The New Christians or Nebulous Christianity

Two things first: Tony Jones is a good writer and Tony Jones needs to be more honest about a certain friend of his. The book is easy to read, if pointless, and Mark Driscoll takes a pounding for being an ass, whereas Doug Pagitt gets a pass. Pretty sure Driscoll is an ass, but I've actually met Pagitt, sat in on his sessions, watched him interact with emergents and NPC pastors, and if anyone gets the designation of asshat in the early years of this movement, it's Doug. And Chris. I was there when Chris Seay and Kevin Wilson (is that who that professional/CT type was?) went at it. Ugly. Ugly. Ugly. Anyway, just a preface to say that even the postmoderns are content with revising history.

Jones begins the "argument" in The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier with the emergent rejection of binary thinking prevalent in American Christianity: dissatisfaction with Right and Left, Conservative and Liberal, Evangelical and Mainline. Except that emergents are less than honest about the new polarity: emergent and not. Jones gives some insight into this when he discusses the early meetings wherein people were designated those who get it and those who don't. He will go on to articulate 20 dispatches from the emergent church (certainly Emergent here, since this book has been designated by some gatekeeper as Emergent), beginning with:

"Emergents find little importance in the discrete difference between the various flavors of Christianity. Instead, they practice a generous orthodoxy that appreciates the contributions of all Christian movements."

The best that can be said about this is that it's half-true. But it's less than honest to call the differences between Independent Fundamentalist Baptists and Episcopalians "discrete." And it's less than honest to pretend that some Christian movements are worthy of appreciation rather than disgust. Better to say emergents appreciate the post-liberal thinking of Hans Frei and the Yale school while still holding onto some of the trappings of evangelical worship combined with Newbigin's missiology.

Dispatch number 2, and I'm not going to list them all, is the rejection of "the politics and theologies of left versus right. Seeing both sides as a remnant of mordernity, they look forward to a more complex reality." I too tend to reject binary thinking. I struggle with teaching ethics to students who have been taught the contrasting pairs. However, it's fair to say that those sorts of polarities predate modernity. Even Jesus must have been caught up in it when he declared, "Those who are not against us are for us." Two teams. Hmm...

Jones then gives an excellent, semi-detailed history of the emergent movement. It's the most helpful section of the book, and probably the last helpful section. When we get to "Who are the emergent Christians?" the answers are typically, emergently anecdotal. To be fair, Jones offers three characteristics of emergents: 1. disappointment with American Christianity; 2. desire for inclusion; 3. a hope-filled orientation. Jones has just described the LGBT movement and the American Humanist Association.

Then comes what should be the backbone of the book: the theology. It's true that emergent Christians, especially church planters, are more theologically tuned in than their evangelical church-planting counterparts. Rare is the middle-aged Hybel/Warren disciple who can withstand the theological questions of a young emergent full of Newbigin, Wright, Frei, and Brueggemann. There are passages within this section that I wholeheartedly affirm and/or sympathize with: "Dispatch 13, Emergents believe that truth, like God, cannot be definitively articulated by finite human beings." There are others that bring out the scoffer in me: "Dispatch 14, Emergents embrace paradox, especially those that are core components of the Christian story."  As a skeptic I have to ask, what else could they do? If they're determined to believe theistic nonsense, they are forced to embrace paradox. Jones uses the example of a physicist who "embraces paradox" to justify his position. Since I'm not a physicist, I'd like to hear what Dawkins or a mathematician (Leighton) would say about this passage (162-163). Then follows the two major paradoxes an emergent is forced, according to Jones, to defend: Trinity and Chalcedonian Christianity (fully God, fully man).

The last critique I have is of Jones's description of "wikichurch" in Dispatch 16: "Emergents believe that church should function more like an open-source network and less like a hierarchy or a bureaucracy." Umm...isn't Jones the "national coordinator" of Emergent Village, and isn't that a nice euphemism for director, and isn't that a hierarchical title? And has anyone else noticed that this open-source network keeps showing the same "programmers/administrators" on the fliers for the conferences? And who is pastoring these open-source network churches? Aren't the names Pagitt, Ward, Kimball, etc.? I don't recall seeing a flier about an emergent conversation or conference wherein the pastor(s) of Solomon's Porch was 500 names.

And then there is wikichurch. Jones wants us to think about Wikipedia as a good analogy of the emergent church. The first thing I tell my students is that they may not use wikipedia as a source for a paper. The problems with wikipedia are well-documented. Contrary to Jones, there is no glory, wonder, or awe attached to allowing morons equal access. Call me an elitist, but I'll stand by that. And that's only the first of many critiques I could make of this analogy.

