, and all the while this "movement" worked hard to define its beliefs and practices - helped, as it were, by the offsetting trends of global postmodernism on display. The further the 21st Century progressed, the further emergent Christianity would be illuminated by it. In effect, modernistic evangelicalism little understood postmodernism and the resultant emergent Christianity that was arising as an orthodox Christian response to it. But so too could the same be said about evangelical Christianity as it grew in response to the modernism of the mid-20th Century before a fundamentalist Christianity still holding on to the 19th Century.


Moreover, the earlier advocates of emergent Christianity perhaps were too eager to point out the shortcomings of evangelical Christianity and fire-bombed precious "traditional" truths with a vigor that quickly put evangelicalism on the defensive. And religion being what it is, shortly betrayed itself as a holy war by both sides out to crucify and condemn each the other side… disappointingly so. If we know anything, it is that change comes slowly, and where religion is concerned, its comes all too painfully slowly, especially when the truth and rightness of God’s word has been grossly mis-defined and limited by holy practices and beliefs.


And yet, emergent Christianity continues to define itself within its culture of postmodernism (much like evangelicalism had continued to define itself within its own modern era) as we are seeing better and better arguments and more patient teaching against the earlier fears and analysis of evangelicalism's much pronounced veracities. Further, it has been because of the pronouncements and verdicts from evangelical pulpits, papers, and seminaries like the one recorded below that emergent Christian “doctrines and practices” have arisen in better response and highlight.


For as such, these charges whether true or not, have helped open-minded Christians re-examine their modernistic faith and to elevate it beyond the confines of the industrial, scientific enlightenment era which many of our creedal beliefs and examinations have arisen in the past centuries by well-meaning men and women of God.


Christianity can never be defined within a box, and much like Schrödinger’s very famous quantum box (of cats) has shown, our doctrinal certainties can slip away into quite another type of box as easily and without our permission! Partly, language and self-limiting human understanding is to blame, and partly too is our need for absolutes and assurances. But God knows all this and because he is our Creator will give us the language, the understanding, the absolutes, the assurances, the faith and the hope to know him as Savior, Lord and God. This we can be sure of, and sure too that regardless of our blindness he while patiently remove the scales from our eyes and hearts to see him correctly, truly, fully, assuredly. For he is the God of light and truth, love and grace.


For man is not unreachable despite our sin and our ill-faith and ill-hope in the divine. God is as surely revealing himself to us today as he has to all men in all places and at all times of human society. This too we can be sure. And thus, my submittal of Norm Geisler’s anti-Emergent paper and very brief responses to it. Curiously, the very stated responses Geisler makes of emergent luminaries I found to be better arguments than the evangelical ones he had devised and quoted.


For these early Emergents were struggling to better express their faith to like-minded people questioning Evangelicalism’s short-sighted and sometimes false-inferences of God. And paradoxically, this very same “course paper” that would expose emergent Christianity has exposed itself in showing evangelicalism’s own shortsightedness and self-proclaimed deficiencies. Curious indeed.

RE Slater

July 2011

**********

The Emergent Church: Emergence or Emergency?
Copyright by Norman L. Geisler 2008

http://www.normgeisler.com/

I - The Background of Emergence Stated

There is one key influence on the Emergent Church movement—postmodernism. While not all Emergents accept all premises of post-modernism, nonetheless, they all breathe the same air. Post modernism embraces the following characteristics:

1) The “Death of God”—Atheism;
2) The death of objective truth—Relativism;
3) The death of exclusive truth—Pluralism;
4) Death of objective meaning—Conventionalism;
5) The death of thinking (logic)—Anti-Foundationalism;
6) The death of objective interpretation—Deconstructionism; and,
7) The death of objective values—Subjectivism.

RE Slater – To be clear, Emergents are not atheistic, have not relativizedEmergents have rejected not the Scripture’s, but evangelicalism’s, conventionalism and its foundationalism through the method of de-construction aimed primarily towards the Reformation's 500-year hold on doctrine through denominational traditions,  creedal formulas, missional statements and self-understandings.

And most definitely the idea of “objectivity” lies in the mind of the beholder as we tussle with the definition of whose “objectivity” we wish to espouse and believe. An Emergent may more believe that it is the Evangelic that is being subjective and non-objective, especially as regards evangelicalism's religion and faith practices.

