If the post here (H/T: Pontifications) and its many responses are typical of emergent "christology" (and I suspect they are), then the so-called "emergent church" is not a work of the Holy Spirit. For the Spirit Himself gives it us to say, "Jesus is Lord" (1 Corinthians 12:3). (Note: The Holy Spirit also gives it us to say "Abba, Father" [Romans 8:15 and Galatians 4:6; cf. Mark 14:36], demonstrating that declarations denying the patriarchy of God are utterly void of any claim of Holy Spirit origin and authority.)
Here are the comments of the author of the post:
Some people avidly assert that Jesus is God and tend to be suspicious of anyone who has reservations about that statement. In some circles that phrase is practically a shibboleth.
Note that from the get-go, the author has psychologized the issues. Instead of it being a matter of someone being rationally critical of those who waffle on the truth of the claim "Jesus is God" we have people who are "suspicious." And of course, this is presented as a problem.
Personally I am not comfortable with that statement because I think it condenses a complex truth so laconically that it leaves itself open to significant misunderstanding. But on the other hand I reject the opposite statement (viz. "Jesus is not God") because I believe Jesus is uncreated, self-existent, transcendent, worthy of divine honour, etc.
Note this second strategy: the "principled hedge." I'm not comfortable with it--but won't go so far as to deny it. Once again, we have a psychological statement, not a truth claim. And notice the locus of the mental discomfort: it purportedly does not preserve the complexity of the issue. There is a subtle psychologism here, as well, for, after all, adults deal with complex realities, children deal with simplistic ones.
And the third strategy: the affirmation of a denial. But, logically speaking, to deny that Jesus is not God does not necessarily entail the affirmation that Jesus is God.
In short, the author has thus far confessed nothing save his own psychological states.
Finally, we do get a confession. But are these confessions really any less "simplistic" than "Jesus is God"? What is the author saying when he claims God is "uncreated"? "Self-existent"? "Transcendent"? "Worthy of divine honour"? Aren't all these concepts shorthand for utterly complex realities that we cannot fathom? Isn't the author being just as simplisitc albeit with more words? In what way is the confession that Jesus is "uncreated, self-existent, transcendent, worthy of divine honour, etc." a truthful improvement on "Jesus is God"?
He goes on:
I am struggling to get a handle on why it is unsatisfactory to say "Jesus is God", and I would like to be able to explain it more articulately to people who glibly say "Jesus is God" as though it were a simple, self-explanatory definition that needs no circumscribing. Maybe it is contrary to the principles of emergent theology to try to analyse and define things systematically, but I am hoping your responses to this thread may give me some useful new insights for my own spiritual growth and also to help me communicate effectively with others.
It seems to me that the author's problem is not the simplicity of the claim "Jesus is God," but precisely its (to borrow a phrase) irreducible complexity.
Now I suppose some plausible claim as to simplistic reduction--which could render the proposition "Jesus is God" as modalistic--might be entertained for a moment. But only for a moment, and in any case, that is not the direction this author is taking the question.
But notice what that author and the first sixteen (of twenty-three as of this post) responses entirely bypass: the "definition" of Chalcedon.
For it [the Christology of the Fathers] opposes those who would rend the mystery of the dispensation into a Duad of Sons; it repels from the sacred assembly those who dare to say that the Godhead of the Only Begotten is capable of suffering; it resists those who imagine a mixture or confusion of the two natures of Christ; it drives away those who fancy his form of a servant is of an heavenly or some substance other than that which was taken of us, and it anathematizes those who foolishly talk of two natures of our Lord before the union, conceiving that after the union there was only one.Following the holy Fathers we teach with one voice that the Son [of God] and our Lord Jesus Christ is to be confessed as one and the same [Person], that he is perfect in Godhead and perfect in manhood, very God and very man, of a reasonable soul and [human] body consisting, consubstantial with the Father as touching his Godhead, and consubstantial with us as touching his manhood; made in all things like unto us, sin only excepted; begotten of his Father before the worlds according to his Godhead; but in these last days for us men and for our salvation born [into the world] of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God according to his manhood. This one and the same Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son [of God] must be confessed to be in two natures, unconfusedly, immutably, indivisibly, inseparably [united], and that without the distinction of natures being taken away by such union, but rather the peculiar property of each nature being preserved and being united in one Person and subsistence, not separated or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son and only-begotten, God the Word, our Lord Jesus Christ, as the Prophets of old time have spoken concerning him, and as the Lord Jesus Christ hath taught us, and as the Creed of the Fathers hath delivered to us. (Definition of Chalcedon)
First of all, let us notice the author's (and presumably the pomo-oriented emergent folk's) deep aversion to "circumscribing" God. This is healthy. But notice that the "definition" of Chalcedon does not really "define" God. For to define something is to delimit it, to classify it as a this and not a that, to discuss that which is essential about that thing. Definition then, is utterly and absolutely inapplicable to God. For his essence is not accessible to us, and to delimit or classify him is to presumably have exhaustive knowledge about God such that we can place him in a set of things which have been tested by counter-example.
No, the historic Church has resolutely refused to define God. All she has been able to do is to declare, on the basis of the revelation in Christ, what God is not, and thus, by extension, we can only say what Christ is not. Or, rather, any positive declarations about God or Christ are circumscribed by what we cannot say about God or Christ. Notice the pronouncement from Chalcedon above. All of the positive declarations about who Christ is are bounded by the negative declarations. Christ is one Person, goes the positive affirmation, but we first start with the negative: Christ is not a duad of Sons, and this is reiterated again when it declares Christ the Word to be one Person, not separat