Comments on: Modern Reformation #4: Experiencing Emergent by Shane Rosenthal

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 24 Jul 2005 22:33:34 +0000

I agree with Roger, although I want to add that in Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church, which is a critique, Carson has devoted three of eight chapters toward being constructive. Chapter four is, says Carson, "a simplification and updating of a couple chapters of [his] book The Gagging of God"—which Carson wrote in 1996. Carson's final two chapters focus on what Scripture offers us regarding truth and experience. So Carson has offered us some ideas on how to proceed, though I'm not sure the EC has accepted them. As far as the other book-length critique of the EC, Reclaiming the Center, I know that the defense of foundationlism by Moreland and DeWeese also includes a statement in favor of modest foundationalism, which is ignored by much of the EC. I should also add that some of the statements coming from EC folk, such as questions are always better than answers, are such that describing a way forward is a practical impossibility because the whole enterprise of argumentation has been discarded. It is useless to construct something with people who have given up on the whole notion of construction, and there are portions of the EC that have done just that. Regrettably, the many recent advances that have been made in developing a robust, life-changing Christian apologetic in which the truths of the Gospel are embodied both to the glory of God and the benefit of others (such as Tell the Truth, Total Truth, and a host of others) appear to have been dismissed by the likes of Robert Webber, Tony Jones, and Brian McLaren, and they have thrown the apologetic baby out with the modern bathwater.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 24 Jul 2005 15:48:07 +0000

The scope of the article is describing what he experienced at the Emergent conference. The critique only is his reflections on it on the last page or so.
I haven't seen anyone say specifically- here's what's wrong with EC, here's what we should do instead. Rather, they tend to be treated as two different topics. If you read Al Mohler's blog, he certainly talks about what the church should look like- it just tends not to be in the context of discussing EC. I've done the same thing here on a few occassions.
It's important to recognize that the criticisms of modernity and Evangelicalism are not new, they're not original to EC. We've been talking about the problems for years, see the books The Coming Evangelical Crisis, Power Religion, and Made in America, for example. And it's not as though there hasn't been any solutions offered to reaching out to culture. Some excellent examples are Tell the Truth (edited by D.A. Carson) and Total Truth. As far as I can tell EC has completely ignored the resources already available to them, and I would say these are far better than anything EC has offered.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 24 Jul 2005 14:54:23 +0000

Does Rosenthal offer a constructive argument of his own as he uses Emergent's criticism of the North American church and North American evangelicalism? (I will acknowledge that the scope of the article may just be a simple critique of Emergent.)
I hear a lot of critics say that the emerging church's and Emergent's critiques of the church, modernity, and culture are valid, but Emergent's solutions are misguided and wrong. I have not probed deeply into the literature in a while, but are you aware of an emerging church critic that takes the cultural critique of the emerging church and formulates her or his own possible solutions? My point is that the discussion between the Church as a whole can't go very far if we say to the emerging church, “Your critique is good, but your solutions are bad,” and then offer nothing constructive of our own. I am attracted to the emerging church because they are at least trying to formulate some solutions to address their critique of the church and culture. I resonate with some solutions and disagree with others, but if there is at least an exchange of ideas and a willingness to practically address these issues, then we can move forward together.