dissertation

logical distortion? 210 Miroslav Volf, for one, acknowledges the limits and also dangers of
such a theology-by-analogy approach: “Although trinitarian ideas can undeniably be
converted into ecclesiological ideas...it is undeniable that this process of conversion must
have its limits, unless one reduces theology to anthropology, or, in a reverse fashion, elevates
anthropology to theology.” 211
This line of questioning need not be pressed further. It is sufficient to note that some
legitimate theological questions can be raised about the EMC concerning the increasingly
popular ‘social’ or ‘perichoretic’ understandings of the Trinity and, by extension,
its (practical) ecclesiological implications. In the EMC publications that were consulted
for this dissertation, however, social trinitarian thinking is attractively presented, while
these difficulties seem to be overlooked.
2.5.3 What Kind of Community?
This chapter has emphasized that the concept of community is crucial in the EMC.
Rarely, however, does anyone spell out exactly what is meant by ‘community’. 212 Community
is both a buzzword and an ideal not only in the EMC, but also, for example, in
contemporary neo-paganism. 213 This raises the question of how emerging churches are
different from other postmodern or neo-Romantic communities today. 214 The challenge
for the EMC is therefore to articulate and embody a fully theological understanding of
63
210
Anne Hunt warns that to “take the social interpersonal model of the Trinity to justify particular ecclesial
structures in what we might call a downward application of the analogy (from the divine to the human reality)
is to construct a circular argument. The circularity of the argument is problematic in that it risks the
possibility of ideological distortion, albeit perhaps unwittingly.” Anne Hunt, “The Trinity and the Church:
Explorations in Ecclesiology from a Trinitarian Perspective,” Irish Theological Quarterly 70 (2005), 233.
211
Volf, After Our Likeness, 198.
212
This is not unusual. In 1986, Frank Kirkpatrick designated community as “perhaps the most overused
word and least consistently employed concept in the disciplines of theology, sociology, and social philosophy
today.” The word risks collapsing into a meaningless term “evoked more for rhetorical or emotional
reasons than for illumination or explanation.” Frank G. Kirkpatrick, Community: A Trinity of Models (Washington,
DC: Georgetown University Press, 1986), 1-2.
213
See Jon P. Bloch, “Individualism and Community in Alternative Spiritual ‘Magic’,” Journal for the Scientific
Study of Religion 37, no. 2 (1998), 286-302; Sarah M. Pike, Earthly Bodies, Magical Selves: Contemporary Pagans
and the Search for Community (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001); Tom Hope and Ieuan
Jones, “Locating Contemporary British Paganism as Late Modern Culture,” Journal of Contemporary Religion
21, no. 3 (October 2006), 341-354.
214
Cf. the findings of James Gilmore regarding “patterns of engagement” between the Burning Man festival
and the Emerging Church. He concludes that the core ideas of what makes for the ideal society for
both Burners and emerging Christians are essentially the same. Think here of values like radical inclusion,
gifting, decommodification, radical self-expression, communal effort, civic responsibility, participation, and
immediacy. Gilmore’s concern is that the typical postmodern value of ‘nonjudgmentalism’ that characterizes
Burning Man (and other kinds of neopagan ventures) translates into the Emerging Church Movement
as licentiousness and lack of accountability to the moral standards of Scripture. James G. Gilmore, “Divine
Appointments: Patterns of Engagement Between Burning Man and Emerging Churches,” (MA thesis, Fuller
Theological Seminary, 2006), 66, 83, 85.