Under the guise of our postmodern context, post-conservatives are moving in the same direction as Schleiermacher and Briggs. Despite their protests to the contrary, they have already begun to go down this same path. There is such a thing as unintended consequences. The more things change, the more they stay the same, or to quote that great Yankee philosopher, Yogi Berra, “It’s like déjà vu all over again.”

Footnotes:

1. Carl Raschle, The Next Reformation: Why Evangelicals Must Embrace Postmodernity (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004), 1. Perhaps more difficult to define than “postmodern” is the equally confusing term “evangelical.” I discuss this in my chapter, “The Reformation, Today’s Evangelicals, and Mormons” in G. L. W. Johnson and Guy P. Waters, ed., By Faith Alone: Answering the Challenges to the Doctrine of Justification (Wheaton, IL.: Crossway, 2006).

2. Sinclair Ferguson in Justified in Christ, ed. K. Scott Oliphint (Ross-shire, Scotland: Christian Focus, 2007), 1X.

3. Cf. Roger Olson, Reformed and Always Reforming: The Postconservative Approach to Evangelical Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007). Olson repeatedly denies that there is any valid correlation, but does reluctantly concede that a formal similarity exists, but it is purely coincidental (62).

4. Nicola Hoggard Creegan, “Schleiermacher as Apologist: Reclaiming the Father of Modern Theology” in Christian Apologetics in the Postmodern World, ed. T. R. Phillips and D. L. Okholm (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1995), 59–74.

5. B. A. Gerrish, “The New Evangelical Theology and the Old: An Opportunity for the Next Century?” as cited in Reclaiming the Center: Confronting Evangelical Accommodation in Postmodern Times, ed. M. J. Erickson, P. K. Helseth, and J. Taylor (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2004), 240n101.

6. German for “no.” As cited by Mark R. Patterson, “Nein! A Response to Progressives,” Theology Matters 13, no. 2 (2007): 2 (emphasis added). Originally published as Nein! Antwort an Emil Brunner (Zurich: #eologischer Verlag, 1935). An English translation of Brunner’s work and Barth’s response may be found in Emil Brunner and Karl Barth, trans. Peter Fraenkel, with introduction by John Baillie, “Natural Theology: Comprising ‘Nature and Grace’ by Professor Dr. Emil Brunner and the Reply ‘No!’ by Dr. Karl Barth” (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2002).

7. Patterson, “Nein! A Response to Progressives,” 2.