The Emergent movement represents a significant challenge to biblical Christianity. Unwilling to affirm that the Bible contains propositional truths that form the framework for Christian belief, this movement argues that we can have Christian symbolism and substance without those thorny questions of truthfulness that have so vexed the modern mind. The worldview of postmodernism—complete with an epistemology that denies the possibility of or need for propositional truth—affords the movement an opportunity to hop, skip and jump throughout the Bible and the history of Christian thought in order to take whatever pieces they want from one theology and attach them, like doctrinal post-it notes, to whatever picture they would want to draw.

This paragraph is taken from a review of Brian McLaren’s book A Generous Orthodoxy by Albert Mohler, theologian, ordained minister, author, speaker, host of his own radio program The Albert Mohler Program, and President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. In addition to the credentials of the writer, two things struck me about it.

First, this idea that the emergent movement ‘represents a significant challenge to biblical Christianity’ is ambiguous. It could be taken to mean that the emerging church is unbiblical or sub-biblical and therefore threatens to distort and undermine biblical Christianity, which I presume is how Mohler intended the sentence to be understood. But the emergent movement could also be a ‘significant challenge’ in a much more constructive and exciting sense: ‘biblical Christianity’ - not as an ideal construct but as an intellectual product of twentieth century evangelicalism - is imperfect and is open to challenge, correction, realignment, and reinvigoration. I would say that the theology of the emerging church ought to aspire to be more consistently, more critically, more realistically, more adventurously, more honestly biblical than the sort of evangelicalism represented by Mohler.

Secondly, the emerging church needs to make sure that it is not guilty of hopping, skipping and jumping ‘throughout the Bible and the history of Christian thought’ gathering bits and pieces of theology that happen to suit its mood. This is no reflection on McLaren’s book (I haven’t read it), but to the extent that the emerging church is driven by cultural and philosophical concerns, it is always likely to subordinate the reading of scripture to an ulterior agenda - not least because it brings with it many of the bad habits of modern evangelicalism. The answer is not to go back to a complacent propositionalism, because the assumption behind Mohler’s critique is that there is no need to rethink the grounds of faith - we have our propositions, they are the culmination of centuries of faithful reflection, they have preserved the true gospel from the ravages of liberalism, they’ll do just fine.

But there is no reason to shy away from coherence and clarity either. McLaren’s ploy of not answering questions has better precedence than Mohler allows - Jesus was very good at it. There is a place for this type of rhetoric - not least when the winds of paradigm change are blowing. But Jesus does not tell stories, pose riddles, and avoid answering questions merely in a spirit of postmodern, deconstructive playfulness or at the expense of ‘truthfulness’, to use Mohler’s word. There is method in his madness. His retelling of Israel’s story has to give shape and purpose to the new covenant people of God, reorganized around his own story. The emerging church must go back to that story and learn how to tell it again with no less coherence and clarity, not just for the sake of dismantling old paradigms but with a view to rebuilding and sustaining an authentically biblical Christianity. And I wouldn’t be surprised if somewhere along the way we find a good use for propositions again.