It is better to know that believers from whatever faith-walk will always scrutinize their religion rather than to accuse each other of not performing to these charges. And it is definitely regressive of either side to declare “I am a better Christian than you” or “My side is more right than yours”. The house of God knows no distinctions within itself, for we are all one body regardless of its parts. (July 2011)




From post-modernism Emergents devise the following key ideas - They consider themselves:

1) Post-Protestant;
2) Post-Orthodox;
3) Post-Denominational;
4) Post-Doctrinal;

5) Post-Individual;
6) Post-Foundational;
7) Post-Creedal;

8) Post-Rational; and,

9) Post-Absolute.

RE Slater – sic, previously answered above.

It is noteworthy that “post” is a euphemism for “anti.” So, in reality they are against all these things and more.

Brian McClaren, one of the leaders of the emergent church stressed the importance of the postmodernism influence upon the movement when he wrote:

“But for me…opposing it [Postmodernism] is as futile as opposing the English language. It’s here. It’s reality. It’s the future…. It’s the way my generation processes every other fact on the event horizon” (McLaren, The Church on the Other Side, 70).

“Postmodernism is the intellectual boundary between the old world and the other side. Why is it so important? Because when your view of truth is changed, when your confidence in the human ability to know truth in any objective way is revolutionized, then everything changes. That includes theology…” (McLaren, COS, 69).

II - Basic Works by Emergents Listed

There is an ever increasing flow of emergent literature. To date, it includes the following:

Brian McLaren,
The Church on the Other Side
A Generous Orthodoxy
A New Kind of Christian
Everything Must Change

Stanley Grenz,
A Primer on Post-Modernism
Beyond Foundationalism
Revising Evangelical Theology

Rob Bell,
Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith
Love Wins

Doug Pagitt & Tony Jones, An Emergent Manifesto of Hope

Tony Jones, The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier

Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz

Steve Chalke and Allan Mann, The Lost Message of Jesus

Dave Tomlinson, The Post-Evangelical.

Spencer Burke and Barry Taylor, A Heretics Guide to Eternity

See also: www.emergentvillage.com


III - Basic Beliefs of Emergents Examined

Of course, not all Emergents believe all the doctrines listed below, but some do, and most hold to many of them. And since they associate with others in the movement that do, it is proper to list all of them.

Anti-Absolutism

McClaren insists that “Arguments that pit absolutism versus relativism, and objectivism versus subjectivism, prove meaningless or absurd to postmodern people” (McClaren, “The Broadened Gospel,” in “Emergent Evangelism,” Christianity Today 48 [Nov., 2004], 43).

This is a form of relativism. Lets reduce the premise to its essence and analyze it by showing that it is self-refuting.



RE Slater response to Geisler’s analysis – “This is not a form of relativism but a form of expanding evangelical absolutism beyond its self-limiting boundaries of God and all things God. Which religious statements were developed in the enlightenment era of scientific absolutism and can no longer hold true under postmodernism’s era of expanded re-thinking of all boundary setting and quantified truths of the past two centuries.” (July 2011)




1 - Relativism Stated: “We cannot know absolute truth.”

2 - Relativism Refuted: We know that we cannot know absolute truth.


Anti-Exclusivism (Pluralism)

Pluralism is another characteristic of the emergent movement. McClaren claims that “Missional Christian faith asserts that Jesus did not come to make some people saved and others condemned. Jesus did not come to help some people be right while leaving everyone else to be wrong. Jesus did not come to create another exclusive religion” (McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy, 109).



RE Slater - Rob Bell’s book Love Wins succinctly states and buttresses McClaren’s arguments. Evangelical Christianity has self-reinforced its own exclusive arguments to the projection of a smaller remnant of converts than there may be, and thereby have limited God’s love by his own truth and justice. Pitting his own attributes against him in order to create a less-than-biblical view of God, his atonement and his redemption. This would thus be the emergent’s argument with evangelicals. (July 2011)



In brief,

1 - The Claim of Pluralism: “No view is exclusively true.”
2 - The Self-Refutation: It claims that its view (that no view is exclusively true) is exclusively true.


Anti-Foundationalism

Foundationalism in the philosophical sense may be defined as the position that here are self-evident principles at the basis of all thought such as:

1. The Law of Identity (A is A).
2. The Law of Non-Contradiction (A is not non-A).

3. The Law of Excluded Middle (Either A or non-A).

4. The Laws of rational inference.

Inferences take several forms:

Categorical  inferences includes the following necessary inference: a) All A is included in B; b) All B is included in C. Hence, c) All A is included in C.

