NPC #9

Toward a Postconservative Evangelical Theology: Roger E. Olson

Olson's major premise:
"You can be evangelical without being conservative. You can be more evangelical by being less conservative."

There are several different ways to define an Evangelical. Olson mentions Beddington's four criteria:
1. Biblicism- The Bible is the supreme authority for faith and practice.
2. Conversion- Authentic Christian experience begins at conversion.
3. Cross centered worship- The cross was the salvific event of the world's salvation.
4. Activism- The intension to change the world, social justice or missions.

Olson adds a 5th:
5. Doctrine- A general respect for Christian doctrine.

A Postconservative Evangelical holds to this ideas:
-There is no position of privilege given to the past. New ideas are not held in suspicion, just because they are "new."
-The first order of lanague is worship not doctrine. Doctrine serves worship, devotion and proclamation.
-Theology is progressive.
-Not anti-conservative, but seeks to move beyond the "spectrum" they find frustrating.
-Not obsessed with certainty.
-Centered sets, not bounded sets.
-Everyone gets a vote, but never a veto. No system of doctrine is the final arbiture of all other systems.

Postconservative Evangelical Theology:
"eager to test tradition, critical reception of postmodernism, realism without foundationalism, concern with center not boundaries, anti-totalism without relativism, theology as second order language."

Pretty thick stuff. His book about this is called, "Reformed and Reforming."