HOLY FIRE BLOG

By way of introduction…Emma the Angel

To reference producers comments on video, see Emma the Angel

Doing church growing up was a fairly straightforward affair: prayer meetings, Bible studies, and memorizing Scripture at home; mid-week church, Sunday school, and church on Sundays. I cannot remember not being in church; and also cannot remember not knowing the gospel.

We were Pentecostal to the core; Assemblies of God, to be exact. My buddy down the street was Baptist—thoroughly so. His Dad was a Baptist lay-minister. But other than him being allowed movie shows and me not, our church stuff meshed nicely. Probably this was because without making any big deal of it, we shared the same gospel. He read John 3:16 as did I. That was enough. I cannot remember that his eternal security or my charismata were ever mentioned—they probably were; but not in a serious enough way to be memorable. Of course, I had not at that point met Emma.

Given these roots, over a lifetime I never fell out with the Baptists over the gospel. Baptists I know hold tightly to biblical traditions covered with gray hair: their doctrine’s been around for awhile; and despite squabbles, little gets shifted as to gospel essentials. So too, Assemblies of God-style Pentecostalism has its roots in a strong gospel tradition stemming from Calvin. Early on this set the denomination apart from certain precursors to Pentecostalism not nearly as concerned with the integrity of the gospel as with other matters. In a similar way, today this strong gospel tradition sets mainstream Pentecostalism apart from a many-faceted, late-born epilogue to the movement that includes wild offshoots sprouting like weeds in a garden—and Emma; let us not forget Emma.

The precursors went their way but are still around; the epilogue’s wild offshoots keep sprouting. Together, precursors and offshoots have had a profound affect on how we view the gospel, and Emma the angel has had no small part in this. This being so, Emma matters to all to whom the integrity of the gospel matters. You can be sure, then, that Emma matters to Jesus.

Let me tell you why.

The precursors reach back to John Wesley, who was perhaps far more Arminian than Arminius; he was the master marketer of Arminianism, anyway; and semi-Pelagian to the core. But the precursors come forward though Charles G. Finney, who elevated Wesleyan views from mere step-child status into a full-blown Pelagian twin. If Wesley believed sinners were drowning but could grasp a life preserver, Finney insisted they need only swim for shore. God agrees with neither. He directs the gospel only to those who have already drowned. Owning up to this in part (as evidenced later by men like Lewis Sperry Chafer who endorsed Calvin), but fascinated with Finney’s on-demand revivalism, the "all on the altar," not-quite-second-blessing movement was born. Remembered as the so-called Keswick higher-life movement, it developed in two directions: on the one hand, it shaped full-blown second-blessing Pentecostalism cleaving the born again experience from the baptism of the Holy Spirit; on the other, it morphed into not-quite-second-blessing dispensationalism cleaving Jesus as Savior from Jesus as Lord. As expounded by Chafer, Jesus becomes your savior sovereignly, but only you can make him Lord. Chafer clarified this in his classic, He That Is Spiritual (See also reference above on Keswick, and this review of Chafer, Must Christ be Lord to be Savior? NO) This Chaferian emphasis seems to serve two purposes: first, it preserves the "all on the altar" higher-life flavor of Keswick while dispensing with distasteful (to some) second blessing theology; then, too, it allows evangelicals to hold serious-minded, stodgily-solid, gray-beard Father Calvin by one hand and fanciful, colorful, dynamic, inventive, persuasive, marketable Uncle Finney by the other. And it carves out a place ever so nicely, if not intentionally, for Emma as the eminently marketable guide watching over a kind of schizoid, psychic Christianity.

Thus, in brief, such were the precursors. As for the epilogue, the late-born offshoots have come primarily in two phases: first, Latter Rain, ca 1945 sparked by William H. Branham; and second, Charismatics, ca 1960 inspired by Episcopal Rector Dennis Bennett. We consider them in reverse order.

The Charismatics emerged front and center when Dennis Bennett an Episcopal priest at Saint Luke’s Parish in Van Nuys, California, announced to his church that he had spoken and would continue to speak in tongues. Bennett addressed the Pentecostal Fellowship of Greater Los Angeles shortly after his experience. In that message, he was as solidly in the Bible and honoring of the gospel as any Pentecostal or Baptist I have ever heard. It does not follow, of course, that Charismatics after him have always been as solid gospel-wise; but many of them drifted into Assemblies of God and other like-minded churches. In fact, they went where welcomed and today, "charismatic" is a benign-enough term to apply even to Calvinist John Piper’s Bethlehem Baptist Church. For the most part, Charismatics have been embraced by the larger evangelical milieu.

