This paper was written for my ethics class.  Hope it is informative.  I learned bundles in the process.

Jimbo

The Emerging Church:

Ethical Concerns in the Postmodern/Linguistic Turn

I am a lover of reading. My preferred genres are science fiction and fantasy fiction. To the chagrin of my older sister, who was a senior at the time, I read Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings[1] and Frank Herbert’s Dune [2]before the end of my eighth grade year. It must have been hard for her to trade notes with her youngest brother on her senior paper.

Needles to say, most of the time I read was for the joy and pleasure of visiting new and strange places and people. The reactions I most often have while reading are tension, suspense, and happiness. I have even had a tear jerked out on occasion. Never have I read a fiction novel and been moved to anger or frustration…that is until I read Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christian.[3]

Rarely has a book simultaneously caused a desire to yell and cry at the same time. I felt a great amount of empathy for the main character, Dan, who was a disillusioned pastor and a great amount of anger at what his friend, Neo, was teaching him. Neo was telling Dan that there was a great shift in the world called Postmodernism. Dan, in Neo’s opinion, was experiencing the dissonance of living in a world which was turning Postmodern, while he himself was living and pastoring with a Modern mind set. Neo wanted to help Dan to cross over, that is, to change into “a new kind of Christian.” When I read this book along with another of McLaren’s books, A Generous Orthodoxy[4] I realized that there is a crises facing the church. It is not that we are Moderns facing a Postmodern world; it is Christians and the church face an ethical and religious crisis. However, it is not the crisis which Dan and Neo think it is.

In this paper I will explore the ethical issues that several leaders in the emerging church are facing, and in some cases contributing to. I will look at the consequences of theses views and explore how the views affect the church. I will then answer the question, “Can we know truth about the world?” Lastly, I will look at what we as a church should do. Should we challenge the Postmodern/ Linguistic turn, or should we trust that, “this too will pass.”

What is the Crisis?

The current ethical issue in the church has its origin back in the Enlightenment period of the late 16^th early 17^th centuries. One aspect of the Enlightenment, or Modern period, is Cartesian Foundationalism. In this the view of Rene Descartes (1596-1650), all knowledge is built upon a foundation of beliefs which are considered indubitable. The foundation is constructed with those things about which we have absolute certainty. This view goes hand in hand with philosophical Rationalism. Reason is all that is needed to understand the world as it is, therefore, we no longer need revelation from God to know the world.[5]

It was during this time that skepticism began to creep in to the world of philosophy under the guise of Empiricism. Empiricism holds to the view that all we can know is what we are able to experience with our five senses. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) proposed a separation of what we can sense and know (the Phenomenal) and the actual world as it is (the Noumenal). According to Kant, we cannot know the Noumenal because our senses can be deceived. We, therefore, find ourselves on a road where knowledge and truth are not anchored in the world as it is. It is this view that would lead to the Linguistic Turn and the end of the 19^th century.[6]

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) and Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) are credited with taking linguistics and separating it from reality. Their view is that knowing the real world is impossible because our perceptions of reality take place within our language. [7] This was further enhanced by Jacques Derrida. “…Derrida says that all meanings depend for the existence upon individual acts of language. These acts are constantly changing and thus so are our meanings.”[8] “There are no two meanings that are exactly the same, even words, so meanings are always differing from one use of language to another.”[9] Brad Kallenberg goes even further, “Language does not represent reality, it constitutes reality.”[10]

We now find ourselves in the postmodern world in which the Linguistic turn has had a major shaping effect on the culture. Scott Smith sums up this effect by giving several core principles to which many postmodern philosophers and theologians hold. First, all we can know about the world is what we know by talking about it. Second, we are stuck “inside” our language and cannot get “outside” to know the world directly. Third, there are no universal truths which apply to all people at all times, there is only what our group or community affirms as true. Fourth, there is no nature to language, there are just many languages. For example, there is no “Greek” language. There is only “greek” as it was spoken by Euclid in the fourth century BC. Fifth, we cannot know what an author meant in a text. There is no inherent meaning in that text, only how we interpret that text. Sixth, since the world is unknowable, a language community constructs their social world by their use of language.[11] This is the crisis. There is no knowable world. There is no knowable universal truth. There are only the social truths and moirés which are constructed by a particular community at a particular time.

