A Portrait of Emerging/Emergent Postmoderns

The Emerging Church is embracing the postmodern culture and its way of thinking. What marks the postmodern culture is its tendency to dismiss the possibility of any sure and settled knowledge of the truth. In other words it is the rejection of every expression of certainty. According to the postmodern mindset, truth is relative and subjective but not fixed and objective. Therefore one can never speak with certainty and clarity and conviction.

Emerging/Emergent, postmoderns have a special disaffection for clarity, for truth, for certainty. Postmoderns especially despise clarity when it comes to an accurate and true portrait of what they are like. They attempt to eschew their disdain for truth and clarity through several clever disguises.

First they exalt agnosticism as though it is a godly virtue - mystery, ambiguity, and uncertainty as forms of piety. This indeed is a clever disguise because then the truth that God has revealed can be treated as though it has been concealed. But - "The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us" (Deuteronomy 29:29). Then as soon as a Christian deals in truth or certainty, speaking a clear, "Thus says the Lord," he or she is caricatured as immodest, arrogant, Pope-ish, omniscient, excathedra speaking, pontificators of doctrinaire arrogance. Why? Because of the postmodern's hatred for absolute truth.

Phil Johnson of PyroManiacs said, "Like all good postmodernists, Emergent Christians hate clarity and precision. They despise authority, and they detest certainty. They say they don’t want answers; they want mystery. They don’t want to be preached to; they want a conversation. They don’t want to have to judge whether something is orthodox or heretical, true or false; they want to create their own spiritual reality, and they want to be affirmed while they do it. Unfortunately, the evangelical movement has plenty of people who are willing to affirm all of those things." (Source)

Another clever disguise used by postmoderns to appear that they don't really hate truth is their never ending trumpeting of thier diversity. This is in order to attempt to make an accurate portrait of the movement appear to be just a caricature and therefore critique-resistant. As Dan Philips said in one post comment box, "Try to nail down one blop of EC Jello, and another blop says "I'm not that way!" (Source)

So as soon as you describe an accurate portrait of what postmoderns are like - haters of truth, clarity, certainty, and despisers of authority, one will come along and say, "I love absolute truth and we're not all that way. It's unfair for you to lump us all together that way." However, keep engaging him or her in conversation and you will sure enough discover that they fit the portrait and still want to call it a caricature.

A caricature is a picture or description ludicrously exaggerating the peculiarities or defects of a person or thing (Websters Universal College Dictionary). It is an untrue, ridiculous, and absurd characterization. A portrait does not involve ludicrous exaggerations but is an actual and true portrayal or depiction of a person or thing.

Beware of the caricatures painted by postmoderns and study closely the portrait of apostates as revealed in God's Word.

Edit: John Piper has an excellent post today concerning mystery. Check it out here

Neology or Theology?

We read in the Bible that there is a coming disdain for sound doctrine - "For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths" (2 Timothy 4:3-4).

This disdain for sound doctrine is seen in the Postmodern Movements of our day. There is a love for "the new way", "the better way", and "the latest trends." The sufficiency of Scripture as the only reliable guide and blueprint for ministry is being replaced with the sufficiency of "man's best thinking" and his newer and better way of doing things than God's antiquated and outdated method of ministry.

Theology is being replaced by neology and today's postmodern man is actually a sad reflection of "premodern" man - "Now all the Athenians and the strangers visiting there used to spend their time in nothing other than telling or hearing something new" (Acts 17:21).

Here is a clip from a sermon entitled When Religion Encounters Worship by Jeff Lyle that perfectly describes those rejecting theology and opting instead for neology. It is only 1:20 in length and is well worth the listen.

Here is the whole sermon:

Why Some Preachers' Kids Are Emergent!

What does Rick Warren, Joel Osteen, and Andy Stanley have in common? Is it that they dress the same? No! Is it that they all use their hands while preaching? Well, maybe - but that still is not the commonality that I am looking for. Is it that they are all well known leaders in apostate seeker-sensitive, self-esteem, emergent church philosophy? Yes, but here's the real commonality between these three men - they are all preachers' kids!

Why or how is it that preachers' kids can turn out to be undiscerning, pragmatic, utilitarian, Pelagian or semi-Pelagian, ecumenical, postmodern apostates held captive by philosophy?

First and foremost there has been a wide-scale abandonment by preachers to be faithful to the God-called assignment of equipping the saints for the work of service through faithful, careful, diligent study, and systematic exposition of the Word of God which results in the saints "no longer [being] children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming" (Ephesians 4:14).

Second there has been a wide-scale adoption by preachers to judge by appearance, seek the glory and honor of man, attempt to be popular, remove the offense of the cross, grow large crowds rather than loyal Christians, and pursue quantity rather than quality by using pragmatic methods based on philosophical religious humanism.

Finally, although more could be said, there has been a wide-scale acceptance of secretly introduced destructive heresies to the neglect of sound doctrine for the purpose of an ecumenical, liberal, social agenda to bring about world peace and prosperity.

At the root of the problem is a man-centered philosophy of soteriology rather than a God-centered theology of soteriology which naturally leads to a man-centered philosophy of ecclesiology and a man-centered philosophy of eschatology.

Do not be taken captive by philosophy!