A Postmodern View Of Scripture

By Norman L. Geisler, Ph.D. & Thomas A. Howe, Ph.D.

[Norman L. Geisler is Professor of Theology and Apologetics, and Thomas A. Howe is Professor of Bible and Biblical Languages, both at Southern Evangelical Seminary in Charlotte, NC]

Post-moderns generally affirm the self-defeating creed of being creedless. But one cannot avoid doctrine, if only for the reason that this is a doctrinal claim itself. Further, one need only survey their writings to find a multitude of doctrinal claims. Their doctrine of Scripture is no exception.

Since space will not permit discussing all so-called post-modern evangelicals on Scripture, two major proponents will be examined: Stanley Grenz and Brian McLaren. Grenz, now beatified and enlightened, was the philosopher of the movement. And McLaren is one of the foremost proponents of the emerging (post-modern) church.

Stanley Grenz On Scripture

My friend, Gordon Lewis, was right when he told me [Norm Geisler] that the Evangelical Theological Society would have done itself a great service by focusing on Professor Grenz’s deviant view of Scripture and not just that of Clark Pinnock. As it turned out Pinnock slipped through their net, and Grenz slipped off into eternity. Nonetheless, Grenz’s view is still alive and is the best effort to provide philosophical underpinning to their doctrine of Scripture, and, thereby, it is one of the best ways to understand the foundation of the Emerging Church movement.

Classical Orthodox View Of Scripture

Grenz summarizes well the classical view he rejects: “Evangelical theologians begin with the affirmation that God has revealed himself. This self-disclosure has come through general revelation and more completely in special revelation.” Further, “the Holy Spirit preserved some of this special revelation by inspiring biblical writers [really, writings] to inscripturate it. The Bible, therefore, is God’s Word. Because the Bible is the inspired Word of God, it is dependable, even inerrant.”[1] Unfortunately, Grenz rejects this approach, claiming that “the construction of bibliology in this manner, ‘from above’ as it were, has certain shortcomings.”[2] He adds, “We can no longer construct our doctrine of Scripture in the classical manner.”[3]

Rejection Of Classical Orthodoxy

The post-modern rejection of the classical orthodox view of Scripture is sweeping. It includes a rejection of the correspondence view of truth, a rejection of objective truth, absolute truth, propositional truth, and the inerrant truth in Scripture. This is done in favor of anti-foundationalism, relativism, subjectivism, constructionism, non-propositionalism, Barthianism, and Fallibilism.

Anti-Foundationalism

Grenz approaches the Bible out of a post-modern anti-foundationalism perspective. Like others, however, he wrongly sees all foundationalism as rooted in Cartesian (and Spinozian)[4] deductivism which attempted to deduce absolute truth from self-evident principles. He ignores a legitimate Thomistic foundational reductivism which grounds all truth in irreducible and self-evident first principles like the basic laws of thought.[5] Along with this, Grenz rejects the traditional rational apologetics based on God’s general revelation that Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Calvin, and modern followers held.[6] He chides, “Twentieth-century evangelicals have devoted much energy to the task of demonstrating the credibility of the Christian faith… .”[7] But without a rational and evidential apologetic, one is left swimming in the sea of subjectivism. Indeed, Grenz contends, “We are in fundamental agreement with the postmodern rejection of the modern mind and its underlying Enlightenment epistemology.”[8] While there is sufficient reason to disagree with some aspects of “enlightenment epistemology,” classical foundationalism and a rational apologetic is not one of them, nor is a basic trust in the reliability of sense knowledge about an objectively real world.

Grenz, however, throws out the “baby” of proper foundationalism, which is the basis of the historic evangelical view of Scripture, with the “bathwater” of rationalistic deductive foundationalism. This leads to relativism and subjectivism, which Grenz renames as “post-rationalistic.”[9] He does not explain how one can justify using reason to pronounce reason passe.

