Update 3: Apparently I misunderstood Doug’s post on fear. I am sorry for suggesting those who critique him are driven by fear. Instead, Doug means a certain kind of attitude and vitriolic reaction is “driven from fear.” Sorry for mischaracterizing you, Doug.
Update 2: An important follow-up that explains my journey in, through, and beyond Emergent.
Update: Another one who doesn’t care about the emerging church anymore.
Once upon a time I was enamored by the “I-am-not-a-movement-but-a-conversation” known as the emerging church (In fact, at my seminary I’ve been known as Emergent Jeremy!) Five years ago, I stumbled upon an “emerging” author known as Brian McLaren (even attending his church for a stint). I gobbled-up his “A New Kind of Christian” trilogy because it’s question-asking permissive narrative gave flesh to the phantom that was haunting me at the time: What the hell is this whole Christian thing about?!
Pastor Dan was my doppleganger; Neo my mentor.
Five years ago I entered a period of faith deconstruction (one particular post I wrote that I was fond of at the time was, “10 Ways to Deconstruct Your Faith“) and reconstruction the likes of which I had never experienced in my life. For the first time I was taking my faith in Jesus Christ seriously and asking a whole lot of questions.
These questions were healthy and freeing and opened up a whole new world to explore and enjoy. For this I am grateful to the emerging church conversation of which I’ve been apart for several years. As my relationship with Emergent progressed, though, I began to wonder why it was cool and trendy to disregard Paul, pity the fool who believed in real judgment, ignore the cross, and downplay individual participation in rebellion/sin.
In short: I became uncomfortable and have grown downright tired of the theology that has bubbled-up out of the emerging church.
I’m not exactly sure when my saucy love affair with emergent and liberal Christianity ended. My “I don’t” isn’t as crystalized as my “I do.”
Maybe it was when I read Pelagius‘ writings and realized much of Emergent theology really does mirror his 5th century theology.
Maybe it was after the former head of Emergent Village, Tony Jones, rejected original sin, a historic part of the Rule of Faith, claiming that it is “neither biblically, philosophically, nor scientifically tenable. “.
Maybe it was when I read Fredrick Schleiermacher and realized his and modern liberalism’s vapid, gospel-less faith are being repackaged and popularized to an unsuspecting, ignorant Christian community as a wholesome alternative to what has been.
Maybe it was after I read Karl Barth and realized the natural theology pushed by popular emergent theologians is not revitalizing Christian faith, but killing it; it is the same kind of faith Barth so vociferously fought against in order to preserve the historic Rule of Faith.
Maybe it was after reading a leading emerging church voice suggest that God and grace and the Kingdom of God are not tied directly and exclusively to Jesus Christ; ultimately its not really about Jesus, but about a vanilla, generalized World-Spirit god (lower-case “g”).
Regardless, what I’ve come to realize is that while Emergent may believe it is believing differently—and consequently believe it is offering the world a different Christianity that is more believable than the current form—in reality the emerging church simply believes otherly; the form of Christianity that this version of Christianity pushes is neither innovative nor different: it is a form of Christianity other-than the versions that currently exist but mirror those that have already existed.
The Christian faith that the authors, leaders, and followers within Emergent believe “feels alive, sustainable, and meaningful in our day” (ACWB, 2) is really forms of faith from other days. They combine other forms of faith that both the Communion of Saints and Spirit of God have deemed foreign to the Holy Scriptures, Rule of Faith, and gospel of Jesus Christ throughout the history of Christ’s Bride, the Church.
I hope my friends from Emergent West Michigan won’t claim this is a “heresy hunt” and suggest I am no better than the hyper-fundamentalists who exalt themselves as Truth Defenders and tirelessly work to expose false teachers in the church. I think this suggestion would be grossly unfair for 2 reasons:
1) I am bidding “au revoir” as one who has been on the inside of and involved with this conversation for half a decade. I attended Brian McLaren’s church; I helped host the Church Basement Roadshow at my church for Tony Jones, Doug Pagitt, and Mark Scandrette; I’ve had several interactions with Doug Pagitt, someone I like as a person and who even introduced me to my wife and attended our wedding; and I am personal friends with the coordinator of the Emergent West Michigan cohort who is also a member of the new Coordinating Council for Emergent Village. In short, I am an insider who is simply leaving the inside.
