Plagued by grace and faith

A recent discussion of Romans on an Emergent Church blog essentially described the doctrine that we are justified by grace through faith as a 'plague.' (See comment 1).

If you read the rest of the ten comments, no one seems to think this description is remarkable or unfair or at the very least needs to be seriously discussed and explained. This is why I'm worried about postmodern philosophy and its influence in the Emergent Church.

Postmodern philosophy

Postmodern philosophy claims that we never see reality as it actually is. The reason for this is because in order to see something we have to think about it. Supposedly, we think in “language.” Language is arbitrarily constructed by society, and contains all the biases of that society. And so anything we think about is molded by the biases of our culture, and thus we never see reality as it actually is.

Just to be clear, I think there’s a small kernel of truth to this, but mostly a lot of hooey.

The Emergent Church and the Impossibility of Objectivity

It seems to me that the Emergent Church has embraced a serious philosophical mistake. That mistake is the post-modern notion that there is no such thing as objectivity.

Here are some links that, at length, will connect these dots:

Here, an Emergent pastor I know is Durham argues that objectivity is impossible (you have to scroll down a ways): http://timconder.typepad.com/

Here, a relatively famous professor discusses the same issue: http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/06/french-theory-in-america/?em&ex=1207713600&en=813ce2c4527f0de0&ei=5087%0A

And, here, Dallas Willard, refutes the idea that objectivity is impossible:

http://www.dwillard.org/articles/artview.asp?artID=4

To read all this would probably take at least an hour, but you can skim and get the gist. Or just take my word for it.

I think many Emergent Christians have, in good faith, bought the argument that objectivity is impossible, and their ministries are good-faith attempts to be Christian having accepted that argument. Nevertheless, if the underlying argument is erroneous, it's important not to build anything around it.

The problem with the “context” argument

One of the most popular methods for reinterpreting the plain meaning of a biblical text is to say “well, the context of that passage is different than our current context.” The way this argument is put usually goes like this: “we need to keep in mind that this was a letter Paul was writing to address a certain situation in a certain time in a certain place.” The argument then eventually says “now we’re in a different time and situation, so that text is not directly applicable.” (The teaching that is being reinterpreted is almost always one that offends contemporary politically correct views).

There’s plenty that can be said in favor of understanding the context of a biblical passage. But, I’d also like to point out a major weakness of this method: it can be used to undermine every aspect of Scripture. In law school this is what we called an argument that “proved too much.” What I mean is that, although it’s true that Paul’s writings on (women/sexuality/authority/you-name-it) were meant to address a particular situation, the same is true of all the writings of the Bible. So, to the extent this notion of “context” calls into question any given teaching (say, women’s roles in church), it equally calls into question any other teaching (say, salvation by grace through faith). This is not to suggest that we should question our central doctrines because of context, but rather it’s to suggest that the “context” method is often being used not in pursuit of truth but in the pushing of an agenda.

This isn’t to say that understanding context isn’t important. But it is to say that pointing out that a biblical epistle was addressed to a particular context is often simplistically misapplied by people desiring to justify a convenient re-interpretation of Scripture.