Who is at the Heart of the Crisis?

The reader, especially the Christian reader, may not agree that these Linguistic views are held very universally. The Postmodern view may not be held for most people in the older generations, but for generations X and Y (those who are under 40), this is the dominant worldview. Former youth pastor and the current leader of Emergent US, Tony Jones, writes,

“The students with whom we work were born into a culture in transition, and children born today are entering a thoroughly postmodern world. This is not to say that all students will adopt postmodern traits, but postmodernism will be the reigning school of thought, and postmodernism will be the reigning culture when our students arrive at college.”[12]

So it is no surprise that many of the church leaders are seeking ways to relate to and minister to this “emerging” generation of Postmodern people. However, this is more than just a change in methodologies.

For many in the Emerging Church this constitutes a complete paradigm shift into a very skeptical world, as demonstrated through the literature produced by Emergent leaders. Brian McLaren’s character Neo claims, “History began with our ability to write it.”[13] Later the same character says, “Dan, everything is contextual. No meanings can exist without context.” While this is a fictional novel, there is no challenge to these ideas. McLaren seems to hold to this radical skepticism and implies we cannot know the world as it is because the context of our lives always colors our perceptions.

Tony Jones adds to this line of thinking, “…no one, weather an author or a reader, objectively approaches a text. Each of us is full of presuppositions that color the way we read and what we write.”[14] Jones also speaks very negatively about the idea that we can know “objective truth” about the world in stating, “So, we must stop looking for some objective truth that is available when we delve into the text of the Bible….”[15] Like McLaren, Jones is skeptical of our ability to know the world and of us truly realizing universal objective truth. “ ‘Objective Truth’ simply does not exist in postmodernism.”[16] He also asserts that the idea of a historian reporting the “true, factual, neutral, and objective account of an event or a person” is a lie from the Enlightenment. All writers tell the story as they see it and are bound in their use of the language. Their cultural and linguistic baggage prevents them from attaining any “neutral ground” from which they can view the world. [17]

Doug Pagitt, pastor of Solomon’s Porch in Minneapolis MI, is similar to Jones in his thinking, as shown as he states, “…a spirituality of the knowledge of God where the Bible is not reduced to a book from which we extract truth, but the Bible is a full, living, and active member of our community that is listened to on all topics about which it speaks.”[18] If the Bible is living, can it speak truth universally to all people? Ethics of the Bible may be true for a particular community at a particular time, but that doesn’t necessarily imply it is true for all people at all times. Elsewhere Pagitt adds, “In every communication process there are at least two authors, the one generating or expressing the idea and the one rebirthing the idea in her or his own mind.”[19] The context of this statement is Pagitt’s desire to have all people participate in the teaching process. Yet, his intent reveals that the idea does not derive its meaning from the originator, but is “reborn” in the minds of those listening. This statement agrees with Derrida in that the meaning is not inherent to the statement. There is only our interpretation of that meaning. Hence, if we cannot communicate a universal truth, then we can only tell things from our point of view; we can only tell our story. For the Christian, Pagitt sums the idea up well, “We are people entering into the story of God’s work in the world and seeking our place in the story.”[20]

What are the consequences with this view?

While I agree with the afore mentioned authors that Postmodernism strongly prevails in today’s culture, I disagree that Christians are obliged to subscribe to it’s implications on truth. Leaders like McLaren, Jones, and Pagitt have fallen prey to the naturalistic fallacy. Just because culture is that way, doesn’t mean that it ought to be that way. These and other leaders in the Emerging Church movement need to consider the consequences that a postmodern stance entails.

