Posted on 03/06/2015 8:06:28 AM PST by Gamecock
I used to celebrate that the emergent church has gone the way of the buffalo. With Rob Bell jumping the shark and Brian McLaren’s “marriage” of his son to another man it had outed itself as at best a reincarnation of old-school 20th century liberalism and at worst another vehicle for moving large numbers of people out of the church. But the reality is, the ethos and theologically unorthodox impulses haven’t disappeared. Even more nefariously these impulses have been incorporated as a part of modern evangelicalism’s already sickly emaciated theological assumptions. Perhaps the greatest lasting rhetorical aspect of the emergent methodology was its constant insistence that it was only asking innocent questions.
A few months ago one defender of emergent theological experimentation claimed that one of the godfathers of the emergent movement was publicly crucified. His sin?
“He deviated. He dared to ask questions. He challenged the status quo. He moved against the grain.” “He asked a ton of really natural questions about reconciling eternal punishment with a loving God.” “In the now infamous and pivotal volume that caused the Church to break-up with him, Bell didn’t give many answers. He only asked people, to ask the questions.” “He’s admitting the real questions that surface in the excavation of deep faith.” In all of these propositional assessments of how Bell was treated, of course, the author seems to assume that mere questions without propositions can be benign. Is it possible for mere “question” asking to be totally innocent? Certainly. You could be asking someone a genuine question and seeking an actual answer. But there is another kind of question-asking that is intended to expose absurdity and turn people away from a particular belief or series of beliefs. Jesus dealt with this exact method of questioning, and he saw right through it.
Near the end of the book of Mark during his confrontation with the leaders in Jerusalem Jesus is confronted by a series of adversaries, each with their own agenda. In the middle of this series of challenges, the Sadducees come to him and offer a challenge of their own (Mark 12:18). They want to argue that the resurrection is an absurdity, and they do it by means of narrative, telling the story of a woman who, for various reasons related to the levirate law (Deut. 25:5) has married a series of seven brothers, each of them dying and leaving her childless. The Sadducees ask Jesus whose husband she will be at this supposed resurrection that is coming. This is a hard question with a great deal of emotional and rhetorical force.
Notice the structure of the rhetoric employed by the Sadducees. They never once make a propositional statement (except when setting up the background of the story they’re telling). Everything that they say is either story-telling or question-asking. They’re just daring to ask “the real questions that surface in the excavation of deep faith,” aren’t they? They’re only asking “a ton of really natural questions.” And yet Jesus says to the Sadducees, “Is this not why you are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God?”
The Sadducees might just as well respond, “How can we be wrong? After all, we’re just trying to start a conversation. We’re just asking questions. How can a question be ‘wrong’?”
It is also obvious to Jesus what the story is meant to accomplish. It’s meant by these people who are “just looking for a conversation” to illustrate in vivid fashion just how silly or problematic the idea of someone being resurrected actually is. Of course, they have underlying assumptions (unstated) that Jesus has to deal with, and he does so first by reminding the Sadducees that heaven is not a place of marriage, and second by reminding them from the Scriptures that “He is not the God of the dead, but of the living” (12:27). Their problem, according to Jesus, is that their underlying, unstated theological assumptions are wrong and that they don’t know their Bibles (v. 24). A truly deadly pair of problems that afflict far too many. Some even find it embarrassing that churches today still employ Jesus’ methodology of quoting 2,000 year old Scriptures to settle theological and ethical disputes.
In spite of the supposed ‘innocence’ of such questions, Jesus responds to them that they are wrong. Contrary to the insistence of many, you can set forth a series of mere questions and stories and still be “quite wrong” (v. 27).
His most recent heresy? Former Megachurch Pastor Rob Bell: A Church That Doesn't Support Gay Marriage Is 'Irrelevant'
“Even more nefariously these impulses have been incorporated as a part of modern evangelicalism’s already sickly emaciated theological assumptions.”
That’s a broad brush. There are a lot of problems with many churches, no doubt. But there are healthy ones, too. And countless believers who are repentant and calling on the Lord.
Satan is the accuser of the brethren. We should be careful that we do not join him in his accusations. (I’ve done it, too!)
“In all of these propositional assessments of how Bell was treated, of course, the author seems to assume that mere questions without propositions can be benign.”
Genesis, chapter 3 - “Did God really say that?”... all the evil in this world started with a “harmless question”.
That is why they are quite wrong.
Our former church was so conservative that it was a notorious thorn in the denomination’s side. In the past at a meeting a member stood up and said that if the denominational office wanted them to compromise then they would just remove the denomination’s name from their sign. Fast forward 10 years from that point-no one in the congregation saw a problem with the materials from Rob Bell and Brian Mclauren (a darling of that denomination) being used for youth and adult Sunday School.
