Request: If you read nothing else in this post, read the last quote from Jonathan Edwards at the bottom.

Pagitt’s book arrived in the mail and while I’m nowhere near ready with a review (have to read farther than the preface for that!) I wanted to post a few comments based on the editor’s note.

Pagitt’s book, A Christianity Worth Believing, has been published through a new series of books called A Living Way: Emergent Visions. Series editor Tony Jones included a forward in Pagitt’s book explaining the series. Here are a few snippets that demonstrate the kind of thinking at the heart of the emerging church:

New ways of being Christian, of being spiritual, of following God have bubbled up…

The problem being that there is nothing new under the sun. There are no new ways of being Christian, of following God. The way is the same as it’s always been. If the path one is following does not resemble the path of old one must ask whether or not he is moving in the right direction. But to be moving in the right direction you have to be headed to a destination. This could be a problem:

…it’s become clear that it is the conversation that matters, not the conclusion; the journey, not the destination.

We might not get anywhere, but at least we’re moving… Certainty, definiteness, firm ideas and a clear vision are things the emerging church tends to cringe away from. I am not even sure what it means to say the conversation, not the conclusion, matters. If you aren’t going somewhere you’ll never get anywhere. This is one reasons Christians are called to fix their eyes on Christ. He is our destination and getting to him is no nebulous journey filled with exploratory conversations and vague travels. He is the end we have in sight and he has already shown us the way to himself. That remains true in this age just as much as in any other.

Doug is an adopted son in the Christian family, and his lack of Christian heritage gives him an unconventional set of eyes and leads him to some unconventional conclusions. He is not beholden to many of the theologies and practices on which many of us were weaned.

In a movement that has done a great deal to throw off “traditional Christianity” someone coming from outside (is Doug really that much of an outsider? He has been “in” the church most of his life…) has certain appeal. In a movement already going away from orthodox Christianity people are all the more willing to respond favorably to someone who will try to once and for all replace the old with something new. Part of the problem is that this new thing isn’t drawn from a firm foundation but comes instead from the conversations of those who don’t believe we should be heading anywhere anyway.

As I read this book I will also be reading Jonathan Edward’s A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, following Tim Challies’ Reading Classics Together venture. The two books will make an interesting mix. The following quotes come from the introduction of Edwards’ book and will be helpful to keep in mind as I read Pagitt:

It is by the mixture of counterfeit religion with true, not discerned and distinguished, that the devil has had his greatest advantage against the cause and kingdom of Christ, all along hitherto.

By this means he deceives great multitudes about the state of their souls; making them think they are something, when they are nothing; and so eternally undoes them; and not only so, but establishes many in a strong confidence of their eminent holiness, who are in God’s sight some of the vilest of hypocrites.

By this means he brings in even the friends of religion, insensibly to themselves, to do the work of enemies, by destroying religion in a far more effectual manner than open enemies can do, under a notion of advancing it.

And by what is seen of the terrible consequences of this counterfeit religion, when not distinguished from true religion, God’s people in general have their minds unhinged and unsettled in things of religion, and know not where to set their foot, or what to think or do; and many are brought into doubts, whether there be anything in religion; and heresy, and infidelity, and atheism greatly prevail.