The word and the Word: do not sunder what God has joined

by Dan Phillips

Ask a group of Biblically faithful Christians how God is known. Some will likely answer, "In Christ." Others, "Through the Bible." I had just such an array when I asked the other day, as we have been studying how God reaches out to us and how we must respond.

Well, which response is right?

Broadly, one could say that three answers have been given in the history of the Christian church. Taking "A" as representing "In Christ," and B as "Through the Bible," we can treat them thus:

A, not so much B. This would be broadly the view of Christianoid liberalism of all stripes. Like virtually all false teachers, they do want to be seen as on the Jesus bandwagon, so they would claim Him. "Christ, not doctrine" would be their rallying cry. It might be neo-orthodox shaped with a sprinkling of existential spice, but it would amount to this: "We must encounter the living Christ. The Word witnesses to this Christ, but it is just the words of men witnessing poorly and fallibly to the Christ. It is inadequate. All that matters is the soul's contact with the living Christ, a contact that can't be tied to dogma or reduced to doctrines."

This is useful, of course, because this "living Christ" usually fits in pretty well with wherever the professor wants to go. This "living Christ" gets down with the world just fine. He's for evolution, "a woman's right to choose," "marriage equality," "social justice," "empowering women"; He's green, He voted for Obama, He loves Huffington Post, He's not so sure about literal Adams and Jonahs and falling walls and man-swallowing fish. In other words, He pretty much hates and loves what the world hates and loves. The  professor need not deny himself, much less take up anything as distasteful as a cross.

Machen killed this monstrosity decades ago but, like Freddy Krueger, it just keeps coming back. Unlike Freddy, it does change its shirt from time to time. But it's always the same nonsense, under the skin.

Both A and B. Many orthodox Christians would sign onto this, and it's a vast improvement. It at least recognizes that Christ and the Word are not opposed to each other. In fact, I wouldn't quarrel too insistently with this answer, as long as its view of B matched B's witness to itself.

However, I think this isn't the best way to put it. It still envisions a parting between the two that doesn't do justice to the role Christ Himself (A) gives to the Word (B). That is better expressed as...

A, by sole means of B. Of course and always, the intent is to know Christ truly and intimately (Ephesians 3:17-19; Philippians 3:10). And this can happen only as we are born of the Spirit (John 3:1ff.), and the Lord opens our hearts (Acts 16:14). But by what means, through what instrumentality, is this accomplished?

As I've been studying closely with my church on Wednesday nights, God has always had but one means of making Himself known, from the first moments when there was sentient life: by His Word. This has always been the case. Adam's first recorded experience of God is of God speaking to him; and so it goes through redemptive history. The grand trans-covenantal paradigm of Abram is that his right standing before God came through his saying "Amen" to the word of God (Gen. 15:6 and context).

Nothing has changed in the coming of Christ. He preached, He preached and preached; He was known as "the teacher." His miracles showed that his preaching had power, but their meaning was known through His preaching. When people came for his miracles, He moved on so He could preach more, say more words about God and His Kingdom (Mark 1:33-38).

This is what He said would be the norm. The mark of someone who was a genuine disciple was that that person continued in His word (John 8:31-32). That person who experienced God and knew God personally would be the person who kept Christ's commands and word (John 14:21, 23). Christ's abiding in the person would flourish by means of His word abiding in him (compare John 15:4 and 7).

And so it continued after He ascended. When Peter was surrounded by inquiring unbelievers, he preached God's words to them and used those words to urge them to salvation (Acts 2). The saved — reconciled to eternal fellowship with God — were those who embraced his word (Acts 2:41). Again and again, Luke describes the spread of Christianity as the spread of the word of God (Acts 6:7; 12:24; 13:49). In fact, how would we today have fellowship with the Father and the Son? Through the words of God through the apostles (1 John 1:1-3).

This is but a brief sample. I could just put it like this. You say the really important thing is to know Christ. I say "amen." And then I ask, "Who is this 'Christ'? Where do we learn of Him? Where do we find out infallibly who He is, what He taught, what He did, what He offers and demands, how I can know Him, and how He wants me to live and think?"

You know the answer.

A, by sole means of B.

Don't sunder what God hath joined.

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(Less) tersely put: omniscience and certainty revisited

by Dan Phillips

In crafting my maiden-voyage post for this series, I had a number of things in mind. Some ended up reading my mind (poor souls) pretty well, while other nascent thoughts were left on the dusty shelves. To save you a click, here it was:

To profess certainty, non-Christians must feign omniscience.