Such is not the case of the earlier Latter Rain. Decades before the Charismatics came along independent-minded Pentecostals had already spawned the lesser-known latter rain movement which is seldom quiet, loudly dismissive of tradition always, separatist in spirit, and would no more drift into an Assemblies of God-type Pentecostal or an un-Pentecostal-type Baptist church then they would wait around for sound biblical exegesis. PFA (pull from air?) prophecy is much more exciting. Besides, Emma gets to tag along; and from a Latter Rain perspective, Emma and others of her breed are key to a whole new gospel revolution. Jesus, it seems, they have had enough of. Ah, say, Jesus, got a moment? Meet Emma. She may know your Momma, so don’t feel bad when she says, "Move over...." It’s kind of in the family...?

Some date the movement to a revival in a Canadian Bible School in 1948; the Assemblies of God rejected the movement in 1949; but in fact the touchstone of the Latter Rain especially as it affects American evangelicalism today was William H. Branham’s healing revivals already underway in 1941; he published his seminal tract, "I Was Not Disobedient Unto the Heavenly Vision" in 1945; and claimed The Angel—Emma’s main man, apparently—visited him in 1946; Branham’s "angel" has formed a core of the movement’s claims regarding frequent "outpourings" from that point forward, including the touted Toronto, Canada, revival and the most recent event in Lakeland, Florida.

More on the above ahead; here we note that these offshoots of my side of the aisle, along with the precursors to my side of the aisle (I am letting my Baptist buddy off the hook), have profoundly affected how we do church today; and it is just no longer the case that I and my Baptist buddy can agree on the gospel and let other matters care for themselves. The other matters have so intruded on the gospel that often the gospel of God gets buried beneath tons of imitations. Precursors and offshoots alike have produced frauds of "deeper experience" mysticism which passes itself off as a "fuller" gospel in various guises. And too many innocent, and/or gullible bystanders to the whole thing have swallowed tainted bait sold to them as good news.

We Pentecostals used to call ourselves "full gospel;" then "charismatic" came along and the "full" fell by the wayside. But there is in fact only one way in which supposed full gospel people are not frauds: that is if with Paul we mean the gospel as "the whole will of God" (Acts 20:27). By this, Paul meant that he declared the full meaning of Jesus as Lord of all, Jesus Christ having fulfilled God’s complete intent in creation, and his promise in covenant, thereby upholding the integrity of God and of God’s gospel.

Quite different than this, somewhere along the way the label "full" grew bigger than the gospel. The offshoots of Pentecostalism inspired by precursors of second-blessing mysticisms stretched the label way beyond the boundaries of the gospel of God and came up with distortions much closer to gospel of Barnum and Bailey. Emma slipped into her bright shinny circus get-up and took over where Jesus left off. Thus we discover anew a truth of long-standing: when the gospel we preach is no longer God’s call to his full will to serve Jesus as Lord, Emma and her crew will happily supply what is missing. As Mr. Dylan insists, "Everybody’s gotta’ serve somebody."

In all of this, the integrity of the gospel has been compromised. To see how, we need to nail down what we mean by integrity. Then we’ll get back to Emma.

By integrity we mean that concept stemming from the word root integer, meaning entire; thus the concept portraying a thing that is whole, or complete within it self; a thing not reducible, divisible, or soluble into a lesser quantity or quantities; by the same token, a thing that cannot be added to or enhanced with decorative trappings.

As sinful humans, people have degrees of integrity; by virtue of being sinners not one of us is complete; at best we are in process. Except for the pathologically proud, this existential fact elicits great humility if and when we own up to it. It is only by the Spirit of God that we ever do, of course; left to our own we are mostly sure that we are right – which explains a great deal of the human drama.

On the other hand, the gospel in itself is absolute integrity by virtue of what it is and who it is from; and this in spite of the many corruptions parading in the name of the gospel. The corruptions are indeed part of the human drama, perhaps a great deal of which is inspired by hell. The point is, however, by whatever means we get there, with the help of hell or on our own, only when people get into the mix sideways with the gospel does the integrity of the gospel come into question. Thus, we insist, it is the integrity of the human handling the gospel that needs improvement; the integrity of the gospel remains; we need only to restate the gospel in clear unequivocal terms.