2) I approach this effort as one who has pursued academic training in biblical studies and systematic/historical theology for nearly three years. I’m NOT trying to play the “education card” here, but rather offer this bit of information to give context for my leaving. I am finishing up the Master of Divinity (M.Div) and have begun the Master of Theology (Th.M) in Historical Theology. Specifically, I’ve spent a number of hours reading many primary theological sources from the Early, Reformation, and Modern Church, giving me a broad picture of the historical “movement” of church dogmatics. While I have been trained in a more conservative institution with Baptist roots, I am a free thinker who is familiar with the theological arguments from both sides of the aisle and historical progression of theology.
In his book, The Story of Christian Theology, Roger Olson says, “The story of Christian theology is the story of Christian reflection on salvation.” The same is true today. Over the next several weeks I am taking the liberty of taking two Emergent “theologians” to task: Doug Pagitt and Brian McLaren. Like Olson, I believe any theological inquiry is by nature soteriological, by nature reflection on salvation, which means the stakes are high. Both men have taken the opportunity to make public, written commentary on the nature of salvation, on the gospel, whether they know it or not; I doubt they are ignorant of their effort.
I would like to publicly, theologically interact with their own theological interactions.
First, I am posting a series based on a theological examination I undertook for my Early Church Th.M class called, “Pagitt and Pelagius: An Examination of a Neo-Pelagianism.” Many have suggested Doug Pagitt is dishonest about his Pelagianism, an early church teaching that was declared heretical. I thought it would be interesting to read all of Pelagius‘ known works (including an interesting, little read commentary on the Book of Romans) along side Pagitt’s
Second, I will post on the soon-to-be released book by Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity. In it he discusses the top 10 questions facing the Christian faith. In some ways it’s a tell-all that should finally give his critics what they’ve asked and wanted for years: answers. From what I have read so far in an advance copy, this is truly going to be a line in the sand that will determine where people are in their understanding of the nature of salvation and commitment to the historic Rule of Faith, which is why I want to tackle it question by question. Along the way I will provide a theological assessment in order to understand his take on human nature, sin and rebellion, the nature of Jesus Christ, the cross and salvation, resurrection, judgment, and God. Look for this interaction at the start of March. (A friend of mine has already begun such an interaction, here.)
Recently, Doug Pagitt wrote on his blog (my apologies for misunderstanding Doug’s original point. He and others brought correction, so thanks!) and Brian McLaren said in a video that those of us who take them and others to task are held in bondage to fear and thoroughly un-loving; my motivation for analyzing the theology and beliefs of leaders within the emerging church is fear-based and inherently un-love. One word: ridiculous. I am not fearful; this has nothing to do with fear. In fact, the loving thing to do is in fact confront, prod, and question.
Why, then, am I doing this? Two words: Grand Rapids. I am disturbed and deeply saddened by what I see happening within evangelicalism, from both sides of the aisle (I could say as much about Rick Warren, Joel Osteen, and James Dobson as I will about Doug Pagitt and Brian McLaren. That will have to wait, though.) especially within my hometown.
Plenty of people are disaffected—even offended and wounded— by the type of Christianity offered here.
And they have bailed.
But here’s the thing: these disaffected Christians of my generation—and younger and older—still long for an intimate, rooted connection to Christian spirituality that is fresh, new, and vibrant. After leaving what they’ve known, they search after and pursue a “Christianity worth believing
Yet while these fresh forms appear different and exciting, they are an “other” form from a forgotten age, a re-packaging of what has already been, what has already happened. Because most American Christians—even the ones from the Christian Mecca known as Grand Rapids—are biblically and theologically ignorant, they don’t realize what they are reading and pursuing.
So for Grand Rapids I write; for the Grand Rapids church I analyze in hopes it will better understand this other faith that is, in my estimation, foreign and inconsistent with the Church’s Rule of Faith and Holy Scriptures.
Popularity: 4% [?]
A 4 week series based on a paper called “DIGGING UP THE PAST: KARL BARTH AS FOE TO THE EMERGING CHURCH ON THE DOCTRINE OF REVELATION.” Non-identified citations relate to Rollin’s It’s Really All About God CD equals Barth’s Church Dogmatics.
