Job Confronts the Emergent Church, Part 1

I have been reading about the Emergent Church during the last year, especially after having run into some of their movements and methods in China.  The movement is purposefully multi-faceted and difficult to define, so my purpose here is neither to do that nor critique the movement (I can recommend a couple of books that can do and already have done that: for this, see Why We’re Not Emergent (By Two Guys Who Should Be), by Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck; and Becoming Conversant With The Emerging Church, by D. A. Carson for excellent critiques of the Emergent Church movement from the scholar’s, pastor’s and layperson’s perspective).  I would like simply to point out a couple of key themes and share an observation from the book of Job which, though it is the oldest story in the Bible, speaks to this “new” movement.

Again, the Emergent Church movement is multi-faceted, so these themes may not be true of every Emergent Church, but they are characteristic of many of the writers, churches and websites of churches that have chosen to be visible.  One theme is that they are post-modern, meaning, amongst other things, that they have conceded to secular post-moderns and believe, or at least say, that there are no objective, absolute truths or truth-claims that the church can hold with absolute certainty.

Another theme is that the Emergent Church desires to focus on orthopraxy over orthodoxy, or in English words: right-doing over right-teaching.  Or, in other words, turning to the practical before the doctrinal.  This flows from the first, because if there are no absolute truths on which we can agree with certainty, we should drop our focus, or at least primary focus, on doctrine, because all doctrine is at best flawed, and at worst arrogant.  For, they say, who can really know God?  Who can really know about God?  Who can articulate the doctrine of the Trinity or the Person of Christ?  Who can understand the doctrine of justification or substitutionary atonement?

If this criticism seems unfair, perhaps British Emergent writer Steve Chalke should speak for himself:

The fact is that the cross isn’t a form of cosmic child abuse – a vengeful Father, punishing the Son for an offence he has not even committed.  Understandably, both people inside and outside of the Church have found that twisted version of events morally dubious and a huge barrier to faith.  Deeper than that, however, is that such a concept stands in total contradiction to the statement “God is love”.  If the cross is a personal act of violence perpetrated by God towards humankind but borne by his Son, then it makes a mockery of Jesus’ own teaching to love your enemies and to refuse to repay evil with evil (Steve Chalke, The Lost Message of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003), 182-183; quoted in D. A. Carson, Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005), 185).

Popular American Emergent guru Brian McLaren questions core doctrines along similar lines as Chalke.  When a character in one of his books questions the substitutionary atonement, he muses,

That just sounds like one more injustice in the cosmic equation.  It sounds like divine child abuse.  You know?  (Brian McLaren, The Story We Find Ourselves In: Further Adventures of a New Kind of Christian (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003), 102; quoted in D. A. Carson, Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005), 166)

Preferring narrative theology, any attempt at systematic theology, they say, is “boxing God in.”  Since we cannot agree, and everyone’s attempt at right-teaching is imperfect, let us quit with doctrine and confessions and focus on right living.  Deeds before Creeds.  McLaren also stresses deeds over creeds, as in statements such as this, found in A Generous Orthodoxy:

For me the ‘fundamentals of the faith’ boil down to those given by Jesus: to love God and to love our neighbors (Brian McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy (El Cajon, CA: emergentYS/Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004), 184; quoted in D. A. Carson, Becoming Conversant with the Emergent Church (Grand Rapids, Zondervan, 2005), 177).

So, it is no stretch to say that Emergent thinkers and writers have, and continue, to question core doctrines of the Protestant Christian faith, and repeatedly stress right-action over right-doctrine.  Sadly, when this happens, as it has with several prominent Emergent writers, those important doctrines, such as justification by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, on the authority of Scripture alone; substitutionary atonement; and others go by the wayside altogether.  When this happens, as it has before and is happening again, all they are left with is a “let’s just follow Jesus and exemplify the love of Christ to others with our actions,” WWJD, Christian morality.

A third theme to mention that the Emergent Church likes to stress is that their ideas and methods are new. They believe they are novel, interesting and provocative.  They like to write theology narratively; they like stories.  They write and articulate that writing and articulating systematic theology, and stating truth claims from Scripture, is dogmatic, old and outdated, and that their ideas and methods are actually new and fresh.  (Ironically, they usually state such things about their ideas and those they oppose rather dogmatically.)

With these themes stated, I will next turn attention to some observations from the pre-modern book of Job in the second part of this post, in which I believe he interestingly addresses some of the very same questions post-modern Emergents pose.

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