Well, whatever else you think of Armstrong’s article, he’s got this part dead on:

My solution to this problem is sacramental. It is not neo-orthodox, though some will say it is. And it is not irrational, or against logic. The fundamentalist spirit will insist on saying this too. By this means the spirit of fundamentalism will not have to deal with what I am actually saying. It can put a “label” on it. If you wish to oppose something this method will generally work, since it ends all discussion. You can almost always get people to agree with a label. Call a person, or position, liberal, or conservative in some cases, and there is no need to seriously ponder the arguments being made.

He couldn’t be more correct. Imagine a parishioner in a “Truly Reformed” church coming to his pastor with a book handed to him by a friend who highly recommended it. This parishioner is excited about the book, because he sees the excitement in his friend’s response. He wants to know what his TR pastor thinks of the book before diving into it.

The book is by N.T. Wright.

“Wright’s a postmodern,” the good TR pastor replies. “You don’t want to read the shoddy theology of a postmodern.” End of discussion, in many cases. The simple label is a catch-all defense against anything that doesn’t fit neatly into the TR theology.