Series Posts
1—Introduction
2—“God Speaks”
3—“God’s Revelation is Jesus Christ”
3—Conclusion
CONCLUSION
Thanks to these emerging leaders, there is now growing confusion within the Church over both the extent to which we may know God and the manner in which He has revealed Himself. It is clear that Rollins understands God as hyper-transcendent and Wholly Other, believing He is far more hidden and concealed than Christianity acknowledges. For Rollins we can neither truly name God nor actually describe Him, because He is not really, genuinely revealed. Practically, this cashes out as what Rollins calls an “a/theistic Christianity.”
An a/theistic Christian can be said to operate with a discourse that makes claims about God while simultaneously acknowledging that these claims are provisional, uncertain, and insufficient; our questioning of God isn’t really questioning of God Himself but only a means of questioning our understanding of God. (98) By implication this would mean the revelation we have of God is not complete or real enough to understand, question, and know Him. This is why Rollins ultimately insists that speaking of God is really only speaking about our understanding of God, not God himself. (32)
Selmanovic, while acknowledging a real revelation of God that can be experienced by humans, believes that revelation is neither exclusively tied to Jesus Christ nor contained within Christianity. For Him, it’s really all about “God.” God is a vapid, generalized World-Spirit (This is the same language Fredrick Schleiermacher uses in his book, On Religion.) that is encased in all religions, rather than exclusively revealed through Jesus Christ, on the one hand, and the Church, on the other. He is unsatisfied with the assertion that Christianity testifies to God’s Story of Rescue and that rescue is exclusively found in Jesus Christ. In fact, the grace of God to which the Holy Scriptures and Church has testified to for generations isn’t even unique to the Christ Event or Christianity. Instead, it is independent from both and common in the world’s histories, stories, and religions. God is present everywhere and in every person and the Christian faith cannot insist on an exclusive revelation in Jesus Christ or the Church. In the end, it is the kingdom of God that reveals God to the world, a thing that is trans-religious and separate from even Jesus Christ Himself. It is a revelation in-and-of-itself which is the gospel, a thing uncontrolled by Christianity and Jesus.
Upon surveying the writings of both Rollins and Selmanovic, one wonders why they are self-described Christians and committed to Christianity at all. If God doesn’t really speak, why posture one’s self as a listener? If God is not wholly and exclusively revealed in Jesus Christ, why commit one’s self to Him and His Story? In response to both religious thinkers, Barth asserts God does speak and He is revealed in Jesus Christ. For Barth, there is real, genuine knowledge of God because God has chosen to reveal Himself to humanity. This divine self-disclosure is in such away that humans can really, genuinely know Him. Barth declares that there is a readiness of God to be known, a knowledge that is “clear and certain.” While the knowledge that humans have is not through their own ingenuity and gumption, but through grace, God is so made up that He can be known by us.
Though apprehending revelation does not happen through our own power and command, it does happen and has happened. Barth makes clear that ultimately Jesus Christ is the point at which the world truly knows God. While others may suggest God is best defined by Jesus Christ, Barth insists He is only defined by Jesus. God is utterly and wholly revealed in Jesus Christ; to know Jesus is to know God. In fact, the only way to know God in intimate relationship is through the grace found in and through Jesus Christ. Barth maintains that God’s grace is only and intimately connected to Christ, rather than other sources and other religious faiths. Finally, Barth warns of the danger of selecting competing centers of revelation apart from Jesus Christ, like the kingdom of God.
In His Church Dogmatics volume on The Doctrine of God, Barth makes clear, “Theology guides the language of the Church, so far as it concretely reminds her that in all circumstances it is fallible human work, which in the matter of relevance or irrelevance lies in the balance, and must obedience to grace, if it is to be well done.” (CD I,1:2) Here Barth acknowledges the difficult task of “theologizing,” of speaking of God and His acts. While that speech is fallible and vacillates between relevance or irrelevance, requiring a healthy dose of grace along the way, it needs to happen nonetheless. Every generation needs to cherish, protect, and contend for the Rule of Faith given by our Lord once to the Church. If not, there is a real danger of precipitating into darkness and confusion. It is clear from the writings of these two theologians and thinkers that a shift is occurring within the Church regarding an important piece of that Rule, revelation.
