Young Reformers and Emergent on Certainty

Tony Jones and Colin Hansen are having a blogging style dialog over at CT (here).  At the end of the first post, Tony asks the question:

"Where we probably differ is not so much on theology, but on epistemology....I wonder, do you think that some people are just more inclined to look for sure answers, and others are more comfortable with ambiguity?"

I also was recently looking through a series of videos that went up on Piper's desringGod site (here) where he explains and expounds at length on the Calvinistic doctrines of TULIP.  The first in this list is Total Depravity, and this reminded me of my seminary days and a cool seminary phrase, noetic effect of sin.  Which according to Theopedia means:

"The noetic effects of sin are the ways that sin negatively affects and undermines the human mind and intellect...sin's noetic effects are most prominent in our knowledge of God (our "sense of divinity") and less prominent in other domains."

And I got to thinking, doesn't the 'emergent' epistemology as explained by Tony do better justice to the reformed concept of the noetic effect of sin?  I mean doesn't having greater humility about our ability to know who God more accurately embody the concept of noetic effect of sin?