Has “the doctrine of the Nicolaitans” (Revelation 2:6,15) resurfaced in the Emergent Church? John MacArthur thinks so. In his latest book, The Truth War: Fighting for Certainty in an Age of Deception, MacArthur defines the doctrine of the Nicolaitans as “a kind of radical licentiousness” further defined as “using Christian liberty as a cloak for vice and an opportunity for the flesh,” which later characterized gnosticism, “a deadly brand of false religion that flourished in the second century and often infiltrated the church, masquerading as Christianity.” What made this threat so dangerous is that it came from within the church (Acts 20:29-31), and more specifically from among the leaders of the church, precisely where the Emergent threat is originating in the present day.

Truth is under attack by those who profess to be purveyors of truth: evangelical ministers.  MacArthur roots his definition of truth in what the Bible teaches: “truth is that which is consistent with the mind, will, character, glory, and being of God.”  God is the source of all truth, and knowing truth is the irreducible minimum in knowing God. Unlike the view of postmodernism, truth can be known. Knowing truth is essential to our salvation: “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.” However, saving faith is not merely assent to propositional truth. It is also fundamentally about a relationship to a Person – Jesus Christ – who claimed to be “the Truth.”  While “there is without question a personal element to the truth,” MacArthur argues that “truth simply cannot survive if stripped of propositional content… 

While it is quite true that believing the truth entails more than the assent of the human intellect to certain propositions, it is equally true that authentic faith never involves anything less. To reject the propositional content of the gospel is to forfeit saving faith, period.”

The Emergent crowd suggests it is arrogance to believe anything for certain, and to do so makes us out of step with the culture and therefore incapable of communicating with the culture.

Emerging Christians are determined to adapt the Christian faith, the structure of the church, the language of faith, and even the gospel message itself to the ideas and rhetoric of postmodernism.

Emergent theologians are telling us that knowing truth is futile at best.  Ambiguity and mystery are the new creeds of modern evangelicalism.  Our commitment to propositional truth died with the collapse of modernism according to the Emergent theologians:

[Stanley Grenz and John Franke] are convinced that every desire to gain a fixed and positive knowledge of any truth belongs to the collapsing categories of enlightenment rationalism.

MacArthur points out that propositional truth isn’t rooted in the enlightenment rationalism that gave rise to modernism, but rather propositional truth is rooted in the eternal nature of God which is changeless.  To abandon propositional truth for fuzzy, wuzzy metanarratives is to abandon the very essential that forms who we are as followers of Jesus Christ.  But this is precisely the path Emergent takes us down. The cardinal sin in these postmodern times is the claim to be right.

What Brian McLaren, Stanley Grenz, and John Franke argue for is the “contextualization” of Christianity for these postmodern times.  Their argument boils down to “if we cannot know everything perfectly, we really cannot know anything with any degree of certainty.”

Since culture is constantly in flux, they say, it is right and fitting for Christian theology to be in a perpetual state of transition and ferment too. No issue should be regarded as finally settled.

MacArthur cogently addresses what truth is and how it trancends both modernism and postmodernism.  If you are looking for a cogent and understandble response to Brian McClaren and Stanley Grenz, you’ll find it in chapter two of MacArthur’s book. MacArthur concludes this chapter with a call to counter the culture:

[T]he absolute worst strategy for ministering the gospel in a climate like this is for Christians to imitate the uncertainty or echo the cynicism of the postmodern perspective – and in effect drag the Bible and the gospel into it. Instead, we need to affirm against the spirit of the age that God has spoken with the utmost clarity, authority, and finality through His Son (Hebrews 1:1-2). And we have the infallible record of that message in Scripture (2 Peter 1:19-21).