#174 – A conservative scholar critiques our liberal theology

This is the conversation that motivated me to start Season Six: the book that got me questioning whether “my [liberal] faith was in vain”

Folks, this interview is the one that rebooted the podcast!  The previous three episodes that started Season Six were all a lead-up to this conversation.  It was an article written by our guest today — Dr. Roger Olson, Professor Emeritus of Theology at Baylor University, one of the biggest religious universities in the United States, and the biggest Baptist University in the world — that got me seriously questioning whether I was allowed to still call myself a Christian. That article  — Why I wrote Against Liberal Theology — caught me at a time when I was getting very comfortable in my liberal/Progressive Christian skin, and very disillusioned with the Christianity of my Fundamentalist Evangelical past.  It prompted a deep introspective dive into what DO I really believe (or not believe) … and why?

In this conversation — a very calm, collegial, and respectful one by the way! — we asked Dr. Olson to define liberal Christian theology and explain why he sees it as “heresy.” We also asked him to define orthodox Christian theology (essentially, the Nicene Creed), the gospel message, and the label “Christian.”  We talked about whether Christianity truly has an unchanging core tradition set over a millennium ago by the church fathers, or whether it has always been evolving.  Other stopping points in our conversation included: miracles, the resurrection of Jesus, the Wesleyan quadrilateral, naturalism, and Carl Sagan.  And in the last part of our conversation, I asked for his comments about my very liberal Christian view on the human condition and our need for salvation — a view that, I’ll admit, looks very different from the traditional, “orthodox” view — and about my insistence on using the label “Christian.” 

Truth be told, it was a great conversation, and I highly recommend Dr. Olson’s book — Against Liberal Theology: putting the brakes on Progressive Christianity — to any listeners who “want to hear both sides of the story” on the conservative/liberal Christian spectrum.

Next week, we’ll talk to an equally prominent theologian from the liberal end of the theological spectrum. In fact, one whom Dr. Olson frequently mentions in his book and in our conversation as perhaps the absolute best representative since Friedrich Schleiermacher of the Liberal Christian Theological movement that he was targeting in his book! 

As always, tell us your thoughts …

Find more information about Dr. Roger Olson at the Patheos web-site that now hosts his blog posts, and find his many books at Amazon, including the one we discuss in this episode: Against Liberal Theology: putting the brakes on Progressive Christianity.

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