The emerging/emergent culture infected many strong churches because the delivery of it’s proponents was so subtle and slick that people who trusted their pastors saw nothing wrong. The NUMA series was unbelievable-the videos I saw left me speechless, there was no way the kids watching this weren’t being brainwashed into thinking it was truth. They were so well done it was hard to resist being pulled into false thinking.
The Baptist General Conference changed its name to Convergent because the word Baptist was too off-putting to many people. Good grief, the mushiness of emergent views is spreading everywhere.
The best defense is a good offense. The way churches go on the offensive is to win people to Christ. And inspire their people to share Christ.
If a church isn’t doing that most basic thing of the Great Commission... look out.
Rob Bell didn't have to answer if Hell exists - his actions betrayed what he thinks the answer is, and what direction he wanted his audience to take.
There are (at least) three motivations to ask questions, (at least) two of which are disingenuous.
One is to ask questions in order to obtain a justifying response: when Jesus was asked, “And who is my neighbor?”, what the questioner wanted to hear was that the people he didn’t want to love weren’t his neighbor and so it was OK not to love them. Jesus answered the question, but He also answered the desire for self-justification. It’s also what the Sadducees did when they presented their stupid pseudo-scenario of the wife-of-seven-brothers; Jesus already knew what the Sadducees thought the answer was, so He addressed the question, but He also addressed their supposed answer.
The second is what Hegelians do, including the emergent theologians, it would seem. They ask questions in order to “start a dialogue”—except that the function is the dialogue is not to find the truth, but to find the synthesis, which then becomes the next thesis to be addressed by a “question to start a dialogue”, which then morphs into the next synthesis, and so on. It didn’t take long for sinful man to figure out that this is a very effective means of leading society down the road to where you have decided you want it to be, rather than where God has decreed He wants it to be.
The emergent theologians think that they can take the Bible, fashion an antithesis to the Bible, and then come up with a synthesis that is somehow closer to the truth than the Bible is—and then take that synthesis, fashion an antithesis that is even less like the Bible, and come up with a new synthesis which is somehow closer to the truth, even those it is even further away from the Bible.
Look at how it’s been done in relation to homosexuality. The Bible states that homosexual activity is a sin. Situation Ethics devised an antithesis, which sounds Biblical but is in fact demonic: activity done in love cannot be a sin. (What makes it demonic is that we get to define what “love” is, which makes us as gods, knowing good and evil.) Out of this arose the liberal church synthesis: homosexual activity done in love cannot be a sin. But that immediately became the next thesis, and homosexual activists formed the next antithesis: marriage is the joining of two people who love each other—and remember, activity done in love cannot be a sin. Out of this arose the more recent liberal church synthesis: any joining of two people in love can be considered a marriage—and this is an even further departure from the Bible’s view on homosexual activity than the previous synthesis, which did not attempt to homosexual activity as being a marriage-able act.
There is only one desirable reason to ask a question, and that is because one wants to know the truth, and is willing to subordinate one’s own opinion to the truth, whether or not the truth is what one might wish it to be. Self-justifiers and Hegelian synthesizers are more concerned with what they want than with what God requires, and in that they are no different from the rest of us; as Paul teaches, we deal with such in a spirit of humility, knowing that we can also be tempted (Gal. 6:1).
What is “emergent”.
Some will journal during services. Mold clay. Sit around in leather chairs and chat about esoteric ideas.
This is the extreme, but sort of gives you an idea.
I looked up info about and McClaren.
It is not as benign as you describe.
It is the same ol same ol liberal social Gospel.
Nothing new under the sun.
Almost impossible to define :), but the people mentioned in the article are some of the early leaders. Mark Driscoll was another.
It is a fluid, man centered view of Christianity. It rejects 2,000 years of church history and core elements of the Bible and replaces it with a sort of spiritualism and eastern mysticism while claiming that that is what Jesus would really want.
Yes.
I found out the term come from contrasting “emerging church” with “inherited church”.
You are quite right. Didn’t mean to make them sound benign. Thought the heratical nature was covered in the article.
What's the NUMA series and what false thinking were they promoting?
It’s a series of brief videos, it’s been several years since I saw “Bullhorn” or “Bullhorn Man” (can’t remember the exact title of it), but there were no spoken words, just poignant scenes. This one implied that preaching or speaking out against sin was foolishness (really made the guy look pathetic and stupid) that turned people away from God. Don’t remember the other that I saw as they were pretty similar. No scripture, just provoked an emotional response to show that feeling a certain way was right-no proof texts needed.
It’s pretty much artsy films that give the same message as his book, “Love Wins”. There is absolutely no condemnation of sin, only condemnation and scorn for those who dare to teach that Jesus calls us to repent from sin.
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