The whole idea of an ‘emerging theology’ is nebulous, which is probably unavoidable and probably a good thing. But every now and again I feel the need to sketch some boundaries, contours, intentions, commitments - if only to help us keep in view the stated purpose of this site, which is to ‘assist the development of a transparent, community-driven theology for the “emerging church”’. There have been good discussions along these lines in the past: ‘Outline of an emerging theology’, ‘What is the relationship between emerging and evangelical theologies?’, ‘The marks of a renewed theology’. This is simply another personal attempt to give some definition to the phrase ‘emerging theology’.
So here, very briefly stated, are what I feel to be some of the leading characteristics of an emerging theology. It reflects my biases and blindspots. If people want to suggest corrections or additions, I would be happy to take them into account and republish the list as a more collective statement.
- A theology for a community that is in self-conscious continuity with the biblical people of God and the calling of Abraham to be blessed and be a blessing to the nations of the world.
- A theology done under the lordship of Christ.
- A theology that gives priority to narrative in order both to define its core and to contextualize the content of biblical teaching.
- A theology that seeks to understand the intimate relationship between text and historical narrative.
- A theology that at its heart is a reading of scripture.
- A theology that as a matter of methodological commitment celebrates, reinforces, and exploits community: an emerging theology is strongly relational, conversational, interactive.
- A theology that is strongly aware of, and responsive to, the locality in which these conversations take place.
- A theology that attempts to resist certain distortions of modernism.
- A theology that is broadly but not slavishly postmodern in its epistemology, wary of absolute formulations, tolerant of diversity and plurality, sensitive to the social manipulation of texts.
- A theology that places a high value on intellectual and critical integrity - ‘integrity’ being, I think, the ‘postmodern’ word in that sentence.
- A theology committed to the renewal of its own discourse, understood not only as speech but as the whole spectrum of means (artistic, communal, activist) by which we communicate.
- A theology that fosters an open, inquisitive, probing mindset.
- A theology that endeavours to integrate rather than dissociate modes of thought, analysis, and practice, that draws on the mind of the whole community of faith.
- A generous theology that is inclined to discover meaning and truth outside of itself.
- A theology with an eschatological orientation towards the renewal of creation - humanity within a comprehensive ecology; therefore a public rather than a private theology.
See also Ian Mobsby, ‘Is there a distinctive approach to theologising for the emerging church?’
theology and ec
andrew, these are great. well thought out and good choice of words. appreciate the effort and sharing it with us.
good thoughts
these are some really good thoughts. not that any list can define me, but i feel like this is a good start to articulating a theology that i’m commited to.
Love #5
A theology that reads the scriptures, now that is a worthwhile statement. Thanks for this list.
an emerging theology
I am grateful for these thoughtful recommendations, and with qualifications here or there I can agree with many of them for how to pursue theology. However, I am struck by a certain irony for the list as a whole. Every tenet begins with the word theology, which, you know, means a “study of God.” Yet I do believe that I could be a philosophical materialist and affirm every tenet you have proposed (as long as you permit me to define “Christ” in number 2 functionally or in any way less than fully divine). In other words, the problem is not what’s on your list, it’s what’s not on your list. Why not speak about the “revelation of God” or the “divinely-conferred authority of Scripture,” unless you are in fact working with hidden “modernist” presuppositions, much as the postliberals, Hauerwas et al are. As it stands, you’re not talking about “theo-logy,” you’re talking about “community-ology.”
Jonathan, I agree that the
Jonathan, I agree that the list is much more about method, about how we talk about the living God in our midst. The reason for this is basically that I wanted to avoid pre-empting discussion about the content of a theology, which is what this site is for. I wrote a personal and provisional statement of faith a couple of years back, but I’m not sure it would have been right to have included this, or something like it, in an attempt to sketch the boundaries of an emerging theology.
Your phrase ‘divinely-conferred authority of Scripture’ is precisely the sort of prejudgment that I think an emerging theology needs to avoid. It is the product of an older battle that I’m not sure we’re fighting any more. Similarly, to insist here that an emerging theology must accept that the Christ is not ‘in any way less than fully divine’, in such terms, seems to me a mistake - not because I want to say that it’s not true or that I believe Christ’s lordship must be understood functionally (whatever you mean by that), but because I want to make space to consider in what sense - taking into account the other statements in the list - it might be true or meaningful. These traditional formulations do not make good starting-points for an honest and critical examination of the biblical texts or of their place in our intellectual and cultural environment.
