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Postconservative theology may be said to parallel with “postliberal theology” at its best. Orthodox, biblical, but open to new insights about how to interpret Scripture. But the new insights must be faithful as well as fresh. Postconservative theology is not the same as "progressive theology,” which tends to lean toward indeterminant faith expressions, whereas “postconservative” allows for particular faith commitments and expressions but understands that the constructive task of theology is never finished. Authors emphasize various interpretive theological lenses used for doing theology among various postconservative theologians, rather than emphasizing the philosophical background to hermeneutical theory present in other works, such as past influential thinkers (including Gadamer, Grondin, Ricoeur, Heidegger, etc.). This resource could also function as a companion to Evangelical Theological Method: Five Views (2018). This emphasis of the chapters will not be on the nuts and bolts of “how to” interpret, but rather on the theological impulses that govern various lenses (Bible, cultural context, etc.) for doing theology and the way Scripture functions with respect to the practice of interpretation.
CONTENTS
My response: R.E. Slater
A cursory view of the above book seems to say this is a handbook on evangelicalism from a continental view (or more broadly, a global view) claiming it is postconservative in a postmodern sense. Which is all well and good but process-based philosophical theology cannot be said to be a real participant in evangelical post-conservatism. Moreover, Process is also the truer heritage of Open and Relational Theology (ORT) though Thomas Oord has been paring it down to be more palatable for evangelics to accept.
Secondly, the three titles mentioned in the last photo above (Cambridge, Blackwell, Routledge) may hold some interest for those like myself who wish to branch out away from evangelicalism's acclaimed post-conservative look.
And thirdly, I dearly appreciate Roger Olson as he was my way out of Calvinism in the early years of leaving evangelicalism however, Roger stopped short of Whitehead's process-based implications for Christianity back between 2014-2017 when I was following him. Thus my inclusion of Roger's Fall 2018 article further below on "What Is a Post-Conservative Evangelical?"
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Why Process Theology is NOT an
Evangelical Post-Conservative Theology
by R.E. Slater
The simple answer is that process theology is altogether different from traditional Christianity. It's philosophical basis is different. It's emphasis is different. It's gospel is different. And it's God is different. Let me introduce what I mean in rather ineloquent, if not crude illustrations:
Process' Philosophical Basis
Process philosophy, otherwise described by Whitehead as a "Philosophy of Organism," is organic, relational, experiential, and spiritual. It is more related to the Eastern philosophies than it is to the Western philosophies wherein Christianity was birthed and described by Hellenised Jews.
Alfred North Whitehead was a British scholar who late in life felt Einstein's physics needed a more sufficient basis metaphysically than what he was hearing from the scientists of his day. So he picked up where Hegel had left off a hundred-plus years ago and described cosmology in terms of a living, sentient-like, organism which can only be described in the momentary present. Years later, today's quantum physicists are describing a universe very much like Whitehead was in the early 1900s.
Then theologians like John Cobb came along, picked up Whitehead's metaphysic, and fleshed it out in Christian terms such that there is a God which "organized" the universe into a "becoming" essence from the "static" hot mess that it was; Cobb declared this Creator-God to be "ever-present" in the moment at all times with creation.
And should we go back into antiquity to explore the Semitic cultures such as the Sumerians, Akkadians, Assyrians, Babylonians and Jewish Israelites we will find many, many, many ancient mystics and religious view expressing something similar about God's creation (the universe) as a living, evolving, hot mess that yearns for freedom, connection, and meaning. In short, this is process philosophy and theology.
Processual Emphasis
We live in a universe which isn't "living" unless it is connected to other processes. As "no man is an island" so too "no man or woman can have any sense of being without finding connection with something." Thus, a process-based cosmogeny is one that is relational. And with relationality comes experiential reaction.
For example, even as an atom or a quark responds to another atom or quark they do so because of their relation to that atom or quark and their consequential act of experience resulting from that relationship. Nothing in the universe can be described without these two metaphysical building blocks... that of relationality and a resulting experience from a relationship.
