However, at the same time, many Christians in the most fundamental, “Bible-believing” churches deny the perspicuity of Scripture. Though ignorant of what is meant by the perspicuity, many by their very acts in church verify their rejection of it. Many pastors and teachers have heard the collected sigh and closing of Bible’s when students and adults throw up their hands and declare that what they just read makes no sense. Others do not even bother bringing their Bibles to church because they assume that Scripture is too obscure for a simpleton like them.
Yes, conservative, evangelical Christians affirm Scripture’s inerrancy but without knowing it deny its perspicuity. As a result, Evangelicalism is returning to its pre-Reformational theology of Scripture: though it is true and without error, it is obscure and unclear.
A movement has arisen recently disguising itself as something new, but reminiscent of the old liberalism but with a more postmodern spin called the Emergent Church. Emergents have picked up on this uneasiness of Scripture’s clarity but from a different perceptive. Instead of throwing up their hands in frustration and disgust, Emergents throw their hands and rejoice in their own inability to understand the infinite. Rooted in their postmodern worldview, Emergents have rejected the clarity of Scripture on the basis of this false sense of humility. Emergent leader Brian McLaren sums it up best when he commands, “Drop Any Affair You May Have with Certainty.” [1] To affirm Scripture’s clarity, they suggests, is theological arrogance. After all, what finite man can understand the majesties of our infinite God? As a result, most Emergents promote ambiguity, mystery, postmodern parables, professional dialogue, [2] conversations, [3] and unending questions without certain answers. Read the Emergents and one will find themselves engulfed in a world of ambiguity and doubt.
[1] Brian McLaren and Tony Campolo, Adventures in Missing the Point: How the Culture-Controlled Church Neutered the Gospel, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2003), 84. The heading reads, “Drop Any Affair You May Have with Certainty, Proof, Argument – and Replace It with Dialogue, Conversation, Intrigue, and Search.” Ibid.
[2] This term is developed by Emergent leader Doug Pagitt in his book, Preaching Re-Imagined, in which Pagitt argues that traditional “speaching” (his word for preaching) is no longer affective. Postmodernists prefer stories and conversation. See Doug Pagitt, Preaching Re-Imagined: The Role of the Sermon in Communities of Faith (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005), 48-51.
[3] The Emergent Church, almost from its birth, has been characterized as a “conversation.” In fact, in her analysis, Phyllis Tickle summed up Emergent simply as a conversation. See Phyllis Tickle, The Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2008), 153. Tickle clarifies that the “Emerging Church” is more than just a conversation, but that conversation defines everything in it. She goes on to add that the Emerging Church is also radical, relational, nonhierarchical, and “a-democratized form of Christianity entering into its hegemony and as an analog for the political and social principles of authority and organization that will increasingly govern global life during the centuries of the Great Emergence,” Ibid.
Consider also other statements made by Emergents. Peter Rollins wrote: “While the term ‘emerging Church’ is increasingly being employed to describe a well-defined and well-equipped religious movement, in actual fact it is currently little more than a fragile, embryonic and diverse conversation being held between individuals over the Internet and at various small gatherings. Not only does the elusive and tentative nature of this conversation initially make it difficult to describe what, if anything, unifies those involved; the sheer breadth of perspectives held by those within the dialogue makes terms such as ‘movement’, ‘denomination’ and ‘church’ seem somehow inappropriate.” Peter Rollins, How (Not) To Speak of God (Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2006), 5.
Alan Jones also argues: “St. John’s gospel begins, ‘In the beginning was the Word . . .’ In the beginning was the communication, the conversation, the act that created the world as a covenanted reality. Christianity, from the beginning, was a great dialogue – a conversation.” Alan Jones, Reimagining Christianity: Reconnecting Your Spirit Without Disconnecting Your Mind, (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2004), 192.
For more:
Theology - Thesis: Brian McLaren and Emergent Soteriology: From Cultural Accommodation to the Social Gospel
Theology - The Real Divide: Luther, the Reformation, and the Fight Over Perspicuity - Part 1
Theology - The Real Divide: Luther, the Reformation, and the Fight Over Perspicuity - Part 2
Theology - The Real Divide: Luther, the Reformation, and the Fight Over Perspicuity - Part 3
Theology - The Real Divide: Luther, the Reformation, and the Fight Over Perspicuity - Part 4
Theology - The Real Divide: Luther, the Reformation, and the Fight Over Perspicuity - Part 5
Theology - The Real Divide: Luther, the Reformation, and the Fight Over Perspicuity - Part 6
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