Hypothetical  inferences include the following: a) If all human beings are sinners, then John is a sinner; b) All human beings are sinners. c) Therefore, John is a sinner.

Disjunctive inferences are like this: a) Either John is saved or he is lost. b) John is not saved. c) Therefore, John is lost.

One of the fore-fathers of the Emergent movement was Stanley Grenz who wrote a whole book against Foundationalism entitled: Beyond Foundationalism.

McClaren contents that: “For modern Western Christians, words like authority, inerrancy, infallibility, revelation, objective, absolute, and literal are crucial…. Hardly anyone knows …Rene Descartes, the Enlightenment, David Hume, and Foundationalism - which provides the context in which these words are so important. Hardly anyone notices the irony of resorting to the authority of extra-biblical words and concepts to justify one’s belief in the Bible’s ultimate authority” (McLaren, GO, 164).

So, the claim and refutation of anti-foundationalism can be states like this:

1 - The Claim: “Opposites (e.g., A is non-A) can both be true.”
2 - The Self-Refutation: They hold that the opposite of this statement (that opposites can both be true) cannot be true.


Anti-Objectivism

Another characteristic is the denial that our statements about God are objectively true. Grenz declared: “We ought to commend the postmodern questioning of the Enlightenment assumption that knowledge is objective and hence dispassionate” (Grenz, A Primer on Postmodernism, 166).

1 - The Claim of Anti-Objectivism: “There are no objectively true statements.”
2 - The Self-Refutation: It is an objectively true statement that there are no objectively true statements.


Anti-Rationalism (Fideism)

Most Emergents have a strong doze of fideism. Grenz chided “Twentieth-century evangelicals [who] have devoted much energy to the task of demonstrating the credibility of the Christian faith…” (Grenz, Primer on Post-modernism, 160).

“Following the intellect can sometimes lead us away from the truth” (Grenz, PPM, 166). One might add, that not following basic rational thought will lead you there a lot faster!

McLaren adds, “Because knowledge is a luxury beyond our means, faith is the best we can hope for. What an opportunity! Faith hasn’t encountered openness like this in several hundred years” (McLaren, The Church on the Other Side, 173).

“Drop any affair you may have with certainty, proof, argument—and replace it with dialogue, conversation, intrigue, and search” (McLaren, Adventures in Missing the Point, 78).

Donald Miller confessed that “My belief in Jesus did not seem rational or scientific, and yet there was nothing I could do to separate myself from this belief” (54). He said, “My most recent faith struggle is not one of intellect…. I don’t believe I will ever walk away from God for intellectual reasons. Who knows anything anyway? If I walk away… I will walk away for social reasons, identity reasons, deep emotional reasons…” (103).

“There are many ideas within Christian spirituality that contradict the facts of reality as I understand them. A statement like this offends some Christians because they believe if aspects of their faith do not obey the facts of reality, they are not true” (201).

So the basic claim of anti-rationalism goes as follows:

1 - The Claim of Fideism: “There are no reasons for what we believe.”
2 - The Self-Refutation: There are good reasons for believing there are no good reasons for what we believe.

1 - The Claim of Fideism: “Knowledge is a luxury beyond our means.”
2 - The Self-Refutation: We have the luxury of knowing that we can’t have the luxury of knowing.


Anti-Objectivism (of Meaning)

Anti-Objectivism deals not only with truth (above) but with meaning (called conventionalism). Emergent embrace both. All meaning is culturally relative. There is no fixed meaning. Meaning is not objective.

1 - The Claim of Conventionalism: “There is no objective meaning.”
2 - The Self-Refutation: It is objectively meaningful to assert that there is no objective meaning.


Anti-Realism

Strangely, some Emergents claim there is no objective world that can be known. Rather, “the only ultimately valid ‘objectivity of the world’ is that of a future, eschatological world, and the ‘actual’ universe is the universe as it one day will be” (Grenz, Renewing the Center, 246).

1 - The Claim of Anti-Realism “There is no real world now that can be known.”
2 - The Self-Refutation: We know it is really true now (i.e., true in the real world now) that there is no real world now that can be known.


Anti-Infallibilism

Not only can we not know absolute truth, but there is no certain knowledge of what we do claim to know, even of biblical truth. McClaren insists: “Well, I’m wondering, if you have an infallible text, but all your interpretations of it are admittedly fallible, then you at least have to always be open to being corrected about your interpretation, right?... So the authoritative text is never what I say about the text or even what I understand the text to say but rather what God means the text to say, right?” (McLaren, NKC, 50).