In Christian terms, God's eternal nature is one that reaches out for connection (relationship), responds to that connection (experience), which then creates new connections for God and for that thing (or soul) interacting with the divine. In Whiteheadian terms, God is the Primary Cause to all Secondary casual effects.
Further, as God is related to all things so all things are related to God. There are two things here:
One, God's Image is not only a part of everything, but deeply integrated, or embedded, into the fabric of creation. I commonly think of this as a panentheistic (not pantheistic) relationship between God and creation where God is God and creation is something other than God.... However, because God is the Primary Cause God's Image or God's DNA is an integral part of creation wherever it is and whatever it is.
In practical terms, tather than describing man theologically as being a sinner born with a sin nature, man was - and is - made in the Image of God wherein there is no sin or sin nature in creation nor humanity. So the question must be ask, "How does sin result?" In process terms, NOT from our presumed "sin nature" (which is a Greek philosophical idea) but from our freewill choices, otherwise known as creaturely "agency".This "sin nature" then is part of evangelicalism's Western assumptions about man's creation when reading the bible and building a "biblical systematic theology." But there is nothing "biblical" about it... the ancient Semitics didn't posit this but the Greek's did. Process theology therefore is more Semitic than it is Greek. (As an aside, the bible was collected from oral traditions but it's collection was occurring during the Hellenistic Age, hence the Jewish scribes were already being influence by Greek thought even as the NT disciples were many years later. One further observation, Jews don't believe in original sin... so a study of earlier semitic religions might help distinguish this idea a bit further).Two, evangelicalism teaches that in Jesus the idea of redemption became "fully understood" as it was related to the Old Testament's evolving teaching on the motif of atonement. Examples: God was Abraham's own atonement when walking between the sacrifices indicating covenant. Moses rehearsed atonement time-and-again throughout Israel's Wilderness experience. The Kingdom Era gave solidarity to the Atoning/Redeeming God by purity of worship to the one-and-only God. And the New Testament book of Hebrews proclaimed Jesus as Israel's High Priest and Redeeming Lamb of the world.
Process theology agrees with these observations but goes many more steps farther when asserting that these mercy-based forgiveness-and-rectifying events were every bit as personal as they are today in Jesus (my old teacher Leon Wood had said that once). Moreover, the history of the earth is rife with everyday cruciform events from Eden-like respites to salvation from evil.
Each-and-all of these cruciform events find there fulfillment in Jesus... however, in process theology Jesus can also be said to be illustrating the Image of God which is birth throughout all processes of the universe... that is, until creational agency disrupt's God's generosity, benevolence, protection, and generally divine activity of redeeming all things to himself. Point being, Jesus's atonement was part-and-parcel of creation's essence in God; Jesus may have been the signifier but he wasn't the only cruciform event in the universe's history. I like to think of Jesus' atonement as being birthed "from the ground up" in affiliation with, and reconcilement to, creation's own "becoming."
The Gospel is Different
God is not to be feared because of God's anger and wrath... no, the medieval idea of "fear" is that of respect and honor, as one would a "king or potentate". Process theology's central core is that God is love above all other divine attributes. Moreover, those attributes of holiness, mercy, caring, justice, etc, all have their basis in divine love.
That is to say, evangelicalism states - even as traditional Christianity had previously taught in centuries past - that the basis for human interaction with the Creator God was a relationship built on fear of the divine because of God's perchant to judge sinful lives with all kinds of "reaped" terrors and horrors ("...as ye sow so shall ye reap"). Example: the story of Job.
In comparison, process theology declares that God is never evil but at all times loving. That God's love is "an always condition" and how God's relationship to creation acts... this also includes all of mankind.
But, this doesn't mean that our sinful acts don't processually evolve over time into horrible things... it simply means that our sin is on us... including what may evolve from our sinful actions. Hence, as God is love let us love. Not to avoid harm and tragedy... but as being faithful to whom God created us to be as loving creatures willing to love and forgive.
