Moving the church away from Christ and the gospel?
The emerging church movement insists that change in the identity, life, and message of the church is necessary if the church is going to be relevant in the present postmodern world society. The movement has valid concerns for relevancy, but, unfortunately, it is driven by postmodernism, so the changes it promotes are moving the church away from Christ and the gospel.
Five Themes of the Emerging Church Movement
The first is what Scot McKnight calls “prophetic rhetoric,” meaning always being “consciously and deliberately provocative.” Brian McLaren states, “Often I don’t think Jesus would be caught dead as a Christian, were He physically here today.”1 Erwin McManus said, “My goal is to destroy Christianity as a world religion and be a recatalyst for the movement of Jesus Christ.”2
The second theme is postmodernism. Emerging church leaders defend postmodernism saying it does not deny truth but instead rejects “metanarratives.” The problem is that while rejection of “metanarratives” would include erroneous worldviews like Marxism, it also includes true worldviews like creation.
The third theme is “Praxis-oriented.” How we live should definitely reflect the teaching of the Word of God. However, under this theme, the Emerging Movement assumes a holistic interpretation and approach to what Paul stated as “the ministry of reconciliation,” (2 Cor. 5:18) focusing not on lost souls, but societal problems.
The fourth theme is “post-evangelical,” meaning the church should be suspicious of systematic theology because language cannot capture absolute truth, so no systematic theology should be considered final.
The fifth theme is political. Emerging leaders proudly denounce “conservative-evangelical-politics-as-usual” and describe themselves as “left-wing.” McKnight states that, in his opinion, most emerging leaders are politically left.
Denying the authority of Scripture
The movement does not view the Bible as the final authority, especially on controversial issues. For example, McLaren states, “Frankly, many of us don’t know what we should think about homosexuality. We’ve heard all sides but no position has yet won our confidence.” How can it possibly be difficult to understand that homosexuality is a sin when God so clearly and absolutely says so (e.g. Rom. 1:26f)?
Destruction by deconstructionism
Brian McLaren stated he is trying to find an alternative to “the narrow, exclusivist understanding of hell (that unless you explicitly accept and follow Jesus, you are excluded from eternal life with God and destined for hell).”3 McLaren suggests that the Scriptures, “simply don’t say what many Christians commonly say they do,” and, “There’s so much going on metaphorically in Jesus’ teaching about hell and judgment.”4 Are we to assume by this that there is no real fire, no real torment for the wicked, and no eternal punishment of the unbelieving? What then did Jesus mean when He said, “Then shall He say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels” (Mt. 25:41)?
Relativist pluralism—a disastrous experiment
The Emerging Movement is knowingly putting the church in grave danger by promoting relative pluralism. Brian McLaren likens this approach to a kind of chemotherapy treatment, saying, “emerging postmodernism … sees relativist pluralism (meaning all opinions or views are of equal value) as a kind of chemotherapy … In order to kill the malignancy, the patient (the church), has to take dangerous medicine that would prove poisonous if taken in too high doses or for too long”5 (parenthesis mine). What gives the Emerging Movement such authority? Jesus Christ, the Head of the church, promised, “Howbeit when He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth” (Jn. 16:13).
“Chastened Epistemology” and “Proper Confidence”
When describing its epistemology, the Emerging Movement is fond of saying “Only God is Absolute Truth and only God can genuinely know Absolute Truth. All our knowledge is tinged.”6 New terms have been coined to describe this position such as “Chastened Epistemology” and “Proper Confidence.” The Emerging Movement is saying to the church, “You must not be too confident of what is absolutely true!” In His prayer for us in John 17:17, Jesus identified the Scriptures as the written, objective truth of God. He prayed, “Sanctify them through Thy truth: Thy Word is truth.”
Defined by behavior—but whose standard?
The Emerging Movement is rightfully concerned for the Church “to live like followers of Jesus in everything they say, do, and think.”7 For that reason, its leaders claim the movement is “concerned with praxis and not simply theology.” However, Tony Jones defended lesbianism as a sexual orientation saying, “We haven’t yet found that there’s anything that justifies us breaking fellowship with somebody else who loves and is trying to follow Jesus. Why would you break fellowship with someone because you have a different understanding of the atonement than they do? Or a different understanding of human sexuality than they do?”8 This demonstrates the futility of seeking to live right without believing right.
The purple gospel
The Emerging Movement insists that the social gospel cannot be separated from the spiritual gospel. Scot McKnight describes it as a “purple gospel,” saying, “A purple gospel takes us beyond both evangelical preoccupation with forgiveness and liberal preoccupation with injustice. It takes us beyond both not by suggesting both are wrong but that both are right—and that a purple gospel is a sin and systemic resolution.”9 Sin is an offense against God which requires judgment upon the sin through Jesus Christ the sin-bearer. Systemically, sin is simply “out there,” rather than “in me” which reduces redemption to “social activism,” and places the focus of the gospel on removing injustice in the world. The “purple gospel” mixes God’s grace and human determination. According to the Bible, the gospel message is not purple but, instead, is pure and focused. Paul said the gospel of Christ is “the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth” (Rom. 1:16).
A politically correct eschatology
Brian McLaren, commenting on eschatology said, “very literally, the lives of thousands of people hang in the balance because … the dominant religious group in the country with the most weapons of mass destruction embraces an eschatology that legitimates escalating violence.”10 McLaren also says, “Eschatology of abandonment, which is how I would characterize certain streams of the left-behind approach, has disastrous social consequences.”11 It can only be understood by McLaren’s reference to “eschatology of abandonment” that, in his view, the rapture would constitute a desertion by Christ of the world, rather than a gathering of His own to Himself.12
Perhaps the most compelling consideration for change in the church called for by the Emerging Movement is for spiritual relevancy or “how faith is lived out” in today’s postmodern society. Very unfortunately, the Emerging Church Movement itself confusedly mixes biblical truth with heretical views as to how the church should become more relevant. Still, it is a valid concern for all of us as believers that our lives bear witness to the life of Christ within us, in order that as members of His body we may effectively witness to the world around us.
Endnotes
1 Brian McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2004).
2 Erwin McManus, interview by the Christian Examiner, Mar. 2005.
3 Brian McLaren, “Inferno 2: Are we asking the wrong question about hell?” May 8, 2006.
4 Brian McLaren, “Inferno 3: Five proposals for re-examining our doctrine of hell,” May 11, 2006.
5 Brian McLaren, “The Three Postmodernisms,” http://www.brianmclaren.net, Sep. 6, 2007.
6 Scot McKnight, “What is the Emerging Church?” http://www.jesuscreed.org, Nov. 1, 2005.
7 Scot McKnight, “What is the Emerging Church?” http://www.jesuscreed.org, Oct. 31, 2005.
8 Tony Jones, interview by Relevant Magazine
9 Scot McKnight, http://www.relevantmagazine.com
10 Brian McLaren, interview with Virgil Vaduva, posted on Planet Preterist, Jan. 30, 2007.
11 Ibid
12 Scot McKnight, “Five Streams of the Emerging Church,” Christianity Today, Feb. 2007.