Theology That Bites Back
The main category for book reviews and cultural interaction.
Statement of the Issue: In the burgeoning reaction to egalitarian feminism, a reactionary subculture has started to take shape in the conservative evangelical world, one that is willing to disparage the idea of providing daughters with a rigorous education, particularly at the college level. Below I post seven theses that indicate why I believe this …
“I have come to believe that there were also a number of critics of the federal Vision who were truly insightful and saw the implications and trajectories of certain ideas better than I did at the time. I was wrong to treat all critics as though they were all more or less in the same boat. There were insightful critics and there were bigoted ones, and I should have given the insightful critics more of a fair hearing than I did, and I should have used the behavior of the ignorant critics as less representative than I frequently did. I believe I was wrong in this also.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 876
Letter to the Editor: "Despite the fact that he was the reason Roe was struck down, for which we thank God . . ."But there's the rub: The hard-core abolitionists DON'T thank God for this. ...
“So the views I hold to are a different kind of thing from what is represented in the common understanding of the Federal Vision, and the differences involved are connected to everything. They are a different kind of thing, not a lesser amount of the same thing. Thus when I speak of the objectivity of the covenant—which I will continue to do—this is not a lite version of what someone else might mean by it. Now I do not say this because I am angry or upset with anybody. I say it because I think I have learned something.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, pp. 875-876
Dear Gavin, As we have been corresponding about identity issues, and particularly the ethnic ramifications of them, it seems that another presidential election has crept up behind us unawares. Naturally someone in your position is going to ask what on earth he is supposed to do. Or, given the larger issues we have been discussing …
“Everybody knew (or thought they knew) what that phrase [Federal Vision] represented. Since I certainly owned the phrase, albeit with modifiers, and lots of energetic typing, what happened was that I was thought to be owning what people knew as this. But the more I typed that, the more it made people’s heads hurt. So one of the few things I have been successful at doing is persuading a number of people that I am a sly fellow, and one who bears close watching. Heretics are slippery with words, and since I have spent a lot of time trying to grease this particular piglet, I must be a heretic. So I have finally become convinced that the phrase Federal Vision is a hurdle that I cannot get over, under or around.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, pp. 874-875
Back in 2012, I wrote a piece for The Huffington Post on the Fifty Shades of Grey business. Given that they are no longer as proud of it as they once were, as indicated by this notice—"This post was ...
“Protestants can be decidedly Protestant without being bigots. And so I will conclude by citing my very favorite papist, G.K. Chesterton. He once said that you ought never to tear down a fence unless you knew why it had been put up in the first place.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 870
“To argue that I have every spiritual blessing in Christ right now, but that perseverance is not among these blessings because perseverance cannot be contained within the present moment is to speak the language of a system, a particular theology, and not the language of the Bible.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 863