Though historic Christian orthodoxy has consistently held to the real, genuine knowability of God and that knowledge being fully and exclusively revealed (outside of creation) in Jesus Christ, there are some who insist otherwise. There is a growing number who shove God so far into the clouds that nothing can be concretely said of Him. Others still, and perhaps more dangerously so, find God outside Jesus Christ, insisting God is in every person, every community, every religion. God and His grace is no longer exclusively revealed in Jesus Christ, but possessed by other faiths, too. It is worth ending with Barth’s warning as a reminder for these and other theologians: “Any deviation, any attempt to evade Jesus Christ in favour of another supposed revelation of God, or any denial of the fulness of God’s presence in Him, will precipitate us into darkness and confusion.” (CD II,1:319) May this not be the end of these or others who claim Jesus Christ as Lord.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barth, Karl. Church Dogmatics, vol I, 1: The Doctrine of the Word of God. Translated by G.T. Thomson. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1955.
________. Church Dogmatics, vol II, 1: The Doctrine of God. Edited by G.W. Bromiley and T.F. Torrance. Translated by T.H.L Parker, W.B. Johnson, Harold Knight, and J.L.M. Haire. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1957.
Erdman, Chris. “Digging Up the Past: Karl Barth (the Reformed Giant) as Friend to the Emerging Church,” Pages 236-243 in An Emergent Manifesto of Hope. Edited by Doug Pagitt and Tony Jones. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2007.
Jones, Tony. “Introduction: Friendship, Faith, and Going Somewhere Together.” Pages 11-15 in An Emergent Manifesto of Hope. Edited by Doug Pagitt and Tony Jones. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2007.
Rollins, Pete. How (Not) To Speak of God. Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2006.
Selmanovic, Samir. “The Sweet Problem of Inclusivism.” Pages 11-15 in An Emergent Manifesto of Hope. Edited by Doug Pagitt and Tony Jones. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2007.
________. It’s Really All About God: Reflections of a Muslim Atheist Jewish Christian. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2009.
Popularity: 4% [?]
A 4 week series based on a paper called “DIGGING UP THE PAST: KARL BARTH AS FOE TO THE EMERGING CHURCH ON THE DOCTRINE OF REVELATION.” Non-identified citations relate to Rollin’s It’s Really All About God CD equals Barth’s Church Dogmatics.
Series Posts
1—Introduction
2—“God Speaks”
3—“God’s Revelation is Jesus Christ”
3—Conclusion
“GOD’S REVELATION IS JESUS CHRIST”
Not only do leaders within the emerging church question our ability to know God and wonder about the extent to which God has truly spoken, the center of that knowledge and speaking is questions, too. The historic Christian faith has taken seriously Jesus’ own claim in John 14:9 that, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” In the past, it was believed that God the Father is revealed in God the Son, the One True God is only found in Jesus Christ. Now, however, even this central idea to the Rule of Faith is questioned.
In an essay in An Emergent Manifesto of Hope, Samir Selmanovic participates in this questioning when he claims, “We do believe that God is best defined by the historical revelation in Jesus Christ, but to believe that God is limited to it would be an attempt to manage God. If one holds that Christ is confined to Christianity, one has chosen a god that is not sovereign.”(emphasis mine) (129) In fact, he writes elsewhere that the revelation of the grace of God through Jesus Christ, which is so central to the Rule of Faith of historic Christianity, is not exclusively limited to that faith or person, either. “We Christians have insisted that our revelation is the only container and only dispenser of grace. The rest of the world, graced from within, has been steadily proving us wrong. Grace is independent.” (52) The revelation that has come through the Holy Scriptures and Jesus Christ himself are not the only containers of God’s grace; grace is found outside the Christian Story. According to Selmanovic, neither the revelation of God Himself nor of His grace is contained or confined to Jesus Christ.
