A Great Revolution? or Looming Problems in the Plumbing?

Gold was and has been thee thing to safely invest your finances in since ancient times. It never seems to lose its value, as it's demand by mankind remains high. The demand for other metals has fluctuated as civilization has moved from one stage to another. There is the Stone Age and the Bronze Age and so on. During the time of the Roman Empire there was a well known metal that was used for all sorts of things. It was used for face powders, rouges, and mascaras; the pigment in many paints; a sweet and sour condiment popular for seasoning and adulterating food; a wine preservative perfect for stopping fermentation or disguising inferior vintages; an ingredient in pewter cups, plates, pitchers, pots and pans, and other household artifacts. It was in high demand, it was extremely popular, it was everywhere! It was lead.

Lead was by far the most useful and diverse metals used in ancient Rome, a civilization known, among many other things, for its intricate system of aquafers and water transport. The Romans made pipes to bring water in and take water out of their homes. There are still exit pipes in use in Rome today that have Ceasar's head engraven on them. It was everywhere. The whole empire loved it... the same empire that some historians say fell as a result of mass lead poisoning in the water supply.

Just because something "seems" good does not mean we should immediately drop what we know to be foundational and true and adopt a completely new and untproven method of things. There is a reason we don't have lead in our pipes or our food products. Given the knowledge we have now, such actions would have to be considered outright idiotic. Furthermore, one should never abandon something that is known to be true to follow something that is known to be false. Yet, this is exactly what appears to be happening in the realms of truth, knowledge and Christianity.

One book that has had disastrous consequences on knowledge and truth has been the book “Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America” by Darrell Guder. Its content is nothing new, as it poses a postmodern agenda in a place where it does not belong, Christianity. This isn’t a new phenomenon, and so it usually wouldn’t be regarded as anything but a sideshow of heresy. However, more and more pastors and church leaders have taken to the postmodern and emergent movements that are being taught within it, and that is what makes this book and others like it so dangerous.

These books attempt to make a mathematical analogy between the world of truth (epistemology, ontology, and metaphysics) and the mathematical discipline of set theory. On the one side, there is modernism (the idea that there is absolute truth and that it is at least possible to discover and know what this external absolute truth is). The postmodern will try to corner this position “mathematically” by labeling it as a “bounded set.” A bounded object in mathematics is an object (usually a set or a function) governed by a set finite value such that all members of that set or function are less that that value. In mathematics, a bounded set could be all the numbers that are less than or equal to 100. In a physical situation, one could take the height measurement at an amusement park to separate people into bounded sets. If you are below 5 feet tall, you cannot go on the ride. If you are above 5 feet tall, you can go on the ride. Both are bounded sets.

The Emergent Church has taken upon itself to create a whole new mathematical concept that cannot be found in almost any PhD level mathematical text in order to back their new and inherently flawed and unbiblical view of Christianity. They call this contrived mathematical concept the “centered set.” (To see that this is NOT a mathematical term in set theory, I would invite the reader to visit www.mathworld.wolfram.com, a website I used often during my graduate work in theoretical mathematics including set theory, and search for “centered set.” It simply does not exist.) Taking this fictitious mathematical idea, they claim that there are sets such that all elements within the set are categorized based on a single “central” element within the set. They claim that elements which are moving towards this central element are included within the set. Elements moving away from this element are said to be outside of the set.

A few things must be mentioned about this from a purely mathematical perspective. First of all, elements within a mathematical set DO NOT MOVE. If they were changing, they would be called variables and not elements. In the case that a set is filled with elements that could, at a different instance, gain or lose elements, then the set is necessarily just a function of some variable such as time. The amusement park height restriction is a good example. This year, one might be too short to ride and fall into the “not allowed” bounded set. Next year, however, they may grow enough to be included in the “allowed” bounded set. This IS a concept in mathematics. In other words, if the elements are functions of time, then the set as a whole is a function of time.

But the Emergent Church claims that this sort of centered set mentality blurs the boundaries of the set. Given that we were to even accept their definition of a centered set, this is simply not true. Note again their definition. If one element within the set is moving towards the center element, then that element is in. If an element is moving away from that center element or stationary, then it is out. This is EXACTLY the definition of a bounded set!!! An element is either in or out! No element can be both in and out, for that would be a contradiction which is clearly not allowed by the laws of logic.

(For those in the Emergent Church who deny the law of non-contradiction, they are necessarily wrong. The law of non-contradiction says that a statement “A” cannot both be true and not true at the same time and in the same meaning. For one to deny this law, they must argue that it’s assertion is not true. That is, they must say that for any statement “A,” it is possible that the statement can be both true and false at the same time and in the same meaning. However, if their claim were to be viable, then this must be true for all statements, including the statement of the law of non-contradiction. So let the law of non-contradiction be “A” and suppose the law of non-contradiction is false. This would imply that then that “A” can both be true and false at the same time and in the same meaning. In other words, it would imply that the statement “a statement ‘A’ cannot be both true and false at the same time and in the same meaning” is both true and false simultaneously. So if one were to assert that the law of non-contradiction is false, they MUST be asserting that it is also true BY THEIR OWN ASSERTION THAT THE LAW OF NON-CONTRADICTION IS FALSE! Thus, we see, the law of non-contradiction is always vacuously true.)

