Christianity
Reforming or Conforming? Post-Conservative Evangelicals and the Emerging Church, edited by Gary L. W. Johnson and Ronald N. Gleason
Pretty frequently I’m asked, What do you think about the emergent (or emerging) church? I usually answer, It depends. From my perspective, the label “emerging church” is a little bit of a red herring. There are so many different stripes of emergents, and the movement is so broad, that it seems unhelpful to make generalizations about it. “Emerging” doesn’t in itself guarantee Christian orthodoxy (or heterodoxy) any more—let’s face it—than “Presbyterian” does.
As with anything Christian, the real issue about any emergent theologian, church, or doctrine is whether or not it’s biblical. Reforming or Conforming?, a collection of essays regarding the emergent church and so-called “post-conservative evangelicals,” examines that question.
The emerging church has been associated with people like Scott Franke, Stanley Grenz, Rob Bell, Brian McLaren, Doug Pagitt, Roger Olson, Scot McKnight, and others. There are differences between these theologians and pastors, but they all share what might be called a postmodern sensibility and articulate a desire that the church become more postmodern in order to better reach our culture. Many of the values stressed in emergent circles “play” to postmoderns: humility, transparency, anti-individualism, and justice. For these emphases, I commend emergent Christians but would want to point out that these are qualities that Scripture recommends already. I’m not sure if the emperor needs new clothes if the old ones work fine. If churches are lacking in humility and are too individualistic or consumerist, it’s better advice that they become more biblical, and not necessarily more emergent.
On the other hand, some aspects of the emergent program are more inherently problematic: a proclivity for mystery over clarity, seeking over finding, Christ’s example over his cross, freedom over obedience, narrative over truth, and so on, are at best oversimplifications and at worst unbiblical. (And why do the former items have to be in opposition to the latter, anyway?)
Reforming or Conforming? was a good book for identifying some of the more regrettable tendencies among emergents and critiquing them from the standpoint of Scripture. Not all of the essays here had a practical payoff, but this volume came from my “theology for fun” pile, and it didn’t disappoint. If D.A. Carson’s Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church is a general primer on the movement, Reforming or Conforming? gets more specific. I enjoyed Paul Wells’ critique of post-conservative doctrines of Scripture that want to affirm inerrancy while at the same time allowing for the Bible to contain much of the hallmarks of ancient writing, including factual errors and mythologizing. How can the Bible be perfect but also self-contradictory and inaccurate? There are answers from post-conservatives to this question, but Wells demonstrates their inadequacy and also offers an organic view of inspiration that is consonant with Reformed confessions but manages to avoid post-conservative criticisms as well. (Herman Bavinck’s theory of inscripturation figures prominently at that point.)
An area of particular interest to me is theological prolegomena, the branch of theology that considers the nature and basis of the theological enterprise. There was a time a few years ago when I felt myself resonating with some emergent critiques of traditional prolegomena. That feeling passed, and a few different chapters in Reforming or Conforming? reminded why. John Franke, for example, wants to construct a post-modernist theological system that is non-foundationalist in its approach, but Paul Helm in his essay shows that building a non-foundationalist theology is harder than it seems. How can someone offer a global critique of systematic theology as a system on the basis of its being a system while not also putting forward a competing system? This is what Franke tries to do, although he disingenuously calls his system a non-system. Helm allows that all of our theologizing is subject to revision pending further reflection upon the Scriptures, but that doesn’t require us, as Franke wishes, that we back away from theological conviction and eschew truth.
Later on, Jeff Waddington—I knew Jeff at Westminster Seminary, he’s a great guy and a fellow Elvis fan—writes a (to me, anyway) crucial article that argues that classical Reformed theology, especially as it follows the transcendental method of Cornelius Van Til, was never “foundationalist” to begin with. Hence the emergent criticism of evangelical theology because foundationalist loses all of its teeth. I wish that I had this article in my pocket when I first came across Franke years ago.
Throw in other essays like Guy Prentiss Waters’ challenge to an emergent appropriation of N.T. Wright’s soteriology, Greg Gilbert’s fascinating deconstruction of Brian McLaren’s doctrine of hell, Paul Helseth’s reappraisal of Old Princeton’s theological methodology, plus other goodies, and this is an entertaining volume. Reforming or Conforming? is not really of too much use for people that don’t have visions of ivory towers dancing in their heads, but it’s a great survey of troubling theological trends that may ultimately threaten (or at least destabilize) the church. I try to keep somewhat current with what’s out there, and this book did the trick.
Nevertheless, Reforming or Conforming? isn’t problem free. A couple of the authors here clearly have contempt for the emergent ethos, and it shows, but not always in winsome ways. The nature of the emergent challenge in particular requires a peaceful response in the midst of polemics, but that call isn’t uniformly answered between the various authors. Plus, the book could have used a little more editing. Many of the chapters begin with a summary discussion of postmodernism, but did we need the same ground covered over and over again?
Finally, and amusingly, the last article in Reforming or Conforming? defines and describes postmodernism by quoting from Wikipedia. Either that’s a really funny meta-critique of postmodernism itself, or we’re just not trying very hard.
General disclaimer: I’ve been reluctant over the last couple of years to start a blog, because I’ve thought to myself that I’d have trouble figuring out things to say, or spend too much time trying to fill a blogospace. But, it seems that one thing I could do would be to keep track of books that I’ve read (plus music), jot down a paragraph about each, and post everything online.
I hope that this list is helpful to people both to give some ideas about what to read (and what not to read), and also to open a window into how I personally process through books and consider issues related to Christ and culture. (In addition, I won’t try to write anything particularly controversial, but I offer these words just as one man’s perspective and maybe some food for thought for others. These aren’t ex cathedra pronouncements that bind anyone into agreeing with me.)