willing to throw God off the lifeboat

...Indeed, by distinguishing between the name and the event, between the name of God and the event that transpires there, I have laid myself open to the possibility that this event, or stream of events, can twist free from this name and that we might then find ourselves out in the desert, in a khoral place of namelessness and the desire for new names...The event of solicitation that is issued in the name of God stands on its own, calls and solicits us on its own, whether or not someone named God is th author of that solicitation, in which case the death of the author, which would be here the death of God, is the condition of hearing this solicitation. In the desire for God, it is not God but the event that stirs within that name that is undeconstructible, and it would always be possible for that desire to take other forms, to find other formulations, now or in times to come...For, however precious and prestigious it may be, the name of God remains a historical name and, as such, a contingent formation or unity of meaning...
John Caputo, in the essay "Spectral Hermeneutics", in the book "After the Death of God", pp. 69-70

In reading this, it seems that he really is saying that, if the name of God should someday become of no use (which such as he will intentionally or not bring out, if given time, I would add), then it is to be chucked aside.

Strange ideas, rather blasphemous, one may say. But is it not a logical followup to his notions that there is no sovereign God, no God Who is out there, no God who is in control, no God period? He has stripped the name "God" of all real meaning, has filled it with a meaning of his own (I shall probably have to give a bit about his use of 'event' sometime soon), and then says that if the name God does live up to what he calls the event, then we are free to discard it, and find a new name.

And yet, when God gave His name to Moses, He called Himself "I am". And He is still "I am".

God is not an empty shell, to be filled with what we will. Nor is He dead or weak.

the postmodern's greatest fear

To propose a postmodern theology of the Cross, to meditate the event that transpires in the death of Jesus, is to try to think a certain death of God, the death of the ens supremum et deus omnipotens, the death of the God of power, in order to release the event of the unconditional claim lacking worldly sovereignty that issues from the cross...I would press further to a more pressing and important death, the death of the deus omnipotens of classical theology, and this in order to nourish the life of the event that stirs within the name of God, which is the stuff of our rebirth...insofar as there is any philosophical life left in this increasingly dated expression, the death of God, it refers to an ongoing and never finished project of deconstructing the God of ontotheologic, which is for me above all the God of sovereign power...The work of burning off the old metaphysics of omnipotence, which can never cease, must always be a way to fan the flame or build the fire of the event that transpires in the name of God.
John Caputo, in the essay "Spectral Hermeneutics", in the book "After the Death of God", pp 66-67

From my perspective, limited as it may be, perhaps these statements sum up the whole postmodern virus mindset as well as anything else--the thing the postmoderns are running from, that they fear, that they try to hide from by calling on the mountains of relativism and meaninglessness to hide them from, is the God of sovereignty, the all-powerful and all-knowing God.

Read Pagitt's "A Christianity Worth Believing", and see how he desperately tries to say that our concepts of God power and sovereignty have somehow come from Greek or Roman thought, not from anything in the Bible.

Read almost any emergent work, and see how they denigrate the concepts of the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-sovereign God. It's a common theme.

What is there instead? Something of human construction. With Caputo, it's some kind of 'weak theology', which is essentially meaningless. With Pagitt, it's some kind of 'holism', which does not recognize any barriers.

Little gods made in man's image.

One can only hope and pray that these will have their eyes opened, while they have time to be opened.

making the simple sickeningly impenetrable

This comic works for the current postmodern virus on so many levels...



In reading pomos recently, I'm struck by how far they will go to take what is simple and make it into impenetrable blather. See Caputo's take on the Cross below here for an example, and Raschke's death of God thoughts, though those are rather clear compared to other things they and those like them have written.

One does after a while get that sour taste.

And, finally, as so well put in McLaren's "A New Kind of Christian", since we don't know what postmodernism is or where it's going, we'll probably need to live quite long before they finally decide whatever it is they are (all the while having to deal with them in the here and now). Though I doubt anyone, even they themselves, buy into such a patient view of things.

reversing the Cross

I am proposing a postmodern theology of the Cross in which I ask, what is happening on the Cross? What is happening to us? What events pulsate through that unforgettable scene? Of what are we to make ourselves worthy? It is a mystification to think that there is some celestial transaction going on here, some settling of accounts between divinity and humanity, as if this death is a amortization of a debt of long standing and staggering dimensions. If anything, no debt is lifted from us in tis scene, but a responsibility imposed upon us...The crucified body of Jesus is a site--one among many--of divine eventiveness, through which there courses a stream of events that traverse our bodies and shock the world under the name of the weakness of God, and we are to make ourselves worthy of this event.

