Evaluating theologians

Ben has opened a poll on the ‘world’s best living theologian’ here. His list of contenders itself will raise plenty of eyebrows (isn’t David Bentley Hart a bit, well, new on the block to be a contender? I’d say the same of Milbank, even, although he has at least written more than one significant book) and generate plenty of comments. Me? I vote for Augustine, on the basis of Lk 20:38… The interesting question it raised in my mind is how one assesses such a category. What is ‘good’ theology, and what makes a particular theologian ‘the best’? Some answers look attractive, but probably need to be dismissed because they are inoperable as criteria: the ‘best’ theologian is not the ‘most right’, or else who would judge? (At present, I have to assume my own theology is the best on this criterion, because, uniquely I believe, I do not hold to any positions I consider to be wrong…) Is the best theologian merely the cleverest? Or the one with the deepest knowledge of the tradition? (In that case the winner is almost certainly some French Roman Catholic monk none of us have heard of…) Or the widest knowledge of contemporary thought? (Milbank might well win on that criterion.) I think a good theologian prays well, first. No theologian who doesn’t has even begun to understand the discipline. And then s/he serves the Church, and his or her particular part of it (down to a local congregation) in humility and faithfulness. Theology belongs to the Church; any theologian divorced from the Church is a bad theologian, however brilliant or knowledgeable. A good theologian has a grasp of gospel values, and would swap everything s/he has written to see one sinner repent, or one broken life healed. A good theologian writes and speaks only to help the Church be more faithful to the gospel, bringing whatever knowledge of the tradition, whatever insight into contemporary modes of thought, and whatever native cleverness s/he may possess, all into service of this one end. A good theologian is marked by humility and cheerfulness, knowing how far short of the mystery of God and God’s works his/her best efforts fall, and knowing that in the good grace of God something of lasting worth may still come from them. A good theologian, finally, does know something, and has some capacity of thought, and so can make a contribution through his/her God-given vocation. I am not a very good...

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Evangelical ecclesiology (2)

Andy and Michael have raised an interesting issue in comments on this post. Andy had claimed that ‘evangelicalism has a weak ecclesiology’; Michael countered with ‘evangelicalism has a low ecclesiology’. I actually disagree with both, as will become clear. Let me first make a distinction: a ‘low ecclesiology’ might mean a ‘low-church ecclesiology’, i.e., an eccelsiological position that tends to Presbyterian or Congregationalist polity, or it might mean a ‘low evaluation of ecclesiology’, i.e., an ecclesiological position that, whatever its account of ecclesiology, held the matter to be relatively unimportant in the scheme of theology. I take it from his post that Michael meant the latter, but the two must be distinguished: I, and many others, would identify with the ‘high chapel’ tradition which is low in the first sense but emphatically not in the second. (I’ve quoted Smyth elsewhere: ‘Is not the visible church of the New Testament with all the ordinances thereof the chief and principal part of the Gospel?’–is there, anywhere, a higher ecclesiology in the second sense?) Now, what of the ecclesiology of Evangelicalism? Is it either ‘weak,’ or ‘low’ in the second sense? I contend that there are enough counter-examples to render either conclusion untenable. The Wesley brothers held a high ecclesiology in both senses of the word, as my previous post indicated; Edwards’ ecclesiology was low-church, but strongly held (he lost his ministry because he refused to compromise on questions of church membership and qualifications for communion). Whitefield, in complete contrast, did have a weak or low ecclesiology. In the nineteenth century, many of the more radical Evangelicals had strongly-held, if low-church, ecclesiologies. Edward Irving and John Nelson Darby are obvious examples; Thomas Chalmers split the Kirk over questions of ecclesiology in 1843, which is hardly the action of someone careless of ecclesiological questions! Across the Atlantic, the anti-missions movement points to an astonishingly strong Baptist ecclesiology. I also think Spurgeon held to a strong ecclesiology, but recognise that this is more contentious… In the twentieth century, Lloyd-Jones’ somewhat ill-tempered and unclear strictures in 1966 at least implied that he felt that ecclesiological questions were important; the Restorationist strand of the (British) charismatic movement was strongly committed to its distinctive ecclesiological positions. Today, look at something like 9Marks: there is an intense focus on certain ecclesiological positions, including accounts of the proper offices of the church and qualifications for ministry, as essential to the gospel. It happens that I disagree with at least some of the positions they urge on both points; their ecclesiology cannot be dismissed as ‘low’ or ‘weak’, however. Of course, Whitefield too has his heirs, particularly in Britain amongst Anglican Evangelicals, but not exclusively. In the wider Evangelical world, The London Missionary Society forbade its missionaries from teaching on ecclesiological matters; the origins of the Salvationist repudiation of sacraments lies in a desire on Booth’s part to focus on gospel, rather than structures; and so on. So, I do not think that ‘Evangelicalism’ has either a weak or a low ecclesiology; I would be prepared to accept that Anglican Evangelicals, after the Tracts for the Times, have found it impossible to hold to a strong ecclesiology, and that others have sometimes followed the same course; but there is no uniformity visible in the history that I know (mainly, British, I own). Evangelicalism as a whole has no distinctive or common ecclesiology (just as ‘Arminianism’ as a whole has no...

