I should have said one other thing about the two-fold authority of Scripture. It is not the case that the raw propositional truth has the two-fold authority (both rerum and verborum), but rather that only Scripture in the original languages had that two-fold authority. To translate a Scriptural passage into “pure” propositional notation would result in (as with all translations) a loss of authority.
Propositions are great. No Scripture without them. Feel the same away about verbs. Without them, no revelation from God. Every Sunday when we say the Creed, I want the little kids squirming with excitement over the looming proposition time. Is this arid intellectualism? Yes, it can be, when the scribes get hold of it. But for faithful Christians confessing their faith, their mouths are full of salvation. Why? Because in faith they are forming propositions with air, tongues, and teeth. What a privilege. And I feel the same way about my two-year-old grand-daughter’s excitement over the Lord’s Supper. “Bread guys! Bread guys!”
The problem with the emergent church (in addition to some of those already described) is that they tend to identify humility with uncertainty and dogmatism with pride. Consequently, they embrace story, not because it is the best vehicle for restoring robust certainty to the Church, but rather as a means of getting Christians to knock it off with that off-putting certainty business. Granted, many traditional Christians are certain because their faith is built on tidied-up propositions, removed from their native habitat. But this is a certainty that is too brittle. So the problem is not that our systematic theologies have propositions in them. The problem is that they don’t have enough propositions. They do have many statements of fact about God, man as sinner, and the ordo salutis. But they leave out all the divinely inspired propositions about hair, linen, blood, empires, dirt, semen, poems, dead Amalekites, and pomegranates.