In a discussion at Eclectic Itchings, I'm reminded of my own journey away from Christian orthodoxy some years ago.  No one of the thoughts listed below convinced me on its own, but taken together I found them compelling.  

What I would like to see the Emerging Church do is to deeply engage questions like these.  Not because my points are so f-ing brilliant, but because questioning modernity — as the Emerging Churchers frequently claims they do — should mean questioning the foundational assumptions modern Christianity makes about what's Christian and what's not, even if that means questioning the medieval and ancient roots modern Christianity relies upon. 

What follows is something of a beta of my own thoughts over the years.  I do not intend for them to be definitive, though I find them compelling myself (obviously).  Please also keep in mind that they are intended to question and/or refute arguments, not make a single, unified argument. 

"Word of God"

1.1. The Bible does not claim to be the Word of God.  It claims that Jesus is the Word of God.  So which is it, the book or the man?

1.2. The phrase "word of God" in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament do not necessarily mean the same thing.  They are in different languages, after all.  Assuming they mean the same thing is a choice, not a necessity.  Not to mention that they might mean different things in different books and passages, not just in the different testaments.

1.3.  Why does the Bible need to be propositionally consistent with itself?  Where does the Bible endorse the modernist, propositional understanding of truth?  

Council of Nicea 

2.1.  The foundational document of Christian orthodoxy, in practice, is the Nicene Creed, not the Bible. If Jesus believed the Nicene Creed, why didn't he teach it?  Or, why didn't he say it was coming, some three centuries down the road?

2.2.  The concepts endorsed by Nicene Creed depend, clearly and directly, upon Greek metaphysics.  They are, I believe, an incredibly beautiful resolution of the problems raised by the encounter of Judaism, the early Jesus Movement, and Hellenism.  But is beauty enough?  

2.3.  Because the concepts endorsed by the Nicene Creed depend upon Greek metaphysics, does that mean that God is a Greek metaphysician?   Does it mean that to follow Jesus, one must grok Greek metaphysics, or at least consent that the problems raised by Greek metaphysics are crucial to faith?

2.4.  The Nicene Creed was created at the behest of Caesar, for the purposes of Caesar.  Jesus said to render unto Caesar what is Caesar's.  Why then should we let Caesar's creed define Jesus?

2.5.  Luther's dictim of "Scripture only" would seem to contradict the reliance upon the Nicene Creed and its concepts which orthodoxy requires.

2.6.  Scripture is not interested in propositional truth, a distinctly modern philosophical conception with roots in Greek metaphysics.  The concept of propositional truth requires assumptions that Scripture does not endorse.

2.7.  Everything branded as "heretical" since Nicea was branded as such in reference and deference to Nicea and the organizational structure it endorsed and produced.  This makes all of those judgements suspect.

2.8.  Would not Caesarean Christianity more properly be considered heretical?

Philosophical Theology 

3.1.  Positions like theism, monotheism, polytheism, henotheism, panentheism and Trinitarianism are positions of philosophical theology.  The Bible is not a book of philosophical theology.  It's concerns are not the concerns of philosphical theology.

3.2.  Various passages of the Bible can be read as endorsing theism, monotheism, polytheism, henotheism, panentheism and Trinitarianism. (I'm not going to go into detail on this point.  I'll refer to books like Karen Armstrong's The Great Transformation instead.)  

3.3.  Reading the Bible as endorsing one and only one of those philosophical positions requires subsuming one set of passages beneath another set, forcing one passage to endorse another according to the will of the reader. 

Canonical Authority 

4.1.  The New Testament quotes Jesus as saying that he is the way, the truth, and the life.  Yet Jesus does not endorse or predict the creation of a canon, nor of canonical authority, positions which would seem to be at odds with his claims about himself.

4.2.  The New Testament canon itself was endorsed some three and a half centuries after Jesus, in a post-Nicene Council held under the authority of Caesar.  Why should we trust that judgement? 

4.3. The argument is made that the canon is trustworthy because it represents the judgement of centuries of Christians.  Yes, Caesarean Christians since the Council of Nicea.

4.4.  Questions were raised by orthodox theologians about the inclusion of certain books for the next ten centuries, up to and including Martin "only Scripture" Luther.