The Hermeneutics of the Emergent Church

Pastor Mark Chanski serves as a professor of biblical studies for Reformed Baptist Seminary and teaches the seminary’s course on hermeneutics (i.e., the science of interpretation). In the spring of 2014, Mark gave a special lecture on the Hermeneutics of the Emergent Church (see below). Chanski demonstrates how earlier neo-orthodox and existential ideas that predominated the academia in the early and mid-twentieth century gave rise to post-modern thought, which in turn found its way into the church. Uncertainty, doubt, and even skepticism are now praised and serve as the interpretive lens through which the Bible is interpreted. Chanski not only exposes but critiques this unbiblical hermeneutic, contrasting it with the hermeneutic of Jesus and the apostles, which is predicated on certainty, faith, and conviction in the veracity and authority of God’s Word.

The Hermeneutics of the Emergent Church