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Which Way to the "Third Way"?

Posted Mar 17, 08:43 AM | 4 comments | by Editor | Link

Dan Kimball has opened up an interesting dialogue on his blog regarding the concept of a “third way.” Kimball draws a contrast between the “third way” posited by Tony Jones in his new book The New Christians and the “third way” talked about by Tim Keller in his new book The Reason for God.

Kimball writes, “Tony said that Emergent is striving to be the ‘third way’—and now I am reading that Tim and what he is saying here is also striving to be the ‘third way’ (same words used as Tony).”

The discussion in the comments (which appear to be posted blog-style, in reverse-chronological order) is pretty interesting. Here are a few snippets:

• “In order to agree on a ‘third way’, we must agree on a problem/solution.


• “Calling for a third way is a cheap way of calling everyone else on the field errant extremist and is a bit of a straw man attack. Having said that, it typically works and helps people understand what you’re trying to say. It’s just not as noble as it looks at first glance.”


• ”’What will define the boundaries’ The Bible. Or hopefully it will. ... If three different Christ following personalities start here, and this is their common ground,- their foundation,- and ‘Jesus Christ Himself the chief corner stone’ (Eph. 2:20), then there surely could be a middle way, which must abide on the straight and narrow, as the other two must as well.”


• “Who gets to define the middle? With respect to the authors mentioned, I would assert it tends to define itself, as a kind of organic tension that results from meaningful conversation across the aisle, between conservative and liberal (theologically, politically and otherwise) in order to find that elusive common ground.”


• “Emergents ‘third way’ seems like plain old fashioned liberalism with some slight variations—but still is liberalism and sometimes even worse. Keller’s ‘third way’ seems a bit more like what a true third way could be.”


• “Haven’t we already gone through this and created ‘evangelical’ as a good ‘middle’ between fundamentalism and liberalism? What is wrong with keeping evangelical as the middle or third way?”


• “Anabaptism has often been called the ‘third way’.”


• “We need to check the Scriptures to see if what people say is this middle or third way, really is a third way Scripturally.”

One commenter tried to clarify Keller’s position, saying, “Keller argues that the Gospel is a Third Dimension. If humans tend to land somewhere on the horizontal spectrum of beliefs that we create (and often end up polarizing each other), then God, His Message, His Kingdom are from outside humanity. It is the vertical axis breaking into human existence.” And therefore, “A true, Dimensional Third Way is essentially non-human in origin, and so it is impossible for people to pin down into neat categories. It’s profoundly counter-cultural in a good way.”

That sounds like a good bit of kingdom theology to me, and who’s going to argue with that?

Well, for what it’s worth, I posited my own theory of an Emergent “third way” in the comments section on Michael Kruse’s blog a few weeks ago: “When I read concerns/criticisms of Emergent for having an unrealistic or disingenuous ‘third way’ ideal/rhetoric, I think there’s just a fundamental misunderstanding of how we hope this ‘third way’ is going to play out. The ‘third way’ isn’t a point on a spectrum between ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative.’ The ‘third way’ is another parallel spectrum altogether, that I would say is above (and transcends) the liberal/conservative spectrum. The ‘third way’ is relationship/friendship, and the spectrum is simply how close/tight-knit or far/separate we are relationally. ...

“To put it one way: The question isn’t so much ‘how are we different in what we believe/think?’ as it is ‘how are we connected? what can I appreciate and learn from that other person’s perspective/tradition/tribe/camp?’”

I finished reading The New Christians today—and I loved it. My signed copy of Keller’s The Reason for God is in the stack of books to read next. I have to echo the sentiments by one commenter on Dan Kimball’s blog: “It’s actually encouraging to hear authors who represent more or less opposite ends of the spectrum use similar language in this way.”

¡Viva la third way!

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