Tellingly, while our theologies and worship forms have followed the ebb and flow of religion, culture, and politics over two millennia, being warped this way and that, from the messy milieu of history the gospel stubbornly insists on re-emerging unscathed; it overcomes suppression and oppression; corruption and carelessness; fraud and deceit; and even well-meant exuberance and exhilaration. Most tellingly, perhaps, is that it overcomes theological puzzles attached to it putting good men at loggerheads in pursuit of solutions—even as they agree that the gospel at the core of the puzzle is not a puzzle.

Notwithstanding the puzzles, the gospel remains "the gospel of God…concerning his Son, who was…declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord…" By this gospel message we are "called to belong to Jesus Christ" (Romans 1:1-6). Those who respond in faith are saved "because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved" (Romans 10:9-10).

As to how we should live as saved people, Paul explains that since Jesus is Lord now, we have been called to "the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations." (Romans 1:5). He is our Lord from the get-go, but the Lord of all others, too, and it is in Jesus’ interest—for the sake of his name—that they come to know this.

Here then is the gospel irreducible, whole, and complete; the entire enchilada; you need know nothing else to know God, live in fellowship with him, and enter the eternal kingdom of God while doing his work on earth joyfully, happily and purposefully because you have discovered your reason for being in Jesus Lordship. You were created to serve him; your freedom is in serving him. So you are to serve him as a vital member of a new humanity in a new creation inaugurated by his resurrection, ascension and the once and for all outpouring of his Spirit. We may expect times of refreshing; but the outpouring has taken place. Emma, step aside. We have work to do.

It is certainly advisable, of course, that to do this work we want to know all entailed in Jesus’ Lordship; we need good theology, including a vaild angeology; and we certainly need empowerment by the Holy Spirit to live out our mission as people serving the Lord Jesus together. But in knowing all else the essential, integral core of the gospel is the measure of the integrity of all else. Whatever else does not keep this core of Jesus as Lord front and center, clean and pure, whole, entire, and uncorrupted is false and not of God. So Paul warns those who "are turning to a different gospel—not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed" (Galatians 1:6-8). Angel from heaven—Emma, he did say him!

The integrity of the gospel is serious stuff, just because it is God’s gospel revealing his own integrity. To impugn the gospel is to impugn God’s righteous faithfulness to his own purpose in the gospel which is to reveal himself as the faithful promise keeper.

So…when a not-quite-second-blessing dispensationalist (they would not at all like that label, so you might suggest a better one) adds to the gospel the free ride of a once-saved-always-saved decision that is merely a vote for Jesus (a caricature of Calvin’s good doctrine of the perseverance of the saints) to get you to bite down on the apple; or a Pentecostal adds to the gospel the high-flying fireworks of "manifestations"— tongue-talking, holy-rolling, head-twisting, body-shaking, humbug prophecy—caricatures of real charismata such as speaking in tongues and prophecy to get you to bite the apple, we have a real problem: to what extent does any of this obscure, distort, or demean the gospel? To the extent that it does God’s purpose in the gospel is frustrated and God as Sovereign Lord will not long put up with it.

Without meaning to sound overly dramatic, I assure you judgment intended to clear the way for the pure gospel will come: "As for me, I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill…Serve the LORD with fear and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled" (Psalm 2:6, 11, 12).

Given the above, for appropriate emphasis and by way of summary let me repeat in different words the two front-burner issues that confront all who preach, teach, or live out the gospel in witness in the world today. One is easy-believe-ism that distorts the gospel into a Jesus-punched ticket to heaven. This supposed two-tier, get-saved-with-an-option-way to heaven—cast a vote for Jesus, go on your way in his blessing; if you allow him he will catch up with you later to explain the benefit plan of his Lordship and the higher-life—obscures the true call of the gospel to "the obedience of faith," and in doing so creates space that Emma is sure to fill. To the contrary, the call of the gospel as set out by Paul is critically different than—in fact the reverse of —what it has morphed into in some circles, merely obeying the call to believe. To make "the obedience of faith" less than a call to righteous living "for the sake of his name" is to obscure all Paul says in the balance of Romans and demeans the gospel and God in the process. Further, it fills churches with unsaved people who think not only that they are ready for heaven but that God owes them favors on earth, including in too many cases spirit guides like Emma.

