Of Straw Men

I’ve had an interesting email conversation with my new friend, Jeff (aka, Senor Jefe). He responded to my post, on the Emergent Village blog, about STR’s Brett Kunkle, and the paper that Brett delivered to the Evangelical Theological Society a couple weeks back.

Jeff argues that Brett creates straw men, only to knock them down. I’ve often had this concern about the critics of Emergent, and it’s nice to hear that someone else sees that tendency, too. Several times a week, I get an emails that go something like this: “I think that you emergents are in danger of ________. Can you tell me if you are or aren’t?” I respond by asking for spcific examples of said heresy, and I get back a quote from a McLaren book that doesn’t explictly name the heresy, but maybe dances near it. It seems to me that Brett does this in his paper: these guys aren’t heretics, but the things they say make me think that maybe, someday, they will be.

This raises all sorts of questions, like,

• Who determines orthodoxy and heresy in a post-conciliar age?
• Did everyone in the room know Brett to be orthodox?
• Will someone let me know when I am unorthodox?

Scot McKnight had a good post on this type of thing last week.