Also in this section, Jones uses Tim Keel's church Jacob's Well as an illustration of an emergent church. Tim Keel, along with Brian McLaren, is one of the good guys of the movement. He's sincere, approachable, humble, kind, and a whole host of other positive adjectives, and the last time I talked to him (about two and a half years ago), his exact words were "I'm not even sure we're an emergent church anymore." That's because Jacob's Well has become a baby mega of sorts. A good church still, but emergent?

Jones answers his own questions about Emergent when he talks about the inevitable hardening of the categories that takes place in any movement—the tendency to move toward bureaucracy. He even admits that the purchase of his book might be a sign of that move, an argument I made both when Jones became "national coordinator" and when the first publisher announced their line of Emergent books, and I think I bitched when they came up with a logo. In short, you can read Jones's book and you'll probably enjoy the read, if you're sympathetic. If you're not because you're a skeptic, you'll probably be bored and a bit frustrated with the circular thinking attendant with theism. If you're not because you're fundangelical, then you'll be frustrated by Jones's unwillingness to be pinned down about almost anything. So, this is a book about emergents written for non-emergents that non-emergents won't care to read, but emergents will think Jones has done them a good turn. And Emergents are still unwilling to admit that the forces that drive fallen powers toward ossification and bureaucracy have taken deep root in the emergent church.

I had high hopes for emergent Christianity. I was one of them. Susan and I started what was arguably the first emergent congregation in Oklahoma City. What I want emergents to recognize, and this is from an outsider (to Christianity) now, is that there is no room within institutionalized American Christianity for them, so the sooner they stop the apologetics for the sake of the sanctified, the sooner they'll truly be counter-cultural and not counter-Church. Maybe then they'll make a difference for the long term. Playing by the same rules as the churches they've left—marketing, publishing deals, logos, titles, celebrities—only guarantees their demise.

Comments

[Antje]

I often find myself confused by the label "emergent." I didn't even know what it was until about four years ago, and once I did hear a definition, I couldn't figure out why that particular collection of ideas had to become something like a new denomination. Most of the emergent ideas were familiar to me just from the Christian university I attended, and also from various people (of all ages) I had been talking to in my church. So why the new label/brand? Why does it have to be a big statement to be "emergent"? It seems like it has ended up being a divisive thing instead of a new bunch of refreshing ideas that can work within any average congregation.

I'm guessing part of the answer is that the culture of Christianity is somewhat different here in Canada than it is in the States.

[Leighton]

The physicist "embrace" of "paradox" is actually nothing of the sort. The reference is wave-particle duality--the observation that things like light behave as waves when observed by some experiments, and as particles when observed by other experiments. The usual popular science formulation is that light is both a wave and a particle, but this is mostly a PR hook to get people interested in science (and science funding). It is more strictly accurate (though not methodologically useful) to say that light is neither a wave nor a particle. Particles, as classically defined, don't have wavelengths; waves, as classically defined, don't have a center of mass. Try arguing that Jesus is neither divine nor human, though, and you won't make many friends in theological circles.

With light, you can't say it's one or the other, because experiments force you to recognize that both claims are true, depending on which specific observation you're conducting on photons. The lesson to take from this is that our intuitive notions of particles and waves aren't complete--they don't completely reflect the way things are on submicroscopic scales. We're still struggling to articulate a model where this discrepancy can be resolved.

This process of continual revision is qualitatively different from dual nature claims concerning Jesus, where it is usually asserted that we do know what humanity is, and we do know what godhood is, and Jesus is somehow both, for no better reason than a bunch of people centuries ago deciding to make a political compromise concerning doctrine; furthermore, what we have now is all we will ever have, for ever and ever amen.

When you see a theologian trying to use bits of quantum theory torn from context as analogies for "paradoxes" (read "contradictions") in theology, you can be pretty sure that he's bullshitting and doesn't actually give a rat's ass about what scientists really do.

[greg]

Leighton,

You are my hero. I had a suspicion that he was bullshitting, but I've read that particle-wave anecdote so many times in apologetics texts I've stopped thinking about it. Have you read the bullshitting book? It looks worth picking up.

[Zossima]

The bullshit book is a good read imo.

