The Church in the “Emerging” Age

Article #4: A Deeper Look into the Emergent Church

I would first like to state that this Article has been one of the most frustrating article I have ever done! Not Because of things going wrong or just way too much to read.  No, no it was because the emergent church is so CONFUSING!!I’ve studied some of the Jehovah Witness beliefs, and right now I’m actually studying “The Book of Mormon” on my kindle, and at least of each these churches have a belief that is found in every single church (Not the same one of course) . The emergent Church on the other is torn on almost everything they believe! I mean I do think it’s awesome that these Churches have united as one church under what they THINK is one belief, the Correspondence Theory, but the fact is that the Correspondence Theory has been broken down into various schemes and subcategories, and there IS NOT absolute unanimity among these churches. The closest thing that I can find that every church is SUPPOSED to have is this statement:  “a growing generative friendship among missional Christian leaders seeking to love our world in the Spirit of Jesus Christ.” Even their website for the headquarters, emergentvillage.com, encourages churches to “adapt” to the areas that they belong.

 God in an Emerging Age

God does not change; “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever,” Hebrews 13:8, but the mindset of the world does. But if we are to live like and according to God (“Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” (NIV) Ephesians 5:1-2), then should the church change with the worldly standards? Of course not! But that’s exactly what is happening in the Emergent Church, as the world is trying to base everything on facts. (which isn’t that bad unless you’re talking about subjects that associate with God or economics, in which you need both faith AND facts) When you’re basing your facts on of THE WORLD and not of God’s, it’s pretty hard to say you follow Christ, for Christ Said “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.” John 18:36. A statement by Douglas Groothuis describes the correspondence theory of truth as the assumption that “A belief or statement is true only if it matches with, reflects, or corresponds to the reality to which it refers. For a statement to be true it must be factual. Facts determine the truth or falsity of a belief or statement.” It’s this “Correspondence Theory” that the Emergent Church has established as their bases for their new “Christian” church, not the word of God. Well if you have ever picked up a bible in your entire life you should know that Christianity is based on the word of God! HOW?? Well in the O.T. prophets existed so that God could directly speak to his people through them, in the N.T. Jesus Christ (God-the-Son) chose 12 Apostles (Technically 13, but we don’t talk about that lol jk) that he taught to in person to spread his message, after he had ascended to heaven he was able to speak the message THROUGH them. By doing all this we have been able to gather 6000 years of “BIBLICAL TRUTH.” (6000 years is based off of the “King James” research, from the 1600 hundreds. This number has been debated a million times over and is probably, you know, 5000 or so years off, but honestly 6000 years is the most common used number by churches. Because no one argues with KING JAMES! Lol) Through this Biblical Truth we have been able to found our faith, on the words that God has provided through his people.

The Correspondence Theory of Truth

“Narrowly speaking, the correspondence theory of truth is the view that truth is correspondence to a fact—a view that was advocated by Russell and Moore early in the 20th century. But the label is usually applied much more broadly to any view explicitly embracing the idea that truth consists in a relation to “reality”, i.e., that truth is a relational property involving a characteristic relation (to be specified) to some portion of reality (to be specified).”  A statement directly from the “Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy”. This philosophy is really not that hard to understand, anyone that believes it pretty much is saying this: “We believe truth comes from fact, and fact is based on the reality WE live in!”. God intended real, objective meaning in the Bible. Scripture has no real value to us beyond subjective moments of “inspiration” if we do not believe its narratives and propositions connect with reality or that each author’s original intent is the ground and goal of our interpretation. Therefore if we change the original intent of the bible, and thus the word of God, then we actually destroying what is truth and what is reality. The truth is that the Emergent Church is helping destroy our faith, by destroying the true intent of the bible.

Reference:

http://www.thinkchristian.net/index.php/2007/12/05/views-of-the-emerging-church/ http://www.emergentvillage.com/cohorts/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correspondence_theory_of_truthhttp://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalms%20139&version=NIVhttp://www.apologeticsindex.org/290-emerging-church http://www.talkjesus.com/bible-study-hall/25715-scripture-based-affirmations.html http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-correspondence/ 
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