John Caputo, in the essay "Spectral Hermeneutics", in the book "After the Death of God", p. 66

The reversal here is staggering, and as much against the Bible as anything I've seen. Is it not written that righteous works cannot save us? Is it not written that all our righteousness is merely as putrid rags?

For a good look at what the Bible says about this, please check out this page.

http://www.carm.org/doctrine/Jesusdieforsins.htm

Some excerpts from it.

The sinner needs to escape the righteous judgment of God or he will face damnation.
Rom. 1:18, "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness."
Matt. 25:46, "And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."

But, no sinner can undo an infinite offense since to please God and make things right, he must obey the Law, which is the standard of God's righteous. character.
Gal. 2:16, "...by the works of the Law shall no flesh be justified."
Gal. 2:21, "I do not nullify the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died needlessly."

Jesus became sin for us and bore our sins in His body on the cross, thus fulfilling the Law.
2 Cor. 5:21, "He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him."
1 Peter 2:24, "and He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed."
Rom. 8:3-4, "For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh. 4in order that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit."

Caputo's 'we must make ourselves worthy' is simply another variation on works salvation. Not only that, his redefining (it's not about making us right us God) and denigrating (it's merely one such event among many) is unbiblical to the core.

praying to no one

Prayer is not a transaction or interaction with some hyperbeing in the sky, a communication with some ultrareality behind the scenes, the invocation or appeasement of a magical power of supernatural intervention from on high. Prayer has to do with hearing, heeding, and hearkening to a provocation that draws us out of ourselves.
John Capute, in the essay 'Spectral Hermeneutics', in the book 'After the Death of God', p. 57

It always raises the eyebrows, how much people will twist and contort themselves and their thinking in order to come up with some way to discard and disregard God. It goes beyond simply looking a bit like the old party game "Twister", and becomes more like some wild-haired mad scientist wildly and maniacally splicing various genetic materials to create the monster that turn on him in the end and devour him.

Read Caputo's words, and see that he is in essence proclaiming a form of 'athiestic spirituality'. When we pray, we do not pray to God, because there is no God out there to pray to, a statement athiestic to its core. But there is a spirituality or something like it that he does say that we hear from, perhaps it is only ourselves and something inside us that we hear from (a bit later then the above he seems to say that it is 'our desire').

One may wonder what he hopes to gain from this dismissal of God, and why emergents seem to look to him, because they do.

what lies behind deconstruction 4

Deconstruction is the flailing of the spades of God's gravediggers. To refuse the ceremony of burial, however, is a more culpable form of hubris than to take the shovel in hand. For the stench of "divine decomposition," as Neitzsche phrased it, is everywhere.
Carl A. Raschke, from the essay 'The Deconstruction of God' in the book 'Deconstruction and Theology', p. 30

Here is something I remember from way back when. I may not have it worded exactly at it was, but I think I have the basic point of it. It has to do in regards to people like the above, who want us to take Neitzsche's "God is dead" statements seriously.

"God is dead."
Neitzsche

"Neitzsche is dead."
God

The point is, somewhere in this world, there are the remains of the man Neitzsche. If there is a "stench of '...decomposition'", it is coming from that spot. One may also wish that it were coming from the 'philosophy' Neitzsche put forth, because that would the most merciful thing to happen to it; instead, there are people who seem to latch on to it like he were some kind of prophecy, like they were the words of a genius instead of the words of a madman.

There is no "stink of 'divine compositions'", because despite the many of people like Raschke, God is very much alive. Despite the words of such as Marcus Borg, Christ is indeed risen from the dead. Despite McLaren's attempts to caricature the second coming as some kind of "Jihad Jesus", Christ will return to set up His kingdom on the earth. Despite Caputo's desire for a 'weak God', God is still sovereign.

These people's attempts to elevate man can only end in disaster, because they are lies and cannot end any other way. May they, I pray, put aside their pride in their man-made philosophies, and finally bow before the living and true God, and truly come to the Christ who died for them and rose from the dead.

what lies behind deconstruction 3

Deconstruction is the dance of death upon the tomb of God; it is the
tarantella whose footfalls evoke the archaism of the Great Mother, who takes
back with the solemnity of the Pieta her wounded, divine son.
Carl A. Raschke, from the essay 'The Deconstruction of God' in the book 'Deconstruction and Theology', p. 28

Whatever the last part of that statement means (what Great Mother?), it's pretty clear again that this is about an athiesm wearing a faux-christian mask.

beware...

