Read “Evangelicals Divided” by Gerald McDermott in the April (2011) issue of First Things. Here is what I posted in the discussion following the article at First Things’ web site:
“Ken Collins speaks for me on this particular issue. McDermott is delivering a most ungenerous and even distorted representation of my postconservative evangelical approach to theology. I have told him and written that for me and other postconservatives the Bible is our ultimate standard and rule for faith and practice and what I fear is that the traditionalists are functionally adding some version of tradition to Scripture. From where I stand this looks like the Catholic approach to tradition and Scripture more than like true Protestantism. I am not anxious to revise tradition, but when fresh and faithful biblical research requires it, I’m open to that. The door is not absolutely closed. I, for one, at least, most emphatically do NOT believe theology should be accommodated to culture. In none of my writings have I even suggested such. I have always argued that Scripture is that to which we must be constantly accommodated and accommodating in theology. The conflict within evangelicalism is not between traditionalists and fledgling liberals (which is what McDermott thinks postconservatives are) but between those who elevate tradition to a level of authority equal with Scripture and those who view Scripture as always standing above tradition and tradition as open to revision insofar as fresh and faithful biblical research requires it.”
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