Dan J. Brennan

Living God's Story: Being a People of Reconciliation and Peace

Paul Waddell, for you Protestant readers who know Scot McKnight, is sort of like the Catholic version of Scot.  He's a serious thinker who has a great breadth of academic knowledge but he has this incredible gift to translate it in such accessible language without losing the depth.  That is a skill and gift.  I say it again, that there would be many emerging folk out there who would find Waddell to be an implicit "emerging" Catholic, if there is such a thing. 

One of the dangers I think Christians in the emerging conversation, face, is a "communal" sectarianism.  In the "modern" splits of evanglicalism, there were splits involving a "doctrinal" sectarianism.  But I think Christians in the emerging movement face a different temptation.  I will never forget my first meeting with "emerging" Christians.  Brian McLaren was present among an intimate group of believers.  There were several questions posed to McLaren about the Willow Creek model.  Now, I have to admit my own bias and subjectivity, here.  I'm not an advocate of the Willow Creek model.  Personally, my first reaction to learning that Scot McKnight attended Willow Creek, was, "Huh?"   

However, I see something profoundly good, profoundly Christian good, that Scot McKnight, a leading emerging thinker and blogger, attends Willow Creek, even if I don't understand it.  This is connected, I think to Waddell's encouragement that living God's story means we are to be a people of reconciliation and peace. 

Something to Think About: Love, Dependency, and Freedom

 Paul Wadell...
"In a Christian theological anthropology, to be a person is to rest in a gift.  Everyone (and everything) exists in virtue of a love they cannot give themselves, but also a love that cannot be denied them or ever taken away from them because it is God-given.  It is not rationality, freedom, self-determination, or moral awareness that makes us persons.  It is God's love, and that is something everyone has.  The trouble with defining what constitutes us as persons in terms of some quality or qualities we might have is that anyone who lacks these qualities or who is judged to them to a deficient degree risks being assessed as less than human or not truly a person...