In his newly released book, It’s Really All About God: Reflections of a Muslim Atheist Jewish Christian, Selmanovic continues his initial thoughts on God’s Christian containment by arguing, “to say God has decided to visit all humanity through only one particular religion is a deeply unsatisfying assertion about God.”(9) In order to protect his argument in favor of religious pluralism, he claims that none of us are in charge of God, God refuses to be owned and to comply with our religious constructs. (16, 18) In fact, “As long as those of us who are Christians insist on staying enclosed in our own world of meanings, we have nothing more to say to the world. Without recognizing God, grace, and goodness outside of the boundaries we have made and without the possibility of expanding our understanding of God, grace, and goodness, we have come to a place where Christianity as we know it must either end or experience another Exodus.” (60-61)
In experiencing another Exodus, Christians must acknowledge that God is everywhere—in every person, every community, and all creation—otherwise we will loose the basis for seeing God anywhere. (61, 64) Ultimately, Selmanovic insists that “the Christianity that claims exclusive possession of God’s revelation in the person of Jesus has hijacked that same God from the world.”(68) After reducing Christianity to one of three monotheistic “religions,” Selmanovic shows his real hand: “People want God, but not one who is the captive of a religion. They want an unmanaged God. Free God. That’s where hope comes from.” (90, 92) Apparently, Selmanovic also desires a God free from religion, Christianity, Jesus Christ.
Barth paints a very different picture in his Dogmatics, however. He boldly asserts that God’s revelation is only, exclusively in Jesus Christ. While Selmanovic believes that God is simply best defined by the historical revelation in Jesus Christ, Barth insists God is only defined by Jesus Christ. To suggest that God is not limited to “the historical revelation in Jesus Christ” is foreign to the Holy Scriptures and historic Rule of Faith. Barth argues this very point when he writes, “[God] is wholly and utterly in His revelation in Jesus Christ.”(CD II,1:75) He also makes plain that we must know Jesus in order to know God, because “in him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 2:3). (CD II,1:252) Furthermore, Barth makes clear that what he describes in his Dogmatics is the knowledge of God as found in the knowledge of Jesus; unless Jesus Christ is the reference point for the revelation of God, “we have not described it in faith, or as the knowledge of faith, and therefore not in any sense as the true knowledge of God.” (CD II,1:252)
While Selmanovic may believe that “Grace did not start with Christianity and will not end with Christianity. It is a common thing in this world,” (51) Barth argues, “When we appeal to God’s grace, we appeal to the grace of the incarnation and to [Jesus Christ] as the One in whom, because He is the eternal Son of God, knowledge of God was, is and will be present originally and properly.” (CD II,1:252) For Barth, the revelation of God through grace is intimately and only connected to Jesus Christ because His own act of divine self-disclosure is bound up with Him, too. Jesus Christ is given to the whole being of God, not simply a part of Him, and God is not known at all unless He is known in His entirety as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Creator, Reconciler, and Redeemer. (CD II,1:51-52) It is in His grace through Jesus Christ that God is known as Reconciler and Redeemer. Rather than experiencing the knowledge of God and His grace apart from Jesus Christ, both are intimately connected to Him. It is only in Jesus Christ that we know and understand God and His grace, which is revealed in the gospel that defines life.
Selmanovic goes on to rhetorically wonder, “Is our religion the only one that understands the true meaning of life? Or does God place his truth in others too? Well, God decides, and not us. The gospel is not our gospel, but the gospel of the kingdom of God, and what belongs to the kingdom of God cannot be hijacked by Christianity.” (“The Sweet Problem of Inclusivism,” 194) In this argument Selmanovic does two things: 1) the Kingdom of God is not connect simply to Jesus; and 2) the Kingdom of God itself is a vehicle of what Barth call’s “divine immanence.”