Relativism

Once the foundation for absolute truth is destroyed, relativism and subjectivism follow. Grenz is a victim of this logic. He expresses this relativism as follows: “The Bible is seen, then, not as a finished and static fact or collection of facts to be analyzed by increasingly sophisticated methods, but as a potentiality of meaning which is actualized by succeeding generations in the light of their need… .”[10] This he sees as the proper understanding of 2 Tim. 3:16–17 which Grenz grossly misinterprets as meaning that God breathed into Scripture like He breathed into Adam. In fact, theopneustos (“inspired”) means to breathe out, not to breathe in. Just as Jesus said, every word of Scripture comes “out a/the mouth of God.”[11]

Grenz falls into the self-defeating trap of disclaiming the possibility of objective knowledge of the world or the past. He contends that “we ought to commend the postmodern questioning of the Enlightenment assumption that knowledge is objective and hence dispassionate.”[12] He adds, “We affirm the postmodern discovery that no observer can stand outside the historical process. Nor can we gain universal, culturally neutral knowledge as unconditioned specialists.”[13] Grenz seems blissfully unaware of his self-defeating claim to have objective knowledge of this allegedly subjective condition.

Subjectivism

The next of kin to relativism is subjectivism. Grenz couches his subjectivism in warm sounding words like “community” and “the voice of the Spirit” in communal illumination. He wrote, “We can more readily see the Bible-the instrumentality of the Spirit-as the book of the community… .’“[14] Grenz criticizes classical orthodox Christians who “often collapse the Spirit into the Bible.” They “exchange the dynamic of the ongoing movement of the Spirit speaking to the community of God’s people through the pages of the Bible for the book we hold in our hands.”[15]

Grenz’s self-labeled “functional” approach “starts with the role of Scripture within the Christian communities and then draws conclusions from the Bible’s normative value.”[16] He even reinvents the Trinity in terms of his communal model, declaring that “God is the social trinity-Father, Son, and Spirit… .’“[17] But God is far more than a society of persons. There is only one God, and He has only one essence. He is essentially one, not just functionally one as a human community is.

In his communal subjectivity, Grenz also confuses the inspiration of the objective text of Scripture with the subjective illumination of believers to the objective Word. Indeed, he says, “The confession of the inspiration of the Bible is closely intertwined with the experience of illumination.”[18]

Likewise, Grenz’s rejection of general revelation and reason based on the noetic affects of sin contributes to his subjectivism. He misquotes Pascal’s famous statement about the heart having reasons which reason does not know in a fideistic manner contrary to Pascal’s own use of evidence to support the Christian Faith.[19] While Grenz notes that “following the intellect can sometimes lead us away from the truth,”[20] he seems oblivious to the fact that following experience can be even worse. After all, the fall affects the whole person. Further, sin may efface the image of God, but it does not erase it. And the misuse of reason does not mean there is no proper use of reason.

Constructionism

Grenz speaks of the post-modern move from realism (which claims (1) there is an objective world, and (2) it can be known) to constructionism which denies both.[21] This, he said, leads to rejecting a correspondence view of truth (that statements are true if they correspond to reality). Of course, if there is no knowable objective reality to which our thoughts can correspond, then the correspondence view of truth must be rejected. But in this case one must construct his own truth since there is no objective standard by which one can measure the truth of his statements. One is left swimming in a sea of subjectivism. He is lost in the subjectivity of his community. And there is no way to adjudicate between conflicting truth claims of different Christian communities, to say nothing of those of other religions. Grenz and Franke make their position clear in their book Beyond Foundationalism.[22]

While Grenz does not wish to totally give up belief in all objective reality,[23] nonetheless, he does reject the knowability by the sense and reason of a present world.[24] Without any serious analysis or argumentation,[25] Grenz rejects the “Thomistic model” of realism and opts for a post-modern reconstruction which focuses on an “eschatological realism” of the world to come. He wrote, “The only ultimately valid ‘objectivity of the world’ is that of a future, eschatological world, and the ‘actual’ universe is the universe as it one day will be.”[26] Thus, our task is that of “constructing a world in the present that reflects God’s own eschatological will for creation.” In a Witgensteinian fashion, Grenz opines that “because of the role of language in the world-construction task, this mandate has a strongly linguistic dimension. We participate with God as, through the constructive power of language, we inhabit a present linguistic world that sees all reality from the perspective of the future, real world that God is bringing to pass.”[27] Of course, Grenz offers no answer to the criticism that affirming the unknowabihty of present reality is something he claims to know about present reality.

