In chapter 3 of Why we’re not emergent (by two guys who should be), Kevin DeYoung explains why he loves ‘the person and propositions of Jesus’.  What follows is based on part of that chapter.

All Christians claim to have a high regard for the Bible, and emerging Christians are no different.

Brian MacLaren says:

‘I believe [the Bible] is a gift from God, inspired by God, to benefit us in the most important way possible: equipping us so that we can benefit others, so that we can play our part in the ongoing mission of God.  My regard for the Bible is higher than ever.’

Rob Bell affirms

‘The Bible is the most amazing, beautiful, deep, inspired, engaging collection of writings ever.’

And Doug Pagitt regards the Bible as

‘a member with great sway [in our community] and participant in all our conversations.’

But such writers also confess to having mixed feelings about the Bible.  They speak of their ‘love’ and ‘respect’ for it, but do not like to use traditional terms such as ‘authority’, infallibility’, ‘inerrancy’, ‘revelation’, ‘objective’, ‘absolute’ and ‘literal’.  The result is that the Bible is neither the voice of God nor the foundation of Christian belief.  Doug Pagitt says that the Bible is

‘not reduced to a book from which we exact truth, but the Bible is a full, living and active member of our community that is listened to on all topics of which it speaks.’

Rob Bell explains,

‘The Bible is still the centre for us, but it’s a different kind of centre.  We want to embrace mystery, rather than conquer it.’

Rob’s wife, Kristen, celebrates uncertainty in a way which is rather characteristic of emergent people:-

‘I grew up thinking we’ve figured out the Bible, that we knew what it means.  Now I have no idea what most of it means.  And yet I feel like life is big again – like life used to be black and white, and now it’s in colour.’

We can’t help noticing here the false antithesis that crops up so often in emergent thinking: either ‘we’ve got the Bible all figured out’, or ‘we have no idea what most of it means’.  Even allowing for some rhetorical exaggeration, isn’t that just a silly and unhelpful polarisation?

Undeterred, emergent people claim that for too long we have approached the Bible as a rule book, an answer book, a text book.  We treat its teaching as if it were essentially propositional.  McLaren writes:

‘When we theological conservatives seek to understand the Bible, we generally analyse it.  We break it down into chapters paragraphs, verses, sentences, clauses, phrases, words, prefixes, roots, suffixes, jots, and tittles.  Now we understand it, we tell ourselves.  Now we have conquered the text, captured the meaning, removed all mystery, stuffed it and preserved it for posterity, like a taxidermist with a deer head.’

Well, yes, some of us are indeed guilty of analysing the Bible while remaining untransformed by it.  But no: history shows again and again that close and carefully attention to the text of Scripture is entirely consistent with a godly, prayerfully, and awe-struck attitude towards the things of God.  Look at the church fathers, Reformers, Puritans, and Pietists.

MacLaren associates the evangelical esteem of doctrine with the Enlightenment:-

‘Our sermons tended to exegete texts in such a way that stories, poetry, and biography (among other features of the Bible) – the “chaff” – were sifted out, while the “wheat” of doctrines and principles were saved.  Modern Western people loved that approach; meanwhile, however, people of a more postmodern bent (who are more like premodern people in many ways) find the doctrines and principles as interesting as grass clippings.’

Again, yes: the tendency to level out the Bible so that it becomes a series of undifferentiated proof texts is a real danger.  But, again, no: from John Calvin to Charles Hodge to Dick Lucas evangelicals have been striving to pay close attention to (what Lucas calls) the ‘melodic line’ of Scripture.  And the notion that there is a ‘body of truth’ in Scripture is taught by Scripture itself (note the references in the Epistles to guarding ‘the faith’).

So we cannot share Dave Tomlinson’s distaste for propositions:-

‘Post-evangelicals are less inclined to look for truth in propositional statements and more likely to seek in in symbols, ambiguities, and situational judgments.’

After all, what is a proposition?  It is merely a statement that is either true or false.  “God is love” – that’s a proposition.  To be sure, the Bible is more than propositions: it has commands and questions too.  But propositions are all over the place, on just about every page of the Bible.

Actually, antipathy towards the idea of revelation as propositional is not particularly new.  It was a feature of the so-called ‘neo-orthodoxy’ of Barth, Brunner, and H. Richard Niebuhr.  They said that ‘revelation cannot be expressed in the impersonal ways of creeds or other propositions’ and ‘faith is not a relation to…a truth, or a doctrine…but it is wholly a personal relationship.’

But the Bible itself makes no sharp distinction between propositional and personal revelation.  Consider the following propositions of Jesus:-

Jn 8:24 “I told you that you would die in your sins; if you do not believe that I am [the one I claim to be], you will indeed die in your sins.” – Our Saviour utters a solemn warning to those who refused to believe that he was the one he claimed to be.

Jn 15:7 “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. – Jesus places side by side the personal (“If you remain in me”) and the propositional (“If my words remained in you).

Jn 17:13 “I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them.” – Fullness of joy depends on believing and treasuring the words of Jesus.

Emerging church people would do well to quit the either/other categories of propositional and personal truth.  DeYoung concludes:-

‘They pit information versus transformation, believing verses belonging, and propositions about Christ versus the person of Christ.  The emerging church will be a helpful corrective against real, and sometimes perceived, abuses in evangelicalism when they discover the genius of the “and,” and stop forcing us to accept half-truths.’