Oct 24 2009
Truth, Doctrine and the Post-Conservative Movement
Truth, Doctrine and the Post Conservative Movement
One of the most important questions to ask evangelicals today is the question about the importance of truth and doctrine. Why are truth and doctrine important to the Christian faith? Postconservative evangelicals today adhere to experience as the primary source of enlightenment rather than the doctrines of scripture and theological truth. Personal experience is the center of this movement. Clark Pinnock has a way of expressing his thoughts and reflections on experiential Christian living as he explains, “to be a real Christian is to be alive in the Spirit in a life-transforming manner”. Pinnock is aware of and while affirming the importance of doctrine he makes absolutely clear that it cannot take the place of or hold primacy over the experience of new life in the Holy Spirit that comes with faith and repentance and the continuous infilling of the Holy Spirit.[1]
One of the most common characteristics of post conservative evangelicalism is belief that experience rather than doctrine is the enduring essence of evangelical Christianity. Conservative evangelical theologians tend to identify doctrine (right belief) as the enduring essence of authentic Christianity and that which supremely identifies authentic evangelical faith. Roger Olson believes that postconservative evangelicals point back to evangelicalism’s revivalistic roots and its enduring identity as a spiritual renewal movement.[2] A common feature of post-conservative evangelical theology is discomfort with foundationalism and embrace of critical realism. This is where postconservative evangelical theology and postmodernism meet. Some postconservative evangelicals find much value in post modernity, especially in its emphasis on communal knowing as opposed to individually determined knowledge. Postmodernity is non-foundationalist and they tend to reject epistemological and metaphysical realism; they work from a modified, critical realism in epistemology and metaphysics. However, they do not deny the objective reality of revealed truth but instead say that God speaks and shows us revealed truth in narrative form. They say that scripture is not a system of theological propositions waiting to be systematized and organized into a coherent system. Instead, they view scripture with diversity and tend to view it as realistic narrative that contains clues to its own meaning in culturally-conditioned explanations. Clearly, Pinnock moves away from foundationalism in theology and toward critical realism. Revelation is not a foundation so much as it is a catalyst; doctrine is not so much rational description of reality-in-itself as it is faithful witness to the grand story of Jesus Christ that changes lives. The aim and criterion of truth in theology is not so much rational certainty as it is proper confidence of the reality and loving kindness of the God who tells us his story and ours in the mediation of the biblical narrative.[3]
In Stanley Grenz’s view, “to be ‘evangelical’ means to participate in a community characterized by a shared narrative concerning a personal encounter with God told in terms of shared theological categories derived from the Bible”.[4] Traditional theologians have commonly seen propositional truth as foundational material for theology. However, Grenz rejects this as the product of an outdated modernist mindset that ignores the social nature of theological discourse. The authority of the Bible is the product of and the vehicle for the working of the Holy Spirit. In other words, its authority lies not in the text itself, but rather in the Spirit speaking through the Scriptures. This paradigm shift has allowed for many other interpreters of the Bible to have freedom to interpret the Bible in any way they please. For example, Pastor Brian McLaren, an emergent leader, struggled over his dissatisfaction with the old kind of Christianity and came up with four ideas about the gospel that led him to believe that “our message (like our methods) must change from time to time and place to place in order to remain truly the gospel of Jesus and the gospel about Jesus.”[5] He describes the conservative gospel message as too propositional and one that needs to be “depropositionalized” so that what people hear is the narrative and story, rather than mechanisms, abstractions or universal concepts. Also, he believes that the gospel is multi-faceted, and many-layered and the gospel is embedded beneath multiple stories, versions, all of which focus on Christ himself. Further, he argues that the gospel is cumulative and performative and catalytic, which brings about transformation among the community of faith. McLaren wants to move beyond both the reductionistic rationalism of modernism and the relativist pluralism of adolescent postmodernism.[6] This is extremely dangerous as we know that once a progressively curious philosopher like McLaren propagates his ideas within the evangelical community, there will be doubts raised as to what exactly needs to be changed. An interesting statement by Albert Mohler sums up the perspective of the post conservative movement, “A word that can mean anything means nothing. If “evangelical identity” means drawing no boundaries, then we really have no center, no matter what we may claim. The fundamental issue is truth, and though the modernist may call us wrong and the postmodernist may call us naïve, there is nowhere else for us to stand”[7] What Mohler is saying is that we need to be aware of the fact that if we drift from looking at the truth, we will drift from all of reality and therefore have no center at all. There can be no center unless the truth is the primary focus of our pursuit. For the postconservative there are no theological boundaries concerning the gospel message, its function in the Christian life, and the narrative story of the Scriptures, therefore, they have seemingly limitless boundaries to their interpretation and practice of Christian faith. In light of what was discussed in this topic of truth and doctrine and the post conservative movement, McLaren, Olson, Grenz all leave us with the question, “What is the importance of theology? Why do theology?”
[1] Roger R. Olson, “Postconservative evangelicals greet the postmodern age,” Christian Century, (May 3, 1995): 25.
[2] Ibid., 24
[3] Roger R. Olson, “Postconservative evangelicals greet the postmodern age,” 29.
[4] Millard J. Erickson., Paul K. Helseth., Justin Taylor., (ed) Reclaiming the Center: Confronting Evangelical Accommodation in Postmodern Times., (Wheaton, Ill. Crossway Books, 2004.), 25
[5] The following summary is drawn from Brian D. McLaren.,“The Method, the Message, and the Ongoing Story,” in The Church in Emerging Culture: Five Perspectives, ed. Leonard Sweet (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2003), 191-230.
[6] Erickson.,Helseth.,Taylor., (ed) Reclaiming the Center: Confronting Evangelical Accommodation in Postmodern Times
