Review: Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church by Don Carson
Augustine of Hippo, in his essay De Mendacio (“On Lying”), wrote, “When regard for truth has been broken down or even slightly weakened, all things will remain doubtful.” In that essay, as will appear by the title, Augustine illustrated the nature of lying and its evil effects, apparently addressing a problem that was widespread among Christians, and perhaps even pastors, at the time. In the intellectual framework in which many pastors today operate, however, lying is scarcely possible, because truth has ceased to be a meaningful category. As Augustine opined that evil was but the perversion of good, so lying is the perversion of truth—but if truth is denied, there is nothing to pervert. Such is the state of many people’s understanding of religion today, including many Evangelicals influenced by postmodern thought, some of whom are identified with a movement known as the Emerging (or Emergent) Church.
Don Carson, author and professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, has recently published a new book evaluating this movement, entitled Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church. In the 230-page volume he defines and describes the movement, evaluates its contributions to evangelical Christianity, examines its theological views and reliance on postmodern philosophical underpinnings, and brings relevant Scriptures to bear in criticizing the movement and explicating some of its weaknesses.
In Chapter 1, Dr. Carson profiles the movement, broad and multifaceted as it is. The Emerging Church, he explains, is a movement of church leaders and writers working from an essentially postmodern viewpoint, protesting along three main fronts: against traditional conservative evangelicalism, against modernism (as they understand it), and against the seeker-sensitive, megachurch phenomenon. In Chapter 2, Dr. Carson outlines some of the strengths of the movement’s strengths: in reading the times, in pushing for authenticity, in recognizing our own social and cultural location, in evangelizing outsiders, and in embracing other traditions. Chapter 3 is Dr. Carson’s critique of some of the problems with the Emergent movement’s analysis of contemporary culture, including a reductionistic understanding of modernism and lack of nuance in its evaluation of postmodernism. In Chapter 4 he outlines the main strengths and weaknesses of postmodernism, particularly postmodern epistemology. Chapter 5 speaks to the Emergent Church’s failure to critically evaluate postmodernism, and Chapter 6 examines two books by leading authors in the movement, Brian McLaren and Steve Chalke. Dr. Carson concludes the book in chapters 7 and 8 by looking at what Scripture has to say on matters of truth and experience, knowledge, and evaluation of other religions.
As will not surprise anyone familiar with Dr. Carson’s work, Becoming Conversant with the Emergent Church is methodical, precise, delightfully clear, and painstakingly well researched and –documented. It is also balanced, nuanced, and Scripturally based in a way that is a refreshing joy after reading someone like Brian McLaren, who exhibits none of the above characteristics. Dr. Carson’s extraordinary skill in handling Scripture and his enormous intellect are clear from the first chapter on, yet he engages difficult philosophical and theological concepts in a way that is clear and easy to follow. Quite honestly, it is difficult to see how a thoughtful evangelical Christian could fail to be persuaded by Dr. Carson’s analysis. If this book does not deal a death blow to the Emergent Church movement, it will only be because of willful ignorance or lack of widespread circulation.
Perhaps the most helpful part of the entire book is Dr. Carson’s critique of postmodern thought and his presentation of the problems with it from a Scriptural perspective. Though modernism and postmodernism go in different enough directions for the term “postmodern” still to be useful, he shows that they are both based on the same epistemological starting point: the finite self (the “I”). Modernism posits objective, empirically knowable truth apart from any Divine revelation.
Postmodernism, pointing out that every observer looks at “truth” from a different perspective, eventually concludes that objective truth and certain knowledge are illusions, meaningless categories.
Dr. Carson sees in postmodernism’s critique of modernism a false dichotomy: since exhaustive, omniscient knowledge is impossible for finite beings, at best we can glimpse only a small perspective on something without any way of knowing how our perspective relates to the whole—the objective “truth.” This antithesis is both false and manipulative, for it fails to describe how humans naturally speak of knowing and truth. When someone claims that a certain fact or proposition is true, he is not claiming to know, omnisciently, all the truth about that thing. Yet it is still useful to use the categories, for humans are capable of knowing the truth of things adequately, if not exhaustively. All human knowledge, in fact, is a subset of God’s knowledge, and we are able to know truth as He reveals it to us.
Dr. Carson teases out the absurdity in postmodernists’ conclusions: no statement can be objectively, universally true, but they need universal truth in order for this assertion to hold true. Dr. Carson goes on to show how McLaren, as one example, consistently refuses to answer questions of truth and error in his writings, a tendency which seems to be endemic to the movement. This is the most important thread that runs throughout the book. Postmodernism’s claims are absurd and self-refuting, yet most Emerging Church leaders rely on them uncritically and refuse to engage the overwhelming numbers of Scriptural passages that speak of truth as something that we can know, and in fact have a duty to know and believe.
Dr. Carson’s evaluation of A Generous Orthodoxy is, on the whole, very good. He goes through most of Mr. McLaren’s chapters progressively, explaining his arguments and shredding them with charity, logic, and Scripture. His main criticisms deal with Mr. McLaren’s distortion of facts, evidence, arguments and Scripture, and his consistent refusal to answer any sort of difficult questions. Interestingly, a major criticism that Dr. Carson does not use, yet which begs to be raised, is the problem with Mr. McLaren’s divorcing the message of the Gospel from the mission that he understands to be so central to the Christian faith.
