Whoever made up the 'what one generation believes, the next generation assumes, and the next generation denies' thing? Is it even true? Or is it just a bat we use to belt the person who sits slightly to the left of us?
I've heard reference to the Bloomsbury Set being two generations down from the Clapham Sect. Virginia Woolf is demonstrably in this category. And it certainly backs up the point.
However, when I've heard it expressed, it hasn't been a fatalistic statement, but a cautionary possibility.
It's Don Carson. He says it lots. E.g. here (but also in Q&As all over the place): http://www.acts29network.org/article/put-the-advance-of-the-gospel-at-the-center-of-your-aspirations/
"In a fair bit of Western evangelicalism, there is a worrying tendency to focus on the periphery. [My] colleague … Dr. Paul Hiebert … springs from Mennonite stock and analyzes his heritage in a fashion that he himself would acknowledge is something of a simplistic caricature, but a useful one nonetheless. One generation of Mennonites believed the gospel and held as well that there were certain social, economic, and political entailments. The next generation assumed the gospel, but identified with the entailments. The following generation denied the gospel: the “entailments” became everything. Assuming this sort of scheme for evangelicalism, one suspects that large swaths of the movement are lodged in the second step, with some drifting toward the third."
I love our pastor Sandy's use of it in his address at moderator in 2011 http://pcnsw.org.au/images/stories/pulse-pdfs/august11pulse_web.pdf (page 6)
What do you mean?
ReplyDeleteI've heard reference to the Bloomsbury Set being two generations down from the Clapham Sect. Virginia Woolf is demonstrably in this category. And it certainly backs up the point.
ReplyDeleteHowever, when I've heard it expressed, it hasn't been a fatalistic statement, but a cautionary possibility.
It's Don Carson. He says it lots. E.g. here (but also in Q&As all over the place): http://www.acts29network.org/article/put-the-advance-of-the-gospel-at-the-center-of-your-aspirations/
ReplyDelete"In a fair bit of Western evangelicalism, there is a worrying tendency to focus on the periphery. [My] colleague … Dr. Paul Hiebert … springs from Mennonite stock and analyzes his heritage in a fashion that he himself would acknowledge is something of a simplistic caricature, but a useful one nonetheless. One generation of Mennonites believed the gospel and held as well that there were certain social, economic, and political entailments. The next generation assumed the gospel, but identified with the entailments. The following generation denied the gospel: the “entailments” became everything. Assuming this sort of scheme for evangelicalism, one suspects that large swaths of the movement are lodged in the second step, with some drifting toward the third."
I love our pastor Sandy's use of it in his address at moderator in 2011 http://pcnsw.org.au/images/stories/pulse-pdfs/august11pulse_web.pdf (page 6)
-Lachlan B