Beware of Brian Mclaren

This is a very nice summation of some things whacky coming from McLaren. It's a long entry, and I think is actually from another source linked to at the beginning, but well worth reading.

My sole real complaint with it are statements about C.S. Lewis, whom I guess the writer doesn't like, and seems to want to tie in with emergent and McLaren. Frankly, being somewhat familiar with Lewis, I think that on the whole he is very much the antithesis of things emergent.

We must be careful of allowing emergents to make people like Lewis and Chesterton 'posthumous friends of emergent'. Were all of their ideas good ones? No. We must approach them as we would any other teacher, as the Bereans did even towards the apostles, searching in the scriptures to make sure what they taught is really what is. But simply because an emergent references one of them does not make them a part of that movement.

what lies behind deconstruction 2

Again, we must underscore our leading thesis: deconstruction is the death of God put into writing
Carl A. Raschke, from the essay 'The Deconstruction of God' in the book 'Deconstruction and Theology', p. 27

Would that all postmoderns were so honest.

what lies behind deconstruction 1

Deconstruction, which must be considered the interior drive of twentieth-century theology rather than an alien agenda, is in the final anaylysis the death of God put into writing, the subsumption of the "Word" by the "flesh," the deluge of immanance
Carl A. Raschke, from the essay 'The Deconstruction of God' in the book 'Deconstruction and Theology', p. 3

subsume (root for 'subsumption)

1. to consider or include (an idea, term, proposition, etc.) as part of a more comprehensive one.
2. to bring (a case, instance, etc.) under a rule.
3. to take up into a more inclusive classification.

'Immanance' is more difficult, at least as he Raschke seems to want to use it here, but considering that he basically says tha that the "Word" is taken up into the "flesh", or that the "Word" is put under the rule of the "flesh", then I suppose it's like to mean something like this.

immanance (it's a long encyclopedia entry, so not all of it will be here, please read all of it)

The term "immanence" is usually understood to mean that the divine force, or the divine being, pervades through all things that exist, and is able to influence them. Such a meaning is common in pantheism and panpsychism, and it implies that divinity is inseparably present in all things. In this meaning immanence is distinct from transcendence, the latter being understood as the divinity being set apart from or transcending the World (an exception being Giovanni Gentile's "Actual Idealism" wherein immanence of subject is considered identified with transcendence over the material world)...

...the term has been utilized by the Kennesaw School to elucidate the emergent nature of communalized relationality and the potential for becoming within an Age of Globalization.

Trying to get one's head around this is not easy, and I'm not so sure I have done very well at it. But some parts are pretty clear. It's not the first time I've come on the "death of God" thought that tries to disguise itself as Christian. I think Caputo puts it as the "death of the God of sovereignty", substituting instead a "God of weakness".

dispersing

A bit of something different. A Dilbert comic which comments on those who try to not make decisions and commitments. I doubt it was aimed to postmoderns, religious or not, but it seemed apropo.



It looks like it's not going to complete fit on here, sorry about that. But if you click on it, it should take you to where the complete strip is located.

spinning Christ's tempations III

...and refuses to indulge in spectacle to prove himself (which would subvert Gods natural system of being proven through trials and experience).
Brian McLaren, Everything Must Change, p. 139

And the verses...

Luke 4
4:9 And he led him to Jerusalem, and set him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said unto him, If thou art the Son of God, cast thyself down from hence:
4:10 for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee, to guard thee:
4:11 and, On their hands they shall bear thee up, Lest haply thou dash thy foot against a stone.
4:12 And Jesus answering said unto him, It is said, Thou shalt not make trial of the Lord thy God.

As in the other two, there is no hint from the context of the verses of what McLaren is trying to make the verses say. From the nature of the temptation and Jesus' response, one may well see it as something similar to the first--a temptation to presumption, to act without the Father's approval.

Further, just as Jesus several times provided provisions in a manner "which would subvert God's natural system of gaining honor through humble service", at least to McLaren's mind, so too were many of His miracles very public and witnessed by many. He even saw them as being proofs of who He is, as for example here.

