There. Now that wasn’t so bad, was it? I’m sure you agree with me on at least one of those matters! So while lowercase-t “truth” sustains us for the moment, only Jesus our Truth is an eternal energy. Honestly, I think that “propositional truth” alarmists need to pick another issue. Why not fight poverty with Gospel concern instead of fighting your sisters and brothers in Christ?

I’ll try to follow my own advice.

Dan’s commenters are people who are involved in or sympathetic to the ECM. Here’s the very first reply his post gets:

“I do believe in absolute truth. I just don’t think there’s any way we, as humans, can perceive it. It’s like shooting darts at a dartboard in the dark. We can all throw our thoughts out and then guess how accurate they are. But nobody can quite see who got a bullseye and who missed the mark completely. So in that sense, we’re all in the same boat. It doesn’t change the truth of who hit the center of the board, it jsut acknowledges that we’re all sort of ignorant when it comes down to it.”

And here’s another reply, further down, from “Jon”:

“If absolute truth exists does it matter if I believe in it?”

Or Mark, who hesitates to tell unbelievers, “The Bible says…” because, well—

“I actually do believe in absolute truth but that it really doesn’t matter to someone I don’t have a relationship with…”

The rest of the comment-thread that is likewise instructive. It currently ends with a comment from Mark Jaffrey, who has read McLaren and Bell but insists, “I have never found even a hint that fundamental Christian doctrines such as the existance of hell or the concept of absolute truth are being denied.”

What I would like to see is a definitive answer to Kimball’s question number 2 and a clear sorting out of all the ECM’s confusion and uneasiness over “absolute truth” from someone like Kimball or Driscoll. They’re the ones people invariably point to as exceptions to the rule—ECM leaders who are answering postmodernism rather than echoing it. The issue of “absolute truth” is quite obviously very much at the forefront of their movement’s concern. If these guys really do believe absolute truth exists and is both knowable and important, where, precisely, are they saying this with unvarnished clarity?

I know one pastor in my small town of Ulysses Kansas who considers himself into the Emergen Church Movement and calls himself a postmodernist. And his M.O. is that truth is uncertain and that very much affects his view of the Bible and innerancy, and what parts of the bible are true and are not true.

I’ve skimmed McLaren books and the questioning of absolute truth seems to be the reoccuring theme. In fact my experience is the opposite of touchstone, my experience is that everyone (whom i have personally met or read) questions objective truth and it spills over immediately into their veiw on the Bible.

I think that on the whole the movement is dangerous, despite a few good ideas.

This IS the crux of the issue! It isn’t at all that these men desire serious theological dialogue because such a scholarly interchange would expose the “Oz”-like façade they rabidly protect, namely, that they are very dogmatic (certain, that is) about silencing anyone who traffics in propositional certainties. Today’s “uncertain” theologians spend hours feigning an alignment with orthodoxy so they will be invited to the important discussions, then when called upon to contribute, instead of demonstrating a biblical rationale for their views, they clutter the exchange with complaints that everyone else is being “too serious and assertive”. Having now created their own discussion group, they presumptuously invite us to their party, and then call us arrogant for bringing any strong convictions. Phil, your practice of engaging in serious theological argumentation pulls back the curtain on their light show, revealing that their theology is too rootless to stand up under scrutiny, their convictions too vacuous to speak boldly, and their integrity too opaque to admit it.

I put up some commentary on your replies on my blog ( and ).

-Touchstone