[Leighton]

Thanks Greg, glad to help. You don't even really need to know the physics to suspect foul play; whenever I've seen an apologist bring up wave-particle duality, it has always failed the smell test. The tone isn't "Physicists, too, are confronted by apparent contradictions, but it's important to find a way of understanding the subject matter in a way that confirms the essence of both trains of thought, neither of which we can reasonably reject," followed by at least a heuristic justification for asserting both, with an explanation of how you can do something similar with claims that Jesus is both divine and human. Instead, it's merely "See? Physicists do this too, even though I refuse to go into any detail about what they actually assert. We're not crazy!" In general, I can't think offhand of an instance where making an analogy to a discipline with a radically different epistemology is an honest thing to do.

I bought Frankfurt's book the week after he was on the Daily Show. I was amused by his distress that people are paying $10 or $15 for a 20-page paper. The copy I have is pocket-sized with double-spaced 14-point font. The irony that he has probably failed students for doing something his publisher did with his own work was worth the cost IMO.

[awall]

I liked "On Bullshit." [Spoiler: Bullshit has nothing to do necessarily with whether or not what is conveyed is true.] But I especially liked how the interviewer called it "longish". I think I moseyed my way through it (with distractions) in about an hour.

[cheek]

Doesn't Heisenberg's uncertainty principle seem something like a paradox when compared to classical physics? Anyway, that's what the historical account I read portrayed Einstein as thinking (and Niels Bohr too, though he didn't seem to mind it). Perhaps you could clarify that one for me, Leighton.

By the way, this is not offered in defense of the parallel offered in the book, which sounds to be faulty. Just curiosity.

[Leighton]

Einstein didn't view the uncertainty principle as a paradox--he believed it was false and wrong, not inexplicably true. But Bohr did use "paradox" to describe it, which does deserve further comment.

Bohr, like Einstein, was a pantheist in the mold of Spinoza; as such, like many scientists then and now, he made an implicit distinction between the results of the process of scientific investigations, and the way nature itself actually behaves. For him, the most fruitful grounds for contemplation are the disagreements between the two.

His "paradox" is not so much a pairing of seemingly incompatible claims--light is a wave AND a particle, Jesus is human AND divine--but rather a single assertion, borne out by both theory and experiment, that by all prior intuition shouldn't be true--shouldn't even be coherent enough to be false. Paradox for Bohr is a deep conflict between our understanding of how things should be and the way we're compelled to acknowledge that things actually are, reminiscent of Zeno's paradox(es).

Zeno created several thought experiments to illustrate the discrepancy between contemporary ideas of finitude and infinity, and the behavior of the actual world. Parmenides' philosophy resolved these paradoxes in an unsatisfying way; they were resolved conclusively and satisfactorily more than two thousand years later with Leibniz's and Newton's use of calculus to sum infinite series.

That's the real difference between Bohr's notion of paradox and the paradoxes of theologians: we eventually resolve what Bohr calls paradoxes in physics, and in the process we learn more about how things work and unveil even deeper, more interesting mysteries. Paradoxes in theology (as defined by most apologists--I don't mean things like the existential mini-crises of, say, Kierkegaard) just sort of sit there, dank and dusty and stagnant.

[Leighton]

Putting it more concisely, "paradoxes" in science are the most attention-grabbing ways to say, "Hey, let's investigate more." Paradoxes in theology tend to be the places where you say, "Here the questions stop."

[Kevin Powell]

Greg,

Excellent, thoughtful analysis of the emerging church mov't. While I haven't read Jones' book, I've wondered about the theological naivety of many emerging church leaders. They don't seem to want to go deep or far enough into the critique of the churches most of them came from.

What they call "paradox" or what you call "contradiction" or Leighton calling "bullshit" actually has deep roots, maybe not in science (which is not really the domain of the theologian or pastor), but in neo-Orthodox (dialectic) theology; being able to hold polarities in creative tension: freedom and election, personal faith and the redemption of the cosmos, belief and skepticism.

Many are still too invested in substitutionary atonement theology and don't realize it. Or if they do, they haven't figured out a new way of talking about the salvific power of Jesus' death and resurrection.

There's no Barth, Niebuhr, or even Luther or Calvin guiding many of these emerging voices into a new understanding of what it means to be a faithful Christian in today's world.

Sorry for the rant.

Kevin

[Dallas Tim]

Calvin was pretty invested in substitutionary atonement theology as well. As was Jesus, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter, Paul, etc...

[Kevin Powell]

Dallas Tim,

Really? How so?

Kevin

[Dallas Tim]

I think it's clear that Calvin took his lead from clear Biblical teaching that Jesus "died for our sins."

