Beyond Strategy, Towards the Kingdom of God • Joshua M.

Moritz 27

Beyond Strategy, Towards the

Kingdom of God: The Post-Critical
Reconstructionist Mission of the
Emerging Church
By Joshua M. Moritz
Abstract: The Emerging Church is a diverse global phenomenon which envisions a radical reforming
of the theology and praxis of the broader Christian church in light of the philosophical and cultural
shift from modernism to post-modernism. Differing from the evangelical New Paradigm seeker-sensitive
Church’s generational focus, and the organizational unity and routines of Mainline Protestant denomina-
tions the Emerging Church conversation endeavors to create committed, authentic, day-to-day communi-
ties that embrace ecumenical and ancient Christian theology and practices in order to live out the reality
of the in-breaking kingdom of God. Though precise systemic theological unity within the Emerging
movement is recognized as an elusive goal that is generally not even sought, the movement as a whole
finds much in common with post-conservative and post-liberal theology, and shares a joint mission with
those who have been called to the task of post-critical reconstruction.

Key Terms: Emerging Church, post-critical reconstruction, post-modern, post-liberal, post-conservative,

New Paradigm Church, missional, seeker-sensitive, ancient-future

An Image of the Emerging Sunday morning for worship, bringing to a close

Church
Picture a cabin nestled in the serene forests
of the Sierra Nevada Mountains north of Lake
Tahoe in the California wilderness. A group of
19 young men and women in their 20s and
early 30s—Latino, Cambodian, Pacific Islander,
and European American—from diverse church
backgrounds, including Baptist, Lutheran, UCC-
German Reformed, Roman Catholic, Evangelical
Covenant, Seventh-day Adventist, Pentecostal, Pres-
byterian, and Mennonite, gather together on a
their three-day small group retreat. Each per-
son, acting an assigned role, partakes in a dra-
matic reading of the ancient account of the mar-
tyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas (200 C.E.).
Afterwards there is a time for reflective meditation.
Some—moved by the text—weep, and some bow
their heads in silent prayer. A discussion engaging
the play’s text follows. All then join together in a
cappella and acoustic guitar-led songs of petition
and praise—from St. Bernard to Charles Wesley to
U2. The gathering then reaches its culmination as
they celebrate a solemn yet joyful Eucharist together
immersed in an ancient ritual and liturgy emphasiz-
ing the real presence of Christ in the elements.

Joshua M. Moritz is the former Managing Editor of Dialog: A Journal of Theology a member of the Dialog Editorial Advisory Board, and
currently a research assistant and publications editor at the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences. He is also a Ph.D. student in
Philosophical and Systematic Theology at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA.
28 Dialog: A Journal of Theology • Volume 47, Number 1 • Spring 2008

What is the Emerging Church?
This true account of an ecumenical, eclectic gath-
ering where the faith of the ancients is brought
into dynamic interaction with contemporary cul-
ture can be seen as a microcosm of what many are
calling “the Emerging Church.” Beginning at the
turn of the 21st century, the Emerging Church—
which its leaders describe as more of an ongoing
‘conversation’ than a ‘movement’—is a global phe-
nomenon encompassing a wide spectrum of church
traditions that has sprung up in the post-Christian
societies of Europe, North America, New Zealand,
Australia, and the United Kingdom.1 Rooted in a
common disillusionment with modernist dualisms
of spirit/matter, mind/body, and sacred/secular, dis-
satisfied with the Enlightenment’s absolutist distinc-
tions between fact and value and faith and science,
and frustrated with quick, easy, pat, and ready-made
doctrinal answers to life’s most difficult questions,
the Emerging Church seeks another way forward
through the postmodern wilderness of doubt, de-
spair, deconstruction, and disintegration.
For the Emerging Christian, this way forward
involves a rejection of modernism’s airtight cate-
gories, and a welcoming of a radical openness to
questioning established dogmas and time-honored
traditions. It requires a sweeping ecumenism or
post-Protestantism which views no part of Chris-
tian theology or Church tradition as off-limits or
out of bounds. It calls for an embracing of per-
sonal story and historical context and narrative,
and a denunciation of the ahistorical evangelical
protestant-Gnostic approach to ecclesiology.2 It re-
quires a willingness to be intellectually accountable
and interpersonally vulnerable in the midst of au-
thentic community.
In the following pages, I will attempt to de-
scribe these and other aspects of the diverse move-
ment or conversation called the Emerging Church.
Proceeding to examine the Emerging Church in
contrast to its evangelical and mainline counter-
parts, I will then evaluate its theological and philo-
sophical foundations, motivations, and possible fu-
ture directions. Finally, I will argue that while the
Emerging Church has broadly begun to take on the
task of post-critical reconstruction as described by
theologian Ted Peters, the future coherence, in-
tellectual vitality, and relevance of the movement
depends upon its willingness to engage with post-
liberal and post-conservative constructive theology,
and the continuing dialogue between theology and
the natural sciences.