The first problem postmodernists will find is they are limited in their abilities to know the world by their language communities. Consequently, truths only apply as they are understood by those communities. This view of postmodernism is limited to postmodernists’ language community and does not necessarily apply to other language communities. It is not universal or else it would be a statement about the world as it is. In that case, my response might be, “So what? That is nice for you and your community, but as for me and my community, we believe you can know the world.” They could then write their books and have them printed at the UPS store in small quantities for their community. Yet, they have their books printed by major publishers such as Baker or Zondervan. It would seem they mean their ideas to be applicable to a much wider audience. If postmodernists believe their views hold universally, then their statements would be true about the world as it is. If their intent is to apply their views to the world, as it appears, postmodernists would be assuming that which they just denied. Either way, the rest of us are freed to seek knowledge about the world and hold our own views.

The second issue facing Postmodernism is in the equivalent to Relativism. While many postmodern philosophers will disagree that this is a gross reduction of the postmodern view, in the end it is unavoidable. “All truth is relative” is equivalent to saying, “There is no universal, objective truth. There is only how your language community speaks.” The outcome is the same. Truth about the world is not universal or knowable in both cultural Relativism and Postmodernism.

In Postmodernism and Relativism, there is no way to judge between different cultures. While I agree that one must be cautious in assuming the superiority of our own culture, should we not be able to make moral statements about other cultures? In the postmodern view there is no vehicle for doing so. There is no neutral place from where to judge other culture groups. Nazi Germany is no better or worse than FDR’s America. Pol Pot is no better or worse than Mother Teresa. The Crusades are no better or worse than the Great Awakening. We might be able to say that we like or dislike something that was done, but unless we are a part of that particular community at that particular time we can speak no truth regarding that community. People, however, are able to make such judgments and in many cases postmodernists don’t discourage them. For example, it would be safe to say that all Christian postmodernists would agree that Nazis committed universally evil crimes when they slaughtered millions of Jews, gypsies, and others at their own discretion.

For the Christian, the crisis goes right to the heart of the Gospel message. Two sections of scripture demonstrate the problem. Matthew 28:18-20 says:

"Then Jesus came to them and said, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.’ ” [21]

How can Christians go in to the all nations and teach others to obey all that Jesus has commanded? Everyone is not in the same community as Christians. However, Christ’s commands don’t apply to them, even though Jesus and His followers act and teach that they do.

In Acts 17:22-23 readers see Paul speaking in Athens.

“Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: ‘Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.’”[22]

How can Paul proclaim anything to them as if it was true, since the Athenians are of a different community than Paul? For the postmodernist it is impossible to speak as Paul does. As demonstrated above, they think understanding Scripture as a source of objective truths is misguided. A postmodern witness depicts people seeing the story that Christians live out, and if that story appeals to them, they might choose to adopt that story also. Therefore, Paul would have been clearly wrong to teach as if he knew any truth about the world, and for thinking his truths applied to the Athenians.

Lastly, it is hard to see how anyone would be able to truly follow Jesus. If there is no meaning in the Gospel texts, there is only our own interpretation of those texts, then how does anyone claim that they are following Jesus? Yet, this very claim is made by Tony Jones. “We do claim an exclusive faith, we do lay claim to the one true God, the one true Savior, and the one true story into which every human being fits.”[23] Given his other statements about what can be known this seems to be a difficult, perhaps untenable, position. It would seem to be more consistent for Jones to say that exclusive faith in God applies to him, but not every other human. If the postmodernist is consistent they could not claim that Jesus died as a sacrifice for our sins. They could not claim that Jesus resurrected Himself. They could only claim that they believed these things happened, not that they actually happened. It would seem, according to Paul, that we are still dead in our sins.[24]

Where should we go from here?

There are a many people leadership throughout the US and other countries who are struggling with this cultural turn. Many are proposing major methodological changes in how church services are executed. Dan Kimball of Vintage Faith in Santa Cruz, CA is among these. “But we have to resist clinging to modern methodologies despite their past – and even current – successes. We must completely rethink what it means to engage and dialogue with teens.”[25] Kimball holds to a methodological change without the need to discount objective truth. Yet, there are many others in the Christian community who state that the church cannot reach the emerging generation with just a change in methods. By abandoning truth in the midst of adapting methods, these leaders may be abandoning knowledge of God. It is high time for Christian leaders to challenge both Modern and Postmodern paradigms; many of which are inconsistent, untenable, and set themselves against God. Once again Paul sums up how we should react to such views:

“The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”[26]