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The foundational problem with modernism is that it is anti-supernaturalist. The most foundational difficulty with the anti supernaturalism of the modernist is that he has an anti-Christian conception of God. For the modernist God is either totally immanent. That is He is 'down here' and not transcendent, or he is so totally transcendent as to be a sort of deist God who is 'out there' and does not intervene. What the modernist theologian cannot believe in is a God who is both immanent and transcendent--a God who is 'out there' but who touches this world and ultimately enters this world through the incarnation.

Fr. Longenecker is engaged in building a strawman here, based on the dread word, "modernist." (Whatever that means....)

I seriously doubt that Fr. Longenecker is truly unable to find even a single "modernist theologian" who is able to believe in a "God who is both immanent and transcendent." It sounds like wonderful reason to leave ... but I suspect that the good Father is telling a lie.

Don't get me wrong: there's plenty wrong with what passes for theology in the Anglican churches (on both the "revisionist" and "orthodox" sides, it must be noted). But to simply condemn Anglicanism on the basis of an ill-defined epithet is not helpful; and it's not honest, either.

Over the past few years I've had the unpleasant opportunity to see at close hand the sorts of arguments that are unleashed by clergy engaged in self-justification. Fr. Longenecker's screed positively reeks with it.