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The Emerging Church (Part 4 of 4)

Conclusion of a 4-part series on the dangers of ECM in the Christian mainstream

  — | Features, Theme Articles, Series | August 11, 2009



Though it feels to you like months have passed, it has only been a day since you learned of your friend’s “Emergent” faith. Yet these hours have been packed with many weeks’ worth of concern, consternation, and compassion.

Unable to rest well the previous night, you’re now thankful for the prayer and Scripture study that filled those sleepless hours. You’ve called your friend to invite him to your home, telling him that it is cheaper to burn coffee at your place than having it done professionally at the local cafe.

As you wait for him, your thoughts turn again to the implications of your friend’s asterisk-laden profession of faith. Given the Emerging Church Movement’s intentionally loose grip on biblical doctrine, you wonder what its advocates deem distinctively Christian about the movement and how it interacts with other faiths. You decide to do some online research, focusing particularly on the works of leading Emergent thinker Brian McLaren.

Addressing the topic of interfaith relations, McLaren writes: “The church must present the Christian faith not as one religious army at war against all other religious armies but as one of many religious armies fighting against evil, falsehood, destruction, darkness and injustice.”1

McLaren’s words display the top priority of the Emerging Church Movement (ECM)—social justice. Serving the downtrodden in society is a unifying desire in the highly diverse ECM, and its proponents’ passion for the poor and hurting is humbling and inspiring. However, McLaren’s words also declare that the worship of the true and living God is not a necessary ingredient in the ecumenical effort to ensure justice for all. Rejection of Jesus Christ as the only Savior of men and nations does not seem to qualify as part of the evil, falsehood, and injustice which the church is to redress. Calling upon Christians to unite with the faithful in other religions to oppose social evil, McLaren regards their going after other gods as a matter of, at best, secondary importance.2

Indeed, according to predominant Emergent thinking, the church’s theology ought to take a back seat to its sense of sociological mission.3 McLaren writes: “One doesn’t learn what God is like in a library or pew and then begin to love God in real life. One begins to love God and others in real life. In the process one learns what God is like–and one might be driven to the library and pew to learn more.”4

However, the church must have an understanding of the purpose and parameters of its mission; and if the mission is meant to serve God, then its purpose and parameters must be defined theologically. It is here that we spy again the selective agnosticism endemic in the ECM. McLaren again: “For me, the ‘fundamentals of the faith’ boil down to those given by Jesus: to love God and to love our neighbors.” To those who insist on asking which God McLaren means, he responds: “Whichever God Jesus was referring to.”5

Significantly absent from McLaren’s quick quotation of Jesus is our Lord’s specification of the God we are to love. Drawing from Deuteronomy, Jesus calls first for all-encompassing, all-consuming devotion to the unique, covenant-making God of Israel.(^fn6) Only then does He command love for one’s neighbor.6 This unbreakable fusion between message and mission permeates Scripture.7 The doctrine to be believed always drives the duty to be performed. McLaren and the ECM in general lay heavy stress upon Jesus’ second summarizing command but do not attribute the same moral, binding weight to the first (and greatest). At the very least, the ECM does not consider calling our neighbors to forsake their false gods an essential part of loving them.

Further, the ECM’s relaxation regarding who Christian faith affirms gains them desired flexibility regarding what Christians are to do in living out their faith.8 Free from absolute statements regarding God’s unchanging, holy character, the ECM becomes free from God’s absolute declarations of what constitutes sin. Thus, the category of social justice may be inflated beyond perennial duties like feeding the hungry to include the contemporary concerns of political correctness.9

Embarrassed by conservative, confessional churches’ inertia on matters ranging from women in ordained ministry10 to the self-labeled civil rights struggle11 of the homosexual community,12 the ECM attempts to haul up anchors of doctrinal definition on these issues so the church may be propelled and guided by the winds of cultural change.13

Opposing the ECM’s accomplishment of the agenda behind its agnosticism is the doctrine it so staunchly opposes– Sola Scriptura. Sola Scriptura insists that the Bible, with unique and ultimate authority, drives the engine of ecclesiastical doctrine and practice.14 Sola Scriptura insists that the Word is knowable to the point of acting with conviction, even “Calvinistic confidence” regarding its content, clarity, and authority.15

In your study the previous night, you examined the Scriptures to see if the principle of Sola Scriptura was derived from the Bible or if it was merely a modernistic construct foisted upon it. You found your heart strengthened as you discovered anew the Bible’s pervasive emphasis on God’s giving us His Word as the divinely authoritative means of our truly knowing Him and believing and acting accordingly.16

Contrary to the selective agnosticism employed by the ECM, Psalm 19:7-11, among a host of other passages, extols God’s Law for its value in giving understanding. The longest single unit of God’s revealed Word, Psalm 119, is dedicated to the excellence of God’s revealed Word. God’s prescribing the exact content of Noah’s ark, the plot of land in which the children of Abraham were to settle, the tabernacle and temple and indeed the whole sacrificial system reveal Him to be a God very concerned that His people both understand and obey Him with precision. All of these Old Testament demands and details point us toward their fulfillment in Christ, and in the New Testament, we find the overwhelming emphasis on people’s increased accountability to obey the Word of God because of the new fullness and clarity with which it has been revealed.17