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‘Unreal city’

This blog went live on the 16th of December, receiving four views, according to the WordPress stats counter. Today, that counter topped 5000. I imagine long-term theobloggers like Andy, Jason and particularly Ben will regard that as pretty paltry, and I am sure that WordPress set it up to maximise the numbers (their business depends on encouraging their bloggers, after all), but it seems a big enough number to make the blog feel worthwhile. Thanks to all who have stopped by or blogged about this blog, and particularly to all who have engaged in debate. Although (looking at the stats) if you were one or more of the 97 visits on Christmas day, you probably should have had something better to do… (Incidentally, if anyone is wondering, all the ‘admin’ posts have titles taken, like the blog title, from Eliot’s ‘The Wasteland’, and hopefully not totally unrelated to the topic of the post. For this one, the choice was between ‘unreal city’, ‘I had not thought death had undone so many’ and ‘hypocrite...

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Evangelical ecclesiology

Andy has asked in a comment on the previous post about a lack of ecclesiology in Evangelical theology. This bears some reflection. Historically, one of the decisive early decisions that made Evangelicalism a distinctive movement was a refusal to let ecclesiological differences divide it. For some (Whitefield, e.g.), this meant ecclesiology was totally unimportant; for others it remained really very important, but they would work across the boundaries nevertheless (John Wesley agonised over whether he could ordain preachers for the American mission, despite not being in episcopal orders; he eventually decided to take this step, horrifying his brother Charles–who left some manuscript verses about the decision, including the lines: ‘The pious Mantle o’er his Dotage spread, / With silent tears his shameful Fall deplore, / And let him sink, forgot, among the dead / And mention his unhappy name no more’–fairly vitriolic things to say about your own brother!) This has been a continual tension in British Evangelicalism: when Bible Society was founded, it nearly fell apart because some Baptists wanted to insist that baptizo be translated ‘immerse’ in all its publications. Around the same time, the rise of the Brethren movement linked Scriptural faith to particular ecclesiological stances, notably separation. More recently, the debate between Lloyd-Jones and Stott over whether Evangelicals should come out of the historical denominations still reverberates. (Although the folk-memories often enough bear little resemblance to what actually went on in October 1966, judging by the historical reports that are available.) The decision to put ecclesiological matters to one side in order to concentrate on shared missional commitments has, regularly, drifted into a suggestion that ecclesiological matters are not important (see my essay in the Cambridge Companion to Evangelical Theology for some instances); but it need not. Evangelicalism is not, however, a denomination, marked by a shared ecclesiological position. I suspect that most developed Baptist ecclesiologies are, as it happens, Evangelical, and a few years back Tim Bradshaw could develop a specifically Evangelical Anglican ecclesiology in The Olive Branch, but in both cases the denomimnational qualifiers are rather decisive. On this basis, I suspect that there isn’t such a thing as ‘evangelical ecclesiology’, but this does not necessarily mean that many or most Evangelicals are not ecclesiologically interested or...