The second issue is a rash of so-called "latter rain" offshoots of Pentecostalism just close enough to what many Pentecostals and Charismatics are familiar with to pass the sniff test if not sniffed closely enough. For example, a key buzzword floating through the "latter rain downpour" is manifest. When one prophesies, for example, one must manifest wildly in some bizarre way to prove authenticity. The word, if not the bizarre antics, connects with Pentecostals; we believe in manifestations of the Spirit. But the wise among us, if myself least of all, recognize manifestations of the flesh, which are pure fraud. The latter runs rampant through the latter rain movement.

Consider that as previewed above the movement claims to be an extension of William H. Branham’s ministry. Branham strayed deeply into outright heresy. (Listen carefully in this video link early on for the reference to "the Branham anointing"). Following Branham’s path, current leaders employ highly experiential fantasies, visual showmanship, and group psychology, with the lottery-like hope of a miracle attached to attract followers. Further, the current expression of Branham’s legacy clearly shares his primary heresy. Fallen adherent Todd Bentley states plainly, the "Lord" told him that since the church already believes in Jesus that the latter rain "revival" is "all about believing in the angel"—hello, Emma. (For more extensive coverage See here and also see here and see here).

Why not ignore these circus clowns? Frauds have always been around, right? But among many other good reasons, we dare not ignore them because an astounding thing is taking place in American evangelicalism. It is aging; and in aging, failing to reproduce itself as a solid biblically-based movement. Younger evangelicals are ignorant of their roots, biblically illiterate, and unprepared for any sort of evangelical future. Some observers insist we are in the post-evangelical age. Would-be adherents drift away in one of several directions: toward Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox, Mega-Churches, or, get this, Pentecostalism. Looking to Canada currently as an example of the U.S. evangelical future, a commentator notes "If you want to know what the America is going to look like in forty years…look at Canada today…the rise of the Pentecostal/Charismatic movement…along with moderate charismatics like the Christian and Missionary Alliance…are leading the way" in the face of evangelical decline. On this assessment, Pentecostalism is the neo-evangelical future. Problem here is that younger U.S. Pentecostals, like their evangelical counterparts, can be just as ignorant of their roots, biblically illiterate, and unprepared for the future. Thus, the door is wide open for a highly experiential, biblically vacuous, and spiritually dangerous imitation of Pentecostalism to sweep in and sweep away millions with deception. The door is open for many more Emmas.

It is high time for a clear restatement of the gospel; the integrity of the gospel as God’s only power to save is at the same time his power to expose ideologies, personalities, and powers that cannot save. Emma, meet Jesus—he who is entire and complete in himself will show up who is not. Indeed, this is an opportune time to "Preach the word…" (2 Timothy 4:2). The gospel is intensely apropos. In the gospel we meet Jesus as Lord, and as Lord, Jesus sends his Holy Spirit to bring to us the presence of himself and his Father in unbroken fellowship (John 14:15-21). Why settle for Emma?

Posted by paul at 10:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A couple years back, theologian Scot McKnight in a CT article described the so-called emerging church as "one of the most controversial and misunderstood movements today." Then he cited writers Aaron Gibbs and Ryan Bolger who define emerging churches as "…communities that practice the way of Jesus within postmodern cultures."

Even taking into account practices they describe as essential to these communities, one finds little variation from what the church—every church—should be. So where does the emerging come in? Why emerge rather than just be? It all sounds rather uppity and judgmental, like, "We’re the ‘should be’ getting away from the dregs we leave behind."

McKnight also observes lightly, "It is said that emerging Christians… drink like Southern Baptists—meaning, to adapt some words from Mark Twain, they are teetotalers when it is judicious…[but] evangelize and theologize like the Reformed—meaning they rarely evangelize, yet theologize all the time."

And this clue may help unravel the enigma that so-called emerging churches are yet today: they are closer to Mark Twain than McKnight imagines. Indeed, beyond fitting Twain‘s quip, like Twain they cannot escape the tug of the birth canal, the tie to what birthed them squalling, bawling, and bloodied into an upside down world. If they are at all the church, they cannot escape being the church. However emerged they may think themselves to be they are not really.

Let me explain.

First, Twain, too, was an emerging believer in his own ‘gospel’ who never quite made it—to the fully emergent side of his faith, I mean. He remained always tied to what he desperately wanted to run away from.

