Of course, one of the qualifications for an elder, according to the apostle Paul, is that he not be a “striker” or “brawler.” So for those who are a bit squeamish about taverns to begin with, let alone preachers fighting in them, whether metaphorical or not, let me change the image while retaining all the militancy. Allow me to explain why I am at war with emergent theology, why I believe this conflict with the emergent church is as important as the conflict with liberalism in the early part of the twentieth century. Because the rot of liberalism has corrupted so much within the church, we are actually in worse circumstances than we were a hundred years ago. And by “we” I mean we in the English speaking world. The Church is not in worse circumstances in many places throughout the world, but only because the Christians there have the good sense to not listen to the philosophers. When it comes to issues like homosexuality, give me a Nigerian bishop who has read his Bible instead of a former English teacher turned pastor who has read his Derrida. Any day.
So why war? Why is this important? As I sit in my library typing this, the coffee table in our living room is around the corner and out of sight. I have every confidence in the world that the coffee table is still there, right this minute, and that it does not vanish when it moves out of my perceptual field. I believe this, not account of naive realism, or a common sense trust in my own senses. I believe this because I do not believe that God is lying to me. And when I assume a correspondence between my statement “the coffee table is there” and the fact that it really is there, I am indebted in no way to what some philospher might have said about it. Shoot, you can get them to say virtually anything. Some of them will even say it is not there. See?
When I thank the Lord for my dinner, this entails a number of corollaries, and among them is my naive belief that my dinner is actually there. But this is actually not a naive belief at all. It is something else entirely. It is grateful belief. If there is no dinner, then I do not need to thank God for it, do I? And if I have an obligation to “always and for everything give thanks,” this gives me an epistemology of gratitude. What is there? Allthe things I must thank God for, and that includes anything that comes into my life, at any time.
To return to the Garden, the serpent approached them with an epistemological question. Did God really say? This kind of lie can be advanced in many creative ways. Is the tree of knowledge of good and evil actually there? Does it really exist? How do you go about interpreting the prohibition? Eve did not hear the prohibition directly herself, but got it at second hand from Adam. This creates a host of transmission issues. What would Adam have done with a chastened epistemology? They would have gone in circles with the dragon, and then disobeyed.
The problem with a “chastened epistemology” is this. By what standard? Who is doing the chastening? Who holds the rod of discipline? What future behaviors is the disciplinarian seeking to inculcate? And again by what standard?
Certain kinds of heresies are specific. They add or subtract certain key doctrines, while seeking to retain the same basic world that the sum total of the other Christian doctrines describes. “Yes, I believe all that, but I also believe . . .” Or “I happen to deny . . .” Heresies that argue for works-salvation are like this, or one that denies the Deity of Christ. This cannot be consistently done, but it is nonetheless attempted.
But other heresies are global, and all epistemological heresies are in this category. I cannot have a chastened epistemology without that chastened epistemology affecting how I affirm (or if I affirm) the Deity of Christ, His death on the cross, His resurrection from the dead and so on. “I know that Christ is Lord” has a different meaning for people with different epistemologies. Now if the reply to this is that the “chastening” is simply a chastening of modernist epistemology, and is an example of casting down an idol, I would obviously have no problem with this if that is what really happened. Modernist epistemology does need to be chastened. So does postmodernist epistemology, what there is of it. But they need to be chastened by the Holy Spirit of God, revealing His mind in Scripture, and if they were to be chastened by Him, the end result would be certainty about the truth, confidence in forgiveness, devotion to the one true God over against all idols, and much more. But reading the emergennts, you encounter nothing like this. Jesus once said that unless our righteousness exceeded that of the Pharisees, we would not see the kingdom of heaven. We should say the same kind of thing here. Unless your confidence exceeds the confidence of the idolatrous modernists, you cannot know God. Everybody seems to think that the answer to modernity’s hubris is some kind of foot-shuffling uncertainty, as though the answer to Pharisaism is to go out and sin a little.
Modernists counterfeited the certainty that the gospel brings and gives. Their pretension has now fallen apart, and some among the postmodernists are to be given credit for pointing this out. Just as some among the modernists are to be given credit for pointing out that the relativism of the postmodernists cannot be sustained. So they are both right about something, both wrong about everything, and it is time to preach Christ and Him crucified to both groups. They both need it because they are both totally and completely lost.
But certainty of any kind gives emergents the fantods. They don’t like the certainty of Enlightenment philosophers (good), the certainty of emissaries from the Watchtower Society (good), the certainty of politicians promising the moon (good), or the certainty of a faithful Christian minister preaching the unbreakable Word of God (inexcusable). Reading the emergents is like reading people who apologize for taking up space and breathing; they reject certainty about the truth, and make certain clear teachings of Scripture murky (the wrath of God, homosexuality, idolatry). Assuming we pay them the dignity of actually reading their books, examining what they have to say, and taking it at face value, I have to conclude that their sorry approach to “knowing” cannot be separated from “knowing Christ,” “knowing my wife,” “knowing how to ride a bike,” or “knowing that the coffee table is still there.”
Think of the traditional heresies as a household where something important (like the garbage disposal) breaks. Can’t let it go, gotta address it, need to fix it. But epistemological heresies are like termites that eat out the foundation of everything. In our day, ability to grasp this point is one that every faithful minister must have, and every faithful ministerial candidate must learn to acquire. Inability to recognize the wolves that are emerging from the forest is a fundamental disqualification for any who would be a shepherd guarding the sheep in the meadow.