Barth, however, makes it clear that God’s Kingdom is not known at all apart from Jesus Christ, and doing otherwise establishes a Christian heresy. As he warns, “Christian heresies spring from the fact that man does not take seriously the known ground of divine immanence in Jesus Christ, so that from its revelation, instead of apprehending Jesus Christ and the totality in Him, he arbitrarily selects this or that feature and sets it up as a subordinate centre: perhaps the idea of creation…or even the kingdom of God.” (CD II,1:319)
First, Selmanovic clearly describes the kingdom of God in terms that are utterly disconnected from Jesus Christ alone. Secondly, he has selected the feature of the kingdom of God and believes it as a revelatory ground of “divine immanence,” instead of Jesus Christ alone. Barth counters that such people are “oblivious of the fact that [divine] immanence both as a whole and in its parts has Christian truth and reality only in so far as it is founded in Jesus Christ and summed up in Him, so that if, as a whole and in its parts, it is affirmed, preached and believed as a centre in itself and alongside Christ, the Church will inevitably be led back into heathendom and its worship of the elements.” (CD II,1:319) Selmanovic affirms this devastating indictment by claiming the Kingdom is not exclusively limited to Jesus Christ:
Many Christians believe that the Kingdom of God that Jesus spoke about is inseparable from knowing the person of Jesus. If so, the question begs to be asked: Is the Kingdom of God present in all of life, among all people, throughout history, or is the Kingdom of God limited to the historical person of Jesus and thus absent from most of life, most people, and most history? The answer to this question depends greatly on whether Christians are willing to make their religion take a backseat to something larger than itself. (76-77)
Selmanovic completely disconnects God’s revelation from the person of Jesus Christ and makes it no longer exclusively connected to him, too. In light of these observations it seems clear enough from Selmanovic’s arguments that the kingdom of God, as part of divine immanence, has been wrested from its moorings in Jesus Christ and is “affirmed, preached and believed as a centre in itself and alongside Christ.” God is now revealed in the kingdom of God and alongside from Jesus Christ, not through Him alone.
Not only does Selmanovic believe that the kingdom of God apart from Jesus Christ reveals God, he denies that God is revealed fully and exclusively in Him. Selmanovic both favors another revelation of God apart from Jesus Christ (the kingdom of God) and denies that the fulness of God’s revelation is in Him alone. As Barth reminds us, though, “Any deviation, any attempt to evade Jesus Christ in favour of another supposed revelation of God, or any denial of the fulness of God’s presence in Him, will precipitate us into darkness and confusion.”(CD II,1:319) According to Barth, then, Selmanovic’s belief that God is revealed in a separate act of divine immanence (the kingdom of God) apart from Jesus Christ “will precipitate us into darkness and confusion.” Likewise, his assertion that God is not revealed wholly, simply, exclusively in Jesus Christ will have the same result. At this point it is clear Selmanovic’s belief in the revelation and knowledge of God largely departs from the historic Rule of Faith of the Church. In response Barth would adamantly declare it is really not all about God. It is really all about Jesus Christ.
Popularity: 5% [?]
A 4 week series based on a paper called “DIGGING UP THE PAST: KARL BARTH AS FOE TO THE EMERGING CHURCH ON THE DOCTRINE OF REVELATION.” Non-identified citations relate to Rollin’s How (Not) To Speak of God. CD equals Barth’s Church Dogmatics.
Series Posts
1—Introduction
2—“God Speaks”
3—“God’s Revelation is Jesus Christ”
3—Conclusion
“GOD SPEAKS”
In How (Not) to Speak of God, Rollins operates from the assumption that, “That which we cannot speak of is the one thing about whom and to whom we must never stop speaking.” (xii) Though we are called to continually speak of God, we cannot really ever speak of or actually describe Him. Throughout this rhetorical tour de force, Rollins attempts to re-understand the traditional understanding of the nature of God’s self-disclosure along such fault lines.
As Rollins explains, traditionally Christianity has been understood to rest upon the idea that God has communicated to humanity through revelation, a concept that has been known as “that which reveals,” is the opposite of concealment, and God has graciously disclosed to us something about himself. In other words, in the past revelation meant God has actually revealed, de-concealed, and graciously disclosed Himself to the world. In fact, Rollins suggests it is thought that “Christianity…has privileged access to the mind of God,” an access which is contained and controlled by Christianity alone. (7) Rollins believes otherwise.
