It’s interesting how the majority of contemporary conservative Reformed theologians seem to be stuck (very contentedly) in the 16th century in regards to thinking and worldview, whereas those whom they would consider “liberal” are the ones who are actively engaging the culture and people.
“After a major historical turning point, a society does not necessarily continue in its old construal of reality or its old morality. If anything, the new questions that the church confronts after a temporal break in a familiar society may be more challenging than those that it encounters in a newly invaded society. Thus the churches of northern Europe and North America have yet to master spiritually or conceptually the suddenly revealed nihilistic impetus of late Western modernity. What, for example, does marriage mean in a society that values all sexual acts solely by the personal benefits they provide the pair? As it becomes plain that surrounding culture accepts and indeed promotes “marriages” that are not constituted by the scriptural mandate of permanent union between male and female, the church musk ask: Why exactly are unions that are constituted by that mandate entitled to the special recognition that the church presumes? And indeed, how shall the church preserve their place even in its own community? The old maxims are plainly not up to the challenge, and the replacements now being put into place are even less so.”
Robert Jenson, Canon and Creed (p. 65)
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