Consider:

"This is our acquittal: the guilt that held us liable for punishment has been transferred to the head of the Son of God (Is. 53:12). We must, above all, remember this substitution, lest we tremble and remain anxious throughout life — as if God’s righteous vengeance, which the Son of God has taken upon himself, still hung over us."

And...

"By his obedience, however, Christ truly acquired and merited grace for us with his Father. Many passages of Scripture surely and firmly attest this. I take it to be a commonplace that if Christ made satisfaction for our sins, if he paid the penalty owed by us, if he appeased God by his obedience — in short, if as a righteous man he suffered for unrighteous men — then he acquired salvation for us by his righteousness, which is tantamount to deserving it."

Both were his writings from "Institutes II." I could list numerous others.

As for Jesus and the Apostles, I think it's up to you to show where they didn't really mean what they clearly and frequently said.

[greg]

Kevin,

This is the phrase that never made any sense to me: "being able to hold polarities in creative tension: freedom and election, personal faith and the redemption of the cosmos, belief and skepticism." That is what people say when they have contradictions which can't be resolved. My question is, what else would you do but create a phrase like "creative tension?" It's the only way two things that can't be true at the same time can be made to seem true for people who insist on believing A = non-A.

As for your debate with Tim, good luck. There is no limit to the number of proof-texts on these issues. Enjoy.

[Dallas Tim]

Greg,

You are correct. The proof-texts ARE limitless. That's why it's such an obvious and easy conclusion to draw.

[Leighton]

This is the phrase that never made any sense to me: "being able to hold polarities in creative tension: freedom and election, personal faith and the redemption of the cosmos, belief and skepticism."

I don't understand it myself either, but people whose judgment I trust have told me that it's an experiential counterpart to the philosophical and ethical tensions between things like justice and reconciliation, the good of individuals versus the stability of the systems in which they live, and other sorts of sometimes-opposing goals that have to be kept in balance.

But personally, I don't see the usefulness of expressing my personal experience in language that is designed to keep a barrier between itself and personal experience--i.e., to give the appearance of universality. I do understand the weirdness (paradox?) of feeling the strongest sense of personal meaning and fulfillment when I'm pursuing mathematics, which is among the more impersonal, indifferent subjects strongly dissociated from direct human experience (both everyday and out of the ordinary), and I imagine people who study theology probably experience something similar; but it's the kind of thing, like the idea of purifying one's motivations through suffering that I occasionally find helpful, that I would never dare suggest to anyone else as useful, let alone advocate it in a community.

I imagine it has some use as a personal discipline--people developing the habit of being able to mentally balance opposing goals is good practice for when they need to do it on the fly in real life. I use other methods for this, myself.

[greg]

Tim,

This--That's why it's such an obvious and easy conclusion to draw--is why I'm deeply skeptical of Christian claims. Very little is easy and obvious, especially when it comes to issues about which we can KNOW nothing. The hubris involved in that statement is off the charts, yet Christians seem incapable of recognizing that.

Leighton,

I'm thinking through that experiential counterpart bit. I may have something to say about that. I'm surprised that you don't have more to say about the mixture of linguistics and experience that entails.

[Leighton]

I might say more later down the road, but I haven't yet figured out how to say clearly what I mean. Also, I'm posting from work. >.>

[Dallas Tim]

Greg,

You're mistaking hubris for faith. You don't KNOW that you'll be alive tomorrow, but I bet you have the hubris to act today as if you will be.

[Kevin Powell]

Greg,

I get what you're saying. "Creative tension" can sound a lot like "contradiction." But the question becomes CAN two polarities co-exist? Or, is it, as you suggest, playing mere word games? Does paradox, in fact, exist?

I think it does. But my words fail. I wonder if it's more of an experiential thing, as Leighton suggests.

And judging from your comment about my debate with Tim, that it will end in a flurry of proof texts. So I'll just say this

But I think you might do well by reading any system of theology from outside the evangelical tradition, especially the chapters on the "Person and Work of Christ."
The Calvinist "penal-substitution" theology is just one among many.

There are as many atonement theologies as there are biblical scholars and theologians. As my seminary systematic prof noted, the bible doesn't outline a formula for how Jesus' death and resurrection is salvific. The bible only gives us images. Including the penal-sub image.

kgp

[greg]

Tim,

Whether or not I'll be alive tomorrow is a categorically different question than how does Jesus' death save humanity. I hope you see that. I can point to biological processes, physical health, an absence of severe weather, etc., to make that assumption. I can't control things like murder or out of control horse-drawn carriages, but neither do I make elaborate metaphysical assumptions about their impact on my life... To assert that something we can't know is plain and obvious is hubris, especially in the context of a theological assumption that is enjoying contemporary cache. Anselm would certainly have disagreed about how plain and obvious it is. That, I suppose, makes him obtuse?

