Machen on McLaren: A New Kind of Liberal?

Posted by John Ronning

I heard a paper of the above title read by Michael Wittmer at the recently held annual convention of the Evangelical Theological Society, Providence, RI (the paper was read on November 20).  Wittmer teaches theology at the Grand Rapids Theological Seminary, and blogs at www.mikewittmer.wordpress.com.  The title is a take-off on one of McLaren's: A New Kind of Christian.

The gist of the paper is that McLaren seems to have a lot in common with the liberals Machen dealt with 75 years ago.  He's also different in that he acknowledges (or says he does) things that orthodox Christians do.

As we have noted elsewhere, McLaren's new kind of liberalism is a syncretistic religion; a syncretism of old style liberalism and evangelical Christianity.

Mike's paper is available here.  Also see his post on ETS Memories where he discusses some of the reaction to his paper (also see the comments; mine from Dec 2 will be of interest to BTS alumni; I note that John Franke was listed in the program as a rep. of both BTS and Emergent Village).

 A summary of the paper is also posted at the A-Team Blog.