{"id":120,"date":"2005-02-26T14:39:07","date_gmt":"2005-02-26T22:39:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tgdarkly.com\/blog\/?p=103"},"modified":"2005-02-26T14:39:07","modified_gmt":"2005-02-26T22:39:07","slug":"apologetics-and-soft-foundationalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/2005\/02\/26\/apologetics-and-soft-foundationalism\/","title":{"rendered":"Apologetics and Soft Foundationalism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A number of bloggers are raising alarms about the Emergent movement, including <a href=\"http:\/\/steigerblog.blogspot.com\/2005\/01\/are-apologetics-still-necessary-pt-5.html\">Phil Steiger<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.str.org\/weblog\/blog_archives\/00000039.htm\">Greg Koukul<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/lawnrangers.blogspot.com\/2005\/02\/emergent-conversation.html\">Dignan<\/a> and Jeff at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mrdawntreader.com\/the_dawn_treader\/2005\/02\/emerging_concer.html\">Dawn Treader<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I share many of the concerns these folks have raised.  It may not be clear from my site, but I&#8217;m not really an &#8220;Emergent&#8221; guy.  I&#8217;m soundly Evangelical in my theology.  Yet, I do feel great empathy with much in the Emergent movement, because much of it is a needed corrective for the stagnation that now exists in Evangelicaldom.  I hope Evangelicals in the blogshpere don&#8217;t make &#8220;Emergent&#8221; the new whipping boy.  That would betray a lack of real understanding of the movement.<\/p>\n<p>I note, for example, that most of the posts I referenced essentially are critiques of Brian McLaren.  Folks, Brian McLaren is not the sole voice of Emergent!  He is indeed a leader of the movement, and although he isn&#8217;t a theologian, where he has touched on doctrinal matters, he can indeed justifiably be criticized for a tendency towards universalism.<\/p>\n<p>Universalism and moral relativism, however, don&#8217;t have to be synonymous with a postmodern, non-foundationalist epistemology.  If you want to understand more deeply why the Evangelical church <em>must<\/em> escape foundationalism &#8212; even the so-called &#8220;soft foundationalism&#8221; many propose &#8212; please, please read Newbiggin, Raschke, Murphey, Grenz and Franke before deciding Emergent is the next great plague.  If you&#8217;re not willing to read the challenging stuff these folks have written, don&#8217;t comment on postmodern Evangelical theology, because you don&#8217;t really understand it.  If you have read them, address what they&#8217;ve said, not only what McLaren has distilled from them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A number of bloggers are raising alarms about the Emergent movement, including Phil Steiger, Greg Koukul, Dignan and Jeff at Dawn Treader. I share many of the concerns these folks have raised. It may not be clear from my site, but I&#8217;m not really an &#8220;Emergent&#8221; guy. I&#8217;m soundly Evangelical in my theology. Yet, I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-epistemology"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p824rZ-1W","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}