Christians begin with the confession that they (1) do not possess omniscience, but (2) are by grace confidants of the only one who does possess it.


Thus Christians alone not only can be, but are obliged to be, humbly certain.

The first thought touches on what I might call the "Far Side of Neptune" argument.

Just think of all the "scientific" theories in all of human history that have died horrible deaths in the light of new discoveries. The positions were always held with great confidence right up to the moment they had to be abandoned...and sometimes even afterwards. One new fact, or one new set of facts, provoked a paradigm-shift, however eventual and reluctant.

So, how many facts are there, in the universe, total? More than ten? More than a trillion? More than ten decazillion, cubed? Of course, we could never even guess the number — let alone their nature — of all facts.

That being the case, who can say with certitude that one fact, existing only ten miles under the surface of the far side of Neptune, and only within an eight-inch radius, would not change everything we think we know about... any given subject? One can scoff, he can dismiss, he can bluff... but he can't answer that question. He cannot honestly say that he knows for a certainty, one way or the other, that some fact not yet in evidence would not constitute a transformative, revolutionary revelation.

Yet nobody lives with such uncertainties. Nobody speaks exclusively in the subjective mood. We love the indicative, even more than we should.

So we announce that (say) evolution is an undeniable fact, that the world is X-zillion years old, that homosexuality is not a chosen behavior, that the unborn are not human, that this or that is right or wrong. We speak as if from a perspective of not only omniscience, but omnisapience; as if we both possessed and understood all facts... even though neither is true.

Yet someone has to keep pointing out the emperor's illusory garb: unless the speaker has an infinite grasp of both the identity and the meaning/significance of every last fact in the universe, he has no right to speak with certainty.

Yet the unbeliever regularly does so speak. He does not possess omniscience. He merely feigns it. His intent is to cow opposition (and quiet his own conscience [Rom. 1:18ff.]) by a show of bravado. As we have seen, the tactic often works in the short run.

A second idea lurked under the surface: "Thus Christians alone not only can be, but are obliged to be, humbly certain." The Christian, insofar as he actually practices the faith he professes, necessarily affirms the inerrancy of Scripture as the very word of God. In so doing, he claims to possess a revelation from the only one who actually does know and understand absolutely everything that exists, since He is the Creator of absolutely everything that  exists.

Ironically, however, there are those who (A) claim to be Christian, but (B) choose to feign uncertainty on unpopular issues where the Bible is pretty clear.

Return to the subject of homosexuality. The Bible really is univocal on that particular behavior (e.g. Rom. 1:26-28; 1 Cor. 6:9-11). As it is on wifely submission (e.g. Eph. 5:22, 24). Or the exclusivity of Christ and His Gospel (Jn. 14:6; Acts 4:12). Or the reality of eternal conscious torment of the lost in Hell (Matt. 25:41, 46).

These are not murky penumbras, but clear doctrines. Not that a devoted opponent cannot fabricate some murk; it is axiomatic that great distance from the Word necessarily creates greater murkiness (Isa. 8:20). Any clear statement can be smudged... including this one. But the professed believer who adopts a pose of tentativeness on such issues is in the precise-reverse position of the unbeliever who adopts the pose of certitude.

Because (to allude to another terse post that could have been developed further), if God actually has spoken, everything changes.

In sum: the person who denies God's revelation is obliged to speak uncertainly about everything; the person who affirms God's revelation is obliged to speak certainly about some things (Amos 3:8; Acts 4:19-20; 5:29; 1 Cor. 9:16).

The strange thing is that one so often sees the exact reverse.

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The wind in the sails

by Frank Turk

{sigh}

OK – I sort of blogged for a brief moment at my blog last week, and then, having been away from my desk at my day job for almost 2 weeks, I had to man the pumps and get the swamp of stuff off my desk. But today I have 45 minutes, and that means (since it’s Wednesday) that I’ll be blogging you here.

Yes, nice to see you, too.

First, a brief shaddout to all the peeps who introduced themselves at T4G. Not to leave anyone out, but meeting my brother K. Joel Gilliard (known better to many of you as BlackCalvinist) was a highlight for me. Having known him virtually for years, it was edifying to meet him in person and find him to be actually smarter and more personable in person than I knew him to be via the raw bandwidth.

And, of course, spending time briefly with Dan and Phil (and meeting Dan’s lovely wife Valerie for the first time) was both wonderful and at the same time not enough.

Note to Mark Dever: in ’10, T4G needs to have more intentional social time, and ought not to run 12 hours a day. Anyone who agrees with me ought to e-mail Pastor Dever with a kind note of encouragement in that direction.