Further, Twain certainly fits McKnight‘s analogies cited above. On the one hand, while not a Baptist, he drank like one: abstaining when judicious just long enough to win the hand of his beloved Olivia ‘Livy’ Langdon. Twain affirms in a letter, "I shall do no act which…Livy might be pained to hear of—I shall seek the society of the good—I shall be a Christian…" He followed this with another note assuring Livy‘s mother he would "never taste wine or spirits upon any occasion whatsoever; I am orderly, and my conduct is above reproach in a worldly sense; and finally, I now claim that I am a Christian."

A Twain scholar sees in these two letters "a type of spiritual progression; the first indicates a desire to become a Christian, the second contains a declaration of faith…considering the yearning for faith…and his lifelong fascination with biblical themes, it seems likely that this struggle for faith was at least partially genuine."

Even so, the same scholar observes, "this flirtation with orthodoxy was short-lived…shortly after the marriage, some of the piety did disappear, and Twain did begin to slip away from whatever doctrinal orthodoxy he may have attained."

Twain wears the emergent Baptist shoes rather nicely.

On the other hand, Twain writes, "I was brought up a Presbyterian…I was sprinkled in infancy…. It affords none of the emoluments of the Regular Church – simply confers honorable rank upon the recipient and the right to be punished as a Presbyterian hereafter…"

As Reformed folk, Presbyterians theologized continually. Twain even opined there should be two Sundays in the week because, "If all-powerful Providence grew weary after six days' labor, such worms as we are might reasonably expect to break down in three." And he agonized over "the right to be punished as a Presbyterian hereafter; that is, the substantial Presbyterian punishment of fire and brimstone instead of this heterodox hell of remorse of conscience of these blamed wildcat religions. The heaven and hell of the wildcat religions are vague and ill defined but there is nothing mixed about the Presbyterian heaven and hell. The Presbyterian hell is all misery…"

So Twain fits the second of McKnight’s criteria, too. Overall Twain was clearly leaning toward the emergent side of things, drinking as judiciously as any Baptist, arguing theology, and longing to be free from Reformed tradition.

But he was never quite there. His Presbyterian leanings gave him pause.

"It ill becomes us to hunt up flaws in matters which are so far out of our jurisdiction," he worried. "I hold that no man can meddle with the exclusive affairs of Providence and offer suggestions for their improvement, without making himself in a manner conspicuous. Let us take things as we find them…."

But he added that "it goes against the grain to do it, sometimes."

Pause or not, then, Twain protested. He bristled that the local Presbyterian pastor, Dr. Wadsworth, would "get off a first rate joke and then frown severely at any one who is surprised into smiling at it. This is not fair…he gravely gave the Sunday school books a blast and spoke of ‘the good little boys in them who always went to Heaven, and the bad little boys who infallibly got drowned on Sunday,’ and then swept a savage frown around the house and blighted every smile in the congregation."

"This is not fair" spat back at the minister sums up Twain‘s troubled relationship with fire and brimstone Presbyterianism; for sure Twain came down on the side of "the bad little boys who infallibly got drowned on Sunday." Here lays the core of Twain’s cantankerous take on Reformed theology: he took up Adam‘s cause against an austere God as if Adam were one of the "bad little boys" unjustly punished; unjustly, because Presbyterian predestination assured Twain that they had to be little bad boys. As just such a doomed little bad boy Adam becomes Twain‘s distorted metaphor for the whole broken human race, which was God‘s fault in Twain’s view.

Over a lifetime, Twain argued with God using Adam as a foil. He had an "obsession with the biblical story of Adam and Eve…in thinking of [his childhood in Hannibal he] seemed like some banished Adam who is revisiting his half-forgotten Paradise." Pitying the banished Adam Twain opined, "…he was not made for any useful purpose….most likely not even made intentionally… working himself up out of the oyster bed to his present position was probably a matter of surprise and regret to the Creator."

In this way Twain used satire to blame God for the human condition:

• "Necessarily the scene of the real turning point of my life (and of yours) was the Garden of Eden… I cannot help feeling disappointed in Adam and Eve. That is, in their temperaments. Not in them….[it being God‘s fault that they were] afflicted with temperaments made out of butter….What I cannot help wishing is, that Adam and Eve had been postponed, and Martin Luther and Joan of Arc put in their place—that splendid pair equipped with temperaments made not out of butter, but of asbestos. By neither sugary persuasions nor by hellfire could Satan have beguiled them to eat the apple."

