no creeds
Emergent as an organisation have are increasingly needing to deal with critics. One issue that seems to be big is the issue of whether emergent should have a document that outlines a set of beliefs. Emergent have responded to this in their latest email newsletter by resisting such suggestions.
In my opinion, which is very much forged by my Campbell Stone heritage in Churches of Christ this is a good move. Churches of Christ have a slogan that says - no creed but Christ and is driven by the same feeling contained within this statement by emergent:
“Jesus did not have a “statement of faith.” He called others into faithful relation to God through life in the Spirit. As with the prophets of the Hebrew Bible, he was not concerned primarily with whether individuals gave cognitive assent to abstract propositions but with calling persons into trustworthy community through embodied and concrete acts of faithfulness. The writers of the New Testament were not obsessed with finding a final set of propositions the assent to which marks off true believers. Paul, Luke and John all talked much more about the mission to which we should commit ourselves than they did about the propositions to which we should assent. The very idea of a “statement of faith” is mired in modernist assumptions and driven by modernist anxieties”
May 11th, 2006 at 9:14 am
Is it more important to believe exactly the same things, ….or know the same One.
May 11th, 2006 at 9:49 am
The essential, i would think EB, is that He knows us!
May 12th, 2006 at 10:11 am
Somantics James. But I think we do get too hung up on what each other believes. I think that each of us will not even hold the same ’stance’ on issues over the many years of our lives as experience and revealtion teach us andgive new perspective. So we should at least offer grace to each other … we simply aren’t all going to be in the same place theologically at the same time. Were we called to believe the same? nup. But we are called to know the same God. The culture of our religion is more heavily skewed with teaching rather than knowing.
May 12th, 2006 at 11:55 am
Not trying to play semantics EB; over the years it has become quite important to differentiate between, “do i know God” and “does God know me”. At a personal level i wrestled for many years over the do i know Goc question; especially in the face of the great claims of others by which i felt belittled and as if i was the only believer who was missing out. In retrospect, and as ive watched the failed lives of so many of those that once made my dear wife and me feel as if we must have missed something, i now consider it irrelevant whether one makes claims about knowing God … sorry if it seemed like just semantics.
As for the matters of belief; i consider there are very very few “essentials”, but am persuaded that there are some. When it appears to me that some teacher is attacking the foundations, “in the Name of Jesus, then i am not inclined to be especially gracious. To my mind, a post-modernism demands the relinquishing of all foundations - hence i find myself at odds with those that would seek to introduce such teaching into the church.
Yes, let us show abundant grace to those that in darkness, but much less grace to those who would lead others out of the light and back into darkness! Grace to the deceived that deceives, but little grace to the deceiver who knowingly deceives. … just some rambling thoughts