Carson & Keller Have Boundary Issues

There is a great post from D. A. Carson and Tim Keller on The Gospel Coalition site today discussing the boundaries of evangelicalism. The post is related to the ongoing discussion related to James MacDonald and The Elephant Room (cf. DB).


As Carson and Keller state, part of the problem is that we tend to  ask the wrong question when faced with these "boundary" issues.

"Sometimes this way of thinking leads to hopelessly bad questions such as, "What is the least I must believe in order to be called an evangelical?"---the answer to which often generates reductionistic approaches to evangelism and horribly emaciated lowest-common-denominator versions of the gospel. Why not rather ask, "How can I give a theologically rich definition of evangelicalism that faithfully reflects the whole counsel of God?" Worse, inside the boundary there is so little agreed tough-minded confessionalism that love for the truth and a deep knowledge of the Bible and historical and systematic theology are rarely encouraged."

To read the entire post click here. [via TC]


p.s. - I'm really looking forward to more of what Carson has to say on the topic when his book Evangelicalism is finally released.