The Emergent church - I guess this is the continuation of my crappy series a while back that I never did much with...so Part 2

Doug Pagitt makes this statement in the perspectives book Listening to the Beliefs of Emerging Churches: “The idea that there is a necessary distinction of matter from spirit, or creation from creator, is being reconsidered.” (pg. 142)

Earlier in this section, Pagitt relates this “reconsidering” of historically accepted Christian doctrine (specifically of God being separate from his creation, as in Genesis 1:1) to the discoveries of quantum physics and their partial overturning of understood Newtonian science in the modern world (specifically, the idea of the wave-particle behavior of light is addressed). In doing so he makes the assumption that Christian doctrine is much like science, in that its “discoveries” are merely products of human ingenuity, rather than revelation from God. Therefore he warrants the idea of a theological evolution of sorts since this opens the door for Christianity to no longer be defined solely by Scripture, but instead by any which way that the prevailing culture may take it.

It seems to me that these emergent folks, in efforts to try to see value in other religious ideas (of which I would say I agree with), are actually stepping over the boundaries of Christianity and into what we might just be able to call heresy.

It seems like they do so only for the sake of rebelling against accepted tradition, and to try and forge a new path and new traditions. The funny thing is that 50 or 100 years down the road, I would bet that those that are following this emergent trend (if there are any left) will be firmly established in the “new” traditions of the apparently-still-emerging church. It is impossible I believe to avoid tradition in any organization. Even if you’re trying at all costs to go against the tides of how things have been done in the past, your tradition then simply becomes rebellion. And if your organization is based on rebellion, on always trying to find a different way to do something, then in the end you are left only with questions and empty hands rather than answers and hands full of God’s words, since the real business of trusting what God says is never gotten around to and is pushed to the bottom of the priority list. I am fully for asking questions and demonstrating humility by having the courage to say “I don’t know,” but when all you have are questions and loosy-goosy theology, when your beliefs are challenged and pressed, you may find that the foundations of sand have washed away. In order to get somewhere, there needs to be a solid foundation to walk on, and not as Rob Bell says a “trampoline” of theology. Instead of jumping up and down on the trampoline of theology, and in effect getting nowhere but back to where we started, we need to stop playing around, set our sights on Christ, pack our bags, and walk to him. Just an opinion though J.