Luke could hardly be accused of harboring and expressing Modern, Rationalistic views of God’s Word, and yet he opens his gospel with these words: “…It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write to you an orderly account, most excellent Theophilus, that you may know the certainty of those things in which you were instructed.” The Apostle Paul plainly admits our limitedness in understanding God and His will, but he never expresses or endorses agnosticism with regard to what has been revealed of God and His will. The apostle who proclaims that in this life we know only in part also pronounced damnation upon anyone who preached a gospel other than his.18

The ECM ignores these pervasive emphases in Scripture and glosses lightly over Scripture’s inflexible insistence that people worship only the true and living God, while at the same time citing scriptural substantiation for its version of Christian theology and mission.

This disingenuous hermeneutic is apparent in McLaren’s self-conscious refusal to recognize the issue of hell (and heaven, for that matter) as central to the church’s identity and mission in this world. To the question of who goes to heaven and who goes to hell, McLaren blusters back: “Why do you consider me qualified to make this pronouncement? Isn’t this God’s business? Isn’t it clear that I do not believe this is the right question for a missional Christian to ask?”19

McLaren (rightly) chastises the church for not thinking seriously about the topic of hell,20 but his way of dealing with this heaviest of issues is to put it out of his mind, ostensibly to serve Jesus more effectively. The problem, of course, is that Jesus preached about hell, profusely. Jesus gave us many such “hard” sayings, and true discipleship is forged in the crucible of such words, words abundantly clear as to their meaning, thus prompting the severe reactions to them. Rather than trusting Christ, as did a weeping Paul in Romans 9–11 21 and a reeling Peter in John 622, the ECM joins the crowd of those departing from and disillusioned by the teaching of Christ.

The ECM’s running from these and other words of Christ reveals the ultimate irony of its theology, fatal to its claim of being a truly Christian movement: The voice excluded from the self-described Christian conversation started by the ECM is the voice of Christ Himself.

Westminster Theological Seminary (Philadelphia) professor Carl Trueman writes: “Once God has, in effect, been prevented from speaking to us, we lose our ability to speak about him. Thus, this loss of a doctrine of scripture involves the downplaying, if not the ignoring, of the voice of the awesome and holy God; and such a move can only be made when we lose sight of God himself.…We have bought in to the random incoherence of postmodernity, judge the Bible by the standards of our own cultural expectations, and rejoice in the problem as if it were the solution.”23

Having heard your friend decry the doctrine of Sola Scriptura as an idol of the modern era church, you’ve found from God’s Word that Sola Scriptura is in reality the ultimate iconoclast. Scripture’s clear, divinely authoritative statements about God and His character forbid our fashioning Him after the philosophies and fads of our culture. And when God’s Word occupies the place it demands in our faith and life, the church will not be content serving merely as well-mannered social activists. We will hear our Savior’s call to self-denial and proclaim to our fellow man in loving Word and deed, the claims of our King.24

The doorbell rings and you go to greet your friend. You know that your time together will involve more listening on your part, but you also know that you must speak. Though disquieted in heart about what more your friend may say, you find peace in what Christ has said. And so you mean to speak to your friend with the Word of your Savior, desiring to be used by God in the healing of your friend’s hurting heart. The air filled with the smell and sound of percolating coffee, highly caffeinated, you open the door, eager to engage your friend in truly Christian conversation.

—Rutledge Etheridge

Rut Etheridge is pastor of Providence (Pittsburgh, Pa.) RPC and is adjunct professor of systematic theology for the RP Seminary. He was the speaker for a Reformation Society conference on the Emerging Church entitled, “The Church’s Identity Crisis.”

  1. Brian McLaren, The Church on the Other Side (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003) p. 87. See also A Generous Orthodoxy, pp. 277-300. ↩︎

  2. McLaren writes that Christian apologetics should be understood in the vein of calling people on different teams to suit up on ours. He believes that various religions can cooperate with one another in the common cause of curing societal ills, but he envisions an ecumenicism far beyond, for example, a Christian and a Muslim serving side by side at an inner city soup kitchen. The vision of Christianity put forth by the ECM is one in which people who deny the existence of the Triune God can still be seen as possessors of “true faith.” See Church on the Other Side, pg. 87. In ECM theology, true faith is defined apart from faith’s object. ↩︎

  3. Traditionally, missiology has been understood as a subset of theology. The ECM wants the reverse. McLaren writes: “Perhaps the best way to use Scripture is not to concentrate on our use of Scripture at all but rather to focus on our pursuit of mission.” –A Generous Orthodoxy, p. 182. ↩︎

  4. Ibid., p. 207 ↩︎

  5. Ibid., p.206 ↩︎

  6. McLaren seems to advocate the reverse: “…Jesus has taught us that the way to know what God is like is not by determining our philosophical boundary conditions/definitions/delineations before departing, but rather the way to know is by embarking on an adventure of faith, hope, and love, even if you don’t know where your path will lead…” A Generous Orthodoxy, p. 207. ↩︎