So then, the good news (or gospel) of Christ is that God loves and loving forgives and redeems at all times in our lives. Every horrible situation can be redeemed in some way... even if it can't be stayed from it's culmination... even so, a gospel shoot of redeeming love can be planted for some future day. Thus and thus, the evangelical idea of "propitiation" or "expiation" for our sin is both true and untrue. True in that it declares what was said in the first sentence of this paragraph - God loves and forgives. But untrue in that we are sinners born with a sin nature... rather, we are sinner's who bear God's Image who can be redeemed.
And, this God is Different
Lastly, traditional Christianity likes to emphasize God's power, dominian, and presence - and yet, God's power isn't immediately obvious, nor his godly dominian, nor God's presence. God , like Santa Clause, is here when we are good, and not here when we are bad. Yet Process theology says God's power is mitigated upon our circumstances - a tornado cannot necessarily be diverted nor a hungry bear from it's prey.
That is, God helps as God can but creation must lean into God's activity to assist as well. Which places the onus on us. For instance, we might learn how to protect wives and children from abusive husbands but this is more of a process-event thing than a one-time act. Ditto with migrants and refugees fleeing terror.
So we must ask, "What is our responsibility for earthly terror and what can we now do to alleviate it?" We must ask this as politicians and generals... as business and church leaders... as civil servants and environmentalists... what positive roles can we better inhabit than we have done over the years past?
Similarly, process theology states that NO future is ever determined but all futures are open and pregnant with possibility, opportunity, hope, and forgiveness. God has given to us and the universe evolving futures with infinite possibilities from one moment to the next. And because God's Image is embedded in creation we have the additional hope that every event may bear goodness rather than evil.
In Conclusion
In the above paragraphs and illustrations I have shown how process theology differs from Westernized Christian philosophy - however "post-conservative" they wish to describe themselves. Over the years I have elucidated these process motifs by explaining and demonstrating how process can work in social, scientific, political, and ecological situations. It is why I far prefer process-based Christianity over any past traditional Christianities. And it is my hope to take the good of the Christian past and heighten it through process thought. Ditto with all human endeavors in life.
Lastly, I describe my site as being "post-evangelical" and not simply "post-conservative"... I do not wish to any longer build upon any forms of traditional, denominational or evangelical theology. Nor is progressive evangelicalism the same this as progressive process-based Christianity. Rather, I wish to take these past forms of Christianity and fill it with a better language... a (metamodern) processual language.
Peace and Blessings,
R.E. Slater
October 29, 2024
Edited: October 30, 2024
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by Roger E. Olson
October 22, 2018
This is how I describe myself and many others who think in a way similar to my way—about being “evangelical.” For a fuller explanation see my books Reformed and Always Reforming: The Postconservative Approach to Evangelical Theology (BakerAcademic) and How to Be Evangelical Without Being Conservative (Zondervan).
Not many theologians I know want this label slapped on them. However, N. T. Wright accepted it and named me in his book Justification. I thought I coined the label back in the 1990s in an article for Christian Century entitled “Postconservative Evangelicals Greet the Postmodern Age.” Then I found out Fuller Seminary Professor Jack Rogers actually wanted his book Confessions of a Consevative Evangelical titled Confessions of a Postconservative Evangelical. That would have fit the book better. Also, Clark Pinnock used the word “postconservative” in his book Tracking the Maze, but his use and mine are not identical.
I coined the term (or thought I did) to describe a new breed of evangelicals who do not privilege “the received evangelical tradition” over fresh and faithful biblical scholarship (such as is being done by N. T. Wright and others). The “foil” for postconservative evangelical theology is evangelical theology deeply influenced by Charles Hodge, B. B. Warfield, and the whole Old School Princeton Theology following them (e.g., David Wells, Roger Nicole, Millard Erickson, et al.)
