Roger Olson: The Difference between “Orthodoxy” and “Fundamentalism”

I wonder if people like this ever realize how much they talk in circles. Mr. Olson closes his article with this admonition:

We moderate to progressive evangelicals need to embrace classical Christian orthodoxy BECAUSE it is biblical (not for its own sake as if it were true independently of Scripture).

Unfortunately for him, he has already argued against his own position because he denies the necesssity of inerrancy.

Fundamentalism is (among other things): adding secondary and even tertiary beliefs to basic Christian orthodoxy as NECESSARY for authentic Christian identity (e.g., premillennialism, biblical inerrancy, young earth creationism), insisting that salvation depends on belief in a long list of doctrines including ones NOT PART OF basic Christian orthodoxy, and refusing Christian fellowship with other Christians who are “doctrinally polluted” or “doctrinally impure” because they do not believe everything on the fundamentalists’ long list of essential doctrines.

Someone, it might have been R. C. Sproul, once said that while it is true that there are certain things one must believe to become a Christian, it is equally true there are certain things one cannot deny and become a Christian. For example, knowing and understanding the personhood of the Holy Spirit is not necessary to salvation per se, but denying it would preclude salvation. Watering down the Gospel message, as Mr. Olson does, is a guaranteed recipe for destroying the church because it promises to fill it with professing Christians who possess nothing of eternal life.

Chip, I have heard Dave Doran say that as well. His example was the virgin birth. A child that gets saved likely doesn’t know what a virgin birth is but they do not deny it once they do understand.

For those who have not read it Mr. Olson is the “Postconservative Evangelical” contributor in “Four Views on the Spectrum of Evangelicalism”. The whole time I read it I just kept thinking that his belief has no mooring. Since he has no objective standard of truth it is all just opinion.