Non-Propositionalism

Along with his rejection of realism, Grenz discards the traditional orthodox view that the Bible contains propositional revelation in favor of what he calls a more “dynamic” view. He rejects the venerable creedal and confessional view that we can make proposition-ally true statements about God. He insists that “our understanding of the faith must not remain fixated on the propositional approach that views Christian truth as nothing more than correct doctrine of doctrinal truth.”[28] One wonders whether Grenz realizes the propositional nature of his doctrinal claim in that statement. Indeed, elsewhere he admits that “right beliefs and correct doctrine are vital to Christian living.”[29] But how can we have these without a rationally knowable and propositionally stateable objective reality? Grenz’s answer seems to lie in his subordination of the propositional to the experiential. He claims that “sound doctrine is a servant of the Spirit’s work in the new birth and transformed life.”[30] Doctrine is like a Wittgensteinian language “game” based in the changing experience of the community.[31] But here again we are in the quagmire of subjectivism. For reason should be the judge of experience, not the reverse. As Alister McGrath noted, experience is something which needs to be interpreted, rather than something which is capable of interpreting.[32]

Grenz also claims, “Transformed in this manner into a book of doctrine, the Bible is easily robbed of its dynamic character.”[33] He insists that “the inspiration of Scripture cannot function as the theological premise from which biblical authority emerges… ,”[34] So, in place of the historic belief in the essential authority of the inspired text of Scripture, Grenz proposes a “functional approach [that] moves in a somewhat opposite direction from the canonical” approach.[35]

Barthainism

Indeed, Grenz’s view is not essentially different from that of the Neo-orthodox theologian Karl Barth. Grenz seems to recognize the similarity of his view in posing the very question: “Is this not simply the older neo-orthodoxy dressed up in new garb?”[36] While he attempts a qualified “no,”[37] answer to the essence of his view of the relation of revelation and the Bible does not differ significantly from that of Karl Barth. For he denies the identity of the Bible with God’s revelation. Rather, like Barth, he holds that “the Bible is a divinely appointed channel, a mirror, or a visible sign of revelation.”[38] The Bible is not God’s words in and of themselves. Rather, “the human words of the Bible are God’s Word to us.”[39] In support of this, he mistakenly argues that the Bible nowhere claims that it is the Word of God.[40] This is clearly not the case as an examination of only a few texts will illustrate. In John 10:34–35 Jesus uses “word of God,” “writings” (grapha) and “cannot be broken” interchangeably. Second Tim. 3:15–16 does the same by saying all the writings (grapha) are “God-breathed” and are identical with the “Holy Scriptures” that Timothy knew from a child, namely, the Old Testament. In Matt. 5:17–18 Jesus described the Old Testament “Law and Prophets” as the imperishable Word of God. Peter declared that the Old Testament prophetic writings find their ultimate source in God, not by human invention (2 Pet. 1:20–21).

Falliblism and Barthainism

Citing Berkouwer with approval, Grenz affirms, “Our listening to God’s voice [in Scripture] does not need to be threatened by scientific research into Holy Scripture.”[41] For errors in the Bible are only part of the “skandal” it bears as a human instrument. The Bible is not the Word of God in and of itself, but only “to us.” Grenz wrote that “the Bible is revelation in a functional sense; it is revelatory.” Also, “Scriptures are revelation in a derivative sense.”[42] Like Barth, the Bible is only a fallible record of or witness to God’s revelation in Christ. “The Bible is revelation because it is the witness to and the record of the historical revelation of God.”[43] The historic view of inspiration holds that the Bible is without error on whatever topic it touches, science, history, or psychology. Grenz demurs, insisting that “the Bible therefore may not be the kind of authority on the various branches of modern learning that many believers want to maintain.”[44] Rather, it is an authority only on matters of salvation.

Brian McLaren On Inspiration Of Scripture

In his book, A Generous Orthodoxy, Brian McLaren claims to have a high view of Scripture. He says, “I have spent my entire life learning, understanding, reappraising, wrestling with, trusting, applying, and obeying the Bible, and trying to help others to do the same. I believe it is a gift from God, inspired by God, to benefit us in the most important way possible: equipping us so that we can benefit others, so that we can play our part in the ongoing mission of God. My regard for the Bible is higher than ever.”“[45]

Clearly Ambiguous

McLaren gives the following as his explanation of “What the Bible Really Is”:

The Bible is an inspired gift from God a unique collection of literary artifacts that together support the telling of an amazing and essential story. The artifacts include poetry, letters, short histories, and other genres that we don’t have labels for. Even a familiar category like history needs to be used carefully, because we must avoid imposing modern biases and tastes on these ancient documents: they need to be taken and appreciated on their own terms. The stories these artifacts support cover the amazing career of the descendents [sic] of a Middle Eastern nomad named Abraham. It traces their beginnings, growth, settlement, and resettlement through various social structures and economies, through many political arrangements, through good times and had. This collection is uniquely profitable for teaching, rebuking, correcting, training, and equipping people so they can do good works for God.[46]

One of the more difficult aspects of McLaren’s writings is his seeming unwillingness to say anything definitive about what he believes. He seems to want to be able to present his understanding of a given doctrine, but he does not want to say anything that might give others a basis upon which to critique his views. He wants to retain the right to say what he thinks is the correct way to depict a doctrine or belief, but he does not want to express himself in a manner that others can challenge. Consequently, it is virtually impossible to find a definitive statement of what he means by the term “inspiration.” Those who attempt to critique his doctrines are vilified as “Modern” and “polarizing.” The fact of the matter is, McLaren’s view of inspiration is simply not orthodox.

Undefinitive Defining of Inspiration

McLaren sets forth his view of inspiration by the use of an analogy:

I am a human being with a name (plus an assortment of numbers that certify me as a citizen, driver, credit-card holder, phone owner, etc.). Like every other human, I am both a creation of God and a pro-creation of parents who, in partnership with friends and teachers and authors and culture in general, helped make me all I am today. The way God willed to create the “me” I am today, then, like every other human, is through a complex synergy of biology and community and history (plus my own will, choices, and the like). These parental origins, these organic means, these social and historical contexts, do not decrease in any way the reality of God as my ultimate Creator, the One who through all these many instrumentalities says, “Let there be a Brian,” and here I am. In the same way Scripture is something God has “let be,” and so it is at once God’s creation and the creation of the dozens of people and communities and cultures who produced it. One doesn’t decrease the other. One doesn’t lessen the other. One doesn’t nullify the other.[47]

The notion that the Scripture is God-breathed is not simply the notion that “God has ‘let be’” the Scripture similar to the way God “let be” Brian McLaren. The orthodox doctrine is that the very words that compose the Scripture were the very words that God chose for His revelation. The biblical metaphor—God-breathed—is designed to indicate that God spoke these very words —they were breathed out by God. (Parenthetically, it is interesting how McLaren skews the facts to fit the point he wishes to make. In an earlier chapter he criticizes the conservatives for their conflicting and fallible interpretations,[48] but in this context he applauds the “Christian community” of “Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox” Christians for always having a “deep feeling and understanding for this integrated dual origin [human and divine] of the Scripture” and for holding on to “both dimensions of the origin of Scripture.”[49] This certainly does not sound like a group of “shrill, quarreling voices” who “constantly labeled the interpretations of the “fellow Protestants grossly errant.”[50]) McLaren argues that a more effective communication pattern in the Postmodern matrix is “the power of story.”[51] It was not at all clear in that context, but it seems here that power of story involves manipulating the facts to suit one’s point.

Proposition about a Propositionless Bible

McLaren is emphatically vocal about his opposition to what he characterizes as Modernism. He believes that modern, western Christians have actually misrepresented the nature of the Bible “because modern Christians loved the Bible, they paid it four compliments, which have damaged as well as enhanced the Bible’s reputation.”[52] One of the four “compliments” by which modern Christians have misrepresented the Bible is, according to McLaren, “We presented the Bible as a repository of sacred propositions and abstractions”[53] He gives the following as an explanation of what this means: “Which was natural, for we were moderns—children of the 18th-century European Enlightenment—so we loved abstractions and propositions. Our sermons tended to exegete texts in such a way that stories, poetry, and biography (among other features of the Bible)—the ‘chaff—were sifted out, while the ‘wheat’ of doctrines and principles were saved. Modern Western people loved that approach; meanwhile, however, people of a more postmodern bent (who are more like premodern people in many ways) find the doctrines and principles as interesting as grass clippings.”[54] That this “compliment” is perceived by McLaren to be a misrepresentation is not a misrepresentation. He says, “These misrepresentations were not malicious,”[55] clearly stating that he perceives the notion that the Bible is a repository of propositions to be a misrepresentation.

