Defining the Emerging Church Conversation on its own terms
JB on April 14, 2010 in Provisional Closures & Systems, Uncategorized, the interpretive - Religion 4 Comments »A good friend of mine asked me to unpack these tweets:
The real foil for #emergent isn’t Western evangelicalism per se but the naive realism and foundationalism that ground most fundamentalisms (including an Enlightement scientism). What is #emergent on its own terms? Its soteriology is broadly conceived & integral; iow, applying both now & later to both us & “them”
I thought I’d blog my response here:
Soteriology refers to the theology of being saved. The different stances that theologians will take on soteriology will depend on many other factors:
1) theology – or the questions surrounding one’s conceptions of God, but in addition to mere conceptions are people’s imaginative participation in different symbol systems and the practices of a given faith. For example, in our Catholicism, think of the sacraments, our liturgical practices, our different ministries
2) pneumatology – or the questions that speak to the activity of the Holy Spirit throughout history
3) Christology – assuming Christian theology of course, takes into account one’s beliefs about Jesus and the incarnation and why did it happen and what did it accomplish and for whom
4) theological anthropology – asks what is a human being and what are the most insistent longings and ultimate concerns of humanity. In what sort of predicament does humankind find itself, in general, and in our postmodern world?
5) ecclesiology – looking at different ways of being church. What is the church and who belongs? Who’s in and who’s out? What is its mission?
6) eschatology – considering where we as individuals and as a people of God are ultimately headed. What’s the final vision and realization of all that we hope for?
7) epistemology – a branch of philosophy that investigates what it is that humans believe we can know and how it is that we actually know what it is we think we know
8 ) emergent refers to a conversation going on within and between the different traditions of Christianity about how the church is emerging as a whole. In our Catholicism this conversation began w/Vatican 2 and expressed the creative tension between the 2 notions of aggiornamento, which means “to bring up to date” and ressourcement, which means a “return to earlier sources, traditions and symbols.” The general idea is that our institutions preserve what is essential and must continually return to our earlier sources to revive and renew them. New “movements” refer to works of the Spirit in our midst.
9) foundationalism, then, comes under the category of #7, epistemology, as a theory of knowledge or how we know what we know and has resulted in what I called a naive realism, which pretty much means that one imagines that one has a rather unproblematical access to the truth. For example, I used an example, scientism, which is a stance that imagines that science is both necessary and sufficient for interpreting reality. As people of faith, you and I reject that notion; we’d say that science is necessary but, alone, it is woefully insufficient. But, one can ask even from within a faith tradition, what about the Bible? the Pope? the Koran? How truth-laden are they? Why? Why not?
10) The stance one takes in any and all of the above outlooks will influence one’s view on soteriology: What does it mean to be saved? Are we talking about an event in the past, present or future? or more outside of time? Are we talking about Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox, Christians, NonChristians, Nonbelievers or even Atheists?
For a more comprehensive introduction to the emerging church conversation, one can visit Cathlimergent online, which is largely informed by the teachings of Fr. Richard Rohr and also Brian McLaren. There are a lot of links at Cathlimergent to videos and discussions that break these topics open in an engaging and accessible way.
I would like to extend this excursus below to set forth my own vision of how the emerging church conversation might define its self on its own terms without, as some protest, using a Western evangelicalism as a foil.
The most pertinent categories, in my view, are numbers 7 and 9. I do not think it would be too facile a characterization to suggest that emergents employ approaches to the truth that are either nonfoundational or weakly foundational, employing some form of critical realism. They have not traded in an epistemic hubris for an excessive epistemic humility (e.g. Rorty’s vulgar pragmatism) but embrace, rather, an integral epistemic holism.
This results in a more tolerant attitude both toward reality and other people. It does not otherwise result in a monolithic systematic theology. Believers may not jettison their metanarratives but they will consider them fallible, provisional closures. As such, we still transist as anglimergent, baptimergent, cathlimergent, presbymergent and so on.
The emergent cohort of most denominations does seem to be correcting certain overemphases. For example, in eschatology it is better balancing now and later, where later had been way overemphasized. In soteriology, it is better balancing us and them, where us had been way overemphasized. In Christology, it is better balancing the historical & mytho-poetic Jesus with the Cosmic Christ. In epistemology, it is better balancing the dual and nondual, where the dualistic had been way overemphasized. In ecclesiology, it is better balancing the institutional and noninstitutional, where the institutional had been way overemphasized. In theological anthropology, it is better balancing the incarnational goodness of humanity with its wounded condition, where our woundedness had been way overemphasized. In our pneumatology, it is better balancing the notion that the Holy Spirit is active both now and in the past, both in the clerical and in the lay, both here in this religion and there in that religion, where it had way overemphasized the past, the clerical and one’s own religion.
Perhaps 38 Special put it best:
So Hold On Loosely, but don’t let go
If you cling too tight babe,
you’re gonna lose it
You’re gonna — lose control
yeah, yeah, yeah
Just Hold On Loosely but don’t let go
If you cling too tight babe,
you’re gonna loose control




Below, I will employ a Strategic Plan paradigm to characterize and organize the emerging church conversation employing what might, at first, appear to be characteristically Catholic categories. In doing so, I hope to emphasize how this conversation proceeds more from a consideration of questions rather than answers, practices rather than conclusions, methods rather than systems.
Before laying out a Cathlimergent approach, I want to build a conceptual bridge to the approaches taken by many of our Protestant sisters and brothers. Dialogue about prescriptive realities is very much dependent on fair and accurate descriptive representations (avoiding unnecessary strawmen and ad hominems). When it comes to good scholarship and civil discourse, few have gone about it better than the author of
The outline below is meant to be comprehensive but not exhaustive. In each category are sample strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities and sample resources. It is intended as a catalyst for constructive conversation and a guideline for dialogue, a conceptual bridge-builder or heuristic device. It is expected that you will engage this outline, perhaps even suggesting an entirely different paradigm, certainly adding different strengths, weaknesses, threats, opportunities and resources, raising new questions and concerns, breaking open new categories.
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Radically “rooting” orthodoxy in Jesus, orthopathy in contemplation, orthopraxy in social justice & orthocommunio in authentic community
If I had to choose one word to describe what many, many people seem to be searching for it would be reenchantment and I would reckon it is motivated by a nostalgia for an experience of the world prior to it being demythologized. (If only they understood our true myth.)
I would like to add that, in my view, the New Age movement has done violence to the wisdom of the Eastern traditions. It has engaged them at a very superficial level, especially where ontological monism is concerned. The East, for the most part, is not engaging in classical Western metaphysics. It’s practices are geared toward leading people into phenomenal experiences and not, rather, to metaphysical conclusions. The New Age movement, in my view, is a superficial engagement of the East that results in a perversion of those traditions, which I treat here, for any interested:





