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The Emergent Church

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DiscussingTheTopic

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Has anyone been successful in helping people from the Emergent Church understand how to decipher what is true and false, in a more correct way?

If so could they please explain how to do so to me?
 
Thank you for you answers.

Perhaps the answer would be too ignore people in the emergent Church because they are unfaithful.

However having been taught the wrong methods of determining truth by examples of other people in the emergent Church I initially had similar thinking patterns to people in the emergent Church, until I became "awakened."

I do not think they are hopeless because God saved me from the lie...... but I have found no effective way to talk to people from the emergent Church.

Instead of determining if scripture is really God's word and then using God's word as a moral basis.

They start upside down with their own moral basis, then assume scripture is to be interpreted to mean, what they already had as a moral basis. Resulting in no real effective change in morality.

Essentially they use a massive version of something similar to replacement theology (only instead of replacing Israel with the Church, they replace what is written with what they feel should be written) in which anything can be a metaphor for the conclusion they already wanted before reading the Bible.

Until they see that the argument is not about whether or not the Bible is inspired, but that their interpretation methods are self deceitful and or mistaken. There seems to be no way to even have a discussion with them that they can comprehend or that they choose to comprehend.

It is not a matter of teaching them the Bible. But of getting them awakened to the fact that the way they are interpreting the Bible is wrong and then teaching them how to properly interpret it.

I have had a 0% visible success rate of getting people to realize they need to change their methods of interpretation. In fact I am the only person I know personally who even seems to understand this problem exists.

Some claim to be aware of the problem of the emergent Church but these people continue to copy the way of thinking of the emergent Church.

A clear example of emergent church hermeneutics is how they assume Adam having one wife, means, everyone should have no more than one wife.
 
If this is true zondervan has hit a new low. But I could not find the product on amazon.com

It could be a joke, that is so accurate to how people in the emergent Church think that it looks like it is real.

http://bertbrim.blogspot.com/2008/04/em ... bible.html

I am copying and pasting what this person wrote in a blog in case the web address changes it's content at a later date.

"Wednesday, April 16, 2008
The emergent church Bible
The Emergent Church leaders in conjunction with Zondervan Publishing announced on Thursday the release of their latest "Bible version" called the "Whatever Bible." The Whatever Bible is unique in that it is not really a "Bible" at all in the strictest sense. Rather, it is a leather-bound collection of 500 blank pages upon which one can write whatever he or shee believes to be true. Zondervan will custom print a title on the front of the "Bible" for no extra charge.

"We believe this will open the Bible market out there to people who wouldn't traditionally be attracted to reading the Bible" said Kurt James, the editor for the project. "Instead of trying to bind people to one belief system, we believe it is important for people to come up with their own thoughts for their faith journey."

According to Zondervan, the Whatever Bible will allow each person who buys it to essentially "write their own" Bible, putting down on paper what they think is most important. This might include passages from the Christian Bible, the Koran or quotes from Buddha. One may also choose to write their own interpretive "
 
a new abbott and costello routine;

abbott: "it is in my bible"

costello: "whatever"

abbott: "exactly"

costello: "huh.........
 
DiscussingTheTopic said:
~snip~ They start upside down with their own moral basis, then assume scripture is to be interpreted to mean, what they already had as a moral basis. Resulting in no real effective change in morality.
~snip~
Until they see that the argument is not about whether or not the Bible is inspired, but that their interpretation methods are self deceitful and or mistaken. There seems to be no way to even have a discussion with them that they can comprehend or that they choose to comprehend.

It is not a matter of teaching them the Bible. But of getting them awakened to the fact that the way they are interpreting the Bible is wrong and then teaching them how to properly interpret it.

I have had a 0% visible success rate of getting people to realize they need to change their methods of interpretation. In fact I am the only person I know personally who even seems to understand this problem exists.
Click to expand...

When I was in my first Theology class in seminary we discussed the lenses we use to interpret the Bible. There were seven differing methods and number 7 was the influential and the worst method. The worst and most influential is personal experience.
I was in a church that started moving in the direction of the (pre)emergent church 15 years ago. We left because of these problems. What bothered me was how fast people fell for this.