John 11
41.So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, "Father, I thank you that you have heard me.
42.I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me."
43.When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!"
44.The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face. Jesus said to them, "Take off the grave clothes and let him go."

And there are these words from Peter at Pentacost.

Acts 2
22."Men of Israel, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know.

If the temptation was that if people were to see Jesus doing something miraculous then they would believe, His life showed otherwise. In fact, it was the very public raising of Lazarus from the dead that sparked this on the part of those who were against Him.

John 11
45.Therefore many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary, and had seen what Jesus did, put their faith in him.
46.But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done.
47.Then the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin. "What are we accomplishing?" they asked. "Here is this man performing many miraculous signs.
48.If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation."
49.Then one of them, named Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, spoke up, "You know nothing at all!
50.You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish."
51.He did not say this on his own, but as high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation,
52.and not only for that nation but also for the scattered children of God, to bring them together and make them one.
53.So from that day on they plotted to take his life.

Whether that was the nature of the temptation, though, is unclear. Nothing is said by either the devil or Jesus about people's reactions; rather, Jesus responds only to the temptation to act presumptuously, to simply do whatever or anything in the expectation that the Father will bail Him out.

spinning Christ's temptations II

...refuses to take a religious shortcut to authority and kingship (which would subvert God's natural system of gaining honor through humble service)...
Brian McLaren, Everything Must Change, p. 139

And the passage referred to...

Luke 4
4:5 And he led him up, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.
4:6 And the devil said unto him, To thee will I give all this authority, and the glory of them: for it hath been delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it.
4:7 If thou therefore wilt worship before me, it shall all be thine.
4:8 And Jesus answered and said unto him, It is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.

It's simply...incredible, the fact that Mclaren here makes no mention at all of the nature of the temptation, that the devil's demand was the Jesus should worship the devil instead of the Father.

But to look at it in a more (post)modern-day way, please look at what McLaren himself says here.

Emerging church leader Brian Mclaren on Lambeth, mission and reconciliation

And fourth, I think our future will also require us to join humbly and charitably with people of other faiths - Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, secularists, and others - in pursuit of peace, environmental stewardship, and justice for all people, things that matter greatly to the heart of God.

Jesus refused to worship anyone or anything other then His Heavenly Father, even if it meant that the devil keeps authority over the kingdoms of the world. McLaren, on the other hands, encourages compromise and even acceptance of those in false religions in order to accomplish what is in his mind an improving of the world.

The difference in these two views can hardly be more different.

spinning Christ's temptations I

For Jesus, God's natural ecosystem is not only one of care, but also of limits. So when Jesus is tempted (Luke 4:1-3), he refuses to turn stones into bread (which would subvert God's natural system of provision)...
Brian McLaren, Everything Must Change, p. 139

So, what does such reasoning do to, let's say, the time Jesus turned water into wine? Or fed several thousand people with one child's lunch? If one goes back to the Old Testament, what about when God fed Israel in the wilderness with manna, and provided water for them? Or when He provided water for Ishmael and later Samson? Or when He gave food to Elijah before having him take a long journey?

Take a look at the passage, which to his credit he does reference though I contend misinterprets and misapplies.

Luke 4
4:1 And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan, and was led in the Spirit in the wilderness
4:2 during forty days, being tempted of the devil. And he did eat nothing in those days: and when they were completed, he hungered.
4:3 And the devil said unto him, if thou art the Son of God, command this stone that it become bread.
4:4 And Jesus answered unto him, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone

I see nothing in that which says that Jesus didn't do it because it "would subvert God's natural system of provision". Considering how often Jesus did provide such things through miraculous means, I think we should look elsewhere for the reason He didn't do so here. Very likely, since it was a temptation, then Jesus' fasting was in obedience to His Father, so the temptation to eat was a temptation to be disobedient.

update on "let the censorship begin"

The site in question is now back online, but through a different ISP. There is still a good bit of controversy going on.

But at least the attempt to silence it has not worked, so far.

if wishes were horses...

You recently preached a sermon called “God wants to save Christians from hell.” I was discussing the message with a guy who after hearing this message was a bit disturbed and somehow came to the conclusion that you didn’t believe in a literal hell. Let me ask you, do you believe in a literal hell that is defined simply as eternal separation from God?

Well, there are people now who are seriously separated from God. So I would assume that God will leave room for people to say “no I don’t want any part of this”. My question would be, does grace win or is the human heart stronger than God’s love or grace. Who wins, does darkness and sin and hardness of heart win or does God’s love and grace win?

