{"id":3420,"date":"2008-04-02T00:30:35","date_gmt":"2008-04-02T00:30:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/jesuscreed\/2008\/04\/reforming-6.html"},"modified":"2008-04-02T00:30:35","modified_gmt":"2008-04-02T00:30:35","slug":"reforming-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2008\/04\/reforming-6.html","title":{"rendered":"Reforming 6"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Roger Olson, in <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&amp;location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FReformed-Always-Reforming-Postconservative-Evangelical%2Fdp%2F0801031699%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dbooks%26qid%3D1204810480%26sr%3D1-1&amp;tag=jescre-20&amp;linkCode=ur2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325\">Reformed and Always Reforming<\/a><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=jescre-20&amp;l=ur2&amp;o=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" style=\"border:none !important;margin:0px !important\" \/><\/em>, argues that conservative evangelicalism has a one-sided emphasis on doctrinal content as the essence of Christianity and a corresponding neglect of experience. Postconservatism, accordingly, has an experiential impulse. <!--more|inline--><br \/>\nWell, Olson goes back to Carson at this point: &#8220;I cannot escape,&#8221; Carson says in his book on the gagging of God, &#8220;the dreadful feeling that modern evangelicalism in the West more successfully effects the gagging of God &#8230; than all the post-modernists together&#8221; (75 from Olson&#8217;s book). Olson thinks this comment is &#8220;frantic and overblown.&#8221; He then points to Wells&#8217; rhetoric about evangelicalism, who he thinks &#8220;at times [seems] to be operating out of a hermeneutic of suspicion rather than a hermeneutic of charity&#8221; (76). I am certain Wells has done this with respect to megachurches; what I read in his book corresponded to nothing I have witnessed in five years at the mother of megachurches. Now, let me put this in perspective: What Olson is saying here is that conservative evangelicalism&#8217;s biggest worry iis about doctrinal drift among evangelicals.<br \/>\nHis contention is this: &#8220;Authentic Christianity and true evangelical faith have more to do with the personal transforming power of a relationship with God through Jesus Christ than with factual knowledge or affirmation of correct ideas&#8221; (76). Postconservatism does not &#8220;in any way&#8221; reject or neglect the &#8220;importance of correct thinking&#8221; but they &#8220;regard transforming spirituality as more crucial for identifying authentic Christianity and for understanding true evangelical faith&#8221; (76).<br \/>\nHe weighs in with strong words that the postconservative experiential impulse is not at all like Schleiermacher. &#8220;Postconservatives have no interest in being liberal; accommodation to culture is not what postconservative evangelicalism is about&#8221; (77).<br \/>\n&#8220;Doctrine is secondary; it is the second-order language of the church that brings to expression this transforming experience&#8221; (78). &#8220;Of course, doctrine comes into play along with experience, but doctrine serves experience and not vice versa. One is the master and the other is the servant&#8221; (79).<br \/>\nOK, that&#8217;s enough for today: What do you think of these claims for postconservatism?<br \/>\nNext post: I&#8217;ll give a statement or two from McGrath, Grenz, Pinnock, Vanhoozer, and Henry Knight II.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Roger Olson, in Reformed and Always Reforming, argues that conservative evangelicalism has a one-sided emphasis on doctrinal content as the essence of Christianity and a corresponding neglect of experience. Postconservatism, accordingly, has an experiential impulse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":298,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-evangelicalism"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Reforming 6 - Jesus Creed<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2008\/04\/reforming-6.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Reforming 6 - Jesus Creed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Roger Olson, in Reformed and Always Reforming, argues that conservative evangelicalism has a one-sided emphasis on doctrinal content as the essence of Christianity and a corresponding neglect of experience. Postconservatism, accordingly, has an experiential impulse.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2008\/04\/reforming-6.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Jesus Creed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-04-02T00:30:35+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=jescre-20&amp;l=ur2&amp;o=1\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"xscot mcknight\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Reforming 6 - Jesus Creed","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2008\/04\/reforming-6.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Reforming 6 - Jesus Creed","og_description":"Roger Olson, in Reformed and Always Reforming, argues that conservative evangelicalism has a one-sided emphasis on doctrinal content as the essence of Christianity and a corresponding neglect of experience. Postconservatism, accordingly, has an experiential impulse.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2008\/04\/reforming-6.html","og_site_name":"Jesus Creed","article_published_time":"2008-04-02T00:30:35+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=jescre-20&amp;l=ur2&amp;o=1"}],"author":"xscot mcknight","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2008\/04\/reforming-6.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2008\/04\/reforming-6.html","name":"Reforming 6 - Jesus Creed","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2008\/04\/reforming-6.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2008\/04\/reforming-6.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=jescre-20&amp;l=ur2&amp;o=1","datePublished":"2008-04-02T00:30:35+00:00","dateModified":"2008-04-02T00:30:35+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/9c0db2eaf4d047d76276f907b62843f0"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2008\/04\/reforming-6.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2008\/04\/reforming-6.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2008\/04\/reforming-6.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=jescre-20&amp;l=ur2&amp;o=1","contentUrl":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=jescre-20&amp;l=ur2&amp;o=1"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2008\/04\/reforming-6.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Reforming 6"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/","name":"Jesus Creed","description":"Scot McKnight on Jesus and orthodox faith for today","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/9c0db2eaf4d047d76276f907b62843f0","name":"xscot mcknight","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/1f0\/1f0cb0f88d1f99f6e05597a2de7f1949x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/1f0\/1f0cb0f88d1f99f6e05597a2de7f1949x96.jpg","caption":"xscot mcknight"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/author\/xscot-mcknight"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/298"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3420\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}