Have a happy day!
 
aphesis paraptoma said:
So we teach the faithful replacement theology (unrecognized) and then we gasp in dismay as the messianics; the ultimate replacement theologians, cream off the faithful and are growing like kudzo.
Click to expand...

Can you explain this further.

Do you mean Messianic Jewish Christians? Like Zola Levitt?

Do you mean some or all Messianic Jewish Christians?

I am assuming you mean most but not all?
 
DiscussingTheTopic said:
Has anyone been successful in helping people from the Emergent Church understand how to decipher what is true and false, in a more correct way?

If so could they please explain how to do so to me?
Click to expand...

Instead of determining if scripture is really God's word and then using God's word as a moral basis.

They start upside down with their own moral basis, then assume scripture is to be interpreted to mean, what they already had as a moral basis. Resulting in no real effective change in morality.
Click to expand...

This is my experience as well. Another KEY foundational belief is the negation of the "Old Testament", which finds it's root in God's Law being oppressive and cruel. I have never found any emergents admit to this yet, but the time is rapidly coming, as seen in the writing of their own Bibles. Emergents are also very well trained or talented in making their opponent state a theology or belief and tear it to shreds, but never stating anything themselves, similar to a politician. Check out the following link and when you are done ask yourself if you remember anything actually being said.

http://emergent-us.typepad.com/emergentus/2005/06/official_respon.html

There is nothing that you or anyone can do to convince someone that their view is wrong if they are interested in hearing anything that is in opposition to their beliefs. With emergents, you can only make a dent if you make THEM start answering basic questions like...

"Do you believe the Bible is God's Word"
"Are we allowed to change it?"
"Is there any contradiction in God's Word?"

They live and exist from, and for, the purpose of feelings. They are wildly blind to the hypocrisy in their ideals, especially poly. Don't let them catch you saying anything about homosexuality being a sin, but they can call the "Sisterwives" women crazy and ridiculous, even while admitting it is consensual lifestyle. Their "acceptance to all without judgement" only goes as far as their preconceived moral fencing.

Wipe the dust after you have tried, and above all, don't let the seed that is planted fall on rocky soil by being mean spirited or "worked up" when you deal with them. Their religion is "niceness" and you would be burning down their temple if you were not cordial.
 
the enemy always, in my observation, counterfeits what is truly from the Father.
is there any truth "emerging" from what has been "known" for centuries? i believe so.
we must be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
and yes, there is some filthy water in the emergent church pail. so dirty that the baby may not be recognized.
 
OK, I think I know the answer, but just so that we are on the same page. Please define "replacement theology" This is a good topic, I am learning as I read.
Thanks
 
Paul not the apostle said:
BTW, for anyone that does not know what the emergent church is or stands for, the following article is helpful because a key to their belief structure is a pride in having no official leadership, and policy and belief based on experience instead of scripture.

http://www.soundwitness.org/evangel/emerg_all_parts.htm
Click to expand...

Actually there can be leadership but perhaps what I saw of this type of leadership in some churches is not exactly the same as the emergent Church.

Combine it with Confucianism (that is start an emergent Church in an Asian Confucian society] and every Bible verse leads to the conclusion of an authority structure given enough time on the authorities hands to just let their Confucian upbringing naturally lead them to what they feel the verse means. Now pass that on to the next disciple and you will start having non-Asians learn a Confucian value system. [That is they feel they should make disciples and they teach disciples the Bible, but they read the Bible with an emergent Church style of hermeneutics that lead them to perpetuate their belief in Confucianism which was the lens they started with, so now you have a different style of emergent Church that is emphasized on leadership instead of de-emphasized leadership, and that grows very fast, because Confucian people have to follow other higher ranking Confucian people blindly like sheep.]

The people in the middle can control interpretation however they feel so long as it does not disagree with the interpretation of those who have authority over them.

Now about the "original" denominations that are "not" part of the emergent Church.....

As far as I have seen.....

Even if they were not emergent in the sense that they had strict absolute teachings, these strict teachings traced back to a founder who used the same type of hermeneutics that the emergent Church of today did :cry: That is the people today do not use an emergent interpretation, but.... They copy the teachings of their "great leader" who originally used emergent interpretation. But perhaps I am using the term emergent to loosely.