I don’t know why as a Christian you would have to make such declarative statements. Like your friend, does he want there to be a literal hell? I am a bit skeptical of somebody who argues that passionately for a literal hell, why would you be on that side? Like if you are going to pick causes, if you’re literally going to say these are the lines in the sand, I’ve got to know that people are going to burn forever, this is one of the things that you drive your stake in the ground on. I don’t understand that.

Especially when so many fail to recognize the hell that many people are experiencing today and do little about it.

Yeah, I would think it would be your duty as a Christian to hope and long and pray for somehow everybody to be reconciled to God. If you are really serious about evangelism, as I’m sure you friend would claim, and you wanted to save people from hell, then wouldn’t your hope be that everybody reconciles with God? Why would you hope for anything else? It would be your duty to long for that. I would actually ask questions about his salvation.
Rob Bell, interview at theooze
http://www.theooze.com/articles/article.cfm?id=1762

Why would a Christian say there is a literal hell? Because the Bible says so.

Should I Christian hope that people come to Christ and be saved from hell? Sure.

Does that negate what the Bible says about hell? No.

And, as a final insult, Bell comes close to questioning the salvation of anyone who would say there is a hell (but what would that mean, anyway, if in his theology there is no hell then questioning their salvation becomes a moot point).

It's as if Bell is saying "Close your eyes and wish real hard, and the big bad hell will go away". That's not how reality and truth work. The Bible is unapologetic about hell, and leaves no question about the reality of eternal judgment. One doesn't make it go away by saying it's not nice. 

is this obedience?

For instance a lot of Christians have really warped views about people from other religions. They don’t even know how to interact. They can’t even be human with someone who isn’t exactly like them. That’s a humanity issue and God calls us to respect the image of God in all of God’s image bearers. So we need to challenge the theology that wants to label all the world into these nice neat boxes and that wants to condemn these people because we’re so great. We need to challenge something because it gets in the way of the very thing Jesus calls us to be. Love your neighbor. If you can’t even conceive of your neighbor outside of this giant label, if you have never read their sacred texts and you can make these grand statements about their eternal destiny then how are you ever going to love your neighbor? You have no voice with them and Jesus called you to have a voice with them. So I am going to challenge that because I am trying to be obedient to Jesus.
Rob Bell, interview at theooze
http://www.theooze.com/articles/article.cfm?id=1762

Jesus told us to go the all the world and take to Gospel to everyone, because it's only in believing Him that they can have eternal life.

Bell wants us to do...what? Not see people in other religions as they really are, people being deceived and needing to know about Christ? People who really are under God's judgment if they do not repent and believe in Christ?

Does the fact that a Christian may not read the Koran mean that it's ok that Muslims have many incorrect beliefs about Christ?

It's a shallow argument Bell has here, and seems to be more about accepting people in those religions as being ok then in trying to tell them to repent and believe in Christ.

the emergent code

Is it possible that Jesus was intentionally keeping his message of the kingdom a secret so that it wasn't obvious, wasn't easy to grasp, wasn't like a simple mathematical formula that can quickly be learned and repeated?
The Secret Message of Jesus, p. 34

Because if Jesus spoke plainly, we wouldn't have any books about His "secret message"; thus, He couldn't have spoken plainly.

let the censorship begin...

Please visit this link.

http://apprising.org/

If you see nothing there (or only something saying that it is no longer there) then be afraid.

Remember towards the end of "Batman Begins", where Batman and Gordon talk about escalation? How ironic that the week after the sequel comes out, escalation happens on the internet.

Here are two sources for what is going on, sites for the two main protagonists.

http://christianresearchnetwork.com/
http://richardabanes.wordpress.com/

It's a common enough ploy, one used far too often--the accusation becomes more important then any substance behind it. And now, accusations alone have resulted in the taking down of a website.

