• NT Wright and the Emerging Church

    April 21, 2010

    I had the opportunity to catch some of The 19th Annual Wheaton Theology Conference this past weekend.

    N.T. Wright was the keynote speaker and the name of the conference this year was, “Jesus, Paul, and and the People of God.”

    Bishop Wright was spectacluar as usual, but one of my favorite talks was given by Jeremy Begbie, Research Professor of Theology at Duke Divinity School.

    The title of his talk was, “The Shape of Things to Come: Wright Amongst Emerging Ecclesiologies.”  I offer this (40 min) talk to you here, but you can also go here to download or watch the rest of the excellent talks from the weekend.

    Podcast: Play in new window | Download

    Begbie begins by noting 5 features of Wright’s theology and ecclesiology that have immediate resonance with those who identify with the Emerging Church.

    1. Intrinsic – The Church is intrinsic to the vision of the purposes of God and the fabric of salvation.  God’s vision of putting the world to rights involves, at its heart, God forming a community.

    2. Eschatological – Thinking from God’s future to the present, providing a pneumatological vision of worship and mission.

    3. Cosmically Situated – God’s putting the world to rights involves creation-wide, Christological, reconciliation.

    4. Material – Shunning the ideas of the Church as a disembodied ideal and all the material/spiritual dichotomies of modernity.

    5. Improvisatory – Combining obedient responsibility to Scripture with flexibility to cultural and contextual circumstances.

    After offering these, Begbie suggests 3 features of Wright’s theology and ecclesiology that many Emerging Churches would do well to pay more attention to.

    1. Ascension – Christ is not localizible, but is universally accesible through the Spirit.  Failure to recognize Christ as universally reigning over the Church can lead to strident triumphalism on the one hand or painful disillusionment on the other.

    2. Israel – Gounding of Trinitarian enthusiasm in the history of God’s mission in and through Israel.

    3. Catholicity – Refusing to allow consumer choice to become the defacto foundation of church unity by rallying around the cross as the focal point of unity in God’s Kingdom.

    This was an insightful talk that I would commend to anyone seeking to get a better handle on the Emerging Church and its resonance with the theology of a professor and church leader who lives and ministers in a context where the Church is all but extinct.  Here, emergence, far from being a fad, is the only choice the Church has if it wishes to participate in God’s mission.

    Related Posts

    1. The Church Emerging and the Multi-Cultural Future of Western Christianity
    2. Scot McKnight – What is the Emerging Church?
    3. Fuller and the Emerging Church

    Posted in: church, conference, emerging church, theology

Recent Comments

  • Tweets that mention via lifeasmission: NT Wright and the Emerging Church #FB -- Topsy.com said...

    1

    [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by JR Rozko. JR Rozko said: via lifeasmission: NT Wright and the Emerging Church http://bit.ly/a5LRIZ #FB [...]

    04/21/10 12:44 PM | Comment Link

  • Billy said...

    2

    Great stuff JR! Thanks for posting this! Begbie has done an excellent job highlighting aspects of Wright's theology that I personally resonate with. I think the three he recommends a little more focus on are so important as well.

    04/21/10 7:06 PM | Comment Link

  • Jonathan Brink said...

    3

    But JR. I thought the emerging church was dead? ;-P

    04/21/10 7:31 PM | Comment Link

  • jrrozko said...

    4

    Word hasn't reached Tom or Jeremy or the thousands of people who are putting their faith in God helping his people to emerge from the demise of Christendom.

    04/21/10 7:36 PM | Comment Link

  • jrrozko said...

    5

    Can you imagine how smart you have to be to grasp the entire corpus of Wright's theology and parcel it out the way he did?! Holy cow.

    04/21/10 7:37 PM | Comment Link

  • @jorgefusaro said...

    6

    This is awesome JR!! Reading your blog helps me stay current (*sigh* sort of) with what's happening on the missional/emerging conversations. Love you bro! I'm looking forward to hearing that audio soon!

    04/21/10 11:08 PM | Comment Link

  • jrrozko said...

    7

    Jorge! Whatever man, you're the happening one. I can barely keep up w/ all the great stuff you're doing.

    04/22/10 3:38 AM | Comment Link

  • tsk said...

    8

    cool. a number of ec leaders (and me) hung out with tom wright for 3 days in uk a few years ago under a similar topic. glad the americans had the chance to do the same thing, peace.

    04/22/10 8:11 AM | Comment Link

  • Nathan said...

    9

    Hey Jr,
    Did you watch Hays's presentation as well? I thought he made some important criticisms of Wright.

    Also, a question: could you unpack this statement: "Here, emergence, far from being a fad, is the only choice the Church has if it wishes to participate in God’s mission."

    I can't tell if you're saying that the emergent movement is the only way for Christians to participate in God's mission. Or do you mean only in the UK or something? Either way it scares me a little, and I'm wondering if I misunderstood.

    04/22/10 8:40 PM | Comment Link

  • jrrozko said...

    10

    Hey Nate. I listened to Hayes talk, but wasn't there to see it live. I wasn't aware of the harsh criticism Wright had offered to the book Hayes helped to edit so I'm not sure I get the full scope of the dialogue, but I was with him on the idea that the relationship between history and story might be an important lack in Wright's work.

    As for the comment of mine that you referenced…

    Plenty of people continue to accuse the EC of being faddish and novel. To be sure, that observation isn't probably completely unfounded, but it communicates a failure to really appreciate the larger scope of the issue.

    The Church is so small and marginalized in Western Europe and the UK that it's emerge or die. Those are the only 2 options. I don't mean to imply that the EC or Fresh Expressions is the only way to do it, but traditional approaches to what it means to be the Church in these contexts are dying a slow death, mainly surviving on the life support of shrinking endowments.

    Far too few people understand the ecclesiological and missiological impetus behind the EC movement – mainly because they inhabit a context in which Christianity still maintains a position of power and privilege. That being the case, they have little ability to see the EC as anything other than another gimmick. That's what I was getting at.

    04/22/10 9:07 PM | Comment Link

  • Nathan said...

    11

    Okay, thanks for that clarification. Novelty is one thing. Novelty combined with claims to be the exclusive owner of the future of the church is another. I think I understand you a little better now.

    By the way, I just listened to Edith Humphrey's talk while I cleaned the kitchen. Wow! Best appreciative criticism of Wright I've heard, especially toward the end.

    04/23/10 12:26 AM | Comment Link

  • jrrozko said...

    12

    I was listening to that one this afternoon. I haven't gotten to the end yet, but I'm looking forward to it now.

    I should have mentioned that I thought Hayes' thing about the resurrection being an epistemological key for Christians was brilliant and I wish there had been more attention given to that.

    04/23/10 3:27 AM | Comment Link

  • jim vining said...

    13

    I am not sure that I have ever heard a better treatment of a biblical theology of the church in a 40 min talk … plus killer piano! That is the kink of church that is worth pouring our lives into!

    04/23/10 3:07 PM | Comment Link

  • jrrozko said...

    14

    Hey Jim, thanks for commenting. I agree, I thought Begbie's talk was excellent. Certainly lots of other stuff that could have been talked about, but his treatment of Wright's vision and its connection to the EC was incredible.

    04/23/10 3:13 PM | Comment Link

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