Kevin,

Still thinking about what to say about this experiential thing.

[Kevin Powell]

Greg,

Oops! I meant the "So I'll just say this" for Tim.

re: the experiential thing. I find it interesting that we're wondering if the paradoxes found within neo-orthodox and post-modern theologies can be "proven" experientially, while the neo-orthodox theologians who expressed them were suspicious of experience as a means of revelation.

Weird. Just thought I'd throw that in the mix.

kgp

btw, haven't been by for a while. I love the new look.

[Dallas Tim]

Hubris and Faith are different. The Bible tells us that it's record was written so that we could "know." This from the one closest to Jesus Himself. I'd say that counts for something. There are other images used, but not in a mutually exclusive sense (unless Jesus and the rest of the N.T. writers consistantly contradict themselves) but rather in a clear attempt to show that not only were our sins dealt with, but that now we are free to live as "slaves to righteousness" and that we have also been "ransomed" from captivity to wickedness. Proper Soteriology is mutli-faceted and diverse. This seems to be the clear, a priori understanding (if we assume that Jesus and His followers were sane and able to communicate in a normal fashion.)

[greg]

Tim,

Seriously? What else is it supposed to say? We are writing these things so that you will be stupid? No. It's collected by people with an agenda. Part of that agenda is that we believe the collection of documents. So they're not going to choose letters that say "this book is full of shit; feel free to ignore it." I should think that would a simple matter of common sense.

And as for the phrase "the Bible tells us...", it's one of the most useless I hear. The Bible doesn't "tell" you anything. Someone wrote a piece of that book, not knowing it was being compiled into a book, so at best, someone was asserting something that may or may not have had to do with them justifying the veracity of thousands of pages of collected writings. Again, this seems like common sense. But, teach Christians to believe that the Bible asserts things, as if the Bible is itself a sentient creature, then Christians happily sign on to whatever hermeneutic justification follows from accepting that bit of nonsense.

So, while faith and hubris are different, I still think believing in God and that God saved you is a matter of faith, while pretending that the Bible "speaks" plainly and obviously about something no one, most especially the ones with Jesus (since they seemed to miss the point too--you should read the book), can know is hubris.

[Leighton]

I tend to think that we can have experiential verification of "paradox" claims only through metaphor; that is, using the language of paradox as an analogy to express some feeling or experience for which we lack direct language.

For instance, divine/human duality might be used to draw a parallel to the overwhelming experience of disparity between a mind that can conceive of infinity, even of different degrees of infinity, yet stops functioning when its electrolyte levels drop below a certain threshold. Finite and infinite, bound together in one package.

Yet with my background, I hold to certain ideals of parsimony, which in this context bind me in two ways. The paragraph above is worse than nonsense to someone who hasn't had such an experience: not only does it mean nothing, but they'll never recover the time they wasted reading it. So the first constraint is that I don't want to make a claim to someone who isn't going to benefit from it somehow.

The second constraint, which I tend to see as more important, is that I don't want to say anything more than I mean. A theologian who belongs to a church or a Christian community of some kind might elaborate on my example above and say that Jesus is a "resolution" of sorts of that experience, that he could be simultaneously finite and infinite (semantics aside), and yet master the experience rather than being mastered and overwhelmed by it. This would let her do two things simultaneously: communicate an experience for which there is no commonly available vocabulary, and strengthen ties between herself and her readers or hearers, and the community she belongs to. The community itself could be physical, or online, or abstract (e.g. the church throughout time and history seems to be a popular one); the target itself isn't so important as the action of supporting involvement and belonging. This dual-purpose utterance is a marvelously efficient use of philosophy, for those who can afford the social and epistemic tradeoffs in belonging to the community in question.

But the thing about metaphors is that however useful they may be, the imagery involved means different things to different people; it will resonate with some and not others. This makes paradox language in theology, interpreted experientially, inherently different than Bohr's idea of a paradox in science, which anyone who follows the math and the experiments and the data is compelled to acknowledge, even though there is often disagreement on how to resolve the "paradox."

What's puzzling is that a lot of apologists are in the habit of talking about metaphor-language as though it compels assent, when it's not even clear that there are unique interpretations for the key words in question.