Now, this very morning after getting beat down by my new fitness accountability partner, I was checking the blogosphere for anything more interesting than chatter about Barack Obama’s pastor (who, it turns out, was one of Bill Clinton’s spiritual advisors during the Lewinsky thing), and I came across this post at what I would call one of the blogs which hates that it ever agrees with TeamPyro, but cannot avoid it:



Which, you know, yeah. OK. I think “metaphor” is a not exactly the word I would use, but OK.

The word I would use is “condescension”. If you wanted a non-technical, simple word for what I’m talking about, how about “stooping down”.

Now, why split that hair? I mean, what’s my positive affirmation of the “opposite” of what’s been said here, and is what is said here the “opposite” of what I’m saying? Because the guy who said this – he is, as far as I can tell, a nice young man with a fine family, and his blog is at least interesting even if it is, um, succinct. I don’t actually think he’s “wrong” – I think he just doesn’t go far enough here.

I mean, what’s the difference between saying the word “Father” is a “metaphor” and to say it’s a “condescension”? Here’s what I think, and then cry havoc and let loose the blogs of war.

When we say the word is a “metaphor”, what we mean is that somehow we have chosen a word which, as many great preachers have pointed out, points from the lesser to the greater. That is, human language has its limits, and we seek to overcome the limits of language through poetic license – we draw an image and say the greater thing is “like that, but greater.” You know: hell is like fire, but greater than fire – worse for the one who’s in it. The Kingdom of God is like a lost coin which we sweep the whole house to find, but greater – more valuable and treasured.

But the problem with calling these (and the other examples you might pull from Scripture) “metaphors” (or “similes”, if we are going to pick wonkery nits in our blog post today) is that this view overlooks the source of these statements. What is not happening in these statement is man seeking to capture God by human wisdom or philosophy or even poetry: what is happening is that God is revealing Himself to us in terms He has actually deemed sufficient.

That is -- this is not our language trying to reach up at God: it is God’s love and wisdom and power reaching down to us to make Himself known to us. This is not our minds trying to do what, frankly, they cannot do: this is God’s mind sufficiently giving us what we need to know Him above and beyond the vague affirmation “God is the creator of all things”.

If someone wants to call the title “Father” as it refers to God a “metaphor”, yeah. OK. But to say that, for example, to some agnostic or some atheist or some marginal culture-Christian, I think, takes the wind out of the sails of Scripture – and by wind, I mean what Jesus meant in John 3.

Have a nice day. Even if you disagree with me.

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Some Certainties for These Uncertain Times

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon
posted by Phil Johnson

The PyroManiacs devote some space each weekend to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive. The following excerpt is from "The Need of Decision for the Truth," a message Spurgeon preached at his pastors' college a few years before the Down Grade Controversy erupted. This message was originally published in the March 1874 issue of The sword and the Trowel.

here are gentlemen alive who imagine that there are no fixed principles to go upon. "Perhaps a few doctrines," said one to me, "perhaps a few doctrines may be considered as established. It is, perhaps, ascertained that there is a God; but one ought not to dogmatise upon His personality: a great deal may be said for pantheism."

Such men creep into the ministry, but they are generally cunning enough to conceal the breadth of their minds beneath Christian phraseology, thus acting in consistency with their principles, for their fundamental rule is that truth is of no consequence.

As for us—as for me, at any rate—I am certain that there is a God, and I mean to preach it as a man does who is absolutely sure. He is the Maker of heaven and earth, the Master of providence, and the Lord of grace: let his name be blessed for ever and ever! We will have no questions and debates as to him.

We are equally certain that the book which is called "the Bible" is his word, and is inspired; not inspired in the sense in which Shakespeare, and Milton, and Dryden may be inspired, but in an infinitely higher sense; so that, provided we have the exact text, we regard the words themselves as infallible. We believe that everything stated in the book that comes to us from God is to be accepted by us as his sure testimony, and nothing less than that. God forbid we should be ensnared by those various interpretations of the modus of inspiration, which amount to little more than frittering it away. The book is a divine production; it is perfect, and is the last court of appeal—" the judge which ends the strife." I would as soon dream of blaspheming my Maker as of questioning the infallibility of his word.

We are also sure concerning the doctrine of the blessed Trinity. We cannot explain how the Father, Son, and Spirit can be each one distinct and perfect in himself, and yet that these three are one, so that there is but one God; yet we do verily believe it, and mean to preach it, notwithstanding Unitarian, Socinian, Sabellian, or any other error. We shall hold that fast evermore, by the grace of God.