Any honest contemporary treatment of the
Emerging Church movement reveals that it is quite
a complex and multifarious phenomenon. While
some, such as D. A. Carson, have tried to stream-
line this complexity by focusing on one or two
of the movement’s main thinkers and issues,3 I
would argue that network-type metaphors—rather
than hierarchical or radial metaphors—more ade-
quately describe the Emerging Church conversation.
In other words, rather than picturing one person
or idea as being at the hub or center of the move-
ment we should view it as a network where some
nodes (representing persons or key ideas) are more
highly connected than others, and new hubs are
constantly emerging at the grassroots level in re-
sponse to a variety of factors that have nothing
to do with the initiative of one or two central
leaders.
To orient us in our discussion let us begin with
an oft-used definition of the Emerging Church
found in the comprehensive research of Eddie
Gibbs and Ryan Bolger:
Emerging Churches are communities that
practice the way of Jesus within postmod-
ern cultures. This definition encompasses
nine practices. Emerging churches (1) iden-
tify with the life of Jesus (2) transform the
secular realm, and (3) live highly communal
lives. Because of these three activities, they
(4) welcome the stranger, (5) serve with gen-
erosity (6) participate as producers (7) create
as created beings (8) lead as a body, and (9)
take part in spiritual activities.4
In the following discourse I will elaborate upon and
expand this definition while bringing it into dia-
logue with the other themes mentioned above.
 Beyond Strategy, Towards the Kingdom of God • Joshua M. Moritz 29

Beyond A Clash of Generations at least where external forms were considered. The
New Paradigm thus abandoned the traditional sanc-
tuary and constructed new arena or auditorium-
style “suburban churches that reflected the corpo-
While most in the more liberal and moderate main-
rate culture of affluent functionality.” Pragmatically-
line churches have not even noticed the Emerging
driven, they “built churches for one cultural subtype
Church as a blip on their ecclesiological radar, many
of Boomer, the suburban consumer of religion who
in conservative evangelical circles have dismissed it
is also a corporate achiever in his or her vocational
either as repackaged “heretical” liberal Protestantism
life. This corresponded to a gospel of personal ful-
or as the latest generational fad or trendy fash-
fillment and megachurch identification.”10
ion among younger Christians.5 The latter category
While some, such as Episcopalian sociologist of
of evangelicals view the Emerging Church phe-
religion Donald Miller, have heralded the New
nomenon as an updated and ‘hipper’ version of the
Paradigm church movement as the “Second Ref-
seeker-sensitive New Paradigm churches. These New
ormation,” which should be mirrored by mainline
Paradigm Churches of the 1970s and 80s grew out
Protestant churches in general,11 others more cau-
of the Jesus People movement in the 1960s, and
tious in their assessment have observed that such
later inspired the Purpose-Driven Church model
symbolically streamlined seeker-sensitive Boomer
of the 1990s. Such New Paradigm churches—
churches “are struggling to reach ‘Generation X.”12
represented today by Calvary Chapel, Hope Chapel,
It would seem that Gen-Xers, dissatisfied with the
the Vineyard Christian Fellowship, Willow Creek,
modernist Boomer churches of their parents and
and Saddleback community churches6 —endeavored
yearning for symbol, ritual and image, are increas-
to become more “user-friendly” to the average
ingly participating in pre-Reformation churches,
American newcomer of an unchurched generation.
and especially in those churches which refer to
These churches were formed in an effort to reach
themselves as Emerging .13 In fact, the explicit “goal
out to the Baby-Boomers who have been largely
of many in the ‘Emerging Church’ is to embody
absent in the congregations of traditional mainline
an alternative to the model of the Willow Creek,
Protestant denominations. Focusing on “consumer
seeker-driven church that blankets the contempo-
demand by tuning their worship and organiza-
rary evangelical landscape.”14 For disillusioned Gen-
tional style”7 to a new generation’s culture, New
Xers, Yers, and Millennials who increasingly find
Paradigm churches stripped the service of any-
themselves taking shelter in the Emerging Church,
thing that might be perceived as a barrier to
the chasm which divides the Boomer church from
the uninitiated: traditional Christian symbols like
their own runs much deeper and wider than the
robes, crosses, and altars; images and rituals; and
proverbial generational gap. For them, what might
formal theological language. Instead they aimed
at first appear to reflect a mere difference in style
for a casual, relaxed, and experience-focused atmo-
and external form is in fact the manifestation of
sphere that features emotionally charged contempo-
the more profound and more incommensurable cul-
rary musical worship, Bible-centered teaching and
tural and philosophical divide between modernity
preaching, and extensive lay-led home-based small
and post-modernity.
group ministries where personal style and individ-
ual opinion is prized.8 Catering to a “broad ther-
apeutic sensibility in American life,” an increasing The Church Beyond Modernism
“individualism in American self-identity,” and the
Boomer “distrust of authority and established insti-
tutions,”9 the objective of these theologically con- The motivation behind the seeker-sensitive,
servative evangelical churches was to bridge the gen- Boomer-oriented New Paradigm churches was
erational gap where they have felt that established generational and had nothing to do with marked
mainline churches were missing the cultural mark. changes in philosophy or theology. Indeed, the
The issue was one of ‘getting with the times’— “absence of theological scholarship and serious
30 Dialog: A Journal of Theology • Volume 47, Number 1 • Spring 2008
self-critical engagement within these [New
Paradigm churches] has already produced
problems. . .which seem to be unresolvable.”15 With
insufficient theological, philosophical, and ecclesio-
logical foundations, the evangelical New Paradigm
model “is now beginning to face up to its limita-
tions,” as these churches are increasingly bedeviled
by schisms, scandals, difficulties in leadership suc-
cession, and the challenge to offer their congregants
something more than the perfunctory emotional/
spiritual high.