Overall, this book is extremely well-done. Though Dr. Carson would surely say it is not intended to be a thorough refutation of postmodernism, for the average reader it serves as a supremely useful primer on the subject from a Biblical perspective. Dr. Carson’s criticisms of the Emergent Church are fair and balanced, but deep and packed with the weight of Scripture. This book will, Lord willing, be a tremendous step toward correcting the errors in the Emergent movement and restoring wayward churches to an orthodoxy that is truly generous and orthodox.
Don Carson, author and professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, has recently published a new book evaluating this movement, entitled Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church. In the 230-page volume he defines and describes the movement, evaluates its contributions to evangelical Christianity, examines its theological views and reliance on postmodern philosophical underpinnings, and brings relevant Scriptures to bear in criticizing the movement and explicating some of its weaknesses.
In Chapter 1, Dr. Carson profiles the movement, broad and multifaceted as it is. The Emerging Church, he explains, is a movement of church leaders and writers working from an essentially postmodern viewpoint, protesting along three main fronts: against traditional conservative evangelicalism, against modernism (as they understand it), and against the seeker-sensitive, megachurch phenomenon. In Chapter 2, Dr. Carson outlines some of the strengths of the movement’s strengths: in reading the times, in pushing for authenticity, in recognizing our own social and cultural location, in evangelizing outsiders, and in embracing other traditions. Chapter 3 is Dr. Carson’s critique of some of the problems with the Emergent movement’s analysis of contemporary culture, including a reductionistic understanding of modernism and lack of nuance in its evaluation of postmodernism. In Chapter 4 he outlines the main strengths and weaknesses of postmodernism, particularly postmodern epistemology. Chapter 5 speaks to the Emergent Church’s failure to critically evaluate postmodernism, and Chapter 6 examines two books by leading authors in the movement, Brian McLaren and Steve Chalke. Dr. Carson concludes the book in chapters 7 and 8 by looking at what Scripture has to say on matters of truth and experience, knowledge, and evaluation of other religions.
As will not surprise anyone familiar with Dr. Carson’s work, Becoming Conversant with the Emergent Church is methodical, precise, delightfully clear, and painstakingly well researched and –documented. It is also balanced, nuanced, and Scripturally based in a way that is a refreshing joy after reading someone like Brian McLaren, who exhibits none of the above characteristics. Dr. Carson’s extraordinary skill in handling Scripture and his enormous intellect are clear from the first chapter on, yet he engages difficult philosophical and theological concepts in a way that is clear and easy to follow. Quite honestly, it is difficult to see how a thoughtful evangelical Christian could fail to be persuaded by Dr. Carson’s analysis. If this book does not deal a death blow to the Emergent Church movement, it will only be because of willful ignorance or lack of widespread circulation.
Perhaps the most helpful part of the entire book is Dr. Carson’s critique of postmodern thought and his presentation of the problems with it from a Scriptural perspective. Though modernism and postmodernism go in different enough directions for the term “postmodern” still to be useful, he shows that they are both based on the same epistemological starting point: the finite self (the “I”). Modernism posits objective, empirically knowable truth apart from any Divine revelation.
Postmodernism, pointing out that every observer looks at “truth” from a different perspective, eventually concludes that objective truth and certain knowledge are illusions, meaningless categories.
Dr. Carson sees in postmodernism’s critique of modernism a false dichotomy: since exhaustive, omniscient knowledge is impossible for finite beings, at best we can glimpse only a small perspective on something without any way of knowing how our perspective relates to the whole—the objective “truth.” This antithesis is both false and manipulative, for it fails to describe how humans naturally speak of knowing and truth. When someone claims that a certain fact or proposition is true, he is not claiming to know, omnisciently, all the truth about that thing. Yet it is still useful to use the categories, for humans are capable of knowing the truth of things adequately, if not exhaustively. All human knowledge, in fact, is a subset of God’s knowledge, and we are able to know truth as He reveals it to us.
Dr. Carson teases out the absurdity in postmodernists’ conclusions: no statement can be objectively, universally true, but they need universal truth in order for this assertion to hold true. Dr. Carson goes on to show how McLaren, as one example, consistently refuses to answer questions of truth and error in his writings, a tendency which seems to be endemic to the movement. This is the most important thread that runs throughout the book. Postmodernism’s claims are absurd and self-refuting, yet most Emerging Church leaders rely on them uncritically and refuse to engage the overwhelming numbers of Scriptural passages that speak of truth as something that we can know, and in fact have a duty to know and believe.
Dr. Carson’s evaluation of A Generous Orthodoxy is, on the whole, very good. He goes through most of Mr. McLaren’s chapters progressively, explaining his arguments and shredding them with charity, logic, and Scripture. His main criticisms deal with Mr. McLaren’s distortion of facts, evidence, arguments and Scripture, and his consistent refusal to answer any sort of difficult questions. Interestingly, a major criticism that Dr. Carson does not use, yet which begs to be raised, is the problem with Mr. McLaren’s divorcing the message of the Gospel from the mission that he understands to be so central to the Christian faith.
Overall, this book is extremely well-done. Though Dr. Carson would surely say it is not intended to be a thorough refutation of postmodernism, for the average reader it serves as a supremely useful primer on the subject from a Biblical perspective. Dr. Carson’s criticisms of the Emergent Church are fair and balanced, but deep and packed with the weight of Scripture. This book will, Lord willing, be a tremendous step toward correcting the errors in the Emergent movement and restoring wayward churches to an orthodoxy that is truly generous and orthodox.
posted by Jeff at 5:31 PM
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