Comments on: Analyzing “Emergent”

By: “Emergent” Superior? at impleri

“Emergent” Superior? at impleri — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 20:13:28 +0000

[...] 5: Analyzing “Emergent” [...]

By: “Emergent” epistemology at impleri

“Emergent” epistemology at impleri — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 20:12:51 +0000

[...] 5: Analyzing “Emergent” [...]

By: Targets of “Emergent” at impleri

Targets of “Emergent” at impleri — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 20:10:43 +0000

[...] 5: Analyzing “Emergent” [...]

By: “Emergent” and Culture at impleri

“Emergent” and Culture at impleri — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 20:09:45 +0000

[...] 5: Analyzing “Emergent” [...]

By: “Emergent” at impleri

“Emergent” at impleri — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 20:08:14 +0000

[...] 5: Analyzing “Emergent” [...]

By: christopher

christopher — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 22:04:45 +0000

i do agree with you the the EC has been leaning towards some kind of subjectivity, but i don’t think it’s clear as to what kind of subjectivity. Some strands show more relativist leanings, while others show more of the Kierkegaardian leaning.
i find myself leaning more towards Kierkegaard’s subjectivity and not that of relativism. From there, it is obvious as to how “open” the orthodoxy will be. The reason why i don’t consider myself part of the “Emergent” crowd and yet consider myself “postmodern” is because of these lines that have been drawn. For the most part, though, the EC does seem to be more community-focused when it comes to theology in which, as you said, “all rely on each other for mutual upbuilding.”

By: gaardian

gaardian — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 20:23:03 +0000

It seems to me that emergence and the fundamentalism to which it reacts are a symptom of the subject/object split that has taken place within modernist thought. While fundamentalism goes hard to the objective side to combat an objective scientific framework with an objective biblical framework, the emergent church rejects this notion leaning ever harder towards a more subjective grounding of religious truth in the experience of the believers.
This condition seems to explain the EC’s movement, especially on liturgy.
The question that I have is how does the EC avoid sliding into a kind of subjective Pentacostalism in which the measure for adequacy becomes the spiritual feeling that one experiences in the church or bible reading? I am concerned about this because I worry about the EC’s more broad conception of doctrine as you said earlier as “not wrong” seems to slide into a religious consumerism in which a variety of views on vital issues such as justification etc. may be tolerated to get people to come to church.
As a student of theology I wonder if this undermines a monotheism which prides itself on the search for a single source of reality and experience. Instead of a church working out within its institutional self what is the best answer (and this process never ends) we stop short with a plurality of answers in which one may or may not be as adequate as the next. This to me seems antithetical to the idea of a church as a community in which all rely on eachother for mutual upbuilding.