Having said that, it surprises me a little that you don’t think a philosophical materialist would have problem with the first statement about a community in ‘self-conscious continuity with the biblical people of God and the calling of Abraham to be blessed and be a blessing to the nations of the world’. Admittedly it’s minimalist, for reasons already given, but if nothing else, it means we have to take very seriously the God who calls and blesses. The fifth point must ensure that we are not merely interpreting what it means to be community. And the language of eschatology and the renewal of creation in point 15 ought to safeguard the place of God as a final guarantor of hope for the world.
It might be interesting to get a real philosophical materialist to scan these points and see what he or she makes of them.
Re: What (again) is emerging theology
Emerging thoughts about emerging theogical thoughts
Andrew - just a few questions for you before breakfast. Strange that the system crashed while I was trying to download this yesterday.
1. Would ‘self-conscious continuity with the people of God’ include the people of God throughout history, and their reflections on the meaning of the biblical faith?
2. Does (2.) assume that Jesus lives now, in communion with his people? In other words, his significance is more than simply historical? Or does ‘lordship’ inhere exclusively in the principles he gave his people to live by?
3. Does narrative priority include reflections on God’s ontology, and how this emerges from and influences the narrative? (I think for instance of David and the psalms, and their meditations on God’s being; the interaction between God’s holiness and our unholiness on a personal as well as corporate level - central sections of Romans, and much of the epistles).
4. What is the difference between text and historical narrative? In the bible, the text provides the historical narrative doesn’t it? This might also raise questions about canon: which version of biblical history/text are we talking about? Why some not others? If others, what grounds do we have for taking those as in any way authoritative, and not the biblical version? (Or the other way round).
5. Should we also be consulting the experience of the Spirit as well as reading scripture? Sometimes scripture encourages us to do this - eg Peter’s experience in the house of Simon the tanner - which was formative for his views on Torah observation. It’s arguable that a great deal of biblical interpretation can and should be conducted in the light of the faith community’s experience of God outside the text. It’s also arguable that the text also, in some ways, stands over the life of the faith community.
6. Total agreement!
7. Does this have a bearing on my question in 5.?
8. & 9. Agreed, whilst suggesting that not all the contributions of modernism are distortions (eg the place modernism gives to reason in the interpretation of scripture); ‘broadly but not slavishly postmodern’ seems a good qualification - though here again, the precise application of this qualification raises further questions.
10. What governs ‘integrity’? Is there any approach to scriptural understanding that does not include some distortion or deception? Being accountable, and prepared to modify a point of view in the light of better arguments might be included here, but above all, what is the place given to the Spirit’s role in interpreting scripture? A ‘Christ-centred’ interpretation of scripture, especially the OT, might be the most partial of all interpretations - taking us outside the realm of intellectual interpretation to the experience of God in our lives. Very risky - but isn’t that what the NT does in relation to Christ?
11 - 15. Agreed.
Not nit-picking - just asking some questions - that’s if you or anyone has persevered this far with the post.
Andrew, I appreciate these
Andrew, I appreciate these points from you. I read this a while back but had no chance to comment yet. One issue that comes to mind is this: By going into great details to define what emergent theology is all about, do we not risk to go full circle and end up exactly where we started, in a place where systematic theology, dogmatism, creedalism and everything else that comes with the Christianity we are all trying to emergent out of, literally suck everything that is beautiful and meaningful out of our faith?
The gaping jaws of dogma
Virgil, a similar observation about these 15 points, but from a critical perspective, was made at metalutheran.blogspot.com:
I would say that the 15 definitions reflect what emerging theology is at the moment, at a certain stage in the development of a certain aspect of mostly Western theology; there is no reason to suppose that things will stay as they are. The current distrust of dogmatism may well mutate into something else - I’ve always felt that we need to do a lot of unlearning and forgetting before we start learning again.
That something else may (or may not) look rather like what we now regard as modern dogmatism. We can’t make the process of thought stand still, and I’m not sure that it would be right to try to build into an emerging theology an absolute horror of ‘systematic theology, dogmatism, creedalism’, etc. I would have thought there is a natural oscillation in our theology between statement and restatement, construction and deconstruction, certainty and uncertainty.
In any case, I think we are already learning to find beauty and meaning in a more confident and coherent telling of the biblical story; and my hope would be that we keep the narrative - as a dynamic and self-sufficient discourse - central and regard more ‘dogmatic’ formulations are secondary, contingent, provisional, revisable responses to it.
Well said...