RE Slater - A postmodernist would understand the difficulties inherent in the use of limited human language to describe God’s thoughts and intents – thus the constant parsing and re-parsing of the divine word of God until it can approximate some degree of truth to that generation’s psyche and soul that would compel the human mind and heart towards conviction, truth and love of God, his design, will and salvific mission. (July 2011)




1 - The Claim of Anti-Infallibilism: “My understanding of the text is never the correct one.”
2 - The Self-Refutation: My understanding of the text is correct in saying that my understanding of the text is never correct.


Anti-Propositionalism

Emergents, along with post-moderns, opposed propositional truth, that is that true can be stated in propositions (declarative sentences) that are either true or false.

Grenz wrote: “Our understanding of the Christian faith must not remain fixated on the propositional approach that views Christian truth as nothing more than correct doctrine or doctrinal truth” (Grenz, PPM, 170).

“Transformed in this manner into a book of doctrine, the Bible is easily robbed of its dynamic character” (Grenz, Revisioning Evangelical Theology, 114-115).

1 - The Claim of Anti-Propositionalism: “Our view of the Christian faith must not be fixed on propositional truth (doctrine).”
2 - The Self-Refutation: We must be fixed on the propositional truth that we should not be fixed on propositional truth.

1 - Another Claim of Anti-Propositionalism: “Doctrinal truth is not dynamic.”

2 - The Self-Refutation: It is a dynamic doctrinal truth (of the Emergent Church) that doctrinal truth is not dynamic.

They fail to recognize that doctrine is dynamic! Ideas Have Consequences! For example, Einstein’s idea that “energy equals mass times the speed of light squared”had consequences—the atomic bomb! Likewise, Hitler’s idea (Nazism) led to the holocaust and the loss of multimillions of lives.

RE Slater - It is unfortunate that Geisler would unconsciously think that Emergents are Hitler-like; it feels like the egg calling itself the yolk when all along it may be guilty of the very charges of being “authoritarian police of religious rhetoric and beliefs” itself.  I will assume a polite retraction of this word-linkage and overlook an over-eager statement made too quickly, and too-quickly grounded in its own assurances rather than its own introspections. (July 2011)

Anti-Orthodoxy

The emergent movement is post-orthodox. Dwight J. Friesen suggests it should be called “orthoparadoxy.” He claims that “‘A thing is alive only when it contains contradictions in itself ….’ Just as he [Moltmann] highlights the necessity of contradictions for life, so I declare that embracing the complexities of contradictions, antinomies, and paradoxes of the human life is walking the way of Jesus” (in Pagitt ed., An Emergent Manifesto of Hope, 203).

“Jesus did not announce ideas or call people to certain beliefs as much as he invited people to follow him into a way of being in the world…. The theological method of orthoparadoxy surrenders the right to be right for the sake of movement toward being reconciled one with another, while simultaneously seeking to bring the fullness of conviction and belief to the other…. Current theological methods that often stress… orthodoxy/heresy, and the like set people up for constant battles to convince and convert the other to their way of believing and being in the world” (Friesen, in EMH, 205).

1 - The Claim of Post-Orthodoxy: “We should not insist on being right about doctrine.”

2 - The Self-refutation: We insist on being right in our doctrine that we should not insist on being right in our doctrine.

Anti-Condemnationism (Universalism)

Many Emergents are not merely pluralist, but they are universalists. McClaren affirmed that: “More important to me than the hell question, then, is the mission [in this world] question." (McLaren, Generous Orthodoxy, 114).

Rob Bell believes that Jesus reconciled “all things, everywhere” and that “Hell is full of forgiven people.” So, “Our choice is to live in this new reality or cling to a reality of our own making” (Bell, Velvet Elvis, 146).

“So it is a giant thing that God is doing here and not just the forgiveness of individuals. It is the reconciliation of all things” (Bell in “Find the Big Jesus: An Interview with Rob Bell” in Beliefnet.com).




RE Slater – Though poorly stated, both McClaren and Bell are speaking not to the emergent idea of hell but to the evangelical idea of hell, one that is too crowded with the justifiably condemned. But whether this is true or not, what they are attempting to say is that Evangelicalism too often preaches Jesus as Judge and their faith as the escape-route from hell.