And, brethren, there will be no uncertain sound from us as to the doctrine of atonement. We cannot leave the blood out of our ministry, or the life of it will be gone; for we may say of our ministry, "The blood is the life thereof." The proper substitution of Christ, the vicarious sacrifice of Christ, on the behalf of his people, that they might live through him. This we must publish till we die.

Neither can we waver in our mind for a moment concerning the great and glorious Spirit of God—the fact of his existence, his personality, and the power of his workings; the necessity of his influences, the certainty that no man is regenerated except by him; that we are born again by the Spirit of God, and that the Spirit dwells in believers, and is the author of all good in them, their sanctifier and preserver, without whom they can do no good thing whatsoever. We shall not at all hesitate as to preaching that truth.

The absolute necessity of the new birth is also a certainty. We come down with demonstration when we touch that point. We shall never poison our people with the notion that a moral reformation will suffice, but we will over and over again say to them, "Ye must be born again." We have not got into the condition of the Scotch minister, who when old John Macdonald preached to his congregation a sermon to sinners remarked, "Well, Mr. Macdonald, that was a very good sermon which you have preached, but it is very much out of place, for I do not know one single unregenerate person in my congregation." Poor soul, he was in all probability unregenerated himself. No, we dare not flatter our hearers, but we must continue to tell them that they are born sinners, and must be born saints, or they will never see the face of God with acceptance.

The tremendous evil of sin—we shall not hesitate about that. We shall speak on that matter both sorrowfully and positively; and, though some very wise men raise difficult questions about hell, we shall not furl to declare the terrors of the Lord, and the fact that the Lord has said, "These shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal."

Neither will we ever give an uncertain sound as to the glorious truth that salvation is all of grace. If ever we ourselves are saved, we know that sovereign grace alone has done it, and we feel it must be the same with others. We will publish "Grace! grace! grace!" with all our might, living and dying.

We shall be very decided, also, as to justification by faith, for salvation is "Not of works, lest any man should boast." "Life in a look at the Crucified One" will be our message. Trust in the Redeemer will be that saving grace which we will pray the Lord to implant in all our hearers' hearts.

And everything else which we believe to be true in the Scriptures we shall preach with decision. If there be questions which may be regarded as moot, or comparatively unimportant, we shall speak with such a measure of decision about them as may be comely. But points which cannot be moot, which are essential and fundamental, will be declared by us without any stammering, without any inquiring of the people, "What would you wish us to say?"

Yes, and without the apology, "Those are my views, but other people's views may be correct." We ought to preach the gospel, not as our views at all, but as the mind of God—the testimony of Jehovah concerning his own Son, and in reference to salvation for lost men. If we had been entrusted with the making of the gospel, we might have altered it to suit the taste of this modest century, but never having been employed to originate the good news, but merely to repeat it, we dare not stir beyond the record. What we have been taught of God we teach. If we do not do this, we are not fit for our position.

If I have a servant in my house, and I send a message by her to the door, and she amends it, on her own authority, she may take away the very soul of the message by so doing, and she will be responsible for what she has done. She will not long remain in my employ, for I need a servant who will repeat what I say, as nearly as possible, word for word; and if she does so, I am responsible for the message, she is not. If any one should be angry with her on account of what she said, they would be very unjust; their quarrel lies with me, and not with the person whom I employ to act as mouth for me. He that hath God's Word, let him speak it faithfully, and he will have no need to answer gainsayers, except with a "Thus saith the Lord."

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How Can I Be Sure?

In a World That's Constantly Changing...
by Phil Johnson



ere's an exercise for you: Next time you meet a young post-evangelical who is zealous about contextualizing Christianity for these postmodern times, tell him you're completely certain about something spiritually important—preferably a doctrinal proposition he has already expressed uncertainty about. (If he is the type of postmodernist who prefers to express no opinions whatsoever on doctrinal topics, try substitutionary atonement, inerrancy, sola fide, or something of similar import.)

If you can get him to discuss the issue for longer than a sound bite, I predict within ten minutes he'll tell you you're too much of a "modernist."

So give him a look like, "Huh?" and remind him that the position you are defending has historically been associated with a point of view that is known for its militant opposition to modernism. Then ask if he understands what "modernism" is.

He'll most likely respond with a condescending look and tell you in an exasperated tone that—while this all is probably far too complicated for you to understand—you have naively bought into foundationalist epistemology; your worldview has recently been totally discredited; and you need to acquire some epistemic humility.