In contrast to the New Paradigm Churches,
the Emerging Church movement has come into
being expressly in relation to the paradigm shift
from modernity to post-modernity, and in re-
sponse to the question of how the church is to
bridge the hermeneutical gap by taking postmod-
ernism seriously.16 Dissatisfied with modernity’s de-
mands for absolute rational foundations for truth
and knowledge, and with modernism’s dichotomiz-
ing of fact/value, faith/reason, science/religion,
matter/spirit, secular/sacred, and so on, Emerg-
ing Church leaders have resonated with post-
modernism’s critique of modernity’s hermetically-
sealed groupings. In response, these Emergents
have turned towards those philosophers and the-
ologians who are working to recover an under-
standing of knowledge and truth that is not only
propositional and scientific, but also historical, rela-
tional, metaphorical, mystical, and narrative.17 Such
thinkers who have strongly impacted the Emerging
Church’s thought and praxis include the scientist
and philosopher Michael Polanyi, philosopher of
hermeneutics Hans Georg Gadamer, literary critic
and novelist G. K. Chesterton, New Testament his-
torian N. T. Wright, Old Testament scholar Wal-
ter Brueggemann, moral and political philosopher
Alasdair MacIntyre, missiologist Lesslie Newbigin,
philosopher of science and theologian Nancey Mur-
phy, theologians Jürgen Moltmann and Miroslav
Volf, ethicist Stanley Hauerwas, post-liberal theolo-
gian George Lindbeck, and post-conservative the-
ologian Stanley Grenz.18 Not concerned simply
with styles of worship music or outreach strategies,
Emerging Christians are striving to reintegrate re-
ality for the purpose of achieving a holistic vision
of lived-out Christian faith. To assist them in this
task they plumb the treasures of secular philosophy,
literary theory, and mainline Protestant and Ro-
man Catholic theology. Making “evangelical revival-
ism hipper or louder,” remarks Emerging Church
leader Brian McLaren, “does not change the fact
that it is still just ‘emotional manipulation.’ Nei-
ther rap music nor video loops will provide the
needed change, since, the real core of this thing is
theological.”19
Striving for Authentic
and Missional Community
For Emerging Christians, addressing the cultural
and intellectual challenge of postmodernism is
about more than just changes in epistemology.20
It involves confronting the rampant individualism,
consumerism, and forces of alienation so prevalent
in contemporary urban society and reinforced in
much of the mainline and seeker-sensitive evan-
gelical churches. Emergents desire to reclaim via
praxis the ancient notion of the church as primar-
ily ekklesia—a people called out and called together
according to God’s will for the purpose of redeem-
ing God’s beloved cosmos. This understanding of
church as a verb rather than a noun is opposed
to the common misconception of the church as a
place to meet once a week. For Emerging Chris-
tians, church is a 24/7 affair that requires nothing
less than a commitment to authentic and mean-
ingful community wherein whole persons live out
their new identity in Christ as the adopted children
of God. Within this new identity and community,
all previous loyalties, privileges, rights, and individ-
ual priorities are subsumed into the greater real-
ity of God’s in-breaking kingdom, as each member
is known and loved as a whole person, supported
relationally in their everyday lives, and invited to
actively and creatively participate with their gifts
and talents in life-transforming activities and the re-
demption of God’s world. Such was the experience
of Lutheran pastor Pamela Fickenscher as she de-
scribes the interpersonal dynamics of her Emerging
congregation or community in Uptown Minneapo-
lis called “Spirit Garage”:
 Beyond Strategy, Towards the Kingdom of God • Joshua M. Moritz
After being around Spirit Garage for a while,
people eventually discovered that, indeed,
this was a human community. We struggled
about growth, about music, about clashing
personalities. We struggled with our relation-
ship to the church that started us and the
denomination that supported us. And our
members struggled with finding a way out
of the fear of hypocrisy and into a faith
that was passionate but also allowed [us] to
fail and that could let others fail. . .Being au-
thentic means that our brokenness is evident.
There is no smooth polish or veneer to put
on our failings as individuals or as a com-
munity. People weep openly in worship and
are not afraid to say exactly what they think
about the church, about God—and about
the mess the world is in.21
But for Emerging Christians, the authentic com-
mitted community called church does not cease
with a mere acknowledgment of personal failures
and the world’s mess. As missional communities
Emerging Churches enter fully into that interper-
sonal and worldly messiness in order to redeem it.
