In replying to Jacob (and to Paul), I make the simple observation that whatever one’s attitude to Josh McDowell (‘Evidence that demands a verdict’ etc), something of a shift is taking place concerning the criteria that are being brought to judge and assess truth-claims, and that this has a great deal to do with a shift in our underlying culture and its worldview.

The shift could be described thus: when our culture today looks at ‘truth’, it is less to do with whether something can be proved correct or incorrect, whether it is verifiable or not verifiable. Instead, it is increasingly whether something has integrity, whether something comes across as ‘real’ or ‘authentic’ on the register of personal experience. This is part of the shift from a modern to a postmodern culture, which has been fuelled by the perceived failure of the big explanations or metanarratives - in science, sociology, psychology, philosophy, history and spirituality.

I don’t personally think Josh McDowell is reducing the concept of God to a hypothesis which can be objectively verified; rather he is providing reasons why the claims of Judeao-Christianity should be taken seriously. He has done a good job. But this method may prove less attractive in an age when what many people want is not proof which can be apprehended with the mind, but phenomena which register with the level of our experiences.

The issue for the church, emergent or otherwise, is how it responds to culture - especially postmodern culture. Rudolf Bultmann made the claim that the Christian faith did not need to rest on its supposedly unreliable history, and could be reframed in terms of an entirely existential experience of God. Something similar is happening today, but as with Bultmann, to dismiss the significance of history as the basis of Judaeo-Christian belief is to cut the faith loose from its moorings. The biggest mistake Bultmann made was when he tried to reinterpret the resurrection of Jesus as a purely personal, inward experience. New Testament belief does not allow for such a move, and Bultmann is, in this respect, now seen as a dead-end rather than a pioneering highway. It would be tragic if the emergent church made the same mistake.