See, he's familiar with the reductionistic argument that lies at the heart of Beyond Foundationalism, by Stan Grenz and John Franke. Perhaps he has even read the book (or a review of it). At the very least least he'll have seen some of the many Emerging/Emergent/Post-evangelical books or blogs that parrot Grenz's and Franke's all-you-need-to-know-about-epistemology script—namely, that any point of view which is not postmodern (and squeamish about certitude) is nothing more than an outmoded relic of modernity and rooted in foundationalist epistemology.

Earlier this week, a question came up in one of our comment-threads about foundationalism, modernity, and the dripping-faucet accusation that if it weren't for a set of modernist presuppositions you probably don't even realize you have imbibed, you could not possibly justify holding specific theological opinions with any kind of settled conviction. I gave a thumbnail reply to that comment and said I'd try to write a somewhat longer post about it later in the week.

I really don't have time to write a fresh, detailed post on the subject, so here's an excerpt from an e-mail exchange I recently had on the subject. My correspondent had expressed discomfort with the postmodern drift at a certain Christian college, and a professor there gave him the standard Grenz-Franke post-evangelical dodge. After reading something here at PyroManiacs where we expressed concern about the decline of confidence in what the Bible says, he wrote to ask for help:

Phil, the Christian college my church supports seems to be leaning Emergent, and when I talked with some of the professors I was accused of being a "Classic Foundationalist" and that "no one believes that kind of framework anymore"... If you have time for an answer, just a one sentence answer is really all I am looking for... I would like to ask, do you have a dominant epistemological view? If so what is it? (would it be “Classic Foundationalism”?) No. "Classic foundationalism" is inherently rationalistic. Descartes, of course, believed it was possible to lay a foundation for all knowledge with a handful of "self-evident" truths—starting with our own existence ("I think, therefore I am")—and then build a rational system on that foundation. But I reject every worldview and/or epistemology that begins with man as a starting point. It's very popular these days (especially in circles where people are enthralled with postmodernism) to pretend that if someone doesn't accept postmodern skepticism, that person must be a Cartesian foundationalist. But that's a ridiculously reductionistic view and demonstrably false. Ask your professor this: Where did pre-enlightenment and early-Reformation minds think their knowledge came from? Specifically, how did the Reformers explain their knowledge? Calvin answered that question in detail at the very start of his Institutes some 70 years before Rene Descartes was even conceived, and Calvin's answer was neither rationalistic nor man-centered. So it's both a lie and a total anachronism to label the historic Calvinist understanding of human knowledge "foundationalism"—even though that's become an extremely popular pastime in certain Emerging circles. Contemporary epistemology per se is a hobby of philosophers and rationalists who have already rejected the only sound starting point for knowing truth, i. e. that God has revealed Himself, and the fear of Him is therefore the beginning of knowledge (Proverbs 1:7). Remember, some knowledge of God and His truth is innate in every human soul because God placed it there (Romans 1:19-21). He has amplified that knowledge with the more explicit revelation of His Word (the Bible), which He Himself assures us is true, and absolutely certain. In other words, the postmodern notion that no one can really know anything for sure is the fruit of suppressing one's own innate understanding and conscience while denying what God Himself says. (And ironically, the fact that people do this so stubbornly is a fulfillment of what God says in Romans 1). Anyway, that's why the pervasive uncertainty of the postmodern worldview is dangerous. When that point of view is used as a lens through which to read Scripture, it becomes a positively sinful way of thinking and is utterly irreconcilable with biblical Christianity. I don't think there's a fancy name for the view of knowledge the Reformers and other biblically-oriented Protestants held, other than "basic Christianity." Call it "Calvinism" if you like. Or you can label it "the Proverbs 1:7 view" to be even more accurate. Phil Johnson http://www.romans45.org/

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Some Thoughts about Truth

posted by Phil Johnson




ere are a couple more excerpts from The Truth War. These come from the book's introduction, pages xiv-xv and xviii-xx.