Such redemption within the support and mutual
accountability of committed community thus goes
well beyond the salvation of just individuals, and
extends also into the local economic, social, and
environmental contexts of each particular church
community. The goal of such communities is not
numerical or economical success, but rather the in-
carnation of the gospel for the sake of each other
and for the sake of the larger community in which
they live as a church. For Emergents, church is not
a means through which the souls of individuals
might ultimately escape this God-forsaken world,
but rather is the way through which the body of
Christ puts hands and feet on Christ’s gospel and
thus embodies the reality of God’s love for the
world. 22
The “Ancient-Future” Church
of Relevance & Resistance
Emerging Christian thought and worship flows
from this sense of authentic community as it is
31
rooted in postmodern thought and contextualized
within the larger global, ecumenical, and historical
Christian faith. In practice this involves retrieving
ancient theological understandings, liturgical forms,
devotional practices, and spiritual disciplines from
the pre-evangelical and pre-Protestant Christian past
to bring them into dynamic interaction and conver-
sation with contemporary cultural styles and forms.
In this way, many Emerging communities have been
described as “ancient-future” churches.23 As Scott
Bader Saye observes:
The emerging church is not shy about raid-
ing the storehouses of the Roman Catholics,
the Orthodox and the Anglicans for richer
liturgies as well as prayer beads, icons, spir-
itual direction, lectio divina and a deeper
sacramentality. The return to ancient faith
and practice is increasingly seen as a way for-
ward in churches polarized by worship wars
and theological intransigence.24
From the Patristics to the medieval mystics to
the post-liberals, the whole ecumenical Christian
history and world is the Emerging Church’s the-
ological and liturgical playground. Transcending
the traditional versus contemporary worship divide,
Emerging worship—in contrast to what they re-
fer to as modernist, linear, word-centered, rational
worship—is multi-media, multi-layered, and multi-
sensory. Differing from the mainline Protestant,
Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox liturgical
repetition around the church year, and also from
the ‘seeker-sensitive’ New Paradigm churches where
‘worship’ is stripped of its traditional Christian
characteristics, Emerging Church worship “reclaims
all the accoutrements of piety—candles, icons, in-
cense, kneeling and chanting—alongside the projec-
tion screens, electric guitars and televisions rolling
looped images.”25
What makes such eclecticism possible for Emer-
gents is the philosophical presupposition of open-
ness along with an understanding of the Chris-
tian church as an incomplete work in progress.
To this effect, those in the Emerging Church con-
versation understand themselves as creedal rather
than doctrinal, and seek after what they refer to
as a “Generous Orthodoxy.”26 Consequently, there
is among Emerging thinkers a considerable focus on
32 Dialog: A Journal of Theology • Volume 47, Number 1 • Spring 2008
the apophatic tradition within Christian theology,27
and a sense that many of the classic denominational
church debates are inconsequential in light of what
we do know about Jesus the Christ’s gospel, his
portrayal of the kingdom of God, and its mean-
ing and implications for human society and be-
yond. Such implications—as Emergents understand
them, with the aid of biblical scholars such as N.T.
Wright and Walter Bruggeman—must be translated
into radical political and social action, as Christians
are called to strive for justice and mercy for the
poor, the aged, the orphaned, the alien, the vic-
tims of war, and others who are abandoned by the
utilitarian, consumerist, corporate-imperialist values
of contemporary Western, and especially American,
society. Environmental justice and responsible and
self-sacrificial stewardship of creation are also in-
cluded in this understanding of the kingdom of
God as it is presented in the Gospels. With so
many crucial kingdom-oriented things to work for,
many Emergents would question the prudence of
many Christians who seem only to argue against
one another.
A House Divided or a
Post-Critical Reconstruction?
Emerging Church thinkers, however, are certainly
not without their own differences. Indeed, the dis-
parity within the movement has made some ques-
tion whether it makes sense to call it a ‘movement’
at all. With such an eclectic, smorgasbord approach
to worship and theology one finds everything from
what might appear on the surface to be an Eastern
Orthodox divine liturgy, with the addition of video
loops, coffee, and couches, to churches that have no
formal or centralized gatherings at all.28 In matters
of theology, the same type of diversity is present.
For example, some Emerging Church authors fol-
low the academic theological mainstream in seeing
God as radical Trinitarian community,29 while oth-
ers have denied the Trinity and the personal nature
of God altogether.30
While this spectrum of opinions makes it dif-
ficult for critics of the Emerging Church to pin
it down, it can also make theological conversation
with and within the Emerging church quite diffi-
cult. One could even say that this lack of theo-
logical method, ubiquitous in Emergent writings, is
the systematic theologian’s worst nightmare. To be
sure, Emergents are quite emphatic that they don’t
need or want a systematic theologian to make sense
of the Emerging conversation. The problem of hav-
ing meaningful theological dialogue with Emergents
is thus exacerbated by their explicit bias against
systematic treatments of theology and the use of
reasoned prose in general to discuss theological
matters.31 Emerging Church leader Brian McLaren
elaborates on this point:
There long have been Christian traditions
recognizing the profound importance of
mysticism and poetry, and the corresponding
limitations of rationality and prose, includ-
ing the via negativa—the negative way—and
the hesychastic tradition, which discovers God
in silence. Both traditions remind us of the
limitations of language when talking about
God, a subject so great that no words can
do it justice.
