Emergence Amongst the Libertarians

Jesus Creed guest blogger Michael Kruse brought up an interesting juxtaposition of economic emergence versus Christian emergence in his recent post “Selective Emergence?”

Emergence/emerging/emergent pastors and thinkers have all been shaped by chaos theory, game theory, or emergence theory in some way, and it is a helpful metaphor for the way of thinking about the community life of the local church as in a healthy tension with the individual member.  Kruse gets down to the nuts and bolts of the issue with a comparison of similar ideas between libertarian economics and emergence Christianity:

As I was in conversations [with emergence Christianity], over and over again I heard in my mind the Austrian School economist-philosopher Friedrich Hayek, a darling of libertarians. Hayek exposed the inherent limitation of human knowledge about mass human behavior and our inability to centrally plan and control human systems. Yet, when we establish a basic set of abstract rules and boundaries and turn people loose in markets of free exchange (i.e., free trade), a spontaneous order. Since emergence has captivated postmodern Christians, I thought, we will naturally see a preponderance of emergent Christians sharing Hayek’s view of the economic order. Right? Wrong.

I have a hypothesis about why what would seemingly be a congruence between libertarian economic theory and emergence Christianity doesn’t happen.  I think the fault is in Emergence Christianity itself, specifically a lack of a theology of the Holy Spirit within Christian emergence thinking (pneumatology for you theology nerds).

From my fairly significant reading of emergence Christianity thinkers there is a taking for granted of the Holy Spirit within theological formations.  I don’t think this is an absence or reluctance to deal with the Spiritual or charismatic, but instead a falling into the trap left by our evangelical foundations and forebears.  The Holy Spirit is evident and its presence attested to, but it just doesn’t show up in the literature.

So to the specifics of my hypothesis.  I believe that emergence theory in Christian thinking and libertarian economics is categorically different on the aspect of power and control.  Whereas the wording and phrasing may sound similar between economics and theology, I think the Holy Spirit serves as the control within Christian emergence formulations; specifically, when emergence Christians speak of chaos theory, group dynamics, or free exchange there is always the unconscious acknowledgment of the Holy Spirit’s divine presence within the system.  That is, the chaos is from a human perspective and not God’s perspective (unless you are an open theologian).

Emergence Christianity and libertarian economics share many of the same goals: a democratization of power and control so that an equality can be achieved within the market (of spirituality or economics, respectively).  The divergence which Kruse brings up appears to me to be caused by the lack of a theology of the Holy Spirit within most of emergence Christianity’s theological formations.

Do you agree with my hypothesis?  Do you have examples of a theology of the Holy Spirit in emergence Christianity?  Specific examples of a lack of such a theology?