Here are two guys perplexed by labels, rubrics and categories and the difficulties attending their use.

Tony Jones sat down and puzzled at length before writing: [Emergents] "have a particular antipathy toward rubrics, labels, and categorizations. They seem to us convenient ways of boxing someone in, which all too often leads to writing someone off."

First is Dave Doran, the Barney Fife of Fundamentalism, a man who has devoted his life to the confusion of seminarians, (often by means of boxing in and writing off). Now those seminarians are seeking accommodations in a part of town he disapproves of. He attributes this emigration to confusing labels.

I guess I find myself back at a spot where most of these discussions end for me these days. I think they are all handicapped by the use of labels from the 20th century which no longer fit and, therefore, don't serve the discussion well. By thinking of three circles-new evangelicalism, conservative evangelicalism, and fundamentalism-all of the energy of the discussion goes into who's in and who's out. The unavoidable problem, though, is that nobody can define in and out at this stage of the game. So, where I differ with Bauder is that I don't think that we can say anything definitive about a group. We need to look at individual men and ministries, find out what they believe and how they apply those beliefs, and then draw our conclusions.

---Dave Doran, president of a Fundamentalist seminary

The second is Tony Jones, the Mr. Bean of Emergence, who understands conservatism just as well as Mike Morrell does. He too boxes in and writes off, but he does it from the other end of the spectrum.

Please allow me a tangent: Was Thomas Aquinas a "liberal" or a "conservative"?  Well, we might at first paint him a conservative, for he rescued orthodox Christianity from a particularly stagnant period by recovering - i.e., conserving - scripture and tradition.  But how did he do that?  By entering into a thoroughgoing dialogue with the Aristotelian philosophy of medieval Islam.  I daresay that if a theologian today were to admit that he or she was dipping into the wells of Muslim philosophy in order undergird Christian theology, that theologian would be condemned as having slipped off the slippery slope.

My point is that the question, Was Thomas a conservative or a liberal? is nonsensical, because "liberalism" and "conservatism" are modern categories, linked to modern (read, analytic) philosophical presuppositions.  If I can make the point even more strongly, they are not theological categories.  Thomas was not a liberal or a conservative, Paul was not a liberal or a conservative, Jesus was not a liberal or a conservative.  And, if I may be so bold, I am not a liberal or a conservative.  Those non-theological categories become less helpful each day.  I suggest we stop using them.  OK, end of tangent.

---Tony Jones, ex-national coordinator of Emergent Village

How do you suppose a good man might live in a world defined by Deputy Fifes and Mr. Beans?