Much of the visible church nowadays seems to think Christians are supposed to be at play rather than at war. The idea of actually fighting for doctrinal truth is the furthest thing from most churchgoers' thoughts. Contemporary Christians are determined to get the world to like them—and of course in the process they also want to have as much fun as possible. They are so obsessed with making the church seem "cool" to unbelievers that they can't be bothered with questions about whether another person's doctrine is sound or not. In a climate like that, the thought of even identifying someone else's teaching as false (much less "contending earnestly" for the faith) is a distasteful and dangerously counter-cultural suggestion. Christians have bought into the notion that almost nothing is more "uncool" in the world's eyes than when someone shows a sincere concern about the danger of heresy. After all, the world simply doesn't take spiritual truth that seriously, so they cannot fathom why anyone would. But Christians of all people ought to be most willing to live and die for the truth. Remember, we know the truth, and the truth has set us free (John 8:32). We should not be ashamed to say so boldly (Psalm 107:2). And if called upon to sacrifice for the truth's sake, we need to be willing and prepared to give our lives. Again, that is exactly what Jesus was speaking about when he called His disciples to take up a cross (Matthew 16:24). Cowardice and authentic faith are antithetical. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [E]very attempt to define truth in non-biblical terms has ultimately failed. That's because God is the source of all that exists (Romans 11:36). He alone defines and delimits what is true. He is also the ultimate revealer of all truth. Every truth revealed in nature was authored by Him (Psalm 19:1-6); and some of it is His own self-revelation (Romans 1:20). He gave us minds and consciences to perceive the truth and comprehend right from wrong, and He even wired us with a fundamental understanding of His law written on our hearts (Romans 2:14-15). On top of all that, He gave us the perfect, infallible truth of Scripture (Psalm 19:7-11), which is a sufficient revelation of everything that pertains to life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3; 2 Timothy 3:15-17), in order to lead us to Him as Savior and Lord. Finally, He sent Christ, the very embodiment of truth itself as the culmination of divine revelation (Hebrews 1:1-3). The whole point and the ultimate reason for all of this was for God to reveal Himself to His creatures (Ezekiel 38:23). All truth therefore starts with what is true of God: who He is, what His mind knows, what His holiness entails, what His will approves, and so on. In other words, all truth is determined and properly explained by the being of God. Therefore every notion of His non-existence is by definition untrue. That is precisely what the Bible teaches: "The fool has said in his heart, 'There is no God'" (Psalm 14:1; 53:1). The ramifications of all truth starting with God are profound. Returning to a point we touched on earlier: Here is the reason why once someone denies God, logical consistency will ultimately force to that person to deny all truth. A denial that God exists instantly removes the whole justification for any kind of knowledge. As Scripture says, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge" (Proverbs 1:7). So the necessary starting point for gaining authentic understanding of the fundamental concept of truth itself is an acknowledgment of the one true God. As Augustine said, we believe in order to understand, and our faith in turn is fed and strengthened as we gain better understanding. Both faith in God as He has revealed Himself and the understanding wrought by faith are therefore essential if we hope to apprehend truth in any serious and meaningful sense. Scripture describes all authentic Christians as those who know the truth and have been liberated by it (John 8:32). They believe it with a whole heart (2 Thessalonians 2:13). They obey the truth through the Spirit of God (1 Peter 1:22). And they have received a fervent love for the truth through the gracious work of God in their hearts (2 Thessalonians 2:10). According to the Bible, then, you haven't really grasped the truth at all if there's no sense in which you know it, believe it, submit to it, and love it. Clearly, the existence of absolute truth and its inseparable relationship to the person of God is the most essential tenet of all truly biblical Christianity. Speaking plainly: if you are one of those who questions whether truth is really important, please don't call your belief system "Christianity" because that's not what it is.

Amen.

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If the Lyotard Fits, Wear It

by Phil Johnson

wice recently (here and there) I have mentioned Scot McKnight's article on the Emerging Church from last January's Christianity Today. The article sparked several thoughts when I read it earlier this year. At the time, I was busy preparing for Grace Church's Shepherds' Conference. Then I had a book chapter to write. After that, I taught a week of systematic theology in Italy. Next I went to Atlanta for the FIRE conference. And yadda yadda. By mid-May, blogging about a January CT article seemed so—yesterday. So I was going to let it go.



But every week, it seems, I encounter fresh references to McKnight's article. "Here's an article that will surely ease your mind about Emerging Christianity," someone recently told me (with a kindly pat on the shoulder). "It turns out that most of the movement is really, really good! You just need to understand how diverse it is. See: there are these Five Streams of Influence, and most of them are very positive and healthy developments. . ." And all the things I originally wanted to reply to in that article keep coming back to me.

So here's another one:

Scot McKnight grossly understates the influence of postmodern thinking in the Emerging Church movement. Notice (on the one hand) that McKnight himself can't even manage an introductory description of the movement without using the P-word over and over. But (on the other hand) he dismisses D. A. Carson's Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church with the patented Friends-of-Emerging shrug-off: "Carson's book lacks firsthand awareness and suffers from an overly narrow focus—on Brian McLaren and postmodern epistemology."

For whatever reason, McKnight hates it when the question of postmodern epistemology comes up in the emerging Conversation—regardless of whether friends or critics are the ones raising the issue. "Instead of epistemology, the EM is concerned with ecclesiology—how to 'do church,'" he insists.

