dissertation

76
steinian, evolving one.” 58 McLaren’s Neo conceives of the contrast as follows: “[But] in a
post-Newtonian scientific worldview – you know, a world of relativity and indeterminacy
– we’re already outside of the old mechanistic view of the universe. Now the universe
is so much more vibrant and alive and dynamic and interesting. It’s about information
and emergence and possibility and novelty.” 59
We also read about old versus new paradigms on a meso level, for example a Spiritualized
Gospel versus an Embodied Gospel; a Dualistic Gospel versus a Holistic Gospel; a
Privatized Faith versus a Public Faith; 60 or about a movement from Propositionalism to
Narrative, from Rationalism to Embodiment, from Power to Servanthood, from Legalism
to Freedom, from Program to Narrative, etc. 61 This suggests that the characteristics
of the old paradigms are totally different from those of the new. The church “On
the Other Side” (McLaren) has almost nothing in common with the traditional church.
Missional and nonmissional expressions of Christianity are “practically unrecognizable
to each other.” 62 Theological seminaries are irrelevant “dinosaurs” because they are “a
product of modernity,” 63 and so on.
In this trend echoes can be heard of the ‘incommensurability thesis’ of the early
Kuhn. 64 He suggested that when paradigms change – for example the Newtonian or
Einsteinian theories of science – everything changes: “the proponents of competing paradigms
practice their trades in different worlds.” 65 Thus, different paradigms are incommensurable.
66 Rational debate between them is difficult, if not impossible, for each paradigm
contains its own standards at all levels. Apart from the concept of ‘paradigm’,
the thesis of the incommensurability of different paradigms has probably been Kuhn’s
58
Kester Brewin, The Complex Christ: Signs of Emergence in the Urban Church (London: SPCK, 2004), 61.
59
Brian D. McLaren, The Story We Find Ourselves in: Further Adventures of a New Kind of Christian (San Francisco,
CA: Jossey-Bass, 2003), 160. Cf. Kurt Fredrickson, “The modernistic, machine paradigm is giving
way to a postmodern, organic paradigm.” Kurt Norman Fredrickson, “An Ecclesial Ecology for Denominational
Futures Nurturing Organic Structures for Missional Engagement,” (PhD diss., Fuller Theological Seminary,
2009), 143.
60
These phrases are used in some of the section headings in Bolger and Gibbs, Emerging Churches.
61
These phrases are used in some of the chapter headings in Robert E. Webber, The Younger Evangelicals.
62
McNeal, Missional Renaissance, xiv.
63
This quote features in Richard J. Mouw, foreword to Jim Belcher, Deep Church: A Third Way Beyond
Emerging and Traditional (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2009), 7.
64
A few years after publishing his famous book, Kuhn softened his position to propose ‘partial incommensurability’,
but this is not referred to in EMC literature. See Kuhn’s essay “Reflections on My Critics,” in
Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave, eds., Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 1970), 231-278.
65
Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 150.
66
Much has been written about this term. See for an overview, Stefano Gattei, Thomas Kuhn’s ‘Linguistic
Turn’ and the Legacy of Logical Empiricism: Incommensurability, Rationality and the Search for Truth (Aldershot,
UK: Ashgate, 2008), 74-136. Simply put, incommensurability means sharing no common factor, base, or
essential characteristic. If a paradigm is incommensurable with another paradigm, then the language –
terms, concepts, categories, notions – used to describe the one would not adequately capture the essence of
the other. For example, the term ‘run’ in cricket means something different from what it means in football.