  7. The same essential doctrinal affirmation fuels the quintessential “mission statement” of Scripture, found in Matthew 28:18-20, wherein the resurrected Christ commissions the church to disciple the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Triune God and calling them to conformity to every command the Lord had given His church. ↩︎

  8. Scott McKnight asserts that proper doctrine, knowing the right meaning of a passage, does not ultimately affect the point of that passage (or the Bible as a whole) which is to call the church to good works. He writes: “I don’t think any person reading this book wonders what good works are.” (The Blue Parakeet, p. 112). The latter is an especially stunning statement in a postmodern culture driven not by the hard pluaristic denial of absolutes, but the denial of our ability to know them. Perhaps McKnight’s limiting the statement to those reading his book is meant to minimize the impact of such a statement, but if so, he seems to ignore the extent to which postmodern ethics and epistemology have influenced the church. For instance, there are professing Christians who believe they are doing “good works” in helping pregnant women kill their unborn children through abortion. ↩︎

  9. Listing these two issues together is done merely to display the spectrum of ECM concerns, and not to suggest the equation of them. However, at play in both issues is a hermeneutic which allows for clearly expressed, oft-repeated principles and commands in Scripture to be handled as matters of mere cultural import. ↩︎

  10. The Blue Parakeet is essentially Scott McKnight’s apology to women, one in particular, whom he believes to have been illegitimately excluded from ordained Christian ministry. McKnight laments the fact that he once belonged to a school of theology that restricted ordained ecclesiastical office to men. ↩︎

  11. In our day, true and legitimate social struggles like the civil rights movement for minorities are pirated by people seeking to invent new rights to accommodate their social demands. During a discussion in the Introduction to Reformed Theology class I’m privileged to teach at RPTS, an African-American student noted her severe frustration at the homosexual community’s describing their political plight regarding marriage as a civil rights issue. ↩︎

  12. See A Generous Orthodoxy, p. 20 and 152 and following. ↩︎

  13. Here we recognize that what the Emerging Church truly brings to Christianity is not reformation and liberation from dated and dangerous modes of theology, but regression toward and subjugation to the essential tenets of old school theological liberalism. The attempted maintenance of Christian ethics apart from biblical doctrine is a hallmark of the liberal church. Though ECM leaders chide the liberal church for its rejection of doctrine dealing with the supernatural, they nonetheless refuse to affirm with certainty the historicity of the supernatural events recorded in Scripture. Thus, they are able to demur at the doctrinal commitments such events demand. ↩︎

  14. For a sad study, consult the minutes of the General Assembly of the PCUSA in its “progressive” dealings with the subject of abortion. When the Lord of life is denied, so, too, is the value of human life. True social justice cannot be achieved by those who deny the Just Judge of all the earth. This theme factors heavily in the book of Malachi, wherein God chastises a community, and especially a priesthood, which had failed to worship Him with reverence and was therefore refusing to tend well to the strangers among them. ↩︎

  15. In embracing Sola Scriptura we certainly recognize that we can be wrong in our interpretations of Scripture; thus the need to be ever reforming. But this reformation is an effort to get back as much as possible to the original words and intents of the God who spoke definitively in His Word; it is not the open quest of constant redefinition to which the ECM calls the church. ↩︎

  16. See the helpful list of biblical texts relating to truth and its knowability in Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church: Understanding a Movement and its Implications (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005) pp. 188 and following. Far from an arbitrary amassing of prooftexts, Carson’s list together with the argumentation found in the rest of his book, demonstrates the enormity and consistency of Scripture’s emphasis on truth and its knowability and, more to the point, on God and His knowability through the Word He’s given to make Himself known. So massive an emphasis and so consistent a theme reveals failure to see it as a willing and malicious blindness. ↩︎

  17. See Acts 3:17 and following, Romans 2, Hebrews 2:1-4. ↩︎

  18. Galatians 1:8-9. Paul’s thundering insistence upon the church’s knowing and proclaiming the true gospel of Christ over and against counterfeit versions is, to my knowledge at least, nowhere to be found in Emergent theology. ↩︎

  19. A Generous Orthodoxy, p. 122. ↩︎

  20. See Article 1 in this series, May 2009. ↩︎

  21. Paul begins his massive treatment on the sovereignty and saving grace of God by weeping for those who’ve rejected Christ. Reformed Christians who enjoy the polemical force of this passage must also feel its emotional weight and be driven to the humility enjoined therein. ↩︎

  22. See John 6:60-71. ↩︎

  23. Though these comments are quite applicable in a critique of the Emergent Church, the article from which they are drawn deals with the “New Perspective on Paul.” See Carl Trueman, “On Meeting Joe Frazier,” at Reformation21.org. ↩︎

  24. Reformed Presbyterians belong to theological tradition and a particular denomination with a history of opposing social evil when other Christians would not. See Dr. Rick Gamble’s article in the July issue of Tabletalk, and consult our denominational record of opposing the slave trade and supporting the civil rights movement. ↩︎