Justin Taylor wrote An Emerging Church Primer. In this, Taylor models sound Christian thinking as well as behavior. The concerns Taylor outlines are fair and specific; they are in the areas of the Bible, the Cross, Truth and Knowledge, and Sexual Ethics (perhaps we could add more as time has evolved). I love the alternatives proposed by Taylor.
A Call for Humble Orthodoxy
Humility has to do with rightly viewing the greatness of God such that you see yourself in the proper light.
In other words, humility does not mean hating yourself and believing that everything you do is wrong. And it doesn't mean remaining continually uncertain. Rather, humility means being confident in - and looking to - God and his grandeur and greatness. It means submitting yourself to his word and his ways.
Orthodoxy refers to having right beliefs, which involves affirming the historic truths of the Christian faith - believing what the church has always believed and confessed. It's not about trying to come up with a new kind of Christianity for your present community. It's about standing in the historic stream with the communion of saints and confessing what the church has always confessed.
As indicated earlier in this article, we must commit to a stance of humble orthodoxy, understanding that true humility should lead us deeper into orthodoxy, that orthodoxy should have a humbling effect on our souls, and that we must speak the truth (orthodoxy) in love (humbly).
A Call for Contextualized Confessionalism
Appropriate contextualization means "adapting my communication of the gospel without changing its essential character." In short, we must retain the essentials and adapt the non-essentials.
Paul discussed the relationship between unchanging truth and changing culture in 1 Corinthians 9:19-23:
For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win the more; and to the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might win Jews; to those who are under the law, as under the law, that I might win those who are under the law; to those who are without law, as without law (not being without law toward God, but under law toward Christ), that I might win those who are without law; to the weak I became as weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some. Now this I do for the gospel's sake, that I may be partaker of it with you.
Tom Ascol recently offered a good summary of Paul's intentions here: "I would make a sharp distinction between compromising what God has revealed in His Word and accommodating others where we can for the sake of gaining a hearing for the Gospel."
We must never compromise - but we must accommodate. What are those things in our lives, in our ministries, in our churches that have more to do with cultural Christianity than they do with eternal, unchanging truth? Our great danger in the Western church comes when we refuse to accommodate the non-essentials in the name of not compromising.
Contextualization has become a buzz word. The flip side of the coin is that we must not only be contextual, but also confessional. By confessional I mean that we should affirm and confess the historic teachings recovered during the Reformation.
Walter Henegar recently wrote: "Emergent writers may correctly diagnose postmodern sensibilities, but their prescriptions tend to conform rather than transform." For transforming prescriptions, we often have to turn outside of our own narrow window of time. Part of being a confessional Christian is reading church history - and reading writers from church history. We all know the statement: "those who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it." We would be naïve to think that all of the issues being raised are "new" and that variants on them have not been dealt with in the past.
One of the things I appreciate about Tim Keller's approach to these issues is his insistence that Reformational Christianity already has within it the resources needed to minister to post-everythings.
- Post-everything folks love narrative and story - and Christ-centered biblical theologians like Geerhardus Vos can teach us how to avoid moralisms and to show that every story points to Christ.
- Post-everythings are experientially oriented - and Jonathan Edwards' affectional theology can serve as our guide.
- Post-everythings rebel against moralisms and self-righteousness - and who better than Martin Luther to teach us about the meaning of true freedom found in Christ alone?
- Post-everythings are concerned about social justice - something powerfully addressed by Herman Ridderbos' exposition of the coming and presence of the Kingdom of God.
- Post-everythings love art because they love the material world - a perspective shared by Abraham Kuyper, who declared: "there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, 'Mine!'"
- Post-everythings tend not to be moved by evidences and proofs—and this is where Cornelius Van Til and company may offer help in explaining the issues of faith, authority, and uninterpreted facts.
A Call to Speak the Truth in Love
We need to remember that we are bound by the Word of God to speak the truth in love (Eph. 4:15). Some of us are so wired to "speak the truth" that we fail to do it in love. (And of course, the converse is true as well. There are those who are so concerned about speaking in love that they never get around to speaking truth.) I know that, for myself, I am often far too impressed with my own cleverness and far too desirous of "scoring points." Yet the biblical imperatives call us to a higher ground: truth and love. It's not an either/or, but a both/and.
Perhaps the most helpful phrase is one coined by John Piper: "brokenhearted boldness." We must seek to soak our critiques with meekness and humility.
Listen to the wise counsel of John Newton—the vile slave trader turned redeemed author of the hymn "Amazing Grace":
As to your opponent, I wish, that, before you set pen to paper against him, and during the whole time you are preparing your answer, you may commend him by earnest prayer to the Lord's teaching and blessing. This practice will have a direct tendency to conciliate your heart to love and pity him; and such a disposition will have a good influence upon every page you write. . . . [If he is a believer,] in a little while you will meet in heaven; he will then be dearer to you than the nearest friend you have upon earth is to you now. Anticipate that period in your thoughts. . . . [If he is an unconverted person,] he is a more proper object of your compassion than your anger. Alas! 'He knows not what he does.' But you know who has made you to differ [1 Cor. 4:7]."
He then closes with these wonderful quotes.
Walter Henegar says,
There's an old story attributed to Dwight L. Moody, who was once criticized for his methods of evangelism. He responded, 'I like my way of doing it better than your way of not doing it.' Reformed Christians may be right about how to reach new generations, but are we doing it? Are we seeking to rescue other professing Christians from the jaws of error? Are we willing to submit our own thinking to the scrutiny, correction, and ridicule that inevitably come from publicly joining the conversation?And Tim Keller, calls both the emerging church and the evangelical church to a better way:
Most important, are we building friendships with postmodern non-Christians, the type who bristle at the sight of steeple and pew? Do we even know such people? Are we bringing the gospel to them in dialogue, listening for their responses so we at least know they understand? And if they place their faith in Christ, are our churches prepared to embrace them without requiring a second conversion into a church culture that may have less to do with the gospel than we're willing to admit?
I see people who are desperately trying to reach the post-everythings who in their desperation are trying to throw out essential elements such as the substitutionary atonement, forensic justification, imputed righteousness, the Sovereignty of God, or the inerrancy of Scripture. Many of them are probably over-adapting to the post-everything situation. But while they do not have our theological resources, often we do not have their level of engagement with the people of the emerging society. To correct this, let us confess that we really have failure across all our parties to reach the coming society, and let us resolve to use the premier resources of Reformed theology. If we can make these changes, then we may really start to see renewal and outreach, and we might actually be a resource for the broader body of Christ in this culture.
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