Satire or not, however, a critic notes a deeply serious underlying conflict in Twain:

• "[He] appears to have embraced the implications of the new science with a vengeance; but…the more he gave in to those implications, the more he returned in his musings and story-telling to the subject of Eden and Adam and Eve….evidence can be assembled to indicate that at one level of his thinking, at any rate, he was classically troubled…over the choice between Genesis and Darwin."

To put this into perspective, Mark Twain‘s Adam, like his Presbyterianism, is cast against the backdrop of a conflicted 19th century Protestantism struggling to "do church" in a modern way—modernity was the contested platform claimed by both liberals and conservatives. While contesting science, one construct of many resting on the platform, neither much questioned the philosophical swamp underlying the platform. Twain did; so although he rejected what he supposed to be the fallacies of fatalistic theology, notwithstanding Darwin he could not fully embrace the utopia promised by modernity‘s mechanistic scientism.

He was caught, as it were, in a conundrum, an emergent un-emerged from Eden. On the one hand, he could not get back to Eden on tenets of science and evolution, yet, on the other, he was destined (or so he thought) to yearn with compassion for that past day of glory lost to all the underdogs of Adam‘s race among which he saw himself as one. Yet, he supposed, the God who had created Eden kept it from him. "There is a God for the rich, but none for the poor," Twain wrote to his brother, expressing disdain for the elitist God of Hannibal, Missouri‘s Presbyterianism juxtaposed with his own concern for social justice. The irony is that on Twain‘s own terms his compassion was a curse not a blessing, a twist of fate from which he could not free himself nor do little about; thus, "The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority."

Twain saw Adam emerging from the biblical account of Eden into the Darwin‘s acxcount of the Descent of Man and while he thought the transition inevitable he intensely disliked what this implied (at least to him). And so Twain pushed back: keep the bloodied baby in Eden for awhile, the proto-emergent Adam un-emerged; Twain disdained what he thought the human race had become, and would run back to Hannibal, the Mississippi, steamboats, and childhood if only he could.

Indeed, one observer "…sees Twain‘s Adamic humor as a way to ‘fend off claims against Adam‘s existence.’ Of course, Twain…admired Darwin‘s work and even used it to build his own philosophy. However, Twain‘s Adamic humor seems to be bittersweet, nostalgic for the idea that Adam really was the father of mankind yet still poking fun at this idea. Twain continually juxtaposes Darwin‘s account of human origins with that of the Bible, for example…Twain gives Adam, Eve, and Cain the credit for making all of the fossils that would later so perplex geologists."

Now, in all of this it just seems that the enigma of the emerging church would have been ideal for Twain‘s predetermined temperament, which he argued posited the illusion of human choice in a deterministic world. Twain would have been quick to unravel the enigma by pointing out that what we hail as the vanguard of renewal led by heroes (or villains) of faith turns out to be just one more fatalistic movement in a dialectical evolutionary drama over which we have no control. Twain would argue that for good or bad emergents do not choose to emerge; they are evicted by forces set in motion when Adam, Eve, and Cain were sorting out fossils for geologists to find.

He would argue, too, that if the mainstream church seems fossilized, fossilization is but one inevitable aspect of the drama. Do not despair, out of this new life is bound to emerge. That we are here and the fossils back there proves this—they signal not merely death but also new beginning. This movement of never-having-arrived is everything; to arrive is to be static is to die and disappear. Thus, happily, you can never get away from the emergent un-emerged but emerging just like Twain‘s Adam clinging to Eden!

Of course, Twain‘s Adam is satire, right? So all of this is tongue-in-cheek, right?

