An engaging post on Wheat & Chaff discusses whether a the “postmodern” emphasis of the “emerging church” movement can be consistent with sola scriptura. The analysis needs to go a bit further — much further, really, I think.
I won’t address the weaknesses of Wheat & Chaff’s portrait of postmodern thought generally, as David at Jollyblogger has already done so in a subsequent post. Although David nevertheless lauds the Wheat & Chaff post, I think the charicature of postmodern thought is enough of a flaw to raise serious questions about its real value. Wheat & Chaff assumes that “postmodern” = “relativism,” which isn’t necessarily a fair or true statement. Clearly, one cannot espouse relativism and hold to any version of scriptural authority, but that is a straw man. Serious Christians who are seeking to engage postmodern thought don’t reject the notion of authority altogether.
A good example of this is the bookBeyond Foundationalism, which is probably one of the most dense and challenging examinations of evangelical theology in the postmodern context. The treatment of scripture in that book doesn’t abandon the notion of Biblical authority. Rather, the phrase the authors use is that scripture is the “norming norm” of the Christian community. In this approach, scripture is normative; indeed, it is the highest norm to which any other norms of the community must be held to account.
How significantly does this formulation differ from traditional formulations of “sola scriptura”? The Westminster Confession states that
“the whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for His own glory, man’s salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men.”
Yet the Confession continues as follows:
“Nevertheless, we acknowledge the inward illumination of the Spirit of God to be necessary for the saving understanding of such things as are revealed in the Word:[13] and that there are some circumstances concerning the worship of God, and government of the Church, common to human actions and societies, which are to be ordered by the light of nature, and Christian prudence, according to the general rules of the Word, which are always to be observed.”
The classical Reformed formulation of sola scriptura, then, leaves some room for individual believers and the Church to interpret the written scriptures and to order the affairs of the local fellowship. In some ways, the concept of scripture as the “norming norm” for the Christian community isn’t that different from this confessional view. In either case, there are areas in which the community has authority to set standards applicable to a given culture, time and place.
This isn’t to say the concept of a “norming norm” is necessarily the same thing as “sola scriptura.” The authors of Beyond Foundationalism seem at some points to suggest that the community not only interprets and applies the existing norms of scripture, but also creates the norms through the act of interpreting and applying scripture. Actually, the book is a bit dense on this point, and I’m not sure if I’m representing the authors’ views accurately. So, there may be some points of departure from classical doctrine which might be subject to criticism.
In any event, Beyond Foundationalism isn’t the “emerging church manifesto,” because, as David Wayne points out, the “emerging church” is still something of a disjointed jumble. Nevertheless, it clearly shows that the theology coming out of the emerging church movement isn’t so easy to define as “anti-authoritarian” or “relativistic.”