But most (if not all) of the typical Emerging innovations in ecclesiology and methodology are in fact rooted in the postmodern epistemological shift, and McKnight is simply wrong if he seriously wants to deny that. In fact (and here's something you will rarely hear me say), on this point, McKnight is wrong and McLaren is right. Practically everything that makes the Emerging movement distinctive is closely related to postmodernism's cynical attitude about knowledge and truth—and that includes all five "streams" identified by McKnight.



Of course, there was no way for McKnight to deny that postmodernism is a major influence (if not the definitive ingredient) in the movement as a whole. Still, he tries to mitigate that admission every way he can think of. Instantly after listing postmodernism as "a second stream of emerging water," he reflexively takes a defensive tone: "Postmodernity cannot be reduced to the denial of truth."

Well, OK. That's true, but what serious critic ever said otherwise? Indeed, Postmodernists don't generally "deny" anything outright. Instead, the usual postmodern response to truth-claims is suspicious skepticism. But even so, it still wouldn't be right to "reduce" postmodernism to that. No credible critic would. So McKnight's comment sets up straw man—a caricature that backhandedly misrepresents why critics are wary of postmodern epistemologies. Perhaps he would benefit from another reading of Carson.

I'm certain Carson would gladly agree (as I do) that postmodernity cannot be "reduced" to the denial of all truth. On the other hand, postmodernists can legitimately be charged with a general reluctance to affirm truth unequivocally. That's the issue McKnight needs to come to grips with, because it does have a seriously adverse effect on the way lots of postmodernists—including several of the most vocal leading voices in the Emerging conversation—handle (and mishandle) the revealed truth of Scripture.

Anyway, after that brief, gratuitous remark about what postmodernism isn't, McKnight gives a not-particularly-enlightening explanation of what postmodernism is. He says (in typically postmodern terms): "It is the collapse of inherited metanarratives . . . like those of science or Marxism."

He seems determined to downplay the problems with Postmodernism's know-nothing approach to epistemology. He makes an offhanded reference to Jamie Smith's Who's Afraid of Postmodernism?: Taking Derrida, Lyotard and Foucault To Church in order to buttress the preposterous suggestion that despite postmodernism's addiction to uncertainty, "such thinking is compatible, in some ways, with classical Augustinian epistemology."

What does McKnight mean by that, you ask? Just this: "Emerging upholds faith seeking understanding."

Yeah, right. "Doubt seeking justification" would be my own assessment of the dominant Emerging approach to epistemology, but let's not get sidetracked with an argument about that just now.



McKnight next borrows some categories from Doug Pagitt to classify three different categories of attitudes toward postmodernism within the Emerging Church. He says some in the movement want to "minister to postmoderns, others with postmoderns, and still others as postmoderns."

It is true enough that the attitude toward postmodernism within the Emerging movement is not uniform. Driscoll seems to belong to category one of the Pagitt/McKnight taxonomy and McLaren probably exemplifies category three. (Although these days, McLaren himself might very well describe himself as a Class-Two Emergent. In fact, I'd think most in the movement would want to place themselves in the center category, because people who are enthralled with postmodernism love those Hegelian syntheses, and they hate to be labeled. No true postmodernist would therefore ever admit to being one.)

McKnight suggests that critics of Emerging spirituality are usually preoccupied with the Class-Three Emergents because they stand out (and thus presumably make the easiest targets). In McKnight's words, "The third kind of emerging postmodernity attracts all the attention."



I think McKnight has misunderstood the critics' concern. My one complaint with our Emerging friends is that (whether they formally embrace postmodern epistemologies or not) they tend to be far too accommodating when they meet postmodernism face to face. Rather than answering postmodern skepticism and refuting it with biblical truth proclaimed confidently, they typically try to tiptoe around the sensitivities of the postmodern unbeliever.

But it is nevertheless quite true that Class-Three Emergents are by far the most problematic. In McKnight's words, "[They] have chosen to minister as postmoderns. That is, they embrace the idea that we cannot know absolute truth, or, at least, that we cannot know truth absolutely."

Now, judging from what's written in the Emergent/Emerging blogosphere, I think that is a far more popular perspective among the rank and file in the Emerging Church movement than McKnight cares to admit. But without George Barna's help, I don't know that it would be possible to cite actual statistics that would prove whether my pessimism or McKnight's optimism is more justified.

