As I write it is Monday afternoon. I just exited Justin Taylor’s breakout session entitled: “A New Kind of Christianity? A Look at the Emerging Church Movement.” Playing off of the conference theme “Humble Orthodoxy,” this is certainly an appropriate consideration given the fact that so many within the EM (Emerging Church Movement) seek to hijack the concept of humility, trying to force it to equal uncertainty.

Let me simply be honest upfront. I was a bit curious to see just how objective Taylor would be given his ties to Wayne Grudem and John Piper. There is a tendency within Reformed Circles to give more weight to the negatives about the EM while ignoring many of the goods that are indeed coming from the movement. I say that not as a proponent of “emergence” but knowing that I have been guilty of these exact things. With that being said however, I feel that Taylor was very fair and evenhanded (but then again, that could be just because I agreed with most of what he said!).

He began by humbly admitting that he is not an expert on the movement. He was not there to simply provide conclusions, but rather, to help us to learn to think biblically for ourselves, using Dr. Mohler of a good example of how this is done. He opened with the biblical exhortations that “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction” (Proverbs 1:7) and that we must actively call out for this wisdom (Proverbs 2:1-5). Directly applying this to the considerations at hand, Taylor admonished that we must “understand before we evaluate.”

The problem in understanding EM though is that there is not a standard, uniform definition. Taylor did a good job of distinguishing between Emergent (an organization) and “emerging” (a movement, dialogue, discussion, conversation, etc. ad naseum). He noted some popular definitions that ranged from calling it a “collection of high profile churches that are youth-oriented,” to asking “aren’t those the people that use a lot of candles and couches in church?” He noted that we might go to three different sources for a definition: 1) the Sources, 2) the Critics, 3) Sociologists, etc. He rightly argued that in seeking to “understand before we evaluate,” we must start with the sources but we cannot stop there.

Going only to the emergents to understand EM, says Taylor is like going to the personal ads. Everyone always says something like: “Hobbies included listening, long walks on the beach and giving people flowers.” No one says: “Hobbies are drinking a lot of Mountain Dew, staying up late to play video games and I have bad breath.” In order to get the full picture, we must seek input from all angles, not just the “personal ad” perspective.

Taylor lists a couple of different lists of “Four Things that EM is Concerned With” One of the lists, taken from Wikipedia, the first list includes: 1) Authenticity, 2) Missional Living, 3) Narrative Theology, 4) Christlikeness and the second list taken from Emergent includes: 1) Commitment to God in the way of Jesus, 2) The church in all its forms, 3) Committed to God’s world and 4) Committed to one another. Notice that in all of these affirmations is the implicit charge that the “other people” don’t do these things.

Taylor rightly argues that EM cannot fully be understood apart from Postmodernism, which cannot be understood apart from Modernism, which in turn, cannot be understood apart from Premodernism. Broadly (VERY broadly) speaking, Taylor argues that Premodernism might be summarized in the word “supernatural,” Modernism in the word “scientific” and Postmodernism in the bumper sticker “Question Authority.” While these are admittedly oversimplified, they are at least somewhere to begin.

Here Taylor made the interesting note from Michael Horton who argues that “Postmodern is actually Most-Modern.” In other words, if the trend in Modernism was reason, then Postmodernism is simply the extension and internalization of reason to the point that it becomes the key deciding factor for many.

Taylor continued to “understand” EM by citing Ed Stetzer “3 Movements Within the Movement and then moved to the “evaluate” phase. He quoted J.I. Packer’s statement that “a half-truth masquerading as the whole truth becomes a complete untruth.” In other words, some of what EM says is true, but the fact that much of it is not means that we ought to exercise extreme caution, especially when dealing with the likes of Brian McLaren (more on that in a bit).

Taylor gave four broad categories by which to consider EM: 1) God’s Word. Here he noted the move towards “narrative” over “proposition” and argued that “the first thing out of Satan’s mouth is not a lie but a question (Genesis 3:1). The warning here was particularly against McLaren who seems to pride himself on “questions,” which in reality work to undermine the authority of Scripture. Moving back to the narrative/proposition argument, Taylor noted that Scripture is more than propositions, but it is not less than propositions. In other words, yes it is narrative, but those narratives include propositional truth, without which we no longer have the Gospel.

Second was the Cross/Atonement. Here he noted that many emergents argue that the atonement is “bigger than substitutionary atonement.” Again, while that might be true, it is certainly not less than substitutionary atonement and we are not free to question or redefine the essential elements of atonement or we are very close to renouncing our faith altogether. He noted Steve Chalke’s book “The Lost Message of Jesus” in which he refers to the traditional view of substitutionary atonement as “divine child abuse,” he calls it “twisted” and “morally dubious.” Brian McLaren refers to this as the book which could “help save Jesus from Christianity.”

Next, Taylor noted the ideas of Truth and Knowledge. Again referring to McLaren (because as Taylor noted, he’s written the most, many look to him as a spokesperson and he says the most outrageous things), Taylor noted that we cannot accuse McLaren and others of disbelieving in absolute truth. They simply believe that we cannot know truth absolutely. Taylor noted that “doubt is not a virtue” and that many “confuse exhaustive knowledge with certain knowledge.” In other words, I cannot know God exhaustively, but I can know Him with certainty.

Last, Taylor touched on Sexual Ethics, noting that many are now questioning whether premarital sex is actually sin, and of course touching on McLaren’s recent comments on homosexuality and his call for a “five year moratorium on pronouncements.” Here Taylor noted that “we have to call a spade a spade” and note that McLaren’s comments are simply foolishness. Not that he is a fool in the pejorative sense, but in the biblical sense; there is a fog that prevents him from seeing God’s clear moral commands. Taylor referenced 2 Timothy 3:7 which reads: “always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth” as an apt description of McLaren.

Before questions, Taylor asked “What’s the Alternative?” In other words, how do we move on some of the valid criticisms raised by EM and avoid the extremes of McLaren and others? Taylor argued that first we must adopt a “humble orthodoxy” and reclaim biblical humility from those who would define it as uncertainty. Secondly, we need what he called a “contextual confessionalism.” In other words, we must learn to communicate the Gospel in culturally-sensitive ways without sacrificing its nonessential elements, citing Tim Keller as an example of how to see this done well. Next, Taylor reminded us that we must “speak the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15), which is a parallel to the call for “humble orthodoxy.” Lastly, we must always turn the critical gaze inward and see if there is any validity in the criticisms being offered up by EM.

Overall, I thought that Taylor’s presentation was fair. Of course he leans toward one side, everyone does, but he intentionally tried to focus on many of the postive aspects coming from EM while not turning a blind eye to the many negatives as well. I’d love to hear thoughts from anyone else who was able to attend.