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Evangelicalism divided?

I have seen/heard several comments in the last few weeks about the divided state of contemporary British Evangelicalism. Rob Warner’s book, Reinventing English Evangelicalism, has attracted a fair amount of attention, not least because of his central role in some of the debates he reflects on in the book. Andy Goodliff has begun a review here, and Jim Gordon has posted two parts of his own review here and here. Both focus in part on Warner’s account of the growing divisions in English Evangelicalism through the 1980s to the present. In addition, this month’s Christianity magazine has a feature article by Andy Peck (an excerpt can be read here) entitled ‘Evangelicals United?’ which is in many ways a re-presentation and popularisation of Pete Ward’s ‘tribes of evangelicalism’ thesis. All these accounts start with David Bebbington’s ‘Quadrilateral,’ from his classic book Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s. David had argued that, historically, if we were to look for the uniting features of those people and groupings that were regarded as ‘Evangelical’, four broad themes would emerge: biblicism; christocentrism; crucicentrism; and activism. Reading the reviews of Warner’s book (my copy is on order…) and Peck’s article, both then recall a time in the 1950s or 1960s when Evangelicalism did appear united to the authors, and chart how Evangelical growth in numbers, influence, and confidence since then has led to fracture and disunity. Andy says this in his summary of the book: Warner’s thesis ‘seeks to build upon Bebbington’s Evangelicalism in Modern Britain‘, but identifies a rather more dynamic model of ‘twin and rival axes within pan-evangelicalism that energise the dynamic of evangelical rivalries, experiments and evolution’ (20). There are two things happening, firstly there are the group of active-orientated entrepreneurs, who make up the conversionist-activist axis – those who are engaged in Spring Harvest, March for Jesus, Alpha, and what was in the 1980s and 90s a growing worship industry. Secondly, there are the more theologically-orientated group, who make up the biblicist-crucicentric axis – those who are concerned with doctrine and often the formulating and guarding the doctrinal core of evangelical convictions’ (20). The book is thus divided into two parts, exploring historically and theologically these two axes. [Where does the third quotation start, Andy? I expect better from my former students!] Jim states that ‘The last 20 years have seen a process of increasing polarisation, as Evangelicalism has gone through a period of reinvention, redefinition and realignment.’ and explores the same basic theme that Andy picked up on: The historic movement of pan-Evangelicalism, has in the past been held together despite many internal tensions, by agreed principles generously interpreted …. What Warner argues is that in late 20th century English Evangelicalism, these four essentials in the Evangelical bar code have through a process of bifurcation split the Evangelical movement into two axes. The first is the crucicentric biblicist axis which is essentially Reformed, doctrinally defensive, leans heavily towards fundamentalism and is increasingly separatist. The other is the conversionist activist axis, which is entrepreneurial in style, pragmatic in approach and mainly driven by and ecclesial pragmatism baptised in the Spirit, but less doctrinally precise. Both are increasingly discredited. I ought to declare an interest here: I presently chair what used to be the Evangelical Alliance Commission on Unity and Truth amongst Evangelicals (ACUTE), although the first decision under my chairing was to re-name it (to an even longer mouthful!). But my concern with this picture is not because I have anything invested in pretending that the Evangelical movement is more united than it is (if anything, unless there is more than Andy and Jim are saying, I think Warner misses the truly toxic potential divisions which may yet happen, and which, if they do, will get entangled with the politics of ethnicity). Rather, it is because I am interested in Evangelical history. The account of increasing division Warner and Peck give is true, but only in the way that political statistics are always true: it is easy to demonstrate decline or increase by carefully choosing the starting point. Evangelicalism in the 1950s in Britain was united and uniform, surprisingly so: the old ‘liberal’ and ‘centrist’ wings of the movement, significant before the Second World War, had declined, and a moderate conservatism held sway. My reading of British Evangelical history, however, is that the 1950s represent an astonishing moment of uniformity, unparalleled in history before or since, rather than a norm against which other things may be measured. Evangelicalism has always been a pluriform movement; in some ways, its chief genius since the 1730s has been its ability to hold together...

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