Evaluating the “Emerging” Epistemology

Much has been writ­ten about the “emerg­ing church” as of late, but I am very new to the study of this “move­ment” as it were. I ran into my first encounter with an emerg­ing phi­los­o­phy to church when I went to Crys­tal Cathe­dral. I remem­ber sit­ting through this ago­niz­ingly shal­low ser­mon, and when I read the ser­mon it adver­tised a “post­mod­ern” ser­vice. I asked the girl next to me, “have you ever been to one of these?” She answered, “of course, they’re great.”

Great? Is a post­mod­ern ser­vice “great?” Many are entan­gled in the emerg­ing move­ment, whether they con­sciously real­ize it or not. Many “emerg­ers” pride them­selves that they are “decon­struct­ing” Chris­tian­ity and “recon­struct­ing” it into a form rem­i­nis­cent of the apos­tolic age. Quite a claim and we will have to sep­a­rate whether this is a fair assess­ment or not. In other words, were the apos­tles postmodern?

D.A. Car­son gives an expla­na­tion of how this move­ment is chang­ing by focus­ing on the dif­fer­ences between moder­nity and postmodernity:

“[T]he fun­da­men­tal issue in the move from mod­ernism to post­mod­ernism is epistemology’i.e., how we know things, or think we know things. Mod­ernism is often pic­tured as pur­su­ing truth, abso­lutism, lin­ear think­ing, ratio­nal­ism, cer­tainty, the cere­bral as opposed to the affec­tive which, in turn, breeds arro­gance, inflex­i­bil­ity, a lust to be right, the desire to con­trol. Post­mod­ernism, by con­trast, rec­og­nizes how much of what we ‘know’ is shaped by the cul­ture in which we live, is con­trolled by emo­tions and aes­thet­ics and her­itage, and can only be intel­li­gently held as part of a com­mon tra­di­tion, with­out over­bear­ing claims to being true or right.”

It’s amaz­ing to think that the Chris­t­ian church could reflect post­mod­ern prin­ci­ples, but as I study this the mod­ern church makes more and more sense. That is, it is become vis­i­ble where it has gone astray. A few of the major alarm­ing trends is an accep­tance of a wide range of the­o­log­i­cal vari­ances. I think this is most reflected in Cam­pus Cru­sade. What does Cam­pus Cru­sade say?

We accept those areas of doc­tri­nal teach­ing on which, his­tor­i­cally, there has been gen­eral agree­ment among all true Chris­tians. Because of the spe­cial­ized call­ing of our move­ment, we desire to allow for free­dom of con­vic­tion on other doc­tri­nal mat­ters, pro­vided that any inter­pre­ta­tion is based upon the Bible alone, and that no such inter­pre­ta­tion shall become an issue which hin­ders the min­istry to which God has called us.

This is con­tin­u­ally an issue in Chris­tian­ity. The ques­tion becomes where is lib­erty allowed, and where must we stand up for the­o­log­i­cal truths? Today, issues such as the extent of the atone­ment, impu­ta­tion of right­eous­ness (Cru­sade makes a stance on this actu­ally), the doc­trine of man, and var­i­ous church issues are seen as being “sec­ondary” in impor­tance. I think that Cru­sade, and the emerg­ing move­ment at large, shows two things: (1) tra­di­tion or his­tory is seen as a means of truth, and (2) that we shouldn’t con­cern our­selves with any­thing out­side of the Apos­tles Creed. Was this the mes­sage of Jesus and the Epis­tles? Sec­ondly, the idea of a “para­church” move­ment is indica­tive, I believe, on emerg­ing phi­los­o­phy. In other words, let’s not be “tied down” to a church. Why? Because a local gath­er­ing of believ­ers, from the Bible, is respon­si­ble to admin­is­ter the sacra­ments, exer­cise church dis­ci­pline, and make doc­tri­nal stances.

The emerg­ing phi­los­o­phy in essence intro­duces “doc­tri­nal rel­a­tivism.” (One such exam­ple is Brian McLaren with his “charismatic/contemplative, anabaptist/anglican, etc. non­sense.) One other big point of emerg­ing, in regards to preach­ing, is the focus on nar­ra­tive instead of a the­o­log­i­cal, expo­si­tional abstrac­tion. Sys­tem­atic the­ol­ogy is down­played for a story. Emerg­ing Chris­tians today, and Chris­tian­ity in gen­eral, would rather be told a story than dealt the­o­log­i­cal truth.

In essence, instead of “return­ing” to the apos­tolic age, the emerg­ing move­ment is sim­ply mov­ing more towards the cul­ture of post­moder­nity. In effect, Chris­tians want to tai­lor the gospel to the world instead of trans­form­ing the world through the gospel.