{"id":991,"date":"2010-02-06T20:57:14","date_gmt":"2010-02-07T02:57:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/2010\/02\/06\/orthodoxy-or-the-academy\/"},"modified":"2010-02-06T20:57:14","modified_gmt":"2010-02-07T02:57:14","slug":"orthodoxy-or-the-academy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/2010\/02\/06\/orthodoxy-or-the-academy\/","title":{"rendered":"Orthodoxy or the Academy?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This came out last month when I was away, but I want to note it for any academics who read here who didn’t see it.  Carl Trueman on “The Real Scandal of the Evangelical Mind<\/a>“:<\/p>\n

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Third, there would seem to be a pervasive evangelical inferiority complex. This means that, while we do not wish to exclude anybody, we dread being excluded ourselves. Indeed, for the evangelical academic, in a world so ill-defined, it is always tempting to cut just a few more corners, or keep shtum on just a couple of rather embarrassing doctrinal commitments, in order to have just that little bit more influence, that slightly bigger platform, in the outside world. This is particularly the temptation of evangelical biblical scholars and systematicians whose wider guilds are so utterly unsympathetic to the kind of supernaturalism and old-fashioned truth claims upon which their church constituencies are largely built. In so doing, we kid ourselves that we are doing the Lord’s work, that, somehow, because we have articles published in this journal or by that press, we are really making real headway into the unbelieving culture of the theological academy. Not that these things are not good and worthy\u00e2\u20ac\u201dI do such things myself\u00e2\u20ac\u201dbut we must be careful that we do not confuse professional academic achievement with building up the saints or scoring a point for the kingdom.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And later…<\/p>\n

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The day is coming when the cultural intellectual elites of evangelicalism\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthe institutions and the individuals\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwill face a tough decision. I see the crisis coming on two separate but intimately connected fronts. The day is coming, and perhaps has already come, when, first, to believe that the Bible is the Word of God, inspired, authoritative, and utterly truthful, will be seen as a sign at best of intellectual suicide, at worst of mental illness; and, second, to articulate any form of opposition to homosexual practice will be seen as the moral equivalent of advocating white supremacy or child abuse. In such times, the choice will be clear, those who hold the Christian line will be obvious, and those who have spent their lives trying to serve both orthodoxy and the academy will find that no amount of intellectual contortionism will save them.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

You can read the whole thing<\/a>.  It’s not very long.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This came out last month when I was away, but I want to note it for any academics who read here who didn’t see it.  Carl Trueman on “The Real Scandal of the Evangelical Mind“: Third, there would seem to be a pervasive evangelical inferiority complex. This means that, while we do not wish to\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-teaching"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/991\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}