The reason for starting at the very beginning is that people feel that the house of faith in which they grew up has just got too much clutter in it. So we drag all the contents out into the yard; we take down the curtains, let some light in, clean the floors and walls, fix the plumbing and wiring, repaint the woodwork; we dust all the stuff down - furniture, domestic appliances, household items, knick-knacks - have a good look at it, and decide what needs to be brought back in and what should be taken to the dump. That’s the theory at least!

I disagree that the emerging church intends to ignore ‘2000 years of traditional belief and understanding of the Scriptures’. My guess is that a lot of people are actually far more interested in the history of theology now than they used to be under modern evangelicalism - you have to remember where most of us are coming from. I made the point that the ‘rethink’ needs to be done ‘in dialogue with other Christian traditions’, which can hardly be construed as neglecting ecclesial and theological history. I would also argue from the perspective of biblical interpretation that AD 70 is a premature cut-off point: New Testament eschatology carries us well into the period of confrontation with the Graeco-Roman world and gives us good reason for thinking both historically and contextually.

Of course the emerging church knows Christ and proclaims Christ - but that doesn’t preclude the possibility that we have not understood him well. You can be married to a person for 25 years and suddenly discover - perhaps as a result of a crisis - that you have really not understood him or her properly all that time, that you have been relating in effect to a false and quite possibly diminished image of who your spouse really is. A lot of people at that point will walk away from the marriage in disillusionment and perhaps look for someone else. What I hope the emerging church will do is reaffirm the commitment that lies at the heart of the covenant with Christ, and then do the hard, painful, but ultimately exhilarating work of getting to know him better.