According to Rollins, this idea of revelation came after Christianity (falsely) embraced the Age of Reason, believing that “God was open to our understanding insomuch as God was revealed to us through the scripture.” (9) For these Enlightenment Christians, it was simple: God gave us a document (the Holy Scriptures) and the ability to understand and explore that document (the mind), thus providing access to God’s full, real Self (revelation). For Rollins, however, this notion of theistic accessibility is nothing short of “conceptual idolatry.” He insists the idea of any system of thought which the individual or community takes to be a visible rendering of God—in this case an intellectual rendering—is neither God nor of God, but is instead an anthropocentric construct, an idol. (12) Rollins insists that Western theology has reduced God to conceptual idols by the very exercise of naming God. Instead Rollins suggests God is not only unnameable, He is omninameable, he cannot be revealed through human words, and at the site of revelation, even when we think we can see God revealed to us, “we can only speak of God’s otherness and distance; Revelation has concealment built into its very heart.” (13, 14, 15, 16)
Rollins believes that Christianity has far too much confidence in a full divine self-disclosure, too much confidence in an actual complete revelation at God’s own behest, resulting in an overly defined, imbued “God” term. “If we fail to recognize that the term ‘God’ always falls short of that towards which the word is supposed to point, we will end up bowing down before our own conceptual creations forged from the raw materials of our self-image, rather than bowing before the one who stands over and above that creation.” (19) Christianity, especially the Western variety, has and is bowing before self-made revelatory “blocks of wood” in the form of theological constructs.
These constructs never really point to God Himself, however, because God blinds us with too much information about Himself. We must realize that our understanding of God comes as a result of One who overflows and blinds our understanding; God’s incoming blinds our intellect, saturates our understanding with a blinding presence, and gives us far too much information, resulting in an intellectual “short-circuiting” by the excess of presence. (22, 24) Ironically, while God blinds us with His presence, he agrees with Gregory of Nyssa that the more we move toward God we journey into divine darkness. While religious knowledge begins as an experience of entering into the light, the deeper we go the more darkness we find in that light; God is beyond the reach of all thinking. (27) In short, “Christianity testifies to the impossibility of grasping God because of the hyper-presence of God.” Barth would suggest otherwise, however.
For Barth, there is real, genuine knowledge of God because God has chosen to really, genuinely disclose Himself to us. Through His own purpose and volition, God made the decision to encounter man. “God encounters man in such a way that man can know Him. He encounters him in such a way that in this encounter He still remains God, but also raises man up to be a real, genuine knower of Himself.” (CD II,1:32) Rather than being hyper-hidden and overly concealed, God sets Himself before man in such away that he can really and genuinely speak of and describe Him. In other words, God is “graspable” by the very fact He has placed Himself before man to be grasped. In fact, though Barth does acknowledge a hiddenness and mystery to even His revelation, God has made Himself “clear and certain to us,” seeing to it that He not only does not remain to us hidden, but that we already have this knowledge from God Himself. (CD II,1:39) We can really and genuinely know God because He has chosen to show Himself to us in such a way that He can be considered and conceived by us. (CD II,1:10) What we must understand, however, is that this knowledge is not from us, but from God.
This knowledge of which we speak “cannot at any moment or in any respect try to understand itself other than as the knowledge made possible, realized and ordered by God alone.” (CD II,1:41) In part, this is the point Rollins attempts to make: the source of our desire (God) is set as an object that we reflect upon in order to grasp it, hold it. (1-2) In an effort to maintain God’s “otherness” and “beyondness,” Rollins ultimately makes God unreachable and unknowable. Furthermore, he argues that even when we describe God and claim a knowledge of Him, that claim and knowledge isn’t really even God Himself, but our understanding of God. (98) As Barth insists, however, “there is a readiness of God to be known as He actually is known in the fulfillment in which the knowledge of God is a fact.” (emphasis mine) (CD II,1:65)
Rather than being hyper-hidden and our God-talk other than God Himself, God can be known because God wants to be known and what we say of God, by His grace, is really God. As Barth continues, “‘God is knowable’ means God can be known—He can be known of and by Himself; in His essence, as it is turned to us in His activity, He is so constituted that He can be known by us.” (CD II,1:65) God has in fact set Himself before man in such away that we can confidently say “God can be known.”
While human efforts at accurately and exhaustively describing God are fraught with inconsistencies, fragility, and incompleteness because man is fallen and sinful, “God makes Himself known and offers Himself to us, so that we can in fact love Him as the one who exists for us…and He creates in us the possibility—the willingness and readiness—to know Him; so that, seen from our side also, there is no reason why this should not actually happen.” (CD II,1:33) Real, genuine knowledge of God can “actually happen” because we have a revelation from Him that comes to us in a manner that is intelligible, accessible, and clear.
