Bruce McCormack on the Diminishing Value of Reading Theology Blogs

Bruce McCormack (Charles Hodge Professor of Systematic Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary) wrote this on FB about the utility of reading blogs. I reproduce it with permission:

There was a time, not so long ago, when theological blogs had the capacity to educate, to push the boundaries in a healthy way, to teach me what the new generation was thinking and how best to address them. But I fear we have reached a turning-point. Now bloggers tend to confuse earnestness with seriousness. Seriousness distinguishes itself from mere earnestness by the degree of its responsibiity to a subject-matter. An earnestness which lacks this is purely an exercise in self-performance, an exercise in banal speech which communicates next to nothing. The avant-gard is losing its capacity to teach in its self-absorption. And it making itself increasingly irrelevant to church life.