This rebuke to arrogant intellectualizing
is especially apt for modern Christians, who
do not build cathedrals of stone and glass
as in the Middle Ages, but rather concep-
tual cathedrals of proposition and argument.
These conceptual cathedrals—known popu-
larly as systematic theologies—were cherished
by modern minds, liberal and conservative. . .
We see modernity with its absolutisms
and colonialisms and totalitarianisms as a
kind of static dream, a desire to abide
in timeless abstractions and extract human-
ity from the ongoing flow of history and
emergence. . .In Christian theology, this anti-
emergent thinking is expressed in systematic
theologies that claim (overtly, covertly, or un-
consciously) to have final orthodoxy nailed
down, freeze-dried, and shrink wrapped for-
ever.32
McLaren’s case against systematic prose for dis-
cussing anything which pertains to the realm of the-
ological mystery is, ironically, argued using the very
reasoned prose that he is rejecting. This presents
McLaren with something of a methodological para-
dox. And McLaren is not the sole transgressor in
 Beyond Strategy, Towards the Kingdom of God • Joshua M. Moritz
this matter. It would seem that the vast majority
of Emerging thinkers who reject systematic theol-
ogy are faced with this same conundrum, in that
every in-house Emerging discussion over theologi-
cal matters that I have witnessed so far—be it in
books, on blogs, in sermons or in lectures—has
transpired predominantly via prose. In this way
Emergents make constant use of the language and
categories of systematic theology while at the same
time denying its legitimacy and denouncing it as
irredeemably modern. If one is to take seriously
the Emerging Church’s focus on praxis informing
theology, I would ask why this should be the one
exception. Shouldn’t the frequent, if not exclusive,
practice of using reasoned prose in Emerging dis-
cussions earn it some legitimate status in terms of
expressing experience and belief?
This is certainly not to deny McLaren’s point
that some truths and mysteries are beyond words.
But, on the other hand, the very core of the incar-
nation involves the reality that unfathomable mys-
tery has been made intelligible. Thus, to hold—as
some Emergents do—‘that God so transcends hu-
man experience that none of our categories apply
to God,’ and therefore to conclude ‘that we cannot
speak of God,’ is a self-referentially incoherent argu-
ment. If we cannot speak of God how can we assert
so confidently that none of our categories apply to
God?33 I fear that some Emergents might be wan-
dering down the road of Nominalism while insist-
ing they are Critical Realists. The rejection of mod-
ernism notwithstanding, theological and philosoph-
ical incoherency is still not a virtue—even among
the most hard-lined postmodernist philosophers.
Beyond this, many Emerging thinkers reject sys-
tematic theology on the basis that “there’s no con-
sensus in systematic theology.”34 Yet, they often
point to areas of academic theological consensus
in order to make their case against their non-
academic evangelical or conservative Calvinist op-
ponents.35 Emergents also protest that no system-
atic theology can ever be final, but I have never
read a 20th or 21st century academic systematic
theology—American evangelicals excepted—which
ever claimed to be such. Indeed, this has been
the case within the Christian tradition of system-
atic theology since the time of the Patristics, and
33
later systematic theologians did not abandon this
standard. Even Thomas Aquinas, arguably the most
systematic of systematic theologians, couched his
whole Summa within the framework of the via
negative—the theology of not knowing what God
is.36 In fact, Thomas was so open to the realm of
mystical experience that he himself eventually re-
ceived an ecstatic vision given from God—and sub-
sequently referred to his Summa as straw in com-
parison.37 While the work of some systematic the-
ologians culminate in mystical experience, others,
such as Wolfhart Pannenberg, can point to such
ecstatic experiences of mystery as the inauguration
of their systematic theological work:
On a long walk from one town to another,
I had a visionary experience of a great light
not only surrounding me, but absorbing me
for an indefinite time. I did not hear any
words, but it was a metaphysical awakening
that prompted me to search for its mean-
ing regarding my life during the following
years.38
As the broader project of “faith seeking under-
standing,” systematic theology is the devotional and
spiritual exercise of loving God with our minds—
a venture which transcends both modernism and
post-modernism. Philosophical and cultural con-
text are the fuel for the systematic theologian’s
exploratory fire—whether they be pre-modern,
modern, or post-modern. In fact McLaren, at
points, acknowledges this corrective as he adopts
for his own vision of the “Emerging approach” the
systematic theological criteria of coherency, contextu-
ality, conversation, and comprehensiveness—the ex-
act same criteria that are used in numerous post-
modern systematic theologies.39
McLaren says that such theologians who embrace
this standard “will be the friend, not the enemy” of
the Emerging approach. In that case, it would seem
that the Emerging church has quite a few friends
from mainstream academic theology. Thus, what
I believe McLaren and his fellow Emerging com-
rades really mean to say—albeit via praxis rather
than through the pen—is something that has al-
ready been emphasized by many theologians who
have been engaging with postmodernism since well
before the Emerging church came along; namely:
34 Dialog: A Journal of Theology • Volume 47, Number 1 • Spring 2008
that theology is contingent, always tentative, and
constrained—indeed maximally constrained—by
the other spheres of human knowledge, even as it
informs them at the level of presuppositions, aes-
thetics, and experience.40
However, I do not believe that Emerging
thinkers are addressing this group of post-modern,
post-conservative, and post-liberal theologians as
much as they are protesting against the Evangeli-
cal Presbyterian crowd represented by persons such
as PCA apologist R.C. Sproul and OPC theologian
Michael Horton. Such stalwart guardians of abso-
lute truth are indeed rightly criticized by Emerg-
ing authors as the last defenders of the crum-
bling bastions of modernism.41 I do believe that
the Emerging church desires to exist as an alterna-
tive to such highly cerebral evangelical modernist
churches and their self-proclaimed ‘orthodoxy.’ I
surmise that what the Emerging church wants to
be—and has already become in many respects—
is post-liberal, post-conservative, and post-modern
theology lived out in practice. Willing to decon-
struct the church and Christian theology in light of
personal and intellectual doubt, critical conscious-
ness, biblical scholarship, hermeneutical theory, hu-
man experience, and the implications of the natural
sciences,42 the Emerging church is simultaneously
engaged in the vital mission of post-critical recon-
struction.
