Why I do not care to engage neo-fundamentalists in dialogue

Last updated on: August 18, 2011 at 7:26 pm by Roger E. Olson

Why I do not care to engage neo-fundamentalists in dialogue 2011-08-18T19:26:36-05:00 Roger E. Olson

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Occasionally here I have mentioned that one thing that really gets my ire up is when some neo-fundamentalists stoop to unethical means to undermine their theological opponents. I alluded to the fact it has happened to me–especially with regard to open theism.

As everyone knows, I’m not an open theist but I have defended open theism as a legitimate evangelical option. I personally knew Clark Pinnock and know Greg Boyd, John Sanders and William Hasker. These were/are godly men who base their views of God’s foreknowledge on Scripture and not on accommodation to modernity, as they are sometimes accused of.

Just because I have come to their defense against neo-fundamentalist critics I have been slandered and my words and intentions misrepresented and even distorted publicly with the apparent intention to harm my reputation and possibly my career. I also suspect in some cases the intention is to harm the institution where I teach.

This kind of behavior is so common, unfortunately, that I have publicly given up on dialogue with these neo-fundamentalists; I do not trust them. Some have written here and to me by e-mail saying I should never give up on dialogue with fellow evangelicals.

Let me now cite a case study of why I do this.

In 2002 a dean of a Southern Baptist seminary wrote and released through the Baptist Press an article about open theism entitled “Cooperative Baptists, Texas partners ponder whether God knows the future.” (Baptist Press articles such as this are often picked up by state Baptist newspapers.)

Here is what the seminary dean said about me: “Olson, who calls himself ‘open to open theism,’ denies that he is an open theist, but calls the new view more biblical than the traditional orthodox view of God as all-knowing, all-powerful and unchanging.”

When I saw that I was absolutely stunned. I have never called open theism that or described it that way. If I thought that about it, I would be an open theist! (Of course, the description of the “traditional orthodox view of God” is also true of open theism! Every open theist I know believes God is all-knowing, all-powerful unchanging (in character).

When I challenged the seminary dean about this and asked for his source (he never interviewed me for his article or any other time) he cited my endorsement of Greg Boyd’s book “God of the Possible” at amazon.com where I wrote that the book’s view of open theism is more biblical than the caricatures of open theism offered by some of its critics.

I e-mailed the seminary dean and the executive head of the Baptist Press (and my former colleague who also teaches at SBTS) pointing out that what I wrote about Boyd’s book hardly amounts to what he reported me saying about open theism. His paraphrase isn’t even a paraphrase of what I said. It amounts to a complete fabrication! And attributing it to me could have damaged me in certain circles.

I demanded a retraction, but, to the best of my knowledge, it was not forthcoming. Even my former colleague and “friend” who now teaches theology at that seminary defended his dean’s attribution of that statement to me based on what I wrote about Boyd’s book and other things I have said in defense of open theism. (I have never said anything even close to that about it! I have always only defended it as a valid evangelical option and not a heresy.)

This and several similar incidents like it led me to believe there is no point in trying to have dialogue with neo-fundamentalists like this. After that event I do not trust them. By “neo-fundamentalist” I do not mean every conservative evangelical; I mean those who are so dedicated to the truth of their own theology that they are apparently willing to use almost any means including dishonesty to counter alternative evangelical beliefs and to discredit those who hold them or defend them as legitimate evangelical options.

I could cite other examples of the same kind of behavior. One well-known conservative evangelical theologian claimed publicly that Greg Boyd embraced Charles Hartshorne’s process theological perspective in his dissertation published under the title Trinity and Process. In fact, what Boyd said there was that he embraces the relational worldview while rejecting Hartshorne process theology. In his dissertation Boyd used Jonathan Edwards relational view of God in his reflections on the Trinity to offer an alternative to Hartshorne’s process theism.

I have cited other examples here earlier.

Unfortunately, there are neo-fundamentalists working within evangelical circles spreading lies and misrepresentations about others’ theological views. These people ought to be exposed publicly by major evangelical publishers. Years ago Eternity magazine published a series of articles criticizing Bill Gothard. As I have mentioned here before, Joe Bayly, an evangelical writer and columnist for Eternity, made it a regular feature of his articles to criticize bad behavior among evangelicals. We need that again.

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