“The irony is that even within Christian churches, we’re already post-denominational. Christian churches are already seeing that the issues that defined the denominations are mostly dead issues for people today.  The connections are across denominations.  Amazing movement called the emerging church.  Not only says, ‘to hell with denominations but to hell with church building, traditions pretty much as a whole.  But find something in this first century rabbi relevant to the twenty-first century.’ We are in a time of unbelievably massive change.”

Philip Clayton, Interview (7:10)

If you are interested in or are a critic of Emergence, I implore you to spend the seven minutes it takes to watch this video. This is one of the moments where someone who really understands what he is talking about communicates the truth in a way that is so easy to understand but blows doors on traditional thinking.

Philip Clayton explores Emergence theory with Spencer Burke. I really appreciate how he lays out the scientific process that essentially removes God from the box.  I sometimes wonder if the next great event in human history is the reconciliation of faith and science and I see people like Philip Clayton leading the way.

Perhaps the most important thing he says here is:

“If the world was determined, we could put God at the top and say, ‘God determined absolutely everything that unfolded.’  Now if life is a kind of co-creation of individual organisms and their surroundings, then God has to work in, with and through your agency, my agency, the planets agency in ways that aren’t so neat and clean.  To me that’s the Biblical God.  And it’s definitely the God of Jesus Christ.”

Talk about an invitation to Kingdom mission.  Clayton’s willingness to talking structural determinism strikes a blow to those in power, those theologians who want to control the core thought about God and put him in a box.

Booyah!