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Lints (1993), a Life-Encompassing Evangelical Theology

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Given that Lints' book, The Fabric of Theology, is getting pretty dated, what has changed in the past 25 years that might be reflected if it were written today?

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Solution Summary

Lints (1993) seeks to reorient an evangelical audience to a life-encompassing theology that he roots in such confessional case studies as Luther, Calvin, Edwards, and Vos. He argues that US evangelicals as a religious body owe their contemporary impudence to their willingly becoming enmeshed in the post-modern compartmentalization of public life and culture. This response addresses the main ways in which US public life have changed from 1993 to the present (2020), and how Lints' text may be updated. These changes are organized as changes in 1. technology and use; 2. politics; and 3. the sites of theology. In many ways, these changes show reinforcing of global village and ecumenical, non-denomination tendencies. In others, the evangelical movement is experiencing unprecedented division.

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1. Given that Lints' book, The Fabric of Theology, is getting pretty dated, what has changed in the past 25 years that might be reflected if it were written today?

Since your question specifically asks about the ways in which events since publication (1993) might affect Lints' book, I am going to try to keep my answer within that scope. The first thing you need to do is ensure that you have thoroughly read the text and digested its main arguments, and I will write assuming this is the case. A few points will suffice:
1. Lints locates the gap that his book seeks to address as being the contemporary ghettoization of evangelicals in the US
2. He asserts that evangelicals face a problem of comfortably existing as a subculture within mainstream post-modern culture (i.e. "Christian" brand this and that entertainment)
3. He calls for evangelicals to reflect on their own identity (the movement's inter-denominational history) and biases impacting their theology (disregard of Reformation-era confessions specific to each denomination). This involves reviewing post-modern (i.e. biased toward subjectivity) criticism of modernism (i.e. biased toward feigning objectivity). Briefly, Lints asserts the authority of the Bible (as objective), but calls for acknowledging our own subjective limits (the "filters" of culture, tradition and reason)
4. He offers a "redemptive history" lens as means of creating a unified theology, unity being of utmost importance (in p. 73 he points to the purpose of salvation as including the practical living of lives that give glory to God as a testimony). An overarching "theistic matrix" of presuppositions is needed as an antidote to what Kuyper points to as our "darkened understanding."

Lints argues that contemporary evangelical theology (ca. 1993) lacked a unified "theology of life" (in which the Bible is applied to every aspect of one's life) and focused on specific public debates (i.e. abortion), compartmentalizing theology from virtue, character, and the "fruits of the Spirit." In this way, says Lints, modern evangelicals accommodate relativism. Problematically, they overlook the "story" character of the Bible (as argued by Vos, the early twentieth century, confessional, Reformed theologian of Princeton, to whom Lints devotes a chapter and considerable attention). The disjointed nature of evangelical theology Lints connects to the "schizophrenic" nature of TV images and of modern ...

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