What Emergents wish to say is that Jesus is love (while not denying the judge aspect) and that heaven here on earth (as well as in heaven later) is the real reason to come to God. Why would we not race to this image of Christ in the Now rather than wait for its “Latter” realization in heaven? And wouldn’t this be a more appealing reason to come to Christ than because of pure condemnation for the crimes of our sin and its sure judgments in hell?

Of course, a true understanding of love in its many aspects of truth and justice should not be lost, as any parent can tell you. But learning to love and to accept love is much harder than the too-easily administration of subjective human judgments. (July 2011)




Let’s analyze the claim of universalism:

1 - The claim: “All persons (free agents) will be saved.”

2 - The Self-refutation: But this is self-defeating for it is claiming that: All persons (free agents) will be saved, even those who do not freely choose to be saved.

C. S. Lewis pinpointed the problem with universalism when he wrote: “When one says, ‘All will be saved,’ my reason retorts, ‘Without their will, or with it?’ If I say, ‘Without their will,’ I at once perceive a contradiction; how can the supreme voluntary act of self-surrender be involuntary? If I say, ‘With their will,’ my reason replies, ‘How, if they will not give in?’” (The Problem of Pain, 106-107). - Amen, RE Slater

Anti-Inerrantism

Most emergent leaders are not inerrantist. They believe that “Incompleteness and error are part of the reality of human beings” (McLaren, COS, 173).

“Our listening to God’s voice [in Scripture] does not need to be threatened by scientific research into Holy Scripture” (Grenz, Revisioning Evangelical Theology, 116). “The Bible is revelation because it is the [errant] witness to and the [errant] record of the historical revelation of God” (Grenz, ibid., 133).

McClaren rejects the traditional view that: “The Bible is the ultimate authority…. There are no contradictions in it, and it is absolutely true and without errors in all it says. Give up these assertions, and you’re on a slippery slope to losing your whole faith” (McLaren, GO, 133-134). He adds, “Hardly anyone notices the irony of resorting to the authority of extra-biblical words and concepts to justify one’s belief in the Bible’s ultimate authority” (GO, 164).




RE Slater - The charge of “Inerrancy” has been previously addressed in this web blog (see the Calvinism section). Suffice it to say that the “doctrine of inerrancy” is a late addition doctrine to Evangelicalism in the 1970s that was self-imposed to better tighten Evangelicalism’s self-limiting boundaries to their religious beliefs.

There are many Evangelics who did not subscribe to its imposition then nor will they now and yet, they are still perceived as Evangelics, just not dyed-in-wool Evangelics. Emergents have this same understanding and do not feel the need to further define the bible’s authority with additional adjectives and propositions. Believing God’s word to be authoritative Emergents question our “errant” human understanding and the human language used to describe it. This is not to say that past orthodox doctrines are incorrect, just that they can be updated and re-applied to today’s postmodernistic jargons and mindset.

As science has loosened up its own ideas of classic vs. quantum sciences, so too is theology permitted to loosen up the rigors of its past languages and understandings. Thus allowing greater fluidity and dynamic application of the Scriptures to postmodern man’s dark demise. In a sense, Scripture is being “carefully re-evaluated and updated” by Emergents though many Evangelics are falsely stating that Emergents are “re-interpreting the Bible”. As testimony to this fact, there are more publications of commentaries and Bible versions than ever before, and evangelicals are the greater perpetrators of these volumes!  (July 2011)




In brief, the problem with the errantists view is this:

1 - The Claim of Errantists: “No extra-biblical words or ideas should be used to support the Bible.”
2 - The Self-refutation: It is a truth (of Post-Modernism) that no extra-biblical words or ideas (like Post-Modernism) should be used to support the Bible.

Yet this is self-defeating for If “No human writing is without error,” then emergent human writing is not without error when it claims that no human writing is without error.

Inerrancy is built on a solid foundation: 1) God cannot err. 2) The Bible is the Word of God. 3) Therefore, the Bible cannot error. To deny this, one must deny either: a) “God cannot error,” or- b) “The Bible is the Word of God,” or - c) both a and b.

