I am currently making my way through the book, Why We're Not Emergent by Kevin DeYoung and Ted Cluck. Since Ted starts out by saying that people will probably blog about this book, I decided to do just that — blog about it.
All I can say is, so far, guys, I couldn't agree with you more!
Having recently read Donald Miller's popular book, Blue Like Jazz (you can read my review of it here), I was interested in reading more books on this post-modern emerging church idea. True, Donald doesn't consider himself a follower of the "emergent" movement, but much of what he says paints him as such. Consequently, his writings have become quite popular with many involved in the emerging church conversation.
Below are just a few lines from the beginning of Why We're Not Emergent. Perhaps they will wet your appetite enough to give this book a try, too.
"... emergent leaders are allowing the immensity of God to swallow up His knowability. In good postmodern fashion, they are questioning whether we can have any real, accurate knowledge about God in the first place ..."
"As Donald Miller says at one point in his wildly popular Blue Like Jazz, 'I don't believe I will ever walk away from God for intellectual reason. Who knows anything anyway?'
"The emergent agnosticism about truly knowing and understanding anything about God seems to be pious humility. It seems to honor God's immensity, but it actually undercuts His sovereign power. Postmoderns harbor such a distrust for language and disbelieve God's ability to communicate truth to human minds that they effectively engage in what Carson calls 'the gagging of God ...'"
"Because of the emerging church's implied doctrine of God's unknowability, the word mystery, a perfectly good word in its own right, has become downright annoying. Let me be very clear: I don't understand everything about God or the Bible. I don't fully understand how God can be three in one. I don't completely grasp how divine sovereignty works alongside human responsibility. The Christian faith is mysterious. But when we talk about Christianity, we don't start with mystery. It's some combination of pious confusion and intellectual laziness to claim that living in mystery is at the heart of Christianity.
"Yet, time and again, emerging leaders brand Christianity as, above all things it seems, mysterious."
"Certainty, for the emergent church, is the same as pinning down Jesus and summing up God, while uncertainty is a breath of fresh air. 'Drop any affair you may have with certainty, proof, argument—and replace it with dialogue, conversation, intrigue and search,' argues McLaren. Clarity, after all, is usually boring and wrong 'since reality is seldom clear, but usually fuzzy and mysterious; not black and white, but in living color.'
"But why do intrigue and search have to mean the end of all certainty? McLaren is guilty of a very modern error, insisting on either-or when a both-and is possible. There is a place for questions. There is a time for conversation. But there is also the possibility of certainty, not because we have dissected God like a freshman biology student dissects a frog, but because God has spoken to us clearly and intelligibly ..."
(to be cont)
All I can say is, so far, guys, I couldn't agree with you more!
Having recently read Donald Miller's popular book, Blue Like Jazz (you can read my review of it here), I was interested in reading more books on this post-modern emerging church idea. True, Donald doesn't consider himself a follower of the "emergent" movement, but much of what he says paints him as such. Consequently, his writings have become quite popular with many involved in the emerging church conversation.
Below are just a few lines from the beginning of Why We're Not Emergent. Perhaps they will wet your appetite enough to give this book a try, too.
"... emergent leaders are allowing the immensity of God to swallow up His knowability. In good postmodern fashion, they are questioning whether we can have any real, accurate knowledge about God in the first place ..."
"As Donald Miller says at one point in his wildly popular Blue Like Jazz, 'I don't believe I will ever walk away from God for intellectual reason. Who knows anything anyway?'
"The emergent agnosticism about truly knowing and understanding anything about God seems to be pious humility. It seems to honor God's immensity, but it actually undercuts His sovereign power. Postmoderns harbor such a distrust for language and disbelieve God's ability to communicate truth to human minds that they effectively engage in what Carson calls 'the gagging of God ...'"
"Because of the emerging church's implied doctrine of God's unknowability, the word mystery, a perfectly good word in its own right, has become downright annoying. Let me be very clear: I don't understand everything about God or the Bible. I don't fully understand how God can be three in one. I don't completely grasp how divine sovereignty works alongside human responsibility. The Christian faith is mysterious. But when we talk about Christianity, we don't start with mystery. It's some combination of pious confusion and intellectual laziness to claim that living in mystery is at the heart of Christianity.
"Yet, time and again, emerging leaders brand Christianity as, above all things it seems, mysterious."
"Certainty, for the emergent church, is the same as pinning down Jesus and summing up God, while uncertainty is a breath of fresh air. 'Drop any affair you may have with certainty, proof, argument—and replace it with dialogue, conversation, intrigue and search,' argues McLaren. Clarity, after all, is usually boring and wrong 'since reality is seldom clear, but usually fuzzy and mysterious; not black and white, but in living color.'
"But why do intrigue and search have to mean the end of all certainty? McLaren is guilty of a very modern error, insisting on either-or when a both-and is possible. There is a place for questions. There is a time for conversation. But there is also the possibility of certainty, not because we have dissected God like a freshman biology student dissects a frog, but because God has spoken to us clearly and intelligibly ..."
(to be cont)
No comments:
Post a Comment