Archive for June, 2008

Current Tunage: Celldweller – Frozen
So cold.

I have fun when the topic of discussion is something related to emergent theology.

See as reference:
Post: Queer Theories
and
Post: Theory in Practise

I haven’t been able to write much at all since school ended. Part is being busy, part is writing burnout, part is not having much to say – or nothing much to say stuff about.

Today I’ll say a few things some of you might want to interact with. First, I’ll give you referential links to the stuff and/or people I refer to:

First, a set of videos detailing Rob Bell’s recent time on a panel at the “Seeds of Compassion” conference, where he basically said stuff you could just as easily have heard from Oprah (note: I was dissapointed, but unsurprised given I’ve read Bell’s books, seen most of the Noomas, and loosely kept up with much of what he’s been saying for the past couple years). Doug Pagitt was also on the panel at this conference – he comes up in the convo.

Second, Mark Driscoll’s Sermon on the Emergent Church. Which basically summed up everything that’s good in some branches of it, and the rest (most of it) that’s really out there and wrong.

That being shared, here’s my thoughts, from an instant message conversation I had today about the “Emergent Trinity” (Rob Bell, Brian McLaren, and Doug Pagitt):

Jer: These are good guys, they’re just wrong… they’re not evil, they mean well, they’ve just missed some important things. I was watching a vodcast by Doug Pagitt today – he’s one of the other guys Mark mentioned along with Bell & McLaren. He was going on and on about some interfaith conference he was on a panel for with the dalai llama and desmond tutu and stuff. I just kept thinking “what about Jesus? any mention of him?” They all seem very genuine, but they’re missing out.

Friend: Yeah, sometimes wonder if we’re missing it too.

Jer: Yeah, fallibility. I don’t blame them for being so fluid about things.

Friend: Big word.

Jer: Fallibility is the recognition that we’re fallible…

Friend: That we aren’t perfect?

Jer: We’re good at being wrong, basically. Good at misinterpreting, misunderstanding, etc. But, and this is where i think they go off track, at some point our human fallibility meets God’s divine infallibility. He’s given us a book to communicate truth to us, and somehow, our fallibility must at some point be overcome, even if only in small ways, particularly through his book, if not exclusively. Check this:

1 Corinthians 2:12-16 ESV
Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.

Ephesians 4:17-24 ESV
Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ!– assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

Jer: When I listen to Rob Bell, I mostly hear Oprah.

Friend: Humanism, not Christianity.

Jer: Well, humanism masquerading as christianity… or at very least… at very very least, a destructive overemphasis on fallibility. In other words, my biggest problem with emergent is that they make fallibility the core and staple of their theology. Human fallibility is an important factor, to be sure. But the core ought to be Christ and all that He is, not us and all that we aren’t. Simply changing that core would transform their theology overnight – hence, why mark driscoll called them out to repent.

Jer: Its a reverse humanism. Since human fallibility isn’t exactly what humanists would normally be celebrating – if you catch my drift. It’s reverse humanism because in making their own fallibility the primary means of interpreting scripture, they make the human being superior to God… who the Bible tells us will enlighten our minds to understand his Word (as we looked at a minute ago). Its a trade, a mistake, and an easy error to overlook because it looks pious and righteous. But really, it’s just an overemphasis on one factor, not unlike the legalism or westernization or whatever it is that emergent is trying to emerge out of.

Jer: Most heresies and theological errors come out of some simple, often overlooked, root error – and with a quick nod to Radical Depravity we can assert that those errors will, one way or another, take the focal point of glorification off of Christ and place it elsewhere. In this case, making the most important factor in the interpretation of Scripture our human imperfection and fallibility instead of making it Christ and his perfect holiness which more than compensates for our fallibility as he indwells us.
/endrant

Nothing too far-fetched, I hope. I’m interested what others think though. As you’ve read, I think that the big deal with emergent is that they shift the core of their faith to themselves (particularly their imperfection) rather than Christ who is supposed to be at the center of true faith.

Obviously, also, there’s a lot of other topics this brings up. I’m up for any of the above.