It's true, however, that the most troublesome voices in the Emerging Church movement are those who plainly and simply have embraced postmodern skepticism about truth, knowledge, and certainty. I would include Chris Seay, for example, in that number. (I wouldn't be surprised if Seay himself objects to that characterization and says I'm "labeling" him unjustly, but again, that's a predictably postmodern thing to say anyway. I'm sticking by my assessment for now, and hopefully what I quote below from Seay himself will be sufficient to explain why.)

Seay is a third-generation pastor in the Houston area. I can't resist mentioning in passing that one of his books is The Gospel According to Tony Soprano: An Unauthorized Look Into the Soul of TV's Top Mob Boss and His Family. That has nothing to do with any point I'm making, but it does illustrate that Emerging Christianity is no less tawdry and shallow than the seeker-sensitive approach that most "Emerging" Christians emerged from—and which they claim to be in rebellion against.

Especially Seay. He is legendary for the way he savages his own father's and grandfather's pragmatic styles of ministry.

So on one of Seay's recent podcasts, an interviewer was asking him about his struggle with youthful rebellion against the beliefs of his parents. Here's Seay's answer:

My bigger question was could we find truth, right? So, um, that we could believe it was true. But who's really to determine what is true? And I still am at a place that I question the reality of objectivity, and what "objectivity" really means. So who can say what is objectively true? Unless you could actually be objective, which none of us are capable of because we can't get to a third place beyond where we are.

That's actually a much better summary of the postmodern attitude toward truth than McKnight gave. But it isn't really a Christian position at all. Note: Seay can't answer the question "who's really to determine what is true?"

That's a serious problem, and it's a much more widespread problem throughout all streams of the Emerging Church movement than I think Scot McKnight wants to acknowledge. I do read a lot of Emerging and Friend-of-Emergent blogs. I see what the grassroots participants in the emerging conversation are saying.

Now, let's be clear here: The Friends of Emergent need to be at least half as fair with their critics as they want their critics to be with them. No intelligent, rational, serious-minded student of theology would ever insist that we have a "complete"—i.e., perfect—understanding of any doctrine.

Postmodernism thinks that admission is fatal to all knowledge. If we don't know anything perfectly, we can't ultimately be certain about anything, right?

That's not a question that suddenly occurred to the people of God now that the age of postmodernism has enlightened us about what true humility really is. Thoughtful Christians have contemplated that same question in every generation, and the historic Protestant confessions answer it plainly.

First, God's Word is truth. It is pure truth, revealed by God, and it is the sole and sufficient final arbiter between what's true and what's false.

Second, while we may not understand any doctrine exhaustively, we can nonetheless be confident that what we do know accurately is true. That's the beauty of propositions. They recognize that truth by definition includes facts, and even though no finite set of facts or propositions ever exhausts all truth about God, we can know lots of true facts about God, and we can even know God Himself (albeit through a glass, darkly) because those facts, and God Himself, have been revealed to us by God Himself in Scripture.

So (lo and behold!) I can actually affirm penal substitution without being guilty of "reducing" the gospel to only that one point.

Mark Dever was saying something very similar in a very fine article which McKnight objected to two Easters ago. Look how far we have come since then. The "conversation" is going nowhere fast, it seems.

With this post, we introduce the first of several original motivational posters based on the jargon of Emerging Christianity. Sixteen are already in the pipeline, and we'll be releasing more in the days to come. Soon we'll post a link where you can view the full collection and even download hi-res copies suitable for poster-size printing. Watch this space.

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Mystery Quotation: knowledge

by Dan Phillips

It's high time for another round of Mystery Quotation. Remember, no tricks—

1. Use your memory (or guessing) alone
2. No electronic tools
3. No Googling

Here 'tis:

Reader, If it be not strong upon thy heart to practise what thou readest, to what end dost thou read? To increase thy own condemnation? If thy light and knowledge be not turned into practice, the more knowing man thou art, the more miserable man thou wilt be in the day of recompense; thy light and knowledge will more torment thee than all the devils in hell. Thy knowledge will be that rod that will eternally lash thee, and that scorpion that will for ever bite thee, and that worm that will everlastingly gnaw thee; therefore read, and labour to know, that thou mayest do, or else thou art undone for ever. When Demosthenes was asked, what was the first part of an orator, what the second, what the third? he answered, Action; the same may I say. If any should ask me, what is the first, the second, the third part of a Christian? I must answer, Action; as that man that reads that he may know, and that labours to know that he may do, will have two heavens — a heaven of joy, peace and comfort on earth, and a heaven of glory and happiness after death.

Appropriate thoughts, I think, for readers (—and writers!) of Biblically contentful blogs.

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