Deep Church addresses deep problems within evangelicalism

(Note: A version of this review was originally published in The Baptist Messenger, October 15, 2009)

The eighteenth century’s Scottish grown Common Sense philosophy has left a hefty footprint upon American life. This philosophy held a bold confidence in the individual’s perceptive powers. It believed that the ability to accurately interpret the world was a God-given gift, common to all (hence “Common Sense”). The result was a heightened confidence in human reason among Americans. These assumptions about the individual spilled over into American theology, becoming strikingly evident in the thinking of the famous minister Charles G. Finney. During the nineteenth century Finney had this to say about revivalism: “The connection between the right use of means for a revival and a revival is as philosophically…sure as between the right use of means to raise grain and a crop of wheat. I believe, in fact, it is more certain, and there are fewer instances of failure.” Mark A. Noll explains Finney’s logic by saying, “Since God had established reliable laws in the natural world and since humans were created with the ability to discern those laws, it was obvious that the spiritual world worked on the same basis.”

Such unflinching confidence in human reason that was bound up in the Enlightenment project has been a source of frustration and protest for those in the emerging church movement. This emerging movement believes that the epistemological leanings that were seen in Finney are not only more modern than biblical but that they have manifest themselves in harmful ways within evangelicalism, producing the arrogance that they believe often marks evangelical preaching, teaching, and discourse. This has led to profound revisions by emergents, revisions that many within evangelicalism at large have felt go too far.

Enter Jim Belcher’s Deep Church: A Third Way Beyond Emerging and Traditional. Belcher’s book seeks to remedy the problems that concern the emerging movement in a way that remains faithful to the gospel and the early Church tradition (specifically, the Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian creeds). This will offer, Belcher believes, a third way, the way of the “deep church.” In chapter four, “Deep Truth,” Belcher takes readers into the epistemological arena by addressing a protest common among emergents, namely, the church’s long captivity to Enlightenment rationalism. The emerging movement challenges evangelicalism’s commitment to the Enlightenment notion that the individual has the ability to ascertain and interpret reality with certitude (what Belcher calls foundationalism). Belcher believes that this postmodern critique of Enlightenment reason is on target. The postmodern answer, however, is problematic. Postmoderns typically resolve this revised epistemology with a faulty metaphysic, one that denies any objective reality. Some (not all) emergents follow suit.

Belcher contends that the emerging movement is correct to challenge the epistemological foundation that much of evangelicalism has been built upon, the kind of optimism toward the individual’s perceptive faculties so evident in Finney. In other words, Belcher calls for the deep church to be epistemologically postfoundational. This means that Christians recognize the intellect’s entanglement in sin and therefore its inability to attain unassailable certainty, especially toward the mysteries of eternal decree.

Postmoderns and some emergents are incorrect to conclude that simply because humans have difficulty grasping truth, it does not mean that no truth exists. In other words, the epistemological deficiency of the modern project has led many postmoderns and some emergents to unnecessarily leap to this metaphysical conclusion: that no objective reality exists. Through an interesting exchange with Nicholas Wolterstorff, Belcher realizes that the Christian’s confidence that objective reality exists is derived from divine revelation, not human reason. Unlike many American evangelicals, including Finney, but like the emerging movement, Belcher believes that foundationalism is a rickety epistemological foundation. Yet, unlike some in the emerging movement, Belcher contends that objective reality does exist and our knowledge of it emanates from without (namely, God’s revelation), not within (namely, human reason). The deep church, then, is epistemologically postfoundational and metaphysically Christ-centered. In practice, this sparks a humble confidence that is anchored not in the individual—as it was in the Enlightenment model so evident in much of American evangelicalism—but in Christ.

As a result of important epistemological changes in American theology during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, a constellation of shifts followed. One of those shifts related to salvation. The Puritan salvation model that stressed the salvation process as mediated by clergy, family and church, and was more skeptical about gaining immediate assurance in salvation was growing tired. Individuals wanted certainty, and they wanted it quick. A new emphasis on the born-again experience soon followed. The born-again experience’s entry found support in the Great Awakening of the eighteenth century. This more evangelical salvation paradigm assuaged previous anxieties by providing a definite moment when one was saved.

The born-again experience also provided a new objective for the many pastors and leaders wanting to win the country for Christ: get the people saved. It was clear; it was simple. And in an effort to reach the multitudes of unsaved Americans, preachers tended to rely on charisma and a simplified gospel that would resonate especially with the frontier-ilk making their way deeper into the hinterland. The preaching became less cerebral, more emotional. Here existed the ingredients for the growth of a stunted gospel. Too busy proclaiming the gospel to astounding numbers of people, many pastors simply did not have the time to explore the depths of that gospel.

And this inherited evangelical gospel is another aspect of evangelicalism that bothers the emerging movement, a topic Belcher addresses in chapter six, “Deep Gospel.” The emerging movement believes that the good news of Jesus’ kingdom has not been stressed enough. While evangelicals have focused on the gospel as a message for the individual, they have failed to act out the gospel’s social implications. On the other side, traditional evangelicalism claims that emergents have simply revived a social gospel that neglects penal substitutionary atonement and, consequently, leads to a work-based model of the Christian life. Belcher believes the deep gospel emerges from penal substitutionary atonement and is the foundation for the coming kingdom of God, thereby unifying the two alternatives.

Belcher closes the chapter by explaining four words that characterize his church: gospel, community, mission, and shalom. These four words, Belcher believes, provide the balance for the gospel’s individual and social implications, thereby remedying the complaints of each side. The gospel is central to their church’s work and identity. As they are affected by the gospel, Belcher’s church has the strength to care for their community. Then, their church’s acts of love should spread beyond their community and into the world. This is their mission. And, finally, as the gospel affects the church individually and corporately, as well as impact the surrounding culture, shalom begins to take root in the world.

I have only underscored two chapters of Belcher’s Deep Church. When reading the book I felt as though I was putting on glasses for the first time; all the issues in this emerging debate took on a new sharpness and clarity. It is probably Belcher’s insider/outsider relationship to the emerging movement that enables him to offer this lucid account of the debate. While not all readers will agree with Belcher’s ecclesiological prescription, every reader will benefit from the clarity his book contributes to the emerging conversation.