May 13, 2005

Comments (4)

  • Haha, first, I have to give you props for the photo... ah, what happened to that guy? Did they ever catch him, or did he die, or escape? I almost bought one of the shirts they were selling online...

    But, actually, I don't know much of the nitty gritty about the Emergent Church movement. I'm hesitatnly positive about their presumed focus on reform, and hesitantly concerned about a supposed wishy-washy-ness. Something by McClaren -- probably New Kind of Christian -- is definitely on my reading list.

    I didn't find theopedia very helpful beyond finding what labels are neatly applied to Emergent(ism?); there was no cohesive explanation of what it is. I followed a few of the links, especially this one on post-modernism by D.A. Carson, with which I agree wholeheartedly. Humorously, as I read back over the external links related to the ECM (as Mills abbreviates), I noticed a response by Dr. Mills to Carson's Staley Lectures regarding ECM. I read Mills, but this also failed to enlighten me much about what the ECM suggests, as this wasn't his point. As Mills noted, Carson "admits that he has only been studying this movement for a short period of time and that he knows no one personally who is involved in the movement."

    Just a thought: Open Theism (which seems to be related to ECM) and other post-modern influenced or sensitive ideas often are responding against certain propositions and extreme modernism. Thus, I reject some propositions that seem to be advanced by Open Theists -- specifically that God does not "know" the future or is somehow limited by time. But, I would suggest that these propositions are not at the core of Open Theism -- I think it is possible that there is Truth in there, but Truth that is so difficult to express propositionally. Perhaps it is impossible. I mean, people have been struggling for two millenia (probably longer) to reconcile God's omnipotence and Biblical predestination with man's moral responsibility and apparent free will. Sometimes, we say things by way of propositions that are false, but that in the context of the latest propositional approximation of the Truth, point us toward correcting an error or excess of the truer theory.

  • I'm listening to the
    What is the Emergent Church (http://www.apologetics.com/audio/carson1.mp3) (MP3), by D.A. Carson from the theopedia.

    and he's talking about the postmodern aspect. I dentify pretty well with certain aspects of postmodernism, such as
    "feeling, experience, probability, and you identify with a particular community"

    feelings and affections over against rational thought
    experience
    contemporary definition of tolerance
    story over and against

    He mentions theooze.com.

    This guy D.A. Carson makes the point that postmodern Christians can talk to anyone, even people who are not biblically literate, which is a growing number.

    Sorry for the lack of prose. these are basically notes I took while listening, but in general I'd say the movement definately has it's good points.

  • Thanks for your interesting points, both of you.  Another thought that I often have about the "Open Theism" movements and "Emergent Church" movements (and even sometimes about Piper, Eldridge, Hybels, etc) is that much of this stuff is not as "new" as it seems.  It's a rehash in many ways of the liberal/conservative theological eddies of the last century, and even the last three centuries. 

    For example, I hope to read more about Gresham Machen in the near future.  He faced many of the same issues, except in their modernist framing rather than the postmodernist framing.  Also C.S.Lewis and Francis Schaeffer (of course) - they faced the issues at the exact time when the prevailing view was gradually shifting to postmod.

  • wow, conversations about Openness and Emmergent church, you guys would fit right in at Southern.  We hear about that all the time it seems.  maybe I should post something soon.

    by the way,

    Bill Demskey, the unofficial leader of the ID movement, will be teaching next semester at Southern. that's wicked cool.  well maybe not wicked

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tim223

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