Postconservative evangelical theology is evangelical theology that does not consider the constructive task of theology finished. Conservative evangelical theology is evangelical theology that considers the constructive task of theology finished. These theologians are primarily interested in the critical task of theology—discovering heresy and exposing it. They are also interested, of course, in translating older versions of “the received evangelical tradition” (e.g., Hodge) into contemporary idiom.
Postconservative evangelical theology does not elevate “biblical inerrancy” to the status of an evangelical dogma or (to borrow Carl Henry’s term) the “super badge of evangelicalism.” Postconservative evangelical theology does not privilege epistemological foundationalism and finds some ideas of postmodern epistemology helpful.
Postconservative evangelicals like: Lesslie Newbigin, N. T. Wright, Richard Bauckham, James McClendon and Nancey Murphy, Stanley Grenz, Clark Pinnock, et al. We mostly stay apart from the Evangelical Theological Society and attend events of the Missio Alliance and Ekklesia Network.
But the main difference between postconservative and conservative evangelicals in theology is attitudes towards the constructive task of theology. For postconservative evangelicals every doctrine is subject to revision in light of fresh and faithful biblical interpretation (not cultural accommodation). The Bible absorbs the world and is our authoritative narrative (but not a “not-yet-systematized systematic theology). Doctrine is important but secondary to Scripture.
The manifesto of postconservative evangelicalism is the late Stanley Grenz’s book Revisioning Evangelical Theology (IVP).
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The article below is from the conservative evangelical viewpoint
which refuses Dr. Olsen's wisdom for it's own... - R.E. Slater
Reformed and Always Reforming:
The Postconservative Approach
to Evangelical Theology
Written by Roger E. Olson
Reviewed By Adonis Vidu
There seems to be a growing recognition that the evangelical world is deeply fragmented. Some have even gone as far as to say that the word “evangelical” has lost any discriminating force, that it no longer identifies a homogenous movement. Olson agrees with the diagnosis of the fragmentation, but argues that the movement has in fact always been inherently at conflict with itself. The historical root of this specific make-up is the twin inheritance of Puritanism, with its accent on right belief, and Pietism, stressing spiritual experience. The present outgrowth of that tension is reflected in the intense and sometimes unfair debates between conservative and postconservative evangelicals. This book sets out to chart that tension, from the perspective of a postconservative.
Olson’s thesis is that “it is possible to be more evangelical by being less conservative” (p. 7). He does not believe that conservative evangelicals have a monopoly on the essence of evangelical Christianity. In fact, their own manner of asserting a certain cognitive component of Christianity is tributary to a modernistic epistemology. On the other hand, postconservatives, without denying the importance of the cognitive, tend to see the enduring essence of evangelicalism, its contribution to world Christianity in its transformational vision. The latter see Christianity first and foremost as a religion of transformation. If doctrines are important, they are always secondary to the ongoing work of the Spirit, transforming the lives of people into the divine likeness.
The itching point in this conflict is how one conceives of the authority of the Word of God in relation to Scripture and whether theological revision is consistent with being an evangelical. Olson argues that conservatives are actually betraying the authority of Scripture when in practice they hang on to certain “classic” doctrines just because they are part of the “established evangelical position.” Although sometimes they confess that their ultimate authority is Scripture, in practice they show almost no willingness to revise a theological position in light of what might be “fresh” understanding of Scripture, as Olson likes to describe it. On the other hand, postconservatives locate ultimate theological authority in God and the Holy Spirit, who speaks through the Scriptures. Olson is ambiguous on this score, since on the one hand he claims that he is ascribing more authority to Scripture than conservatives, but on the other hand he rejects an “unnuanced equation of Scripture with God’s Word” (p. 108) and prefers to locate authority directly in the continuing work of the Spirit in the contemporary church through Scripture. As a result, the past is binding, but not in the sense that it has to be repeated. Rather, theological construction is free to be creative, to draw on the truth that is found in culture, to use its imagination in order to re-perform (Vanhoozer) the script that is found in Scripture. However, the bottom line for Olson, as for many postconservatives, is that if Scripture is authoritative, it is only by its being included in an ongoing drama of redemption, which began at creation and is presently unfolding towards its eschatological consummation.