A frightening precedent has been set here, and I fear we'll see where it leads.

make truth 'supposed'

So any attempt to talk about God being close, involved, and integrated with humanity smacks of taking the deity right out of God, of turning God into little more than a really great guy. As if that weren't enough, the language of integration also brings with it concerns of glorifying humanity, of ignoring our supposed filth and sin and brokenness that goes along with the idea of the pure, unsullied God. Perhaps that's why Christians tend to get a little weirded out by the suggestion that God might be something other than up and out.
Doug Pagitt, A Christianity Worth Believing, p. 108

I like the phrase "supposed filth and sin and brokenness", as if man's state of original sin and fallenness are not among the most blindingly obvious things in Creation, not to mention something the Bible tells us about a good bit. Thus, if Pagitt wishes to assign the word "supposed" to this doctrine, then there is really little left to say--he's playing to the crowds, letting the age have his head.

it doesn't matter what we like

The God I learned about was, to be blunt, a God I wasn't sure I wanted to know.
Doug Pagitt, A Christianity Worth Believing, p. 99

I wonder if I could play the Pharisee card here. After all, the God they saw in Jesus wasn't one that they wanted to know. He ate with tax collectors and sinners, didn't lead a political rebellion, and called them hypocrites and blind.

The point is, this statement has almost nothing to do with whether "The God (Pagitt) learned about" is the true God or one made up.  It's merely opinion.

group reenforcement

To the contrary, nothing roots out heresy better than a group.
Tony Jones, The New Christians, p. 185

I can think of all kinds of 'groups' (Mormons, JWs, Christian Science, Oneness Pentacostals, and dare I add emergents into this list) that are heretical despite being a group.

All a group really does is allow the members to affirm each other in their beliefs, it says nothing about whether those beliefs are good or bad, true or false.

nothing lasts

Perhaps the most troubling but also easiest to answer characteristic of Emergent theology, and the one that would justify using quotation marks so that it would read "theology", is the idea of Emergent theology being "temporary".

It's easy, because it's self-contradictory. If theology is "temporary", then even this statement about theology being "temporary" is itself temporary. One must make a non-temporary theological statement in order to state that all theology is temporary, just as one must make a universal and transcendent theological statement in order to say that theology is not universal and trascendent.

Take a look at these statement, from page 114...

...emergents reject metaphors like "pin it down", "in a nutshell", "sum it up", and "boil it down" when speaking of God and God's Kingdom, for it simply can't be done.

But even in saying those things, is he not "pinning down" things about theology? Even in saying that God and God's Kingdom cannot be "pinned down", does that not "pin down" something about God and God's Kingdom?

Now, one question that could be asked is, how far do they or would they go with this idea? For example, what about the fairly simple statement "God is love". Does that statement "pin down" God and our ideas of God? What if someone says "God is not love"? Is that statement as equally valid as the first?

If all theology is temporary, then what can we say that we really know about God? Can we even say "God is love" if we do not, cannot, have some sort of real non-temporary idea of what that means? If everything in our theology is only temporary, then how can we even say that there is a God? Because isn't saying "There is a God" a theological statement? And if that is so, then isn't it also a temporary statement?

Now, why is theology being temporary such a big characteristic of Emergent "theology"?

Because then, theology can be changed. If the Bible forbids something, like homosexuality, then if theology is temporary, then the theology in the Bible is temporary, Thus, one can posit that despite what the Bible says, things change, including theology, and that now we can think up reasons for saying that homosexual sex is now not forbidden.

Or, what about issues about beliefs and how they relate to salvation? While Jones does say that he believes in the Trinity and in Jesus being fully human and fully divine, he and other Emergents seem to consider someone like Marcus Borg to be a Christian, too. This is the same Borg who said that he would bet his life that Jesus did not rise from the dead, which belief would disqualify him biblically from any consideration as being a Christian. Did not Paul say that if Christ was not raised, our faith is in vain, and we are still in our sins? How, then, can one who teaches the Christ was not raised by considered a brother?

But if theology is temporary, then Paul's statement was maybe temporary, and we are not obliged to take it seriously today (though who knows what tomorrow will allow)? And so, is Borg, whose beliefs are miles outside of any measure of orthodox biblical Christian doctrine,welcomed with open arms by these "temporary" theology people?

talking amongst themselves

The paragraphs about "conversational" are if anything even more vague then the ones about "local". While we do get what seems to be Jones' pat ridicule of Descartes (he sat in a bread oven, so what?), the notion of the "conversational" side of Emergent theology seems an awful lot like...what people have been doing for years. Which would be, learning from what people have said and written both in the past and in more recent times.

For example, on page 113, we have this statement...

They (Emergents) are in conversation with two thousand years of Christians theology and four thousand years of Jewish theology before that).

Now, how does that differ from any other Christian education? After all, learning from the Bible, from history, from the early church, from the writings of Christians through history, what about that is necessarily all that new?

