People want to believe they are rational and that people they respect are setting out rational positions. Thanks to various turns in philosophy, sociology, and even theology and apologetics, many are much more aware of how conclusions are never reached from a position of “neutrality,” but rather involve premises that are themselves a part of the conclusion. Circular reasoning is, broadly, inescapable.

Nevertheless, this doesn’t mean discourse must stop. Broadly circular arguments in a conversation can remain forceful. Claiming the Bible is true because it says so won’t help anyone; but evidence as understood within the Biblical worldview may well help despite the inescapable circularity.

Critics of N. T. Wright and the so-called Emergent Church should keep this in mind. When someone who is obviously in the grip of a highly negative opinion of both uses the association of one with the other to prove something negative, he has pretty much limited himself to the members of his own group who already share his convictions. To say that Wright is suspicious because he appeals to Emergents, when everyone knows that, had the impulse struck differently, you could have just as easily have claimed that Emergents are suspicious because they appreciate Wright, and that you have in fact done so in other times and places, is not an argument.

It is simply an opinion pretending to the authority of an argument.

Addendum: Wright & Emergents