{"id":336,"date":"2015-04-28T10:15:37","date_gmt":"2015-04-28T15:15:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/unsystematictheology\/?p=336"},"modified":"2015-04-28T10:37:35","modified_gmt":"2015-04-28T15:37:35","slug":"leaving-evangelicalism-1a-the-foundations-are-breaking-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unsystematictheology\/2015\/04\/leaving-evangelicalism-1a-the-foundations-are-breaking-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Leaving Evangelicalism, #1a: The Foundations Are Breaking Up"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

This is the first post of a series I will be writing over the next few months in which I reflect on my theological journey through Evangelicalism and \u201cout the other side. <\/em><\/p>\n

I should begin this series with a qualifier: The \u201cEvangelicalism\u201d I will primarily refer to throughout this series is a particular manifestation of a broader and more diverse, global \u201cevangelicalism.\u201d \u00a0The Evangelicalism I am leaving is U.S. Evangelicalism (designated with a capital \u201cE\u201d), sometimes known as \u201cneo-Evangelicalism\u201d; a movement within (primarily) Anglo-American conservative Protestantism which emerged out of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy of the early twentieth-century. These Evangelicals\u2013and Evangelical institutions\u2013share with fundamentalism strong beliefs in several fundamental<\/em> doctrines of Christian theology (with a few variations or nuances here and there), but were also organized around a strategic attempt to be more positively culturally engaged and more intellectually sophisticated than the fundamentalists had proved to be. Many of the most significant self-identifying Evangelical institutions \u00a0(Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Fuller Seminary, Christianity Today<\/em>, etc.) were a direct result of that strategic move toward positive cultural and intellectual engagement.<\/p>\n

Now that the qualifier is over, I begin this series with a reflection about certainty.<\/em><\/p>\n

When I was a senior at Wheaton college\u2013a decidedly Evangelical institution\u2013I (like many young Christians) underwent something of an existential and epistemological crisis of faith. I will spare you the details, but<\/p>\n

\"Artwork<\/a>
Artwork by Stephanie Roberts<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Kierkegaard\u2019s\u00a0Fear and Trembling\u00a0<\/em>helped me work through that crisis and to begin to think differently about faith. Faith, by definition, has no need for epistemic certainty. That\u2019s what makes faith\u00a0faith.\u00a0<\/em>We shouldn\u2019t be looking for any secure \u201cground\u201d outside of the experience of faith to secure our belief in God, our passion for the gospel, etc. This means the classical apologetic enterprise, and the quest for historical or rational proofs for the existence of God or the historicity of Christ and the resurrection, etc., are not only unnecessary, they are completely wrong-headed.<\/strong> For the very attempt to undergo a quest for certainty actually ends up undercutting the very thing you are looking to deepen and strengthen in the first place\u2013which is\u00a0faith.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Fast-forward to 2005, and to my first year of a tenure-track position at Bethel Seminary in St. Paul, MN. Questions about epistemology and certainty were swirling about throughout U.S. Evangelicalism. Postmodernism was still a pretty big deal back then, as it had been throughout the 80s\/90s. Evangelicals were (somewhat) conflicted about how to think about postmodernism. It\u2019s safe to say that the majority of U.S. Evangelicals saw postmodernism (with its tolerance for otherness and difference, its emphasis on the contextual and historical source of \u201cknowledge\u201d and \u201ctruth,\u201d its highlighting of plurality, and its\u00a0disavowal of the quest for certainty) as threatening to Christianity and to Christian faith.<\/strong><\/p>\n

On the other hand, some Evangelical theologians pushed for a more positive engagement with postmodernism and saw, in the postmodern critique of the modernist quest for certainty about knowledge, a hopeful way forward for Christianity. Foundationalism was an epistemological position that looked for an unquestionable and \u201cself-evident\u201d foundation which would buttress one\u2019s theological beliefs and which could uphold one\u2019s theological and belief system (or worldview) on the basis of an errorless, flawless, and self-evidently true \u201csource\u201d of knowledge. Interestingly, some evangelical theologians and philosophers are now distinguishing between \u201csource\u201d foundationalism\u2013this early form to which I am referring\u2013and \u201cdoxastic\u201d foundationalism. which is a more modest and realistic expression. Doxastic foundationalism simply admits that we have some core beliefs which do function<\/em> as more foundational than others. This is a relatively recent nuance, that I\u2019m not sure has caught on yet. But there have long been more \u201cmodest\u201d alternatives, within evangelicalism, to the more rigid \u201cclassical\u201d versions of foundationalism.<\/p>\n

In any case, one of the most important books in those days for the conversation was\u00a0Beyond Foundationalism,\u00a0<\/em>by Stanley Grenz and John Franke. Grenz and Franke inspired a generation of younger Evangelical theologians to consider a more postmodern-friendly faith and one less hampered by the angst about epistemic certainty.<\/strong> There were debates aplenty during those days at the national Evangelical Theological Society meetings about the perceived merits of\u00a0foundationalism versus postfoundationalism (as well as variations of each) as epistemological stances for shaping our theological methods. \u00a0It was also a topic of conversation during the faculty interviews for my first faculty position. The question reflected the larger conflict within Evangelical Christianity: \u201cWhere do you stand on the epistemology debate?\u201d I knew then\u2013as I know now\u2013that I\u2019m a postfoundationalist. Because Kierkegaard had saved my faith.<\/p>\n

This post has already gotten too long. So I will close with this: The first reason I am \u201cleaving Evangelicalism\u201d is because I think that by and large, it is still too hampered by a desire for certainty about religious knowledge and for certainty about theology. This means that on the whole, Evangelicalism \u00a0(if I can think anthropomorphically for moment) evidences a unwillingness to rethink its embedded, fundamental positions. Examples of some of those positions will be considered in subsequent posts.<\/p>\n

I will \u00a0follow up this post in coming days with a discussion about my shift from\u00a0certainty\u00a0<\/em>to\u00a0confidence,\u00a0<\/em>and the important role that recognition of\u00a0context\u00a0<\/em>takes in shaping both our faith and our theological beliefs.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is the first post of a series I will be writing over the next few months in which I reflect on my theological journey through Evangelicalism and \u201cout the other side. 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