Emerging Church Part 3

So far we have seen what the emergents say that they are for and what they are against and it is likely that many of us would agree on many points.

But now is where it gets scary.

To what and to whom do they find their solutions?

9 Marks has done us a tremendous service by preserving a suggested reading list from the emergent village and giving us some biographical information about the authors. Take a look at the list, and remember, these are the guys that are influencing those who are driving this movement.

The list is here.

When looking over the list, did you notice a common thread running through all the authors? They all share the common low view of the Scriptures. The Scriptures are not authoritative, inerrant, absolute truth. They are something that must be redefined, reinterpreted, reimagined. And worse.

Notice a term that Stan Grenz employed: "trajectory." That word gets used a lot. Bell uses it. McLaren uses it. What does it mean?

What has been called the "trajectory hermeneutic" is the idea that the words of Scripture were truth for the original hearers/readers, but it is not true for us in the same sense that it was for them. The words of Scripture, instead, were launched out on a trajectory path from that point, where we, now, are receiving them at another point in the arch. A more enlightened point. A greater evolved point. An emerged point.

So, for example, the Scriptures clearly tell us that homosexuality is wrong. They reply- well, it was wrong, for them. But they received that "truth" at its most basest level, when, at that stage in the evolution of man's thinking, they couldn't have comprehended anything less- but then it was launched forward through space and time and we have received that "truth" at a time when we are more intelligent, more enlightened. We understand that homosexuality is caused by numerous factors and cannot rightly be called "sin." Thus, we don't take the passages at their face value, but we look for the principles underlying the passage that give us an idea of the trajectory that passage has been on. We know, now, that the main concern was not homosexuality, but it was freedom from bondage, etc. So we now see that we are called to liberate homosexuals from the artificial bondage our society has put them under.

That, in its most simplified form, is kind of the idea.

When we get to Bell's "Velvet Elvis" you will see what I mean.

Speaking of Rob Bell and influences. I listened to a message of his some years back and he recommended several books to his congregation. One of those books made it into the footnotes of his book "Velvet Elvis."

Footnote #143 reads: "For a mind blowing introduction to emergence theory and divine creativity, set aside three months and read Ken Wilbur's A Brief History of Everything (Boston:Shambhala 2001).

Do you know who Ken Wilbur is? Check this out.

That's right. Bell, a pastor of a "Christian" church, author of "Christian" books, tells everyone to spend three months- three months!!- studying the writings of a new age, Buddhism-practicing guy to understand the universe.

Scroll down his wikipedia page and you will find this excerpt from the book that Rob Bell recommends we spend three months on:

Are the mystics and sages insane? Because they all tell variations on the same story, don't they? The story of awakening one morning and discovering you are one with the All, in a timeless and eternal and infinite fashion. Yes, maybe they are crazy, these divine fools. Maybe they are mumbling idiots in the face of the Abyss. Maybe they need a nice, understanding therapist. Yes, I'm sure that would help. But then, I wonder. Maybe the evolutionary sequence really is from matter to body to mind to soul to spirit, each transcending and including, each with a greater depth and greater consciousness and wider embrace. And in the highest reaches of evolution, maybe, just maybe, an individual's consciousness does indeed touch infinity—a total embrace of the entire Kosmos—a Kosmic consciousness that is Spirit awakened to its own true nature. It's at least plausible. And tell me: is that story, sung by mystics and sages the world over, any crazier than the scientific materialism story, which is that the entire sequence is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying absolutely nothing? Listen very carefully: just which of those two stories actually sounds totally insane?

– Ken Wilber, A Brief History of Everything, 42-3

This, right here, is enough to get me to put Bell's book down and not bother with anything he says ever again.

But I know that many will pooh pooh it and say: "Well, I believe that truth can be found everywhere...yada yada yada." Okay, I get "all truth is God's truth" but, my friends, Wilber is not promoting "truth." His is promoting, what the Bible calls "the doctrines of demons."

But we'll see more of that as we go when we actually crack open Bell's and McLaren's books.