Christian Theology

September 2, 2008

The Emerging Church and It’s Self-Refuting Views

Filed under: Apologetics, Bible, Biblical Interpretation, Brian McLaren, Christian, Christianity, Doug Pagitt, Emergent Church, Epistemology, Metanarratives, Modernism, Narrative theology, Philosophy, Postmodernism, Theology, christian theology, propostions, rob bell, the emergent church, tony jones, youth group, youth ministry, youth pastors — Doug @ 4:58 am

This is a short look at the self-refuting nature of postmodernism and emerging church.

4 Comments »

  1. i am interested in what you think “postmodernism” is?
    it seems to me that you are confusing “postmoderism” which is the state of our world’s society, with “postmodern faith” which simply describes the nuances that much change in our faith as our entire culture is shifting.

    nearly all of your arguments seem to be founded off of this incorrect understanding of where McLaren is coming from.

    Comment by Adam Lehman — September 2, 2008 @ 3:04 pm | Reply

  2. Adam,

    I am dealing with the core of postmodern philosophy. Primarily the epistemology of it which has been adopted by emergent types like McLaren, Tony Jones, Stanley Grenz, and John Franke. When I deal with language, meta-narratives etc. in the video, I am dealing with what postmodernism is and what the leaders of the emergent movement have adopted. You can describe and discuss post-modernism in a variety of ways, but this is the foundation (or anti-foundation) that drives it all.

    There are those, and I hope I am one of them, who recognize that we live in a postmodern culture and desire to address it without compromising the truth of the Gospel. Unfortunately, this is not what the leaders of the emergent movement are doing. Their “postmodern faith” is built on the same self-refuting foundation as “postmodernism” itself.

    God Bless,

    Doug

    Comment by Doug — September 2, 2008 @ 5:34 pm | Reply

  3. Adam,

    “Postmodernism” is a loose term, but it is first a philosophical school. It is because it is a philosophical school that it can be used to describe a cultural mood. That something is After-Modernism tells us little about what it is we are trying to describe. Philosophers like Nietzsche, Heidegger, Baudrillard, Lyotard, Kristeva, and Foucault, Derrida, Davidson and Rorty supposedly define the content for the interpretation of the postmodern condition that we are said to be experiencing. Really, the only place we tend to find postmodernism or the postmodern condition is in English departments and lightly evangelical seminaries. Everyone else seems to have re-engaged the Modernist program and dismisses recent European philosophy as a momentary lapse of reason. So it seems reasonable that if people want to call themselves postmodern that we engage not only their sentiments but the actual content of their claimed understanding, their hermeneutic, and their justification for both, or lack thereof. That means we can’t really talk with them until we examine the stories of their teachers and their teachers are readily available in the public library.

    Neiswonger

    Comment by Neiswonger — September 2, 2008 @ 6:25 pm | Reply

  4. The emergent church leaders defiinitely do have some wierd ideas. What do you think about rob Bell’s “Sex God”? Also, would not you agree that the emergent church is lacking in substance because they are unsure of where to take their doctrine. I mean their philosophy is reactionary to modernism and very young.

    Comment by Andrew Sapp — September 12, 2008 @ 2:35 am | Reply


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