Transforming Theology: Emergence for Emergents, Part One

I was here! It was soooooo fun! And he’s drinking holy water. Duh! (JK)

The only cool thing here is that your drinking a beer. How emergent of you.

Brian,
Really? Denying the bodily resurrection is “conservative?” I think you’re playing loose with some definitions, leaving them meaningless. I’d say, conservative = holding to those things which most Christians everywhere have always affirmed. The bodily resurrection of Jesus is clearly in this category (see: apostle’s creed, Didache, other NT writings, Augustine, medieval theologians, the Lutherans, Synod of Dort, Westminster Confession, Puritans, Jacobus Arminius, the Wesleys, the Masai creed, Vatican II… and… those dreaded Fundy’s of recent days – just to name a few.)
I’d be interested to see how you’d speak of the resurrection.

Brian,
You seem to want to contextualize the resurrection by your understanding of cosmology instead of letting the resurrection contextualize your understanding of cosmology. A non-physical resurrection plays well to the modern mind, and your description has been bantered around for a couple hundred years, but it fails to make any sense historically. For an exhaustive cataloging of what ancients believed happened after people died, and for what was the story the early church told and why, I recommend Tom Wright’s “The Resurrection of the Son of God.”
As to where did the body of Jesus go if he was resurrected, the church has always confessed, in line with Acts 1, that “He ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God.” This may require you to consider what “heaven” may actually be. But heaven is not really where it’s at, because we continue to confess that “From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.”
Regarding ourselves, we have always confessed “We believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life of the world to come.” Therefore, non-bodily resurrection is at odds with what the church has claimed to believe from the very beginning.

Tony described the Christian “left” and “right” with an unrealistic reductionism. His postmodernity did not shine through here.

Tony,
I couldn’t agree more with these last five minutes. I graduated a few years back from a private Christian university in northern CA and am one of those students that you were talking about. We had a few chapel speakers that pushed the progressive boundaries like Shane Claiborne and Bart Campolo. In fact, Bart created such controversey with his message that two years after his talk students and professors were still talking about the “Barttroversy.” And your last statement and challenge to progressive theologians in right on the money. You say that there are so many young evangelicals that are right on the fence but need permission to think different, I and many, many of my friends are living proof of that. Many of my friends have left behind their Christian beliefs due to the fact that there was no permission and others are still very confused. And I’m not talkign about 3 or 4 people. I’m talking more about 20 or 30. I had to spend a lot of time searching books and the internet to find my permission and when I did it was life-changing and freeing. So, if you or anyone else takes that challenge up I will be the first to purchase your books and pass them on to friends. I’ve already done it quite a bit with the likes of McLaren and Rohr. Keep them coming.

Tony, here is a page which we’ve put together to summarize the Transforming Theology movement. Includes a short video clip as well.
I knew nothing about this until just recently and have learned so much sitting down with Prof. Clayton and reading these threads. Prof. Clayton calls what we’re seeing with the shift in religious groups one of the social movements of our time. I agree!
Thx
Nick Johnson
Claremont Graduate University