While truth itself might be unchanging, our knowledge of the truth can never be certain. We may have confidence that something is true, but we can never have certainty. So the question of truth is really a question about our knowledge of truth, our knowledge of right and wrong, and so forth. I do appreciate the fact that emerging writers stress human fallenness on this particular point. During the Enlightenment, many people believed the process of obtaining knowledge was a fairly mechanical process, as if humans were computers.
Plug in the correct information, and the correct analysis will pop out. EM advocates rightly point out that the process of gaining knowledge is much more complex, and that sinful human biases and perspectives color how we view the world.
I can have the latter without having the former. For example, I can know with certainty that God exists, and yet not have exhaustive knowledge about him. This distinction can be made in most areas of our lives, whether we are talking about my knowledge of my spouse, a country to which I have never traveled, football, or even my own personality. But the EM perspective, like the worldview of postmodernism generally, uses the lack of comprehensive knowledge to undermine the ability to have confidence or certainty.
Scripture clearly teaches that humans are fallible, mixed in their motives, and partial in their knowledge. At the same time, Scripture unashamedly describes humans as capable of knowing the truth. It even portrays doubt as a negative characteristic at times. I wonder if you have noticed this pattern: in the places where Western culture is critical of traditional evangelical Christianity, so—often—are the emergents.
Take, for example, the issue of homosexuality. Perhaps we need a five-year moratorium on making pronouncements. There is a time for charity and a time for deference. But there is also a time for straight-speak. What McLaren says here is foolish. I am not simply calling him names. I am drawing on the language of folly in Proverbs and elsewhere to offer you my measured biblical assessment. The Bible says many things, and some topics are clearer than other topics.
Its teaching on homosexuality, however, is clear. It may not be popular, but it is not ambiguous. The Bible also commends the idea of seeking truth and understanding e. But I believe that the emerging church often makes seeking an end in itself, and Scripture condemns that line of thinking. Do these concerns apply to every church that is considered an emerging church?
Absolutely not. But they do apply to a number of the most prominent leaders and popular churches. I believe that much of the criticism against emerging churches would be quelled if those from within the movement arose and spoke clearly about these crucial issues, and criticized the abandoning of such central Scriptural matters.
Humility has to do with rightly viewing the greatness of God such that you see yourself in the proper light. In other words, humility does not mean hating yourself and believing that everything you do is wrong. Rather, humility means being confident in—and looking to—God and his grandeur and greatness.
It means submitting yourself to his word and his ways. Orthodoxy refers to having right beliefs, which involves affirming the historic truths of the Christian faith—believing what the church has always believed and confessed. As indicated earlier in this article, we must commit to a stance of humble orthodoxy, understanding that true humility should lead us deeper into orthodoxy, that orthodoxy should have a humbling effect on our souls, and that we must speak the truth orthodoxy in love humbly.
In the New Testament, it is a non-negotiable that Christians love one another and express their affection. One way that it commands this is for Christians to greet each other with a holy kiss Rom. Now when most guys in the United States get together, there may be handshakes or hugs or high-fives—but no smooches. Are they disobeying Scripture? Let me give some other examples.
The lunch is ready, and everyone pulls up their chair to the table. What would you think? You might wonder if your pastor is doing okay spiritually? You might wonder why he was so dishonoring to God. Now I think praying before meals is a great idea. But we should recognize that the Bible does not command us to pray before each meal.
There are lots of things like this: praying with your eyes closed, having a quiet time first thing in the morning, singing only hymns, having pews in your church, a pastor wearing a coat and tie, and so on. Paul discussed the relationship between unchanging truth and changing culture in 1 Corinthians For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win the more; and to the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might win Jews; to those who are under the law, as under the law, that I might win those who are under the law; to those who are without law, as without law not being without law toward God, but under law toward Christ , that I might win those who are without law; to the weak I became as weak, that I might win the weak.
I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some. We must never compromise—but we must accommodate. What are those things in our lives, in our ministries, in our churches that have more to do with cultural Christianity than they do with eternal, unchanging truth? Our great danger in the Western church comes when we refuse to accommodate the non-essentials in the name of not compromising.
Contextualization has become a buzz word. The flip side of the coin is that we must not only be contextual, but also confessional. By confessional I mean that we should affirm and confess the historic teachings recovered during the Reformation. Part of being a confessional Christian is reading church history—and reading writers from church history.
We need to remember that we are bound by the Word of God to speak the truth in love Eph. And of course, the converse is true as well. There are those who are so concerned about speaking in love that they never get around to speaking truth.
This practice will have a direct tendency to conciliate your heart to love and pity him; and such a disposition will have a good influence upon every page you write. Anticipate that period in your thoughts. I want to close with a couple of quotes from pastors wiser than myself. First, Walter Henegar says,. Moody, who was once criticized for his methods of evangelism.
Are we seeking to rescue other professing Christians from the jaws of error? Are we willing to submit our own thinking to the scrutiny, correction, and ridicule that inevitably come from publicly joining the conversation? 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" 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, years ago. In fact, I think we'd call him a heretic and plot to kill him, too.
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, : "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.
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. 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. 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.
Baker Academic, 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, 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.
Here is an emerging, provocative way of saying it: "By their fruits [not their theology] you will know them. 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.
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? Sounds "emergent" doesn't it? Home About Us The C. Recycled Riches C. Like a wolf in sheep's clothing, the Emergent Church Movement has crept into the church, bringing New Age teaching wrapped in mysticism.
Much of the church has become susceptible to variant forms of false teaching from Emergents because of a slippery slope away from a Biblically-and-God centered theology. Postmodernism has saturated the church's theology with relativism that has led individuals away from an objectively based faith towards an experiential, self-appointed, and self-directed theology based upon feelings and personal preferences.
The current culture within many churches today is based upon creating idols and a new conception of God that is not Biblically-defined but shaped and formed according to existentialist criteria. Thus, what we have today is an atmosphere fertile for false teaching, but, even more, an atmosphere where there is no standard to evaluate and test such teaching. The Bible is seen not as THE standard but A standard, mixed in a multi-relevant hodge-podge of criteria whose root is self-directed but not God-directed.
So, what are we facing? We see their descendants in our ranks today…what will we do? Do we beckon the church to return to the old paths and restore New Testament Christianity, or, will we melt into the quagmire of this movement? Time will tell! Trusting in Christ and His Word alone as sufficient for all things having to do with Faith and practice is rare and on the endangered list.
Robert Schuller, in his book entitled "Self-Esteem: The New Reformation," writes, "Classical theology has erred in its insistence that theology be 'God-centered', not 'man-centered' page The cross sanctifies the ego trip.
For the Cross protected our Lord's perfect self- esteem from turning into sinful pride page And what is hell? A person is in hell when he has lost his self-esteem" pages 14, This view is shared by emergents and is helping to create a whole new culture of church-goers bent on personal gratification.
Whatever happened to "taking up one's cross to follow Jesus"? Whatever happened to "losing oneself to find oneself"? Whatever happened to Jude's admonition that "we now have the faith once and for all delivered unto the saints" Jude 3? The Greek word "harax" once and for all denotes that we now have the faith in its final, complete, and perfect form. This means that we now have God's revelation for mankind in its final, complete, and perfect form without addendum!
What we are facing today in the Emergent Church Movement is nothing more and nothing less than the oldest lie ever told. He did it with Eve and Adam and he continues to do it with the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve today! Instead of allowing the "rightly divided word of truth" speak to them in current culture, many are opting to seek meaning from experiences, melding religions, religious practices, mysticism, and even the occult!
We need to beware of those who teach or even endorse such fallacies!
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