Post-modern theologian Ted Peters elaborates on
the nature of post-critical reconstruction:
Modern critical consciousness has left us
bereft and alone amid a desert of meaning-
lessness. “Beyond the desert of criticism we
wish to be called again,” writes Paul Ricoeur.
What we need, he contends, is an interpre-
tation of the ancient symbols—symbols that
come to us initially from the outside of our
own subjectivity—that lets us be taught by
them, that lets us share in their world of
meaning. But just how can we do this with-
out returning to the immediacy of belief of
the first naı̈veté? Ricoeur’s answer is the wa-
ger. A wager is a risk, a bet. In this case. . .we
are betting that a hermeneutic of belief in
the Christian gospel will be more fruitful for
living in the world than the skeptical con-
clusions produced by a hermeneutic of suspi-
cion. We will not forget our doubts. But we
will press on, trying to understand ourselves
and the world around us in light of the sym-
bols of divine revelation. The wager is a form
of hypothetical belief, a self-entrustment to
the world of meaning created by Christian
language.
The wager takes us into theology’s
hermeneutical circle. Ricoeur describes the
circle this way: “We must understand in or-
der to believe, but we must believe in or-
der to understand.” When approaching the
claims of the Christian faith, we do so with
at least a hypothetical believing in order to
begin to understand them. What we are ask-
ing for here is a post-Cartesian version of
Saint Anselm’s definition of theology as faith
seeking understanding. Once we have en-
tered the belief-understanding circle, the pro-
cess of interpreting Christian symbols begins
to illumine our own life and makes it under-
standable in relation to the divine reality.43
For Peters, post-critical reconstruction is integra-
tive and holistic, personally participatory and world-
reconstructive. It is hypothetical and tentative by
nature, and yet it is at the same time more truth-
ful, since it also lays claim to and incorporates that
which has gone before. It demands the courage to
trust once again in the face of our pessimism, the
audacity to comprehend once again in the midst of
our skepticism, and the grace to love once again
for the sake of God’s kingdom.
Conclusion
Every now and again, dramatic changes in cul-
ture and media, new findings in scholarship, and
discoveries in science enable a new transformation
to take place in the way the Christian church
lives out its mission to embody the love of God
to the world. In a culture where “God is dead”
and yet people are more spiritual than ever be-
fore, the Emerging Church has arisen like a phoenix
out of the ashes of modernity. Having gone down
the rabbit hole and surfaced on the other side of
modernity, Emerging Christians have taken on the
 Beyond Strategy, Towards the Kingdom of God • Joshua M. Moritz
cultural yoke of post-modernism and have begun
to re-integrate the whole of ecclesial reality in light
of authentic, meaningful community, ancient-future
worship and theology, and a missional faith that
heralds the kingdom of God. Accepting Paul Ri-
coeur’s wager, the Emerging conversation has put
its worldview on the betting table as it endeavors
via praxis and thought to show that a hermeneutic
of faith leads to a more abundant and meaning-
ful personal and intellectual life than a capitulation
to aimless cynicism. Reconstructing the world of
Christian belief in the deconstructive wake of crit-
ical consciousness, and sojourning in the valley of
the ever-looming shadow of church division, the
Emerging Church offers hope as it promises to be
a much-needed balm that will mend the gaping
wounds of the world that God loves.
Endnotes
1. Eddie Gibbs and Ryan K. Bolger, Emerging Churches Creating Com-
munity in Postmodern Cultures, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2005)
28.
2. For a discussion of Gnostic tendencies in Evangelical Protestantism
see Philip J. Lee, Against the Protestant Gnostics (New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1987).
