Anyone who could rub two active brain cells together should be able to discern what Ed Young is teaching is wrong. But since critical thinking is a slippery slope into liberalism, no one dares! No wonder evangelicalism has become so guttural. Evangelicals feel bound to respond to every manipulation of primal fear or irrational emotions or base desires. But thank goodness that we are safe from the critial thinking of liberalism! I feel so proud to call myself conservative!

I know I sound flustered. I hope I don’t sound angry. I am confused. I get the impression Wicker has some severe bliners on. And I’m having a hard time separating her conclusions from yours. Will wait for part five. Thanks.

But she [Wicker] is saying that when you move away from strict and defining fundamentals and start thinking critically, then a process begins. It starts with a C.S. Lewis and ends with a Brian Mclaren and beyond.

This is exactly what I was trying to get at in my first comment. This process was not evangelicalism losing its way. This process was evangelicalism from the get go. (I’m sure you have read Ockenga and Henry!) I haven’t read Wicker’s book, but if she doesn’t get this, then she completely misunderstands her entire subject matter. Maybe what she (and you?) are really trying to say is that evangelicalism was always a lost cause, carrying the seeds of its own destruction from the beginning, and that the only true alternatives are the fundamentalism it grew out of, and modernist secularism? I’m really confused. And, come on, in what sense does C.S. Lewis lead to Brian McLaren? I don’t know many people at all who really like them both.

Sooner or later you wind up with a kid who was brought up in a Christian home but is a universalist, etc. Because you told him to think critically and live with modernity.

Living with modernity and thinking critically are two different things and shouldn’t be conflated. Alot of people will argue that they are in fact contradictory.

Sorry Michael. This post doesn’t sound like you in alot of ways, and it doesn’t sound like your are merely reporting Wicker’s views either. I am confused.

Thank you for this sentence. It almost brought me to tears.

But are there not any more Billy Grahams walking in the woods, placing their Bibles on a stump and declaring openly to the Lord “I don’t understand all that is in Your Word, but I accept it by faith”

Or what about a Robertson McQuilken standing on the Japanese coast hearing a still small voice ask “Are you smarter than Jesus?”as he was wrestling with the lures of agnosticism.

A person who says that they need to have every issue explained so that he understands it before he accepts Christ Jesus as Lord and lives for Him will likely never put his trust in Him.

But you are right, we need to wrestle with, study, research and investigate both the Word and the issues that are confronting the Church.

John Stott and J.I. Packer would classify themselves as evangelicals, but they are in a Tradition where a connection to the Early Church is highly valued. And that connection is not merely scholarly, but liturgical, ecclessiological, etc. C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton are even more so in that camp.

I would argue that without Tradition to keep you in check, without the willingness to look back and read so that one may know what were some of the acceptable parameters of Christian thought, then either theology becomes a logical battleground where almost anything can be argued to be Christian or, as you pointed out, limits are set that may or may not be true to what Christians have believed and/or allowed.

It is interesting to note that Anglicans are in a major worldwide battle precisely because the American Episcopal Church decided to openly give up its connection with Tradition. Once that was given up, it was not long before the American Episcopal Church started having serious problems. There was neither a way to keep “liberals” in check nor any way to call “conservatives” away from inappropriate beliefs.