Reasons Against Reason

This approach leads to the advice: “drop any Affair You May Have with Certainty, Proof, Argument and Replace It with Dialogue, Conversation, Intrigue, and Search.”[56] He apparently sees no inconsistency in his own clarion call against clarity. Apparently, God is not as capable in His Word as McLaren is. He advocates that Bible studies and sermons should not seek clarity because reality is, according to McLaren, “seldom clear, but usually fuzzy and mysterious; not black-and-white, but in living color.”[57] The congregation should not aim to capture the meaning of the text, but aim for “a text that captured the imagination and curiosity of the congregation?”[58] Of course, this is a false dichotomy.. Nothing says that it cannot be both, clearly and accurately capturing the meaning while at the same time stimulating the imagination and curiosity of the congregation. And whether reality is seldom clear is no basis upon which not to be clear. If reality is fuzzy, someone needs to clarify it, and if God cannot clarify reality for us, what hope do we have. Whether reality is fuzzy is no grounds for the claim that God’s Word is fuzzy.

The Big Question About The Big Question

Contrary to the apostle Paul’s claim in the classic text on inspiration that Scripture was God-breathed to “make us wise unto salvation” (2 Tim. 3:15–17), McLaren indicates that the “Big Question of the whole Bible” is not the salvation of man. He says:

Without focusing on the Big Story, we are tempted to impose alien readings on the Bible. For example, if we reduce the Bible to an elaborate answer to the question, “How does a person go to heaven after he dies?”—if we think this is the Big Question the whole Bible is answering—we’ll be prone to misunderstand major parts of the Bible that were written before, that question was on anybody’s mind (like the entire Old Testament). The Old Testament people were far more concerned about being the people of God in this life, not after this life. So when they performed sacrifices, for instance, they weren’t seeking to get a clean slate so they could die forgiven as individuals and go to heaven after they died. To the contrary, they were seeking to remain pure enough as a community to participate in God’s twofold promise to them: being blessed by God, and being a blessing to the whole world.[59]

According to McLaren, Old Testament saints did not ask the question, “How does a person go to heaven after he dies?” He says that in the entire Old Testament, this question was not on anyone’s mind. For McLaren, the focus of the Bible is not salvation, but service; not getting right, but doing good. But, how can a person be “blessed by God” or be a “blessing to the whole world” unless this means first and foremost being saved by His grace? Is man inherently able to do good, good by God’s standard? How can men do good if they do not get right?

An Errant Reading Of Inerrancy

According to McLaren, modern western Christians use certain words to talk about Scripture: “For modern Western Christians, words like authority, inerrancy, infallibility, revelation, objective, absolute, and literal are crucial.”[60] He then declares, “Hardly anyone realizes why these words are important,”[61] and his next assertion indicates that he must be one of those persons who does not realize why they are important: “Hardly anyone knows about the stories of Sir Isaac Newton, Rene Descartes, the Enlightenment, David Hume, and Foundationalism—which provide the context in which these words are so important.”[62] Once again McLaren misrepresents the case. All of these terms with the possible exception of the term “infallibility” have been used by authors throughout history at least from Augustine. Augustine held to the concept of inerrancy even when it was necessary to resort to allegorical interpretation to avoid what he perceived to be a contradiction. None of these words were invented or found any substantively new connotations during the Enlightenment. Additionally, how does McLaren know what “hardly anyone” knows? And how can he be absolutely certain we should avoid absolutes?