3. D.A. Carson, Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church: Un-
derstanding a Movement and Its Implications, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan,
2005), 187. Carson in his discussion of the Emerging Church focuses
chiefly on Brain McLaren and Steven Chalke, and narrows the conversa-
tion to epistemology as the main issue. While Carson makes several key
conclusions about the Emerging Church through his treatment of Steven
Chalke, it must be noted that Chalke is not a leader in the Emerging
movement and doesn’t even consider himself as part of the Emerging
Church. For a further discussion on this see Scot McKnight, “What is
the Emerging Church?” Unpublished lecture at Westminster Theologi-
cal Seminary’s Contemporary Issues Conference (Oct 26–27, 2006), 5.
It is available at http://www.spcc-storrs.org/blog/archives/McKnight%20-
%20What%20is%20the%20Emerging%20Church.pdf
4. Eddie Gibbs and Ryan K. Bolger, Emerging Churches, 44–45.
5. For example, Jim West on Theologie und Gemeinschaft says, “I
heartily suggest that folk become familiarized with this movement. It
will be important (as a fad) until it fades from sight.” http://drjimwest.
wordpress.com/2006/11/06/is-the-emergent-church-heretical/ (last accessed
Nov, 2007). Quite a few conservative Evangelicals have denounced it as
a heresy that “has abandoned the gospel.” Carson 186. Larry Pettegrew
concludes that the emerging church is ultimately a heretical betrayal to
evangelical Christianity in matters of Ecclesiology, Eschatology, and Sote-
riology. See “Evangelicism, Paradigms, and the Emerging Church” The
Master’s Seminary Journal , 17:2 (Fall 2006), 167–175. A Typical example
of more popular renunciations can be found at “The emergent cult?
35
Pastor Ken Silva’s warning to the church” http://galatiansc4v16.wordpress.
com/2006/08/31/the-emergent-cult-listen-to-pastor-ken-silvas-warning-to-
the-church/ (last accessed Nov, 2007).
6. Donald E. Miller, Reinventing American Protestantism: Christianity in
the New Millennium, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).
7. Stephen R. Warner, “‘New Paradigm’ Churches: Lessons from Cal-
ifornia,” Christian Century, 114:33 (Nov, 1997), 1085. See also Mark R
Kowalewski, “Review of Reinventing American Protestantism: Christian-
ity in the New Millennium”, Anglican Theological Review, 82:1 (Winter,
2000).
8. James Garrett White, Can the “New Awakening” Become
Prophetic?” Cross Currents, 49:2 (Summer 1999), 256.
9. Kimon Howland Sargeant, “Review of Reinventing American Protes-
tantism: Christianity in the New Millennium” Social Forces 78:3, (March
2000), 1177. For a more complete discussion see Miller, Reinventing Amer-
ican Protestantism, 21–22.
10. Gibbs and Bolger, 21.
11. Miller, Reinventing American Protestantism, 11.
12. Sargeant, 1178.
13. Gibbs and Bolger, 21. For clarification purposes, there is technical
difference between the Emerging Church and the Emergent Church. Emerg-
ing is the broader, more diverse, informal, world-wide, ecclesial movement,
while Emergent is the name of an official organization in the U.S. and
the U.K., the Emergent Village, which is nevertheless part of the larger
Emerging movement.
14. Scott Bader-Saye, “The Emergent Matrix,” Christian Century
121:24 (Nov 30, 2004), 20.
15. Martyn Percy, “Review of Reinventing American Protestantism:
Christianity in the New Millennium”, Journal of Contemporary Religion,
13:3 (Oct, 1998), 406.
16. The prominent Emerging Church leader Brain McLaren first be-
came involved in the Emerging Conversation at a conference focusing
on the shift to post-modernity and the church’s “philosophical discon-
nect with wider culture.” Gibbs and Bolger, 32. Ted Peters defines the
hermeneutical gap in God—The World’s Future: Systematic Theology for a
Post-Modern Era, (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2000) 11.
17. John Bolt, “An Emerging Critique of the Postmodern, Evangelical
Church,” Calvin Theological Journal, 41:2 (Nov, 2006) 207.
18. The works of these and other authors are listed as recom-
mended or essential reading on various of the Emerging web-blogs such as
www.emergentvillage.com. An official emerging reading list which is cited
by David Donaldson in his article “Constructing a Postmodern Church
with Ancient Building Blocks,” in McMaster Journal of Theology and Ministry
6 (2003–2006), 166. For theological influences see also Brian McLaren’s
acknowledgments in A New Kind of Christian: A Tale of Two Friends on a
Spiritual Journey (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001) and A Generous Ortho-
doxy: Why I Am a Missional, Evangelical, Post/Protestant, Liberal/Conservative,
Mystical/Poetic, Biblical, Charismatic/Contemplative, Fundamentalist/Calvinist,
Anabaptist/Anglican, Methodist, Catholic, Green, Incarnational, Depressed-yet-
Hopeful, Emergent, Unfinished CHRISTIAN (Grand Rapids, MI: Zonder-
van, 2004) 64, 110. See also the discussions of Scott Bader-Saye, “The
Emergent Matrix” and Andy Crouch, “Emergent Mystique” Christianity
Today, 48:11 (Nov, 2004).