However, God cannot err: Jesus declared: "Your Word is truth." (Jn. 17:17). Paul said, “Let God be and every man a liar” (Rom. 3:4). Indeed, “It is impossible for God to lie: (Heb. 6:18). And he Bible is the Word of God "If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken." (Jn.10:34-35) “Laying aside the commandment of God, you hold the traditions of men…, making the word of God of no effect through your traditions.” (Mk. 7:8, 13) "All scripture is given by inspiration of God…."(2 Tim. 3:16) “Not as though the word of God hath taken none effect.” (Rom. 9:6) “’It is written’…by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.” (Mt. 4:4). St. Augustine's dictum is to the point: “If we are perplexed by any apparent contradiction in Scripture, it is not allowable to say, The author of this book is mistaken; but either [1] the manuscript is faulty, or [2] the translation is wrong, or [3] you have not understood.” (Augustine, Reply to Faustus 11.5)




RE Slater - As can be seen in Geisler’s own quotations, Evangelicalism limits itself by its own definitions and as long as you subscribe to those definitions you are an “Evangelic”. Emergents tend to recognize this apriori assumption, and as such, this is one apriori that is not subscribed to, and thus all resultant arguments are thrown out as valid. (July 2011)




IV - Emerging Problems with the Emergent Church

Other Errors of the Emergent Movement

In addition to all the above self-defeating claims of emergence, there are some other crucial doctrinal and practical errors. Here are some of them:

Anti-Substitutionism

Steve Chalke speaks of the Cross as “a form of cosmic child abuse” which contradicts the Bible’s claim that “God is love” and ‘makes a mockery of Jesus’ own teaching to love your enemies” (Steve Chalke, The Lost Message of Jesus, 182-183).

Anti-Trinitarianism

“I asked him if he believed that the Trinity represented three separate persons who are also one” (Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz 202).

Anti-depravity (Pelagianism)

Some (like Chalke and Tomlinson) reject depravity. The former said, “Jesus believed in original goodness.” (The Lost Message of Jesus, 67). The latter said it is “biblically questionable, extreme, and profoundly unhelpful” (The Post-Evangelical, 126).

Anti-Futurism (Amillennialism)

It has an overemphasis on the present spiritual kingdom to the neglect of Jesus’ future literal kingdom—an over realized eschatology.

Anti-Vapitalism (Socialism)

It has a social Gospel, not a spiritual Gospel with social implications. It adopts the agenda of the political left. Tony Jones said on David Chadwicks show that he and most of the Emergents he knew were voting for Barack Obama (6/22/08).

Ecumenism

The Emergent movement is a broad tent which includes numerous heresies (see above), embracing Catholicism, and even pantheism (by some). Spencer Burke said, “I am not sure I believe in God exclusively as a person anymore either…. I now incorporate a pantheistic view, which basically means that God is ‘in all,’ alongside my creedal view of God as Father, Son, and Spirit.” (A Heretics Guide to Eternity, 195).




RE Slater – Many of these additional charges may or may not be true, however, it is a legitimate charge laid to Emergents to better speak their faith (and, whether they like it or not, “indoctrinate it” – probably as loosely as is possible, without saying nothing, while retaining its antecedent orthodox Christian structure).  As in Evangelicalism, Emergent Christianity will have different flavors and colours within it.

For myself, I claim none of the above and have spoken to some of these issues as clearly as possible. For example, Pelagianism is a false charge and Amillennialism is too. This blog leans more to Arminianism than to Calvinism (and rightly so!) and teaches Inauguration Eschatology as a form of Realized Eschatology. But many of these issues can be further found on the Emergent web blog - http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/ .

Suffice it say that Norm Geisler is lumping too many aberrant issues into the Emergent camp based upon the assumption that a few select Emergents speak for all Emergents. (July 2011)




Difficulties with the Emergent Movement

There are many difficulties with the Emergent movement. Here are some of the main ones:

1. Its central claims are all self-defeating.

2. It stands on the pinnacle of its own absolute and relativizes everything else.

3. It is an unorthodox creedal attack on orthodox creeds.

4. It attacks modernism in the culture but is an example of postmodernism in the church.

5. In an attempt to reach the culture it capitulates to the culture.

6. In trying to be geared to the times, it is no longer anchored to the Rock.

7. It is not an emerging church; it is really a submerging church.

Answering an Anticipated Objection

Some Emergents may wish to claim that: No self-defeating truth claims are being made. These are straw men set up by critics. In response we would reply that: Either they are making such truth claims or they are not. If they are, then they are self-defeating. If they are not, then why are they writing books and attempting to convince people of the truth of these views, if not always by affirmation, at least by implication?