McLaren also declares, “Hardly anyone notices the irony of resorting to the authority of extra-biblical words and concepts to justify one’s belief in the Bible’s ultimate authority.”[63] Of course in one sense, all of the words that we use are extra-biblical since the Bible was not written in English. But McLaren does not merely claim that the words are extra-biblical. Rather he claims that the concepts are extra-biblical. McLaren proposes that it is more reasonable to include a statement like this: “The purpose of Scripture is to equip God’s people for good works,” than to use “statements with words foreign to the Bible’s vocabulary about itself (inerrant, authoritative, literal, revelatory, objective, absolute, propositional, etc.).”[64] But not a single one of the words in the statement McLaren proposes is in the Bible. The Bible does not contain a single English word. Now of course someone will object, “Of course the Bible doesn’t contain these English words! He’s not saying the Bible must contain these exact English words. What he’s saying is that it’s more reasonable to use statements that contain the particular meanings, whether expressed in English or in the languages of the Bible, that are actually found in the Bible.” But, if that is what he is saying, then what is the problem? Every single one of the “meanings” of the words he lists as “extra-biblical” are also found in the Bible! The meaning of the term “authoritative” is found in Isa. 46:9–10: “For I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is no one like Me, Declaring the end from the beginning, And from ancient times things which have not been done, Saying, ‘My purpose will be established, And I will accomplish all My good pleasure.’“ Heb. 6:18 says “it is impossible for God to lie.” If the Bible is the Word of God, then the concept of inerrancy is in the Bible. We cannot allow the import of what McLaren has said to escape us. He did not only say words like authority, inerrancy, infallibility, revelation, objective, absolute, and literal are extra-biblical. He said the concepts are extra-biblical: “Hardly anyone notices the irony of resorting to the authority of extra-biblical words and concepts to justify one’s belief in the Bible’s ultimate authority.” What he is saying here is that the concepts of authority, inerrancy, infallibility, revelation, objective, absolute, and literal are not concepts that we find in the Bible!

The Issue Of Other Issues

There are simply too many misrepresentations, equivocations, ad hominem arguments, straw men, and outright falsehoods in McClaren’s chapter on “The Bible” to attempt to address them all. Many of these take the form of innuendos and insinuations, but the blatantly false characterization of Gandhi as someone “who sought to follow the way of Christ without identifying himself as a Christian” reveals either an astonishing lack of understanding of both Gandhi and Christ, or an even more astonishing willingness to distort both for rhetorical effect. Gandhi was an enthusiastic adherent to the Hindu caste system that was originally designed as a tool of racial discrimination. Gandhi slept with nude teenage girls under the pretext of “testing his vow of chastity.” Gandhi allowed his wife Kasturba to die of pneumonia when she could have been saved. Gandhi refused to allow her to be given a shot of penicillin because it was an “alien [British] medicine.” Yet when Gandhi contracted malaria he took the alien medicine Quinine, and when he had appendicitis he allowed alien British doctors to perform an appendectomy. Contrary to the movie depiction, when Gandhi was shot, his last words were not “Oh, God!” Rather, he muttered, “Oh, Buddha.” These are hardly the kinds of beliefs and actions that Jesus would have commended.[65]

The title of his chapter in A Generous Orthodoxy ought to be changed from “Why I Am Biblical,” to “Why Would Anyone Think I Am Biblical?” McLaren certainly has the privilege to express his beliefs. The disingenuous character of his writings is that McLaren presents his beliefs as if they are orthodox Christian beliefs. And he either purposely or inadvertently misrepresents the facts in almost every case, yet he presents these distortions as if these are generally accepted and in complete conformity with the teaching of the Bible.

Conclusion

Postmoderns in general are in denial. They even deny making denials. This is true of the post-modern view of Scripture as well. They deny that they are denying an orthodox view of Scripture, but it is undeniable that they have. The orthodox view of Scripture is rooted in numerous premises denied by post-moderns. They deny absolutism, objectivism, foundationalism, propositionalism, correspondence, and infalliblism all of which a genuine evangelical view entails, even though these are not always consistently acknowledged or applied. The Evangelical Theological Society, which is the largest group of evangelical scholars in the world, following the landmark “Chicago Statement” (1978) on inerrancy, has heralded this as the standard for understanding the inerrancy of the Bible.[66] Grenz and McLaren definitely fall seriously short of the standard on all major counts. The so-called emerging church is the diverging church since it diverts from orthodoxy on one of its fundamental pillars, the one on which all the others rest.

Scripture is the most fundamental of all the fundamental doctrines since it is the fundamental on which all the other fundamentals rest. And on its view of Scripture, Grenz and McClaren are not only postmodern, but they are also post-Christian. Their rejection of the classical orthodox view of Scripture is sweeping. It includes, a rejection of the correspondence view of truth, a rejection of objective truth, absolute truth, propositional truth, and inerrant truth in Scripture. This is does in favor of anti-foundationalism, relativism, subjectivism, constructionism, and Barthianism, non-propositionalism, and Fallibilism.