This revelation is clear, accessible, and intelligible not because we ourselves are capable of thinking our way to God through our own ingenuity and gumption, though. Barth makes it clear that, “it is by the grace of God and only by the grace of God that it comes about that God is knowable to us…He gives Himself to us to be known, which establishes our knowledge of Him. God’s revelation is not at our power and command, but happens as a movement ‘from God.’” (CD II,1:28) Barth also makes it incredibly clear that this ultimate movement of God to reveal Himself to humanity was through Jesus Christ, an assertion that is as questioned as our ability to even know God.
Popularity: 5% [?]
A 4 week series based on a paper called “DIGGING UP THE PAST: KARL BARTH AS FOE TO THE EMERGING CHURCH ON THE DOCTRINE OF REVELATION.”
Series Posts
1—Introduction
2—“God Speaks”
3—“God’s Revelation is Jesus Christ”
3—Conclusion
In 2007, Doug Pagitt and Tony Jones co-edited a book called An Emergent Manifesto of Hope. At the time, Tony Jones was the National Coordinator of Emergent Village, a national coordinating organization for the progressive Evangelical “conversation” known as the emerging church. Likewise, Doug Pagitt was one of the founding members of Emergent and editor of the newly-minted Emersion line of books from Baker Publishing Group out of which this title was published. The book was a collection of “voices” within the broader conversation “attempting to sing a song together” (whether or not the harmonies matched) in order to provide context for and explain what exactly was being sung within the emerging church.
One such voice was Chris Erdman who wrote a piece on the venerable theologian Karl Barth.
In this conversation Barth is known as a so-called “Friend of Emergent” who supports the key questions and answers percolating within the Emerging conversation. In his article, “Digging Up the Past: Karl Barth (the Reformed Giant) as Friend to the Emerging Church,” Erdman attempts to establish that Barth is Emergent’s friend and theological ally. Erdman likes Barth because he insisted that “the theological enterprise must never be the sole realm of academic theologians” and because he believed “the theological imperative was never finished.” (238) Similarly, leaders in the emerging church call on the Church as it currently exists to wrench theological work from the hands of the elite and put it firmly into the hands of the people, in order to ensure theological inquiry and development is “never static, never dull, never fixed, always open.” (239) As Erdman insists, “We now, like Barth then, are dissatisfied with the established and entrenched theology that has produced our present crisis. We seek another way; we want to ‘begin all over again,’ to work in a state of ‘constant emergency.’” (240)
The only problem is that the theological work and “other way” born out of that dissatisfaction would be questioned and disputed by Barth himself, rather than supported.
Though the emerging church may find companionship in Barth’s own theological journey, he is much more a foe in the produce of that journey than friend. Upon surveying the theological fruit birthed from two influential emerging church thinkers—Peter Rollins (How (Not) To Speak of God) and Samir Selmanovic (It’s Really All About God)—and digging into the particulars of Barth’s own theology, these posts will reveal how he is an adversary to the emerging church in the key theological discourse on the doctrine of revelation. Rollins understands the revelation of God in two key ways: 1) the hiddenness and hyper-transcendence of God, resulting in a thickly veiled God who isn’t truly knowable; and 2) our inability to say anything directly of God Himself, resulting in speech that never speaks of God but merely our understanding of God. While Selmanovic does believes God is revealed and known to humanity, that revelation and knowledge is not is contained within the “Christian religion.” Consequently, God is trans-religious and is revealed entirely outside the person of Jesus Christ. Barth will counter both theologians by insisting the revelation of God is “clear and certain” and is exclusively in the person of Jesus Christ.
While Barth insists that theology is “nothing but human ‘language about God,’” there is still something to say. And because the theological discipline of dogmatics is the servant of Church proclamation, that “something” should be proclaimed well and in accordance with the Holy Scriptures, for the glory of God and good of the world. In the end, Barth will reveal how what Rollins and Selmanovic are saying is neither in one accord with the Scriptures nor part of the historic Christian faith.
Popularity: 6% [?]