Before answering, consider that the present emergent enigma stems in part from Protestant tradition beginning with Luther trying to abort a similar dialectic of renewal following the Reformation. Missiologist Ralph Winters observes that Luther forbad the emergence of orders independent of the parish. Ironically, Winters describes how the Roman Church over the thousand-plus years between Constantine and Luther had learned to cooperate with the inevitable corporate birthing process in a productive, orderly, renewing way; mere inevitability was turned to a purposeful, strategic advantage. Based on a naturally occurring dialectic similar to that seen in the Antioch church out of which came Paul‘s missional band (Paul, Silas, Mark), the Roman church applying a similar dynamic (albeit gleaned from the Empire) learned to cooperate with the smaller more dynamic and clearly focused missional community. Rather than condemn, criticize, and repress, the diocese/parish nurtured the pregnancy, worked through the unavoidable pain of the birthing process, swaddled the messy, bloodied newborn, fed, taught, trained, and so on, but then cut the apron strings soon enough to respect the integrity of the dialectical process and keep the relationship on a mutually beneficial basis. Out of this understanding came the monastic orders which, notwithstanding notable failures, were the life stream of Christianity for more than a millennium. If the wheels eventually came off the baby carriage, tricycle, and bicycle, too…well, that is another story.

In any case, Protestantism would reject the notion of Catholicism doing anything right, and for this reason reject the notion of "orders," or anything similar. Winters believes in was a major mistake by Luther and those who followed.

Winters laments that, "Had it not been for the so-called Pietist movement, the Protestants would have been totally devoid of any organized renewing structures within their tradition… However, the Pietist movement, along with the Anabaptist new communities, eventually…reverted to the ordinary pattern of congregational life…"

This would stifle the dynamic of essential renewal well directed, a local, missional dynamic incorporating the incarnational Jesus in a tangible, visible, practical, irrefutable ministry of loving service; rather, it would foster a climate of abstract theological debate, liturgy drained of life, and the elect always wanting feathers to be fluffed. The climax would be fossilization, on the one hand, igniting explosive splintering on the other.

Paradoxically, like forbidding sex to naked couples on a desert island, there resulted a rash of new births flooding Christendom with thousands of bloodied babies in the form of denominational offshoots. It is simply that the church is a living organism indwelled by the life-giving Holy Spirit destined to conceive, gestate, and reproduce as an ongoing dynamic dialectic. If very different from Twain‘s mechanistic process, it is nevertheless an inexorable ongoing movement. Further, the Holy Spirit spawns corporate movements first to achieve individual conversions second despite our blind immersion in modern molecules of individualism—historically the fruit comes in droves as a result of fresh corporate movements and rearrangements led by the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:41; 4:4; 6:7; 8:14; 9:31; etc., etc.)

Indeed, the parish church sans a missional dynamic in Twain‘s case fossilized as a frozen monument to morbid human stupidity; only to spawn what Twain labeled "wildcat religions," many of them splinter groups with zeal but no wisdom. Twain disdained them. Yet, fossilized and frozen, the same parish church aided in conjuring up the likes of Twain. He saw his church as cold, demanding, and judgmental. The result was he spent a lifetime flailing God, himself, and others with cords of guilt imbedded deeply in his soul, guilt absorbed in childhood from an overly austere religion unable to communicate except through fear. It left him stuck in preadolescent childhood, always trying to beat the genie back into the bottle from whence he supposed both he and the Hannibal version of Presbyterianism came and, in doing that, he hoped, send Adam back to Eden.

Now, if this were merely a post on Twain, we could transition here into an exploration of his early life, near-naïve sweetness of his mother, death of his father, and the macabre peep show his father‘s autopsy was turned into by Twain stealing glimpses of it through a keyhole. But we have other fish to fry. The focus is Twain‘s Adam as Twain‘s own proto-emergent un-emerged (Twain would keep him in Eden) as a negative juxtaposed with a positive: the emergent church un-emerged. It is emerging, of course—from something—but we insist it will never get outside its own skin, the church, which is not only skin, but bone, flesh and blood, too. It is far less than positive to think that any part of the body of Christ can abandon any other and proclaim, "We have emerged; we no longer need you!"

At the same time, only a fool would dismiss the movement as a fad, the work of men, or as some see it, loose cannon headed for heresy. In fact, based on what we have argued above it seems very much the inevitable work of the Holy Spirit renewing the church, but with a caveat: we are being led by the Spirit toward an ideal that has its roots deep in the past from which one olive tree grows; it has never been uprooted, transplanted, or otherwise disturbed by the whims and wishes of man—you do not support the root, the root supports you (Romans 11:18). You cannot emerge from the root except as a branch very much attached to the main trunk intended to bear fruit for the sake of the tree and the glory of God. To attempt to emerge further is audacity at best, heresy if accomplished, which is to be cut off and risk Twain‘s deepest morbid fear: that "substantial Presbyterian punishment of fire and brimstone."

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