Although the essence of evangelicalism is experience rather than right doctrine, orthopraxy rather than orthodoxy, Olson insists against popular misconception that doctrine remains important for postconservatives. But doctrine is a second-order reflection upon the experience of the church. Of course, once one puts it like that one must also be ready to explain why this is not Schleiermacherian liberalism. It is common place that Schleiermacher made the starting point of theology a universal human experience. The difference, Olson contends, is that postconservative theology appeals to a particular and supernatural, rather than a universal and natural, experience of being saved and being constituted into a redeemed community by the Holy Spirit.
The reason that it is possible, therefore, to be more evangelical by being less conservative lies precisely in the second-order nature of theology. If theology is subservient to an experience, then what is primary is the authenticity of that experience. What distinguishes evangelicals is not primarily right doctrine, but having one’s life centered on Jesus Christ, experiencing spiritual transformation after his own image through the power of the Spirit. Olson explains this by arguing that evangelicalism is a centered set rather than a bounded set. What defines it is its experience of the risen Christ, rather than boundary-setting right doctrines.
It is hard to do justice to such a wide-ranging book in such a short space. It is even more difficult to properly critique it, since restraint due to space might be mistaken for hurried dismissals. It is rather clear that American evangelicalism is facing years, possibly decades of intense theological debate and perhaps confrontation. This is what I believe will, or should, set the agenda of those conversations.
First, Olson makes a compelling point about the inherently unstable nature of evangelicalism. I am not sure that can be resolved short of a magisterium that legislates what belongs and what does not. I think more work needs to be done on the understanding of the cohesion between Puritanism and Pietism, as well as other influences that have contributed to the development of modern evangelicalism, including modernity and postmodernity. But sociological designators are themselves inherently unstable. There are no universal encyclopedias to tell us what the essence of an evangelical is. At the same time, I found Olson’s identification of the essence of evangelicalism with an experience to be only a partial description of its contribution, as long as no mention was made of justification by faith. If one were to use a classic pair of concepts, Olson does tend to place the emphasis more on sanctification than on justification, when in fact a creative dialectic should be preserved between them.
A second issue that Olson leaves pretty much hanging is the relation between the cognitive-propositional and the transformational aspects of revelation. Although he does acknowledge that there are propositional aspects to revelation, he does not seem willing to allow them to carry through into doctrine so that there might be certain doctrines which are epistemically primary, so to speak. This becomes even more important given his acceptance of holism (not a very nuanced one, for that matter), which in its more extreme forms holds that any belief whatsoever can be abandoned in the face of compelling evidence or for the pragmatic purpose of keeping the balance of the system. But if any belief can be relinquished, in what sense does it continue to speak of the authority of the Holy Spirit that speaks through the Scriptures? Moreover, and this pertains to his set analogy, how is it possible to even identify the center apart from some description of circumference? Unless we speak of circumference, even if we allow variation in distance from the center, what we will have identified is not a center, but simply a dot, a point in space. However, it is analytic to a point being a center that it is in some relation to circumferences.
Finally, Olson’s understanding of the role of tradition is somewhat self-contradictory. On the one hand he does relocate theological authority from the past (Scripture) into the present (continuing work of the Spirit), by circumventing tradition, but he seems not to realize that this present is precisely tomorrow’s tradition! He forgets that Eastern Orthodox Christianity views tradition as precisely the life of the Spirit in the church. So the direction in which I can see more research being done is the relationship between Scripture, the Great Tradition, and the epistemic relevance of the continuing work of the Holy Spirit. Admittedly, much evangelical theology is pneumatologically underdeveloped, but it remains to be seen whether compensating for that weakness should lead precisely in the revisionist direction favored by Olson.