Andrew, I do believe your point is well-stated in that perhaps the important thing for us is “telling the story” without getting it lost between the lines; that is what has been happening forever in Christianity, with dogmatism winning at the expense of meaning and beauty.
I also advise ignoring critics such as the one you linked to, not because we are above them, but because we should not allow them to set our agenda and sway us from our path and journey. Your time (and mine) would be much better spent on developing and learning this thing that we are working on, rather than answering every question raised by every critic out there.
Talking to critics
I’m not sure I agree with that last point. It seems to me that if the emerging church is serious about intellectual integrity, it ought to listen to its critics and, if they will allow, talk constructively with them. It’s not about letting them set the agenda - it’s about recognizing the limitations of our own perspective.
Oh yes, but more than often
Oh yes, but more than often they will not allow for constructive dialogue and conversations more than often end in name calling. I have seen some pretty nasty name-calling directed at emergent folks (forget Emergent officially or Brian McLaren). I suppose there is a thin line between allowing critics to set an agenda and contructive dialogue and conversation.
telling the story
The criticism is that the emerging movement has no specific story to tell - whether conservative or liberal, traditional, modern or postmodern everyone can ‘fit in’.
If there is no story then what story are we telling?
By the way, I am unable to open the metalutheran.blogspot…
Live to serve : Serve to live
I can't see anything
I can’t see anything wrong with the link to metalutheran - try again.
It seems to me important that an emerging theology is a ‘reading of scripture’ - the fifth point in the original post. Scripture presents itself largely as historical narrative, told in a rather complex and not entirely coherent fashion - so basically that’s where the story is. Of course, it has to be interpreted - and I suppose, arguably, the prior characterization of scripture as ‘historical narrative’ is itself the product of interpretation. It differs from the characterization of scripture as God’s Word, for example - God speaking to humanity - and there must be presuppositions that govern that choice.
So, as I see it, as long as the emerging church wishes to see itself as a community shaped by scripture, we have a story with content. The question is how we read it, how we retell it (in our churches, to ourselves, to the world), and how we translate it into other forms of discourse (sermons, apologetic arguments, popular books, and so on).
At this level there are plenty of difficulties and uncertainties. The historical approach has attracted a lot of interest partly because it resists modern dogmatic taxonomies, partly because it grounds truth in the experiences and self-perceptions of communities. I still think it will go a long way towards redefining the story for the emerging church, but we are still in the midst of things. Clarity and consensus are probably still some way off.
Cyclical Christianity
Andrew, but the Church as a whole has always seen itself as a community shaped by Scripture and it always ends up becoming what it hates; it never fails. Now I admit I have no answers as to why that happens; perhaps it is the human need for structure and systematic thinking, or need for rules and regulations; maybe the message of Jesus is too simple for us to deal with and we inadvertedly complicate it. Whatever the reason is, I have always seen the “progress” of the Church as being cyclical (imagine a sinusoidal wave) which grows while still maintaining a permanent phase shift toward the future.
Maybe I am a pessimist, but I see the emerging church offering great solutions to the current and next generation or two, but will it continue to do so in the long run? I hope so, and I pray that it will, otherwise modernism will smother the Christian faith even more.
sucking the beautiful and meaningful
Theology can make it dry and manageable and boring. What I think Emerging Theology must do, however, beyond the specific topics is approach it in the way that describes the beautiful and meaningful. What is beautiful and meaningful about our faith? Why do we dance and delight and celebrate? Who is this God who is above all things yet has entered into our world to create and participate?
The problem with much theology is that it has the character of dry, remote philosophy. An Emerging theology, however, should have an aesthetic. It should be a poetry of itself, an elegant description of an elegant, sublime reality.
The earliest theologies had this character, it was descriptive and worship all thrown together, the discussion about God never separated from the devotion to God.
I think the Emerging Theology will have more of the character of the Eastern Church rather than the Western Church. I like how Lossky characterizes this:
The problem with much theology as presently presented is that not only has it not supported mysticism it has intentionally tried to distance itself from mysticism.
Rather than a list of rules, standards, positions and traits an Emerging Theology can and should describe the divine and the divine experience as a poem, as a dance, as a beautiful recitation of our mystical interaction, letting our minds and our souls and the Spirit mingle together in beautiful carefully constructed praise of the God who is and who we have learned him to be.
poetry and piety in theology
That’s a challenging and great thought but harder to put into practice. The distancing is a result of trying to be rigorous, logical, rational etc. Should rigour be discarded? God is mysterious except for what He has revealed about Himself. His revelation is poetic, pious and mystical as well as historical but unless we are trying to be revelatory in our theology, will we be able to recapture the same?
