Interesting discussion on Jesus Creed about how a younger pastor interested in the emerging church movement can relate to an older pastor who is wary of it. Here’s a comment I posted for discussion, offered here for discussion as well.
Scot and others, I’m curious for your take on this rumination. So this idea of “orthodoxy” has been nagging at me for quite some time. I wonder if in the context of the young pastor’s conversations with his senior pastor, we could use a word like “authenticity” instead. “Orthodoxy” and “central to the gospel” to me sound like hard demarcations based on mere assent to propositions. You agree with this list, or you’re out. Perhaps even, “if you get this one wrong, you’re not really among the elect / saved / Christians.”
But as I read scripture, the central concern seems to be “authenticity.” The epistle of 1 John, for example, is heavily invested in “orthodoxy,” because one of the writer’s central concerns is to distinguish authentic Christians from false teachers (possibly Gnostics) who are denying the deity of Christ. But the overall emphasis is on right relationship — the false teachers were ultimately unable to exhibit a right relationship to Jesus issuing in the prime virtue of love, because they were not coming to Jesus as he is, as the God-man. The sense, I think, is not to ossify a certain statement, expression, or contextualization of faith, but to encourage and enable people to remain in authentic, transforming relationship with Jesus. I’d suggest that other places in scripture in which proto-creedal statements are passed along perform the same function.
So maybe the starting point for this cross-generational, emerging-to-conservative-evangelical conversation is to shift focus from the demarcations of “orthodoxy” to the purposes of “authenticity.” Then the younger pastor can say something like “here’s how I think what NT Wright / Willard / McKnight / McClaren / etc. helps people deepen an authentic relationship with Jesus”; and the older pastor can say “here’s where I see some concerns with authenticity.” Not hard analytical lines, but relational boundaries.