Journal: Emmaus Journal
Volume: EMJ 14:1 (Summer 2005)
Article: Reclaiming the Center
Author: Paul T. Jensen

---

EMJ 14:1 (Summer 2005) p. 97

Reclaiming the Center1

A Review Article

Paul T. Jensen

Paul Jensen teaches in the Religion and Philosophy Department at the University of Dubuque. He also practices law with the law firm Hammer, Simon, and Jensen.

Introduction

During roughly the past thirty years, evangelical theology has been plagued by at least two internal movements that have threatened its core and distracted its attention. First came a view called “open theism,” which claimed that “before there is a word on my tongue, you don’t know it completely, O Lord,” and “all the days ordained for me were not written in your book before one of them came to be.”2 More recently, a view called “postconservative evangelicalism” or “postmodern reformed dogmatics” has come on the scene, exercising both advocates and opponents. With respect to both of these movements, let me fly my colors from the start. As much as I ever did, more than I ever did, I believe in evangelical theology. But there was a rosy time of innocence when I believed in evangelical theologians.3

EMJ 14:1 (Summer 2005) p. 98

Perhaps that is a bit too harsh, particularly since a capable group of evangelical theologians has now risen to the task of responding to this second movement in their book Reclaiming the Center: Confronting Evangelical Accommodation in Postmodern Times. The title is obviously intended as a riposte to Renewing the Center by Stanley Grenz4 who, prior to his untimely death in 2005, was one of the leading advocates of postmodern evangelical theology. Indeed, the second chapter of Reclaiming the Center is Professor D. A. Carson’s lengthy review of Grenz’s Renewing the Center.

A Summary of Postconservative Evangelicalism

Before going further, I will put this second movement in a slightly larger context and permit one of its advocates to offer a summary of its emphases. I myself began hearing the term postmodern while a graduate student in the early 1980’s. Postmodernism is not a single phenomenon; it includes movements in literature and art as well as in philosophy and theology. Let it be said from the start that postmodernism is by no means an entirely bad thing; it all depends on which aspects of modernism one is hoping to get beyond. In 1989, Christian philosopher Diogenes Allen offered an optimistic view of postmodernism for Christian belief.5 He observed and appla...

visitor : : uid: ()