The Emerging Church and the Gospel of Jesus Christ

Reid Monaghan has posted a lengthy, but meaty analysis of the emerging church.

Total Church – Rational vs. Relational Apologetics

If you haven’t yet, definitely add this book to your reading list. Here’s one of many quotes that caught my eye:

…people reject the knowledge of God, not because they cannot know God, but because they will not know him. At root it is not an intellectual problem of the head but a relational problem of the heart. This has profound implications for apologetics. The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard says:

People try to persuade us that the objections against Christianity spring from doubt. The objections against Christianity spring from insubordination, the dislike of obedience, rebellion against all authority. As a result people have hitherto been beating the air in the struggle against objections, because they have fought intellectually with doubt instead of fighting morally with rebellion.

Modern Christianity has developed a rational apologetic. We engage modern society with rational proofs of God’s existence. We provide scientific data to defend divine creation. We have developed logical responses to the questions raised by suffering. All of these presuppose that modern people find the Christian faith intellectually weak. But the problem is not an intellectual problem. The problem is hearts that refuse to live under God’s reign. We reject God. It is a relational problem. And if it is a relational problem, it requires a relational apologetic.

What will commend the gospel are lives lived in obedience to the gospel and a community life that reflects God’s triune community of love (pp. 170-171).

So good.