But then comes the next sentence...

Some are in conversation with Islamic and Buddhist and Hindu and various other theologies (and a/theologies).

And right about now, we can start getting an idea of where this is heading.

Thesis-antithesis-synthesis. The idea that we start out with an idea (thesis), run into an idea against it (antithesis), and when the conflict is over we come away with some kind of a melding of the two, or a middle ground, or a compromise (synthesis).

So, Christianity is an idea, a thesis. In our world today, we are knocking heads with Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, athiesm, and other religions (antitheses). If a claim to absolute truth on the part of Chrisitanity is by definition rejected by postmodernism, then what we have left is finding some way of compromising and blending together these various religious ideas (synthesis).

(Btw how is our situation any different then what the Apostle had to deal with, going from city to city knocking heads with the followers of Greek and Roman false gods? Did they compromise with the idol-worshippers? Can we find anything in the New Testament tell us to synthesize with the followers of idols?)

Which brings us back to things Emergents are saying and doing. Faith House, for example, where the attempt is being made to synthesize Christianity, Judaism, and Islam (and since last I checked they now have a Hindu on staff, we may well think that Hinduism and even Buddhism are being brought into the mix there). And statements by people like McLaren that people do not have to leave their religions and gods to be a follower of Christ.

Emergent Christians hope to avoid the danger of solo theology by intentionally placing themselves in theological communities, and the more diverse the better.

But is this really so? Look at this statement, from page 48...

Sitting on panel at a Seattle event in 1999, he (Mark Driscoll) vehemently stated that women should not be pastors. Everyone else in the room was dumbfounded, since he was breaking an assumed consensus in the group.

And a bit further down the page.

This resulted in a couple of meetings and conference calls, an attempt to quell his vituperations. Driscoll's increasingly conservative theology and his unrepentant attitude led to an eventual distancing from the rest of the group.

So, what's going on here? What was Driscoll's sin that he was unrepentant for? Cussing? Or going conservative?

I'm not defending any bad language Driscoll may have used (though if you want a repentence about it, check out what he says at one point in his 2007 Convergent Conference speech), but given that Emergent seems to have no problem with churches having gay members and their people using some forms of bad language, I suspect a bit of bad language on Driscoll's part would not have been that big a deal. Rather, it's his "increasingly conservative theology" that he remained unrepentent of and that led him away from them.

And I, for one, am glad of it. I've listened to audio files of many of his sermons, and recommend them. I don't agree with him on all things, especially in some end-times things, but he preaches the Gospel in a place that sorely needs it, and does it with boldness, and I have nothing but respect for him. And in all of the sermons I've listened to, I don't recall once having heard him cuss.

At any rate, one can see that Driscoll's views were rather less then welcomed by Jones and those on his side--they had already made up their minds (isn't that un-postmodern of them?), and Driscoll's going conservative and expressing it was again their trajectory.

Or, to point to another example, check out this, from page 207. Things in brackets are added by me for clarification.

Those who hold degrees from Moody Bible Institute (fundamentalist) and Seattle Pacific University (evangelical) are allowed to hold their final verdict on homosexuality in abeyance because the church's [Church of the Apostles in Seattle, WA] position on sexuality is not central to their identity, nor is Karen [Ward, pastor of the church] going to let either of her denominations thrust that issue to the forefront of her congregation (For the matter, the gay members of her church are allowed to hold their opinions of the Moody and SPU grads in abeyance as well!)

So, by that statement, Church of the Apostles already has gay members. Thus, the issue has already been decided, and homosexual activity is fine with them (really, do you think they would let people be members who openly did things they thought were wrong, like, let's say, kill baby seals for their fur?). One can suspect that it's not so much that the people from Moody and Seattle Pacific can "hold their final verdict...in abeyance" as that they are politely or not-so-politely, whatever the case may be, allowed to shut up about it. It's already a done deal, so live with it.

One could wonder what would would happen if one of those people, or a group of them, were to stop holding their verdicts in abeyance, and try to force the issue. I have little doubt they would soon find themselves not part of the conversation.

Which is the point. The Emergent conversation is, in the end, a conversation among Emergents. They have their own people, their own language, their own codewords, their own concepts of right and wrong, their own agendas and propagandas. Jones and McLaren have both come out hard against Dispensationalists, so we can pretty safely figure people with those views are not welcomed to express those views in the "conversation", and do so at the risk of being ridiculed and shot down with simplistic and emotional arguments. McLaren has come out in favor of almost every liberal social idea one can imagine, so we may well think that social and religious conservatives and people who can, for example, point out that that global warming is tripe will not get a hearing among them.

