[FWI, my buddy Clifton has written a post explaining where he is coming from with his attacks on postmodernism.  I highly recommend it.]

Susan Peterson has left an observant comment at Pontifications that suggests that the emergent church’s "paradigm for the development of theology would imply that religion is a production of humanity and therefore making it a collective production could only make it better."  Supposing this is true, then from an Catholic and Orthodox perspective, no amount of ENGAGING, RESPONDING, and EXPLORING will do any good if it is not infused with the Holy Spirit.  Similarly, no amount of ENGAGING, RESPONDING, and EXPLORING will do any good if we do not thoughtfully consider the past - for if we believe that the Holy Spirit is leading and guiding us to truth, how much more was leading and guiding the Christians who came before?  (For a good example of someone whose rediscovery of tradition led him to seek a recovery of the tradition, consider John Henry Cardinal Newman.)

I would, of course, interpret the hostility toward the emerging church differently.  Let us say that you, as a parent, have a child who sees the sun rising in the East and setting in the West.  This child, who is intelligent for his age, concludes, based on personal experience, that the Sun must be revolving around the Earth.  When you try to tell him otherwise, that the Earth actually revolves around the Sun, he cannot grasp it; after all, the Earth doesn’t feel like it’s going in circles, and it certainly doesn’t feel like the entire is sphere is moving around, suspended in space!  Yet something so evident to us, like the difference between the words ‘to’ and ‘too,’ seems so hard for the child to understand, because he is young and immature.  Likewise, the Catholics and Orthodox have been caught up in an ancient tradition, and their responses to you (from what I can see) are not out of feeling threatened - they are rather like a parent rolling his eyes at his child for insisting that the Sun revolves around the Earth.

I must stress again: the problem is not only that the emerging church isn’t taking seriously all the work and thought that has been done by Christians up to this point.  (It seems obvious to me that they are not taking the work and thought seriously as they don’t seem to have studied in depth Church history, the writings of the Church Fathers, and the worship of the early Church all together.)  And the problem is not that the emerging church has neglected two thousand years of Christian soul-searching.  No, the problem is that, from an Catholic and Orthodox point of view, the emerging church undermines the work of the Holy Spirit in Christ’s Church for the past two thousand years.  It does this by assuming that we can not only question but reject such central tenets of the faith as "Jesus is God," and still call ourselves Christian.  The definition of the word Christian has always included the belief that Christ is the God-man, and as Chesterton pointed out, you will necessarily limit yourself by what you call yourself.  You can’t be an atheist who believes in God; you can’t be a theist who doesn’t believe in God.  And from a historical standpoint, saying you’re a Christian who doesn’t believe in Christ’s divinity is, frankly, nonsense.  So with regard to your concern that the emerging church is being too flippant with issues as central as Jesus’ divinity/humanity - I would say that’s progress.

It is good, in my opinion, that those involved with the emerging church are having their feathers ruffled.  When something as precious as truth hangs in the balance, there needs to be more than cordial discussion - there needs to be a serious stand that rejects all other claims.  The statement, "Well, this is what I think [Jesus is God, for example]… but I could be wrong" is a sort of false humility in which, if I may borrow from Chesterton again, the speaker doubts the truth but ironically never himself.  But, once again according to Chesterton, a man should always doubt himself but never the truth.  This is true humility - to trust that something or someone bigger than you decreed timeless truths that no culture, modern or postmodern, can alter.  So maybe the emerging church’s confrontation with the real, historical branches of the New Testament Church will force emergents out of their spiritual lethargy and into a real struggle for the salvation of their souls.