The so-called emerging church is not emerging; it has already emerged. And what it has emerged into is not Christian in any traditional, historic, or orthodox sense of the words. Indeed, it has emerged from orthodoxy to unorthodox, from infalliblism to falliblism, from objectivism to subjectivism, from absolutism to relativism, and from relativism to agnosticism.

Notes

1. Stanley Grenz, Revising Evangelical Theology (Downers Grove, IL: Inter Varsity Press, 1993), 116.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid., 118.
4. Spinoza in particular had a deductive system built on the model of Euclid’s geometry wherein he began with allegedly self-evident axioms and attempted to deduce from them absolutely certain conclusions about his entire world view.
5. For Thomas Aquinas there were certain undeniable first principles (like the laws of logic) on which all thought was based and to which all rationally valid thinking could be reduced. But, contrary to modern foundationalism (like Spinoza), one could not deduce from these principles alone any truth about the real world. All knowledge of the real word begins in sense experience.
6. For a discussion of general revelation see Norman L. Geisler, Introduction and Bible, vol. 1 of Systematic Theology (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2002), chap. 4.
7. Stanley Grenz, A Primer on Postmodernism (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1996), 160.
8. Ibid., 165.
9. Ibid., 167.
10. Grenz, Revising Evangelical Theology, 120.
11. Matt. 4:4, emphasis added.
12. Grenz, A Primer on Postmodernism, 166.
13. Ibid.
14. Grenz, Revising Evangelical Theology, 115.
15. Ibid., 117.
16. Ibid., 119.
17. Grenz, A Primer on Postmodernism, 168.
18. Grenz, Revising Evangelical Theology, 118.
19. Blaise Pascal, Pascal Pensee, sec. one, chaps. 14, 15; sec. two, chaps. 11–12, 16–18.
20. Grenz, A Primer on Postmodernism, 166.
21. Grenz, Renewing the Center: Evangelical Theology in a Post-Theological Era (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Adacemic Books, 2000), 169.
22. Stanley J. Grenz and John R. Franke, Beyond Foundationalism (Westminster John Knox Press, 2001).
23. Grenz, Renewing the Center, 245–46.
24. Ibid., 199f.
25. Grenz, Renewing the Center, 230–31.
26. Ibid., 246.
27. Ibid.
28. Grenz, A Primer on Postmodernism, 170.
29. Ibid., 172.
30. Stanely Grenz, “Nurturing the Soul, Informing the Mind” in Vincent Bacote et. al. eds., Evangelicals Scripture, Tradition, Authority and Hermeneutics (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 39.
31. Grenz, Renewing the Center, 246.
32. Alister McGrath, “Theology and Experience” in the European Journal of Theology 2, no. 1 (1993): 67.
33. Grenz, Revisioning Evangelical Theology, 114–15.
34. Ibid., 118.
35. Ibid., 119.
36. Ibid., 124.
37. Ibid., 125.
38. Grenz is citing Bloesch with approval in Revisioning Evangelical Theology, 131.
39. Grenz, Revisioning Evangelical Theology, 130, emphasis added.
40. Ibid., 131.
41. Ibid., 110.
42. Ibid., 133.
43. Ibid., emphasis added.
44. Ibid., 135.
45. Brian McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 2004), 159 [emphasis in original].
46. Brian D. McLaren, “Missing the Point: The Bible,” in Adventures in Missing the Point, ed. Brian D. McLaren (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 2003), 69–70.
47. McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy, 161–62.
48. Ibid., 134ff.
49. Ibid., 162.
50. Ibid., 134.
51. Brian D. McLaren, The Church on the Other Side: Doing Ministry in the Postmodern Matrix, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 2000), 90.
52. McLaren, “The Bible,” 70.
53. Ibid., 71.
54. Ibid.
55. Ibid., 72.
56. Ibid., 78
57. Ibid.
58. Ibid.
59. Ibid., 78-79 [emphasis in original].
60. McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy, 1 64.
61. Ibid.
62. Ibid.
63. Ibid.
64. Ibid., 164-65.
65. See Richard Grenier, The Gandhi Nobody Knows (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1983).
66. R. C. Sproul, Explaining Inerrancy (Orlando: Ligonier Ministry, 1996).