Even when I looked at Tertulian one of the early Church fathers, when I read why he was against polygamy he used emergent Church style hermeneutics.

The emergent Church is nothing new, but simply relearning the methods the "great" Church founders in the past who sometimes got things right and sometimes wrong, sometimes happened to use. Only now the emergent leaders use their bad methods more consistently and throw out their good methods.

The Simpsons said:
The leader is good the leader is great we surrender our will to the leader this date
Click to expand...
 
What is Replacement Theology

Julie,

As for your question:

OK, I think I know the answer, but just so that we are on the same page. Please define "replacement theology" This is a good topic, I am learning as I read.
Thanks
Click to expand...

Replacement theology is a continuity theology that says Israel of the OT became the Church in the NT. The theology believes in a couple of key things that marks it as such:

1. There is no difference in God's plan for Israel and the Church as they are simply different expressions of the family of God in different time frames.

2. We can interpret the prophetic portions of Scripture with a different set of rules (different hermeneutic) than the rest of the bible.

3. God's election of Israel was a conditional election; i.e. God's election with them and their status and position and promises depended upon their obedience. Since they disobeyed God no longer has to fulfill any promises made to them. The land promise, for example, no longer has to be fulfilled as spelled out in Genesis 13, 15, and 17.

This theology is contrasted with a theology known as Discontinuity theology, or sometimes called Dispensationalism.

This theology says:

1. God can run multiple programs in Scripture; he has a plan for both Israel and the Church and the two are distinct even though related by a common bond as they are all saved by grace through faith.

2. All of Scripture is to be interpreted by a historical grammatical hermeneutic. From Genesis to Revelation we can read the Bible literally and in a plain manner. We do not need to change our rules for prophetic portions of Scripture.

3. God's election of Israel was unconditional; i.e. he elected them not because of their good works or any forseen works to come but by mere grace. Thus their status and position cannot be altered or changed in any way. The exact promises God made to them will at some point in the future come to pass for ethnic Israel (see Romans 11).

That is the basic thrust of the differences between replacement theology and dispensational or non-replacement theologies. The word replacement is so because it describes the idea that the new era, the church and the new people of God, have now REPLACED the OT Promises with new promises.

But keep in mind the key word there. Promises. There is a difference in replacing a law and altering a promise. The two are not the same. And this is where a lot of confusuion comes in. The NC replaces or adjusts or advances in the law but does not alter any promise. A promise cannot change whereas a law can change.

Feel free to ask away if you come across more issues in this study. This was the very field in which I earned my Th.D. My dissertation was within this field so it is a part of my specialty focus. PM me or email me if you like or have other questions as you study.
 
Re: What is Replacement Theology

Dr. K.R. Allen said:
Replacement theology is . . .
Click to expand...

I think you wrote one of the best and most concise defs of replacement theology that I have seen. And your dispensationalism was not to shabby either.
Kudos. <<<<< ---- ask my wife that is high praise form me.
 
I think replacement theology when I heard it used simply means

That when we read the old testament today we can arbitrarily substitute the word Israel for Church where convenient even if this no longer lines up with real history.


Now........

I am using it in a broader sense like substitution in mathematics

If a=(2b+1)

then 5a +7 = 5*(2B+1)+7

which is fine if a really equals 2b+1

but here is how the emergent church uses substitution incorrectly

if A=: you shall not commit adultery

then

A =: whatever I want it to even if that means God has given me permission to commit adultery

=: definition
 
I will give you an example, from a Church I went to, but I want no one to mention the name of the denomination if they know it. I just do not want online gossiping about them.

A Church I went to said children were a metaphor for disciples.

I thought something like that is ok, it could be a metaphor for disciples and also continue to have a literal meaning of having children.

So I never objected for years until it was time I was ready to get married, only then did I find out what they really meant

"You can not marry someone and want to have a lot of children, how are you supposed to make disciples. You need to sacrifice how many children you have in order to make disciples" :oops:

They pointed to many new testament verses about "spiritual" fatherhood.

I can agree that there could be such a thing as spiritual fatherhood but usually it is very clear if the literal or spiritual (or perhaps both or maybe yet something else) is meant based on the CONTEXT.

