Torch, Fall/Winter 2012

M emorials remind us that we walk in the steps of an inherited past. From time to time, I like to visit such memorials, and as I contemplate the emergence of the postmodern church, the five sketched portraits hanging in Cedarville University’s Centennial Library have much to tell us. The faces of John Murray, Cornelius Van Til, Geerhardus Vos, J. Gresham Machen, and B.B. Warfield are not only a monument to Cedarville’s past, but they also remind us of what is at stake in the current debate between the Emergent church movement and its critics. Comparisons have been made, and rightly so, between this current movement and the liberal theology that occupied the attention of these men who defended, in their generation, the faith once for all delivered to the saints. The similarity raises the question: what would these five say to the Emergent church? Were they with us today, I believe the Heritage Five would offer up the following 10 assertions: 1. Christ is the great proposition of history. 2. Doubt is not a virtue. 3. Culture is not neutral. 4. Propositional truth claims did not begin with the Enlightenment, nor were they invented by the Greco-Romans. 5. Language does not originate from or define the Church community. 6. Experience must take a back seat to the Word of God and to the Person about whom it is written. 7. The resurrection is an objective fact of calendar history. 8. Inclusiveness is implicit universalism. 9. A penal/substitutionary atonement and Christ’s righteousness imputed to the sinner are requisite for right standing before God. 10. Baptism and the Lord’s Table are divinely ordained, visible lines of demarcation between the Church and culture. Positively, the Emergent church movement has done much to make evangelicals think about how the Incarnation impacts what we do, not merely what we say. After all, if we are true followers of Jesus, we must bear the identity of the One who showed much compassion to the vulnerable and the oppressed. Nevertheless, we cannot forget that the only true help is found in an Incarnation that is grounded in history, an Incarnation with meaning that is above, outside of, and exclusive to all other systems of thought. Truth is, first and foremost, a Person (John 14:6) who spoke the very first proposition at the very beginning of time, creatio ex nihilo . In His resurrection and exaltation, Jesus became the proposition against which all truth claims are now measured. Truth, then, is the same yesterday, today, and forever. By reminding us that Christ is Truth Incarnate, the Heritage Five’s wisdom is our challenge for the present, so long as we listen to what they have to tell us. 30 TORCH This editorial is presented by CDR Radio: The Path. Chad Bresson serves as Impact News director for the CDR Radio Network and is the host for the Impact News Front Page program. A Cedarville University graduate, he is a self-proclaimed news junkie and has been at the network since 1992. Bresson and his Front Page program can be heard online at www.thepath.fm . ® T Hearing Voices By Chad Bresson, CDR Radio News Director