I appreciate a lot in this comment, Eddie.
I particularly see value in the careful distinction you draw in saying that what you see in the EC movement reflects sea changes in the wider Evangelical community. I also agree that while there has always been a diversity of views about providence and free will within Protestantism, at least in the circles I ran in growing up a couple of decades ago (which were reasonably diverse), Open Theism as a position was always considered outside the bounds of historical orthodoxy. That does seem to be changing in some quarters.
I continue to disagree with you that it is reasonable to line up all BioLogos writers and demand they clarify their views on theology. Sure, you don’t comment this way on Dennis’s blog posts — but in response to this blog post, you state that (emphasis mine)
and this includes Dennis, even if that’s not maybe what you intended. You repeat it again when in this last comment you reference
I still don’t see this as reasonable. It still feels like a witch hunt to me.
Nevertheless I see your point about conversations being dropped. I wasn’t there for most of those conversations, but I don’t doubt your account. Brad may be able to correct you as he corrected MATT (his caps) in the other thread, but your account doesn’t seem unlikely.
In response, my tentative gut-level synthesis (as one very much on the periphery of things and not at all qualified to give an informed opinion) is that I ought to pray that BioLogos might find some vocal scholars on the philosophy / theology / history side of things that are as careful about minding traditional boundaries of orthodoxy as (for instance) you are, yet who are equally adamant that we embrace at least most of the scientific consensus view (and I’m not getting into Neo-Darwinian vs. other evolutionary views, etc. here). It seems that many of the big-name public academics that seem drawn to their programme — I’m thinking here of the likes of Enns, Polkinghorne, Wright, Giberson, and others, though obviously these are all in very different places along the Scale of American Evangelical Acceptability — are more comfortable with outside-the-box thinking in other areas as well. This unfortunately lends weight to the slippery-slope fears of conservative anti-evolutionists, in what then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we had more folks like, say, Tim Keller, who are careful to hew to their Evangelical bona fides, but who could (perhaps unlike Tim Keller) take the conversation still deeper into the gritty academic particulars of the historical / theological / philosophical questions you touch on in your comment here, perhaps BioLogos could gain more traction.
I suspect that pestering the existing columnists about their personal views ad nauseam (my unflattering perspective on your comments, if you’ll forgive me the frankness) may not be particularly productive, but I do see how the lack of which you speak is probably real, and for the success of BioLogos itself, I pray they are able to fill it.