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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 November 2008
What has ‘emerged’ in the ‘emerging church’ movement, through writers such as Brian McLaren, is merely a new form of correlational theology – or what I will term ‘neo-correlational theology’. This ‘emergent’ movement aligns itself with Paul Tillich's systematic presentation of what he termed a ‘theology of culture’ addressed in his 1919 lecture ‘Über die Idee einer Theologie der Kultur’ and is deeply rooted in theological essentialisms aligned with Friedrich Schleiermacher and Don Browning. While many adherents of the Emergent movement have recently attempted to catalogue its theological legacy, this article will address three key emphases which haunt the corners of its discourse yet remain largely unacknowledged. First, the heritage of Schleiermacher's notion of ‘feeling’ as an authentic categorical form of knowledge forged through radical reflexivity which is the proper domain for authenticity in the Emergent movement. Second, as underscored in Tillich's Theology of Culture, the church as ‘emergent’ is profoundly imminent and therefore necessarily social, positivistic and historical. Third, theological anthropology is understood primarily through our freedom over and (at times) against the necessity of redemption. The question this article will address is whether or not such an approach reimagined as ‘neo-correlational theology’ and actualised through the ‘emerging church’ movement tacitly relies upon a more traditional theology which it explicitly rejects.
1 Aaron Flores, ‘An Exploration of the Emerging Church in the United States: The Missiological Intent and Potential Implications for the Future’, thesis submitted for MA in Religion at Vanguard University, May 2005, http://www.thevoiz.com/media/aoflores_ecstudy0605.pdf
2 Anna Dodridge, ‘I am Not Involved in the Emergent Church’, http://www.emergingchurch.info/stories/annadodridge/index.htm
3 Tillich, Paul, ‘On the Idea of a Theology of Culture’ in What is Religion?, Adams, James L. (trans.), (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), p. 165Google Scholar.
4 Kimbell, Dan, The Emerging Church: Vintage Christianity for New Generations (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2003), p. 105Google Scholar.
5 Pattison, Stephen, ‘Some Straw for the Bricks’, in Woodward, James and Pattison, Stephen (eds) The Blackwell Reader in Pastoral and Practical Theology (London: Blackwells, 2000), p. 139Google Scholar.
6 Baker, Jonny and Gay, Doug, Alternative Worship: Resources from and for the Emerging Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004), p. 16Google Scholar.
7 McLaren, Brian, A Generous Orthodoxy (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2004), p. 279Google Scholar.
8 Here I am referring to Jesus' image of the body of Christ as that which finds its identity engraphed into the true vine in John 15.
9 St Augustine, De vera Religione (On True Religion) 39. 72, in Augustine: Early Writings, trans. John H. S. Burleigh (London: SCM Press, 1953), p. 262. ‘What obstacle then remains to hinder the soul from recalling the primal beauty which it abandoned, when it can make an end of its vices? The Wisdom of God extends from end to end with might. By wisdom the great Artificer knit his works together with one glorious end in view. His goodness has no grudging envy against any beauty from the highest to the lowest, for none can have being except him alone. So that no one is utterly cast away from the truth who has in him the slightest visage of truth. What is it about bodily pleasure that holds fast? You will find that it is agreeableness. Disagreeable things beget grief and agreeable things beget pleasure. Seek therefore the highest agreeableness. Do not go outward; return within yourself. In the inward man dwells truth. . . . It [agreeableness] has to do no seeking, but you reach it by seeking, not in space, but by a disposition of mind, so that the inward man may agree with the indwelling truth in a pleasure that is not low and carnal but supremely spiritual.’ Ibid.
10 Acts 17:9.
11 Schleiermacher wrote, ‘Religion's essence is neither thinking nor acting, but intuition and feeling. It wishes to intuit the universe, wishes devoutly to overhear the universe's own manifestations and actions, longs to be grasped and filled by the universe's immediate influences in childlike passivity’. Thus religion is different from morality and metaphysics. On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers, trans. Richard Crouter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
12 Ibid., p. 98.
13 Ibid., p. 134.
14 I expand this notion of givenness in reflection upon the work of Jean Luc Marion in what I term ‘theological givenness’ as ‘the liberative enactment of givenness embodied in iconic theological poetics’. See Keuss, Jeff, ‘The Lenten Face of Christ in Shusaku Endo's Silence and Life of Jesus’, Expository Times 118/6 (2007), pp. 273–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
15 Browning, Don S., A Fundamental Practical Theology: Descriptive and Strategic Proposals (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress. 1991), pp. 3–4Google Scholar.
16 Ibid., p. 5.
17 Ibid., p. 6.
18 See Adams, Daniel J., ‘Possibilities for Theology in the Postmodern Era’, Asia Journal of Theology 10 (April 1996), pp. 89–104Google Scholar; Harvey, David, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989)Google Scholar; Berry, Philippa and Wernak, Andrew, (eds), Shadow of Spirit: Postmodernism and Religion (London: Routledge, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
19 Tillich, Paul, The Protestant Era, trans. Adams, James Luther (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948), p. 43Google Scholar.