But they systematically got rid of every verse referring to having literal children.

Now the way I saw it a good way to make disciples is to have children and then disciple them, but that does not count on record keeping so they can boast I guess. :lol:

Now once they had us skim through some book on the emerging Church, suggesting we use the methods in the book.

Someone from the emergent Church might say something like, "No one can take your testimony from you because they can not argue that you experienced it so share your experiences rather than empty head knowledge about what you think the Bible means to witness to people." "You must learn to apply it to yourself and not just have empty head knowledge."

Would the meaning change if I was not born? That is why we should find out what it means apart from us, before we know how to obey it, in many but not all circumstances.

I have a very different philosophy than them

Another example a man read Genesis 22 where Abraham almost sacrificed Isaac and decided to live in another country than his wife for several years to make ministry more productive. I said that, that is not what Genesis 22 means, and I got in big, big trouble and it was suggested I take a vacation from their Church for a week and then decide if I should come back, I decided to make the vacation permanent (unless they change.)

If anyone knows what Church or denomination that is, do not mention it. I am trying not to gossip about this denomination, because the sad thing is, they are doing a lot of good works more than other Churches and teaching better doctrine than many other Churches. They actually have helped a lot of people believe it or not. And I do not think they are necessarily unsaved they are just very very confused people.
 
DiscussingTheTopic said:
I think replacement theology when I heard it used simply means

That when we read the old testament today we can arbitrarily substitute the word Israel for Church where convenient even if this no longer lines up with real history.
Click to expand...

Please let me know if my definition is incorrect.

Dr. Allen's looks much more complicated, this originally made me wonder if we are using two different definitions and if I possibly need to stop using the word replacement theology, however when I looked carefully he is actually defining two different types of theology so I suspect his definition for replacement theology is the following

Dr. K.R. Allen said:
Replacement theology is a continuity theology that says Israel of the OT became the Church in the NT. The theology believes in a couple of key things that marks it as such:

1. There is no difference in God's plan for Israel and the Church as they are simply different expressions of the family of God in different time frames.

2. We can interpret the prophetic portions of Scripture with a different set of rules (different hermeneutic) than the rest of the bible.

3. God's election of Israel was a conditional election; i.e. God's election with them and their status and position and promises depended upon their obedience. Since they disobeyed God no longer has to fulfill any promises made to them. The land promise, for example, no longer has to be fulfilled as spelled out in Genesis 13, 15, and 17.
Click to expand...

And then the second set of definitions were another type of theology :!: So we are actually "on the same page" I think. Please correct me if I am wrong and we are not "on the same page." Or if I am misquoting what your definition is. :oops:


When I refer to replacement theology with the emergent Church I mean, something much more broad. Which technically does not follow under the traditional definition of replacement theology

The emergent Church uses the same type of replacing only it can be any word with any word. :lol: :roll: Not just Israel replaced by the word Church.
 
I probably should not have used the term emergent Church

And I probably should not have used the term replacement theology

I made this whole post too confusing

What I meant was how do you convince people that they should not arbitrarily make things like real life historical events be metaphors for whatever they want a passage to mean? (Is there a short phrase that means using metaphors arbitrarily to mean whatever you want, so I can stop writing such long sentences?)

i mean if someone read a historical manuscript about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, they would not think they should go to Lincoln Nebraska, or that it is a metaphor to do a good job on the test, or to drop out of school. But sadly many people seem to read the Bible that way, when it talks about historical events.

That is they think Adam being married to Eve, means we should have no more than one wife... Which can only come from poor interpretation.... What I mean is thinking historical events are metaphors for morality arbitrarily is simply poor interpretation.

So how do you reach out to people who use such awful Bible interpretation......

If they really believe what they say, you can not even start with the 10 commandments because I suppose they would think stealing means something arbitrary like not having fun. In fact you can not use their language at all, because they will only hear what they want to hear. I suppose you could choose to only talk to people who do not think like this.... but I have not met any (who think properly about interpretation) face to face that I know for sure. If I ever met someone who actually understood the English language as what it really means, instead of what they choose it to mean, they would not use that Eve thing as meaning one wife maximum.

So how do you witness to these kinds of people?
 
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