Most of our theologians would have to quit trying to write or teach theology as there are very few of the calibre of say a C.S. Lewis amongst our theologians - combining a poetic ability with clarity of thought!
Live to serve : Serve to live
rigour
Of course rigour should not be discarded. It isn’t about rigour, it is about expectation and training. How many graduate degrees in theology have within them a core training in Christian Disciplines? How many theologians are experts also in Christian spirituality. The classics of theology, those many wonderful and grand writers we read from centuries ago were almost always both pastors and thinkers, their thought informing their ministry, their ministry informing their thought, their private spirituality informing their ministry and their thought.
Now we separate these worlds, and insist theology fit into the mold of Philosophy’s lesser cousin.
To blend mysticism and theology is challenging and hard. But it does not mean abandoning the rigour. The idea that distancing is required is a result of centuries of assuming this, insisting there is no room for spirituality in logical thought. But of course there is, and as my Lossky quote suggests it can often result in some of the most rigorous and complex theology.
Do we have, for instance, any theologians today who could match the Cappadocian Fathers?
To be coherent and new and wide reaching Emerging Theology should almost certainly be challenging and difficult. And to be something truly transformative it cannot depend on the same methods or approaches that modernity has taught. Discovering again the different methods will be certainly challenging and require new emphases in training.
If all things stay the same but for different buzz words what will actually emerge from any of this?
training, who should "do" theology
I wonder whether the standard models of pastoral training would be in any sense appropriate to what the emerging church is trying to do. It seems to me that there are a host of prior questions which have to be tackled and to some extent answered before questions such as the ones we are now trying to handle can be meaningfully dealt with.
Are we to think of seminaries at all? Are traditional views on ‘the pastorate’ going to be of any use in the emerging church? Or are matters of leadership and authority going to be much more loosely defined? Will emerging theology continue to be developed in an opensource manner? As Andrew put it (6) A theology that as a matter of methodological commitment celebrates, reinforces, and exploits community: an emerging theology is strongly relational, conversational, interactive.
Live to serve : Serve to live
who does theology
In light of the reference to the Cappadocians and the comments regarding training, consider Gregory of Nazianus in The Theological Orations 2.1:
continuity and discontinuity
I found much to appreciate in this reflection, but for some reason your first point refused to be easily digested in my mind: “A theology for a community that is in self-conscious continuity with the biblical people of God and the calling of Abraham to be blessed and be a blessing to the nations of the world.”
First, this would seem to make the theology more Jewish than Christian. Or, reflecting on the theological tension between continuity and discontinuity between the covenants, this would seem to make one conclusion to that debate the basis for emerging theology, closing the door to certain understandings of what is “new” about the new covenant.
Most likely you simply meant that the narrative of emerging theology is in continuity with the narrative of the Old Testament, but I had to think for a while before I got there.
And then I found it odd to privilege this particular image—God’s promise to bless Abraham and through his seed to bless the nations—in a way that made it feel more incumbent upon Abraham than upon God. (I can more easily see in the narrative how Abraham was called to leave Ur, settle in Canaan, and obey God.)
The blessing of Abraham
Chris, the emphasis in the first place was on continuity with the full biblical narrative, which includes within itself the tension between the old and new covenants. It was really only a way of saying that the emerging church should define a dependence on scripture in narrative rather than dogmatic or systematic terms. It does seem, however, that the emerging church is anxious to recover the Abrahamic (and perhaps ultimately creational) emphasis on blessing. It brings an important social and environmental dimension to ‘mission’.
Is the dichotomy between Jewish and Christian a valid one in this context? Paul’s argument in Romans and Galatians would appear to be that the calling of and promise to Abraham persists regardless of whether it takes a distinctively Jewish form or not.
I find myself more inclined to talk about the people of God than of the Church or of Christianity these days. ‘Church’ is probably unavoidable; ‘Christianity’ seems more disposable. There could be several reasons for this - the influence of NT Wright, postmodern embarrassment with Church/Christianity, etc. But it seems to me also to reflect a positive preference for an expression that highlights historical continuity running back to the calling of Abraham to be a people for God in the midst of the nations. My reading of New Testament eschatology also suggests that the crisis of the end of the age of second temple Judaism constituted more a restoration or reformation (with a new king put in place) than a radical break from or repudiation of the Old Testament people of God, but this is obviously more contentious.
