The Christian Church and the Emergent Church

[In the January 2009 issue of New Horizons in the OPC, Danny E. Olinger wrote an article called "Christianity and the Emergent Church." What follows is my letter to the editor concerning it, so I recommend you read it first: http://www.opc.org/nh9.html?article_id=589. (For those of you who may not know, Danny Olinger is also the editor of New Horizons, so my letter, which refers to him in the third person, is actually written directly to him. Weird, but such is the art of letters to the editor.)]

New Horizons in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church

January 6, 2009

Dear Editor:

I find myself very much in agreement with the substance of Danny E. Olinger’s article “Christianity and the Emergent Church” in the January 2009 issue of New Horizons. However, its last sentence contains a grammatical difficulty; reflection on that point of style may help us discern how best to take the stand which Mr. Olinger urges.

Mr. Olinger hearkens back to Machen’s Christianity and Liberalism and Van Til’s subsequent homage, Christianity and Barthianism. In both titles, the “and” was a subtle but definite means by which to contrast Christianity with a system of belief, a doctrine, which was something other than Christian. Grammatically, this device worked because both words were nouns. What Mr. Olinger similarly identifies as something other than Christian is “the emergent” (p. 9); unfortunately, despite the definite article, “emergent” insistently remains an adjective, not a noun. More grammatically pleasing is the article’s title; however, it fails by contrasting two different sorts of things. While both nouns, “Christianity” is a doctrine and “the emergent Church” is an ecclesiastical body.

This stylistic problem points out a difference between the stands taken by Machen and Van Til and that which we must take in our day. Liberalism and Barthianism were systems of doctrine which sought to (and, in very many places, did) displace that of historic, confessional Christianity. Both, however, were content to leave the structures, practices, and liturgies of the Church in place. Thus, Machen and Van Til took their stands on doctrine.

At roughly the same time, what we today call “evangelicalism” came into its own on the American scene. Because the evangelicals agreed with and defended the historic doctrines of Christianity, we tended to regard them as allies. But while they left Christian doctrine pretty much alone, the evangelicals regarded the historic structures, practices, and liturgies of the Church as secondary and optional matters. In very short order, evangelicalism in the second half of the twentieth century was overtaken by a pragmatic faddism: since they believed historic Christianity could be believed and taught without regard to form, evangelicals radically changed (amongst other things) the role and work of the pastor and the manner in which worship takes place. While many confessional presbyterians distanced themselves from these perpetual innovations, many others saw no reason to criticize evangelicals who remained defenders of historic Christianity.

Now we have a generation of evangelicals who realize that doctrine and practice are not so easily divisible and earnestly desire more substance than did their fathers. They seek not merely a doctrine (“Christianity”), but a faith which finds its form in a community (“Church”): therefore, we cannot properly call them “the emergent” without adding the noun “Church.” If this is the case, then the stand we take today cannot be on doctrine alone. Instead, we must take a stand on doctrine and practice, on how it is that those with our faith are to be the Church.

This is the stand we should have taken against evangelicalism a very long time ago. It is not a stand taken by the publishing of books or the holding of debates, however. Instead, it is a stand taken by a rededication to first principles of historic presbyterian practice: thoughtful liturgy, Sabbath-keeping, catechesis, home visitation by pastors, elders, and deacons. The emergent Church, for all their talk, continue to be evangelicals in the only way that matters: they invent their practices according to their own inclinations, and so their doctrines follow. Our stand against this innovative tendency is simple: be the Church the way we and our fathers properly understand the Bible has taught us to be, by being presbyterian in practice just as much as we are in doctrine. Perhaps then the dissatisfied children of the evangelicals will see that the real choice is between the non-church of evangelicalism and the Christian Church.

grace and peace,
Matthew W. Kingsbury