19. Brian McLaren, quoted in Bader-Saye, “The Emergent Matrix,”
20. Some, such as D.A. Carson appear to assume that epistemology
is the primary issue for Emerging thinkers.
21. Pamela Fickenscher, “Off-road Ministry: What I learned from
Mountainbiking” Christian Century, March 6, 2007, 20–21.
22. Gibbs and Bolger, 90–115.
36 Dialog: A Journal of Theology • Volume 47, Number 1 • Spring 2008
23. The term ancient future comes from the work of Robert Web-
ber, Ancient-Future Faith: Rethinking Evangelicalism for a Postmodern World
(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 1999).
24. Scott Bader-Saye, “The Emergent Matrix.”
25. Scott Bader-Saye, “Improvising Church: An Introduction to the
Emerging Church Conversation,” International Journal for the Study of the
Christian Church 6:1, (March 2006), 19.
26. For example, see McLaren’s book A Generous Orthodoxy.
27. For a treatment of the role of the apophatic tradition within the
Emerging Church see Peter Rollins, How (Not) to Speak of God , (Orleans,
MA: Paraclete, 2006).
28. Gibbs and Bolger, 102–103.
29. This has come about through an Ecumenical renaissance of Trini-
tarian theology since the time of Karl Barth. For a discussion of the
Trinitarian turn in theology see Christoph Schwobel, “The Renaissance
of Trinitarian Theology: Reasons, Problems, and Tasks” in Trinitarian
Theology Today: Essays on Divine Being and Act , Christoph Schwobel ed
(Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1995).
30. For example see Spencer Burke, A Heretic’s Guide to Eter-
nity, (Jossey-Bass, 2006) 195. For an Emerging discussion of
Burke’s ideas see http://www.jesuscreed.org/?p=1319 (last accessed
Nov 5th , 2007)
31. Dan Kimball, The Emerging Church: Vintage Christianity for New
Generations, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003), p.60. Scott McKnight
discusses this in, “Five Streams of the Emerging Church,” Christianity
Today, 51:2 (Feb, 2007), 38.
32. McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy, 151, 286.
33. For an extended discussion on this topic see Alvin Plantinga, Does
God Have A Nature? Aquinas Lecture 44 (Milwaukee: Marquette University
Press, 1980).
34. See Scott Mcknight’s discussion of the Emergent rejection of sys-
tematic theology in “Five Streams of the Emerging Church” and “What
is the Emerging Church?”
35. Examples of an emerging appeal to such a consensus include the
Biblical vision of a psychosomatic unity of the human person as op-
posed to a disembodied soul, see Brian McLaren A New Kind of Chris-
tian, 129, and the larger awareness of the post-modern shift in the
first place. Brian D. McLaren The Church on the Other Side: Doing Min-
istry in the Postmodern Matrix, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2000)
186.
36. Brian Davies, The Thought of Thomas Aquinas, (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1992) 41.
37. “I can write no more. I have seen things which make all my
writings like straw.” Aquinas quoted in G. K. Chesterton, St. Thomas
Aquinas in The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton, Vol. 2, (Ignatius press,
1986) 510.
38. Wolfhart Pannenberg, “An Intellectual Pilgrimage” Dialog: A Jour-
nal of Theology, 45:2 (Summer 2006), 184–85.
39. For example, Ted Peters says “The medium of postmodern think-
ing itself draws theological explication in directions of greater compre-
hensiveness and coherence than were possible during the modern period.”
God - The World’s Future: Systematic Theology for a Post-Modern Era, (Min-
neapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2000) 73–79. Within Peters’ theology he
systematically reaches many of the same conclusions as McLaren and other
Emerging Church leaders. See also Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic The-
ology, Translated by. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B.
Eerdmans, 1991) 18, 24, 40, 49, 165.
40. Robert John Russell, Cosmology from Alpha to Omega: Theology and
Science in Creative Mutual Interaction, (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press,
2008) 22.
41. For example, R.C. Sproul declares “We still have laws against
murder, kidnapping and the like. But these may be mere relics of ves-
tigial remnants from a previous culture that have not yet yielded to
post-modernity. The disintegration of objective morality and law is in
fast-forward mode. . .The cultural war with the hosts of postmodernism
is real and is almost over. The new culture has clearly won the victory
over the old. Post-modernism brings not only a new ethic but a bar-
barian view of human beings, of nature, and of God.” Robert Charles
Sproul, When Worlds Collide: Where Is God?, (Good News & Crossway,
2002) 59–63. See also R C Sproul, Defending Your Faith: An Introduction
to Apologetics, (Crossway, 2003) 35. Michael Scott Horton, A Confessing
Theology for Postmodern Times (Crossway, 2000).
42. See Volume Two of McLaren’s trilogy for a discussion of how one
might integrate the scientific story of the physical history of the cosmos
and life’s common ancestry and evolution into our own theological self-
understanding as created human beings. Brian D. McLaren, The Story We
Find Ourselves In: Further Adventures of a New Kind of Christian, (Jossey-Bass,
2003).
43. Peters, God - The World’s Future, 30.