In his response to my response, Andrew Sandlin made a few comments that I need to address fairly quickly. For the rest I am happy to wait for his book on postmodernity.
Andrew says the following, which is intially quite heartening. “In my own case, for benefit of friend and foe alike, let me state plainly: I affirm every single line in the Nicene Creed and Christian orthodoxy. I affirm much more besides. I affirm, for example, the substance of doctrine in the Reformed Faith. I affirm sola Scriptura and sola fide. If one may sincerely hold all these views and still be a heretic, then I imagine I could be a heretic.”
I am most grateful to hear it, and would love to simply take it at face value. And I am not making any charges here, but rather asking questions. In his book, I would ask (if it is not too late to submit requests) that Andrew address what it means to affirm something, in the way that he does here. This is really the only issue that concerns me. I am glad he affirms every single line in the Nicene Creed and Christian orthodoxy. What I would like to know is in what sense he affirms “the act of affirming.” What does it mean to affirm? What are the idolatrous ways of affirming? What is the faithful way of affirming? What is the difference? And when we affirm, can we affirm with certainty?
Andrew also says, correctly, that “Liberalism repudiated orthodox Christianity at certain vital points — the factuality of Christ’s resurrection, the truth of the Bible, the virgin birth, and so on.” This is exactly right, and is exactly why Machen was right to oppose it. But note that pesky word “factuality.” What are we to do with a movement (like postmodernism) that repudiates the factuality of factuality itself? Postmodernists don’t necessarily deny the factuality of Christ’s resurrection. They deny, in effect, the factuality of anything. What does it mean to assert the factuality of Christ’s resurrection in a world without factuality? And does postmodernism give us a world without factuality? A bunch of them, the hard postmodernists, believe that it does. The soft postmodernists want to salvage something objective “out there,” but I believe, given their assumptions, they cannot do it for very long. Emergents have more in common with the soft pomos than the hard pomos but this is simply because they are trying to make the sale to conservative evangelicals.
Now I know that there are different stripes of postmodernism, and some of them can be consistent with an orthodox affirmation of the Nicene Creed (as least for the time being). But this happy consistency is, in my view, threatened by the postmodern premises. It is incumbent on anyone who wants to be known as a “Christian postmodernist” to show and establish the grounds for affirming objective truths, such as those found in the Nicene Creed. And if Andrew pulls that off, then God bless him.
One other thing. Andrew notes what he thinks is my individualism in all this. But he and I do not actually differ on this, as he has assumed. I agree with him that someone should not be judged a heretic until the Church, with the power of the keys, makes that determination. I quite agree with this. But the process whereby the Church comes to make this determination is not a simple and pristine process, and the leadership of key individuals is very much part of what happens. When liberalism arose, the Church had not yet made a determination about it, and so it fell to an individual (Machen) to call the Church to its duty. When the Deity of Christ was first denied by the Arians, the Church had not yet repudiated Arianism. It fell to Athanasius to declare that he was contra mundum (and the mundum involved was the ecclesiastical mundum). He did this because (at times) the Church was almost overrun by Arianism.
In other words, before the Church makes the determination (and Andrew and I agree that this is where the determination should be made) the Church must debate the question, and hear the evidence, and listen to the arguments on both sides. But in order to listen to the arguments on both sides, there must be arguments on both sides. And so, as the Church considers what to do with the wreckage of the modernity’s idols, and the attempts to raise new postmodern idols (built from the material of those ruins), I intend to be a loud and insistent voice, as God gives me opportunity, calling upon the Church to do her duty. And if it turns out that Andrew is not on the other side of this divide, I will be (genuinely) most grateful.