Page History

...

5. This second typology ought not to be confused with the more familiar one generated by distinguishing between the contemporary situation, on the one hand, and the Christian tradition, on the other. Ordinarily, this more familiar typology distinguishes three main positions  -  from "left," through "center," to "right." But it, too, can be nuanced so as to yield five, rather than simply three, main positions, especially if one allows the extreme opposite positions  -  Types 1 and 5  --  to be represented respectively by a secularism concerned only with the contemporary situation and a fundamentalism concerned only with the Christian tradition. Type 3, then, can be represented by a genuinely (i.e., revised, or postliberalpost-liberal) revisionary theology, while Type 2 is represented by the kind of theology that seeks to do justice to the Christian tradition precisely by doing justice to the contemporary situation, and Type 4, by the kind of theology that does the opposite, seeking to do justice to the contemporary situation precisely by doing justice to the Christian tradition. Perhaps another, and possibly better, way of formulating this alternative typology would be to distinguish between ways of being relatively critical or uncritical of the contemporary situation and of the Christian tradition respectively. Thus Type 1 theologians are relatively critical of the Christian tradition, but relatively uncritical of the contemporary situation, while Type 5 theologians are exactly the opposite. And so on.

...