“‘Modern theology has witnessed a remarkable reexamination of the nature and attributes of God’ (p. 91). And whatever modernity does, even if it involves turning into postmodernity, we simply must imitate. And of course, modern theology does down the road pretty fast, giving our fat little evangelical thighs quite a workout keeping up! We need …
Plato Underfoot
“The classical theists are (and this takes us into deep waters again) to be blamed for fighting Hellenistic philosophy and also for not fighting it. It is not surprising that theological and philosophical chaos followed, ushering in the Dark Ages, or as we might say today, the Ages of Color. The medievalists of course capitulated …
Keeping Up
“This ‘open view’ is modern progressive theology; it is not supposed to make sense. The point is to go with the postmodernist flow, paddling the postevangelical canoe as hard as a respectable scholar may, trying to keep abreast of the latest developments in unbelieving theology” (Contours of Post Maturity, p. 32).
Bureaucratic Poetry
“The subject is worthwhile, because our authors are capable of changing rhetorical gears quite rapidly. Sometimes they write a turgid and purple sort of bureaucratic poetry, flowing across the page like rapidly cooling magma” (Contours of Post Maturity, p. 28).
Feeling Orthodox
“Our authors have not left behind their commitment to the forest noises of biblicism, with a brook-like murmuring of orthodoxy off in the background” (Contours of Post Maturity, p. 24).
Exegesis As Escape Route
“But all is not bliss in our new Arcadia. As the metanarrative emerges from our reading of the canonical literature, we find more than a few stones from the driveway in our narratival Cream of Wheat. The Bible, alas, contains some uncooperative, “angular” texts. Try as we might, we cannot get those puppies to fit …
Fat Postevangelical Babies
“We consequently gotta do something about historic male oppression, while fully recognizing that, having denied historical objectivism, for all we know, women may have ruled the world from the beginning . . . But remember the central abstract lesson that there are no central abstract lessons, and no problem so objectively real that we simply …
Gendered Grace
“One can picture them [IVP] at their editorial meeting, wrestling with the contours of their stupid meeting, and the issue of whether they ought to call the Spirit “she” in print. “Oh, hell, why not?” one imagines them saying. “We’re postevangelicals. We’re not under law, whatever that is. We’re under grace, whatever that is” (Contours …
Come Again?
“Because women have historically been oppressed (although this must not be confused with any naive claim to historical correspondence between our knowledge and what actually happened to women back then) we must come to allow the text of Scripture to speak to us feminitudinously, painted up an objectivst masculine tree as we have been, and …
Lost, But Making Good Time!
“This is a portent of great promise indeed. We don’t need to adopt postmodern relativism, because we know that we are on the road to wherever it is we are going. We simply do not understand why someone has not figured out this angle before” (Contours of Post Maturity, p. 19).