Curious Christian

Reflections on culture, nature, and spirituality from a Christian perspective

The Carson Conversation

Published by

Matt Stone

2006-09-14

In case you haven’t seen it, Hamo has been blogging on his conversations with Don Carson over the Emerging Church during his recent trip down under.

Carson, a respected theologian and author, has been a vocal critic of the movement in recent times. But like many of us antipodeans, Hamo has some critiques of his own, particularly with respect to Carson’s US-centric research methodology.

Hamo writes:

One thing he [Carson] did stress was that he felt the EC in Oz (at least as defined by Geoff and I) would not be considered EC in other parts of the world. Hmmm… And therein lies much of the problem.

Yes indeed. To be defined out of a GLOBAL conversation by someone who’s only looked at it through a myopic US-centric lens (and with a great deal of selectivity even there). I expect a little more objectivity for someone who’s such a harsh critic of relativism.

See parts 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 for the rest of Hamo’s reflections. Worth a read.

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2 responses to “The Carson Conversation”

fernando

2006-09-15

Why do I imagine Carson would define relativism in such a way that he would be except from this criticism.

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Matt Stone

2006-09-15

Hamo rightly points out that many of the criticisms that Carson is levelling at the emerging church – such as sectarianism, poor exegesis of postmodernity, etc – could just as easily be levelled at the established church too, and in fact at Carson himself.
Rather than filtering his data to fit his definitions it would be nice if he could let the data speak for itself.
Well, at least he’s finally talked to one of us so I suppose it’s a start.

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