In other words, Emergent theology is "conversational" only insofar as anyone in the conversation already agrees with certain Emergent ideas. Don't rock the boat, as Driscoll did.

how local is local?

Dispatch 10: Emergents believe that theology is local, conversational, and temporary. To be faithful to the theological giants of the past, emergents endeavor to continue their theological dialogue.
Tony Jones, The New
Christians, p. 111

Ok, so, Jones gives us three characteristics of Emergent theology. Now, what do those things mean, and are they true or not.

Jones, on p. 112 of the book, gives three paragraphs of something like an explanation for what he means by theology being "local". I'm not going to give the full content of those paragraphs, but excerpts.

...everything that emanates from me (like this book) is essentially local in
that it proceeds from the locus of my person...As my attempt to reflect on
notions about God, theology is inherently local

To put it in the converse, theology is not universal, not is it transcendent. The God about whom we theologize is transcendent, but our human musings about God are
not...Professional theologians...are sometimes tempted to write and speak with
the confidence that their theology is somehow clean or sterile or untainted...But of course, they're just as local as the rest of us...

...Recently, I received an e-mail announcement that a local group of
emergent Christian leaders was gathering in Pittsburgh. Their desire? To begin a
conversation about "Pittsburghian theology"...

So, what does any of this mean?

For example, what does "local" mean? Or, to try to be plainer, how big or small must or can an area or a group be to be "local"? For example, looking more at his Pittsburgh example, what if the people of a certain area or district in Pittsburgh thought that having a theology for the whole city was too broad and big, and they wanted to have one for their district or neighborhood that may have differences from what the big city theologians would want? What if it came down to a neighbor, a street, a city block, or even an individual home or even an individual person?

Similarly, what about those who would think that having a theology for a city would be too small? What about surrounding counties and towns? Or a region in the state of Pennsylvania? What about the whole of Pennsylvania itself?

And no matter how big or how small a "local" may be, what about when differences come about? What if the Pittsburghian theologiy is different in some important ways from the Pennsylvanian theology? What if the theology of Export, PA, which is close to Pittsuburgh, has some important differences from the Pittsburghian theology?

What about non-emergent Christians? Will the Pittsburgh Emergents allow non-Emergent Christians to have their theology without criticism, even if it is vastly different from their own?

What about any kind of agreement/disagreement with neighboring theologies? If, for example, the Philadelphian theology adheres to an end-times view that is Dispensational, and the Pittsburghian theology is Full Preterist, how will that effect their interactions? Or if the Ohioan Theology holds fast to Substitutionary Atonement while Pennsylvanian theology thinks that SA makes God into a child abuser, how will those differences effect their relationships?

Also, If the Pennsylvanian theology goes Full Preterist, while the Philadelphian theology believes in Dispensational, how will that effect their relationships? Can the Pennsylvanian state theologians allow the Philadelphian city theologians to have such a different view? Will the state theologians not try to put pressure on the city ones to change their views?

And none of that deals with relationships out of their Emergent groups, with Baptists and Lutherans and Muslims and others, or even an individual Emergent group or person that simply will not buy in to any larger group's local form of theology.

And what if someone moves from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia? If they agreed with the Pittsburghian theology and had disagreements with the Philadelphian, would they have to change their minds to fit in with the Philadelphians when they moved to that "local"?

As well, if theology is merely "local", what does that do to the Bible and how any particular "local" may interpret and use it? How, for example, are they to take such commands as "You shall not steal"? Is that a statement of merely local theology, and we do not need to worry about it now? Or does any particular "local" have to determine what is for them stealing? What if there are differences in what particular "locals" think of as acts of stealing?

I would contend that the word "local" as Jones uses it here is ill-defined, perhaps even essentially meaningless. It is used more for its 'feel good' effect then any other reason.

I would further contend that it is self-contradictory. To say "theology is not universal, not is it transcendent" is itself to make a universal and transcendent theological statement.

Also, Jones himself does not really believe that theology is merely local. If he did, he would not make, could not make, any statements of either praise or criticism to the theological teachings or practices of any other group or church or individual. But he does so, which puts paid to any notion that his theological ideas are merely "local".

I'll have to get back to the other two characteristics later.