And so again, we recognize that the so-called “centered set” is actually just a time dependent bounded set. There is no such thing as a set with what the emergent call a “fuzzy boundary.”

In the Emergent Church, the supposed center element is of course Jesus. Those who are moving towards Jesus are in the set (which we have just clearly shown to be bounded) and those moving away from Jesus are outside of the set. This teaching, in itself, is simply part of orthodox, modernist Christianity. Jesus backed this up with His own teachings. Those who abide in Him, He abides in. Those who are good bear good fruit and those who are not good cannot bear good fruit. A good person cannot bear bad fruit and a bad person cannot bear good fruit. You can tell who is a believer by their fruit. In other words, you can tell who is a Christian by their walk with Christ. Are they moving towards Christ or away from Christ. Our measuring stick for telling this is of course the Bible.

By their own standards then, it is possible to tell who is Christian and who is not Christian based on the Emergent model. For example, the existence of Hell and that people are going to suffer there for eternity is a truth taught directly by Christ. If one is moving towards this truth, they are moving towards Christ. If they reject this truth, then they are actively rejecting Christ. The later, by their own definition, cannot be Christians for they are not moving towards the center element of Jesus. If something is clearly taught by Jesus in the Scripture (which Jesus took to be infallible and inerrant), then we are known as Christian or non-Christian by our heart and reaction to God’s Word. Jesus says He is the ONLY way to God. Does one believe that and act accordingly? If so, you’re moving towards Jesus. If not, you are moving away from Him. The former are Christians. The latter are not. The centered set fallacy is in reality just another way of describing the bounded set reality.

Jesus said, “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” – (Matthew 7:13-14). This is the nature of all truth. It is exclusive. One is either right or wrong. In this case, Jesus was either telling the truth or lying. Either a few will make it into heaven or everyone will. If the latter is true, then Jesus was a liar and Christianity is a farce. Truth leads to polarization, the right versus the wrong. This seems intolerant to the Emergent Church. It even seems arrogant. However, I would like to point out that truth is exactly that. It is both intolerant of lies and arrogant in that it rejects anything that disagrees with it. THAT IS TRUTH! If you purport a truth that does not have these characteristics, then I will save you much time and effort in telling you flat out that what you think CANNOT POSSIBLY BE TRUE.


There are still those in the Emergent Church that will posit that enlightenment thinking is dead and we are moving towards a post-enlightenment culture where there simply is no truth. (This is strikingly absurd, as if the statement “there is no truth” were to be true, it would refute itself and be necessarily false. It should thus be rejected outright, something the Emergent church in their ignorance has yet to do.) Of course there is truth, for their very own stance makes a claim to objective truth, a popular truth that was fabricated by man, which is of course no truth at all, but merely flawed human opinion.

The Emergent Church does have a point in that it does not like to see divisions within the Church. Christ did not want this either. Denominations are the product of personal persuasions, not variation from the foundational Christian teachings. These true teachings, as mentioned already, will necessarily result in good works and deeds towards our fellow man. Those who do not have deeds that match their faith do not have faith at all (See the book of James).

However, the Emergent Church tends to take these acts of good deeds and make them paramount. Yet Jesus promised us that there would be suffering and poverty and war and devastation in this world. He does not teach us to eradicate it, but rather to serve in humility to help those in need get through their ordeals.

Our culture is changing. We can all see that. Christ loved those around them when he despised the way culture was moving. He loved prostitutes, but He NEVER encouraged the act of prostitution. He loved those who believed lies, but He NEVER encouraged those lies. Our current culture believes a vast sea of lies. We, as Christians, are called to love those who believe them and yet firmly set ourselves against any argument or pretense that sets itself up against the knowledge of God. Jesus said that He was the way, the TRUTH and the life. Truth is exclusive. Anything that set’s itself up against Christ is to be destroyed. Postmodernism, the cultural movement that the Emergent Church is following, needs to be destroyed if Christianity is true.

If Christianity is false, then none of this makes any difference. Everyone should be for themselves. There is no reason to act on anyone else’s behalf. If you’re going down, take as many as you can with you. This is the logical conclusion of what the Emergent Church likes to call “love.” It is a flat out rejection of truth, which ultimately leads us to no moral or ethical boundaries at all. As a result, the Emergent Church has more to do with atheism, Stalin and Hitler than it does with Christ. Rejecting the TRUTH is rejecting Christ. And by their own “centered set” definition, the Emergent Church is no Christian church at all. It is body of full blown heretics.

2 Corinthians 10:5:

We are to demolish are arguments and pretenses that set themselves up against the knowledge of God, and we are to take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ (who is the truth).

2 Timothy 4:3:

For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.