Chapter 4 is entitled ‘Deep Truth’ and explores issues of epistemology. He thinks that traditionalists have often misrepresented postmodernism and have failed to understand postmodernity as emergent leaders understand it. Is postmodernity in all forms the enemy? Lstenign to the rhetoric of some evangelicals you would think so. However, he also criticises the emergent church for not recognizing that there are movements and thinkers in the evangelical world who also reject modernism.
‘Emerging voices tend to overstate the traditional church’s captivity to the rationalism and individualism of modernism by ignoring the last hundred years of evangelical criticism of Enlightenment rationalism by thinkers such as Abraham Kuyper, C.S. Lewis, Cornelius Van Til, Herman Dooyeweerd and Nicholas Wolterstorff [quite a few neocalvinists in this list]. Long before post-modern thinkers came on the scene, these Christian thinkers have been debunking the church’s captivity to science and rationalism. It concerns me that bright scholars like Stanley Grenz and John Franke, two influential thinkers for the emerging church, do nor bring this up. It seems the emerging church, for rhetorical purposes, uses sweeping generalizations about the traditional church that are unfair.’ 76
But the traditional church is just as guilty. By not taking the time to understand what the emergent church means by postmodernism, traditional thinkers jump to the conclusion that the emerging church is abandoning historic Christianity. This is certainly not true of the whole movement…Brian McClaren rejects ‘hard’ postmodernism. Few embrace radical relativism or deep constructivism that rejects all revelation or external authority.’ 76
I think Belcher’s analysis is spot on. I will post more later
This does sound like a good book, I’ll have to give it a look. I do think that in the UK context we ought to engage with the UK ‘deep church’ work, esp. this volume edited by Andrew Walker http://www.amazon.co.uk/Remembering-Our-Future-Explorations-Church/dp/1842275046, and this blog hosted by Jason Clarke – http://deepchurch.org.uk/about/#more-20. It sounds quite similar, except that it is more about evangelicals rediscovering the ancient beliefs and practices of the traditional church, and by traditional it means Orthodox, Catholic etc. I think this is an exciting development.