While directed to another view, C. S. Lewis made a insightful comment that applies here as well: You can argue with a man who says, ‘Rice is unwholesome’: but you neither can nor need argue with a man who says, ‘Rice is unwholesome, but I’m not saying this is true.’ I feel that this surrender of the claim to truth has all the air of an expedient adopted at the last moment. If [they]…do not claim to know any truths, ought they not to have warned us rather earlier of the fact?

For really from all the books they have written…one would have got the idea that they were claiming to give a true account of things. The fact surely is that they nearly always are claiming to do so. The claim is surrendered only when the question discussed…is pressed; and when the crisis is over the claim is tacitly resumed” (Lewis, Miracles, 24).

To re-cast the Emergent Movement, using titles from its own books:

It is not “The Emergent Church” but “The Submergent Church.”

It is not “A Manifesto of Hope” but is “A Declaration of Disaster.”

It is not “Refocusing the Faith” but “Distorting the Faith.”

It is not “Renewing the Center” but “Rejecting the Core.”

It is not “Repainting the Faith” but “Repudiating the Faith.”

The Emergent movement is not “A Generous Orthodoxy” but “A Dangerous Unorthodoxy.”

It is not the “Church on the Other Side,” but it is on the “Other Side of the Church.”

It is not “A Primer on Post-Modernism” but “A Primer on the New Modernism.”

It is not going to “Produce a New Kind of Christian” but a “New Kind of Non-Christian.”

In short, the Emergent Church is the New Liberalism As Mark Driscol wrote: “The emergent church is the latest version of liberalism. The only difference is that the old liberalism accommodated modernity and the new liberalism accommodates postmodernity” (Mark Driscoll, Confessions of a Reformation REV, 21).


To put it to poetry:

The Emergent Church is built on sand
and will not stand.
Christ’s Church is build on Stone,
And it cannot be overthrown.
(Matt. 16:16-18)

RE Slater – All of the above is an evangelic summary of improper charges falsely and/or harshly claimed of Emergent Christianity as earlier pointed out throughout Geisler’s course paper. Contemporary books written against Emergent Christianity are commonly constructing these same false arguments. It is the prayer of this believer that Evangelicals spend more time better understanding Emergent Christianity than they currently are criticizing it. To accept it and be more open-minded to it. It certainly would be a help to this new movement to have well-grounded and conversant theologs as part of its congregational body.

However, if it took a decade for me to come-around to this topic, I suspect it may be too much to ask of many Evangelicals. I then pray Paul’s words that we all learn to get along and remember the fight is with the world and sin and devil, and not with each other. For we are speaking the same thing but to different audiences and in different (but similar) fashions. Ours is to the more global audience of postmodernism and not to the older structures of modernism. So be at peace then, my brothers and sisters, and let us love one another.  (July 2011)

Works Evaluating The Emergents Movement

Several works are emerging on the Emergent Church. The following is a select list containing valuable criticisms of the movement.

Adler, Mortimer. Truth in Religion.

Carson, D. A. Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church.

Carlson, Jason. “My Journey Into and Out Of the Emergent  Church”
(www.Christianministriesintl.org)

*DeYoung, Kevin and Ted Kluck. Why We’re Not Emergent.

Driscoll, Mark. Confessions of a Reformation REV.

Howe, Thomas ed., Christian Apologetics Journal of Southern Evangelical Seminary (Spring, 2008,

www.ses.edu)

Kimball, Dan. The Emerging Church.

Rofle, Kevin, Here We Stand.

Smith, R. Scott Truth and The New Kind of Christian.

Geisler, Norman. “The Emergent Church” DVD (InternationalLegacy.org).

MJ@InternationalLegacy.org


Conclusion

Of course, not all emergent beliefs are bad. De Young and Kluck summarize the situation well. They “have many good deeds. They want to be relevant. They want to reach out. They want to be authentic. They want to include the marginalized. They want to be kingdom disciples. They want community and life transformation….”

However, “Emergent Christians need to catch Jesus’ broader vision for the church—His vision for a church that is intolerant of error, maintains moral boundaries, promotes doctrinal integrity, stands strong in times of trial, remains vibrant in times of prosperity, believes in certain judgment and certain reward, even as it engages the culture, reaches out, loves, and serves. We need a church that reflects the Master’s vision—one that is deeply theological, deeply ethical, deeply compassionate, and deeply doxological” (Why We’re Not Emergent, 247-248).