bookreview "An Emergent Theology for Emerging Churches" 3

In chapter two Anderson writes about Christ, which according him is more than christology. Anderson goes back on a very Barthian theology when dealing with epistemology. As Karl Barth he sees revelation as something senkrecht von oben. He introduces a phrase ‘naïve realism’, truth revealed in a confession before it's encoded in a creed (p.43) We find this naïve realism with the man whom Jesus healed, who was blind from birth who said: ‘One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see’(John 9:25). We also find it with Peter when confessing: ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God’(Mat.16:13-17). This of course doesn’t give any answers regarding the truth of those faith statements, and thus the tension remains between relativism and absolutism. The issue does become a bit less important though on a personal level. After all, both Peter and the man that were blind from birth would be convinced of the truth of what they said.
He stresses, time and time again, the importance of the continuity between the work of Jesus on the earth 2000 years ago and the work of the Spirit of the resurected and incarnate Son of God, Jesus Christ, that was poured out on pentecost.
Anderson goes on with the same contrast between the Jerusalem believers and Paul. He points out that, despite their three years with Jesus, despite pentecost, the twelve have contributed very little to our knowledge of Jesus. 'The emphasis was on the Spirit of the Lord Jesus as a source of power rather than on Christ himself as their contemporary.' (p.50) It is largely from Paul that we receive our knowledge of the Christ of the emergent church (here he means Antioch, not the emerging churches of the present day), whereas he most likely never met Jesus in real life. But Paul doesn't seem to make a distinction between the historical and ascended Jesus "Have I not seen Jesus our Lord" (1 cor.9:1)
Then follows a bit on Bonhoeffer that I find hard to understand, about Christ excisting as a community and the social structure of human personhood being intrinsically spiritual or something =), i sort of hear what he's saying (later on he summarizes: the Christ that Paul knew was not only his contemporary (...) but the Christ that connects us to humanity from the very beginning and in every generation), but I never really thought about it this way, and I'm not sure what all the implications would be...
He says emerging churches in our generation are not emerging out of the universalizing and absolutizing period of modernity, just as the church in Antioch wasn't post-Judaism. The Christ of the emerging church for Paul was pre-Moses, pre-Abraham, going back to Adam. 'This is an important distinction for it frees the emerging church from the criticism that it is just another version of modernity.' (see comment 3)

Some comments:
1) Orthodox Christology: one can recite the creeds without ever answering the question "who do you say I am?" (p.43) In other words, a personal relationship with Christ is more than having the right faith statements.
2) Very interesting that he says that we know the Christ of the emergent church mainly from Paul, and that his whole chapter dedicated to Christology shows this. So far I've always understood that emerging churches take the gospels as the main source for how to 'be like Christ', and do mission accordingly.
3) Well, to be honest, I've never heard that criticism, maybe from non-christians?
Secondly i fail to see how the example of Antioch helps, because in a sense it was post-Judaism. All comes back to the question: what is post-? It would have helped if he would have answered that question first, because later he uses it again: 'those who are in christ are neither lawbreakers, nor merely post-lawkeepers but 'law-completed'.' Again it's quite unclear what he means by post-.