I’m not sure I get this. How is it less incumbent on God? He actively blesses Abraham and the nations through Abraham. As for privileging this particular image, I would suggest that the eschatological crisis of the New Testament - including the story about Jesus as Son of man, suffering servant, Davidic son - is precisely the recovery of this image of what the people of God is meant to be. Plenty to discuss there!
Is the dichotomy between
The answer to this, I think, depends on what one means. Obviously, a person who is a Jew but does not accept Jesus as the Messiah might see himself in continuity with Abraham, but someone else could say he isn’t actually in continuity with the “true” Abrahamic narrative in a way that might classify him as “emergent theologian.”
I speak of “Jew” and “Christian” (and “Muslim” for that matter) as a way of pointing to the ambiguity of “people of God.” Many would claim to be people of God that would not recognize Jesus as Lord; while their perspective may inform emergent theology, I am not sure they would identify themselves as emergent theologians.
Finally, I found the phrasing “the calling of Abraham to be blessed and be a blessing to the nations of the world” to place the onus of blessing less on God than, say, “the promise to bless Abraham and, through him, to bless the nations of the world.” I could see how your syntax could be interpreted to mean that God’s purpose in calling Abraham was to bring blessing to Abraham and the world, but that interpretation was not the most obvious one to me.
The emerging view of God's Righteousness
Andrew, Based on #1, would you say that the emerging church’s view of God’s righteousness is his faithfulness to the promise to Abraham? So, when Romans 4 talks about God ‘imputing’ His righteousness to Abraham, what that means is that God committed himself to Abraham? He committed his reputation to Abraham and thus put his righteousness on the line.
Just a thought…
Emerging faith
Christopher - nice to see a solidly biblical theme emerging. Before anyone else gets in, your definition of God’s ‘righteousness’ is that developed by UK theologian N.T.Wright, which provides the basis for new light shed on the whole of Romans, and a fresh understanding of Paul’s (and also Jesus’s) gospel.
The emphasis in Romans 4 is on the faith/works argument - which Abraham vividly illustrates, and lays as a foundation for Israel’s intended relationship with God. This is the relationship intended for the people of God reconstituted around Jesus, faith being the identity marker.
So Abraham is pointing the way to a future fulfilment, rather than being the fulfilment in himself. The people of God today need to discover what that fulfilment is, ie what ‘the blessing’ is intended to be. This seems to me to be the key question which awaits an answer - from the emerging church or any other version of church.
The ‘blessing of Abraham’ needs some clear definition. I suspect when it is defined, we may find ourselves back in mainstream Christianity again - the very mainstream from which some versions of emergent faith seek to distance themselves.
imputation in Romans 4
Thanks for your thought Christopher, and thanks to Peter for indicating a clear need for clarification. For further clarification before any replies begin to this comment:
There is no mention of God imputing his own righteousness to Abraham or anyone else in Romans 4. Besides the problems of translating logizomai (sorry, not good at transliterating) as “impute” notwithstanding, there is no mention of Abraham ever receiving God’s own personal righteousness, and such an understanding of the text is one of the issues that has led to so many misunderstandings of ‘justification.’ The sense developed by Wright is that God’s righteousness is his faithfulness to the covenant (so, in that sense, he ‘put his righteousness on the line” in that he must now prove faithful to what he promised, which begs Peter’s question). The righteousness Abraham, or any person, receives from God is his just declaration (as judge—lawcourt metaphor) that that person is ‘in the covenant/in proper relationship’ to YHWH. Such membership is not defined by the works of the Torah: circumcision, sabbath keeping, food laws, ritual purity laws and others that mark out a person as Jewish, in other words, along ethnic lines. Rather, it is on the basis of faith in the god who gives life to the dead (expanded in Romans 10), a sure sign that the creator god has already been at work in renewing that person, drawing him/her into membership.
Did God give his righteousness to Abraham ?
Good pt. Eric. I agree that God did not transfer his righteousness to Abraham to make up for Abraham’s unrighteousness (that’s my understanding of the traditional view of justification). I am trying to look at this from a narrative perspective. In other words, God promised humanity, known to us in the form of Adam and Eve, to undo the problem of evil. The promise to Abraham was meant to deal with that problem of evil. By making this promise to Abraham, God ‘gave’ Abraham is righteousness; his word to make things right. But when Israel fell into exile it looked as if God was unrighteous. God’s righteousness (his fulfillment to Abraham) is revealed through the faithfulness of Jesus. He has rescued His people from this present evil age. Now, God has made another promise to those in Christ that one day he will re-create the world and resurrect the body. God has once again committed his reputation (his righteousness) to those that have faith.
I've redirected this