On believing and being a Christian, or reflecting on one of the "hard" parts of the creed

I love to read blogs, at least most of the time, and I enjoy the academic aspects of the Christian faith: the questions of authorship of the various documents of the Bible, the theology the various authors exhibit, the scope and content of the gospel message first preached and passed down by the apostles, and it goes on and on. But every once in a while, I'm jarred by a post, jarred back to what it is all about. And a beautiful post by theologian Ben Myers over at Faith and Theology did that for me today. I'll get out of the way now and just say simply, "read it."

Striving to become young, and grateful to be found in Christ,
James

Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy

In Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, Metaxas has given us a very readable biography of one of the most remarkable characters of the twentieth century. Bonhoeffer's theological impact is large and continues to be felt widely, his ecumenical connections and his role in the church struggle in Germany propelled him to prominence in the fight against Nazism, and his role in the plots to remove Hitler gave him a place in the military and political history of the Second World War. So he is certainly a man to be reckoned with. Where Metaxas's biography shines is as he seeks to convey the deep conviction and faith that animated Bonhoeffer's thinking and living. A deeply academic man, with a broad education, he also took very seriously the living and practice of his faith. And Metaxas's biography is careful to trace this stream as he moves smoothly through the various important periods in Bonhoeffer's life. Bonhoeffer biography, in fact Bonhoeffer scholarship as a whole, is contested ground these days. Stephen Haynes wrote a book in 2004, The Bonhoeffer Phenomenon, that sought to show the various ways Bonhoeffer has been interpreted (or even co-opted) by various and diverse groups, how his remembrance goes from technical theological interaction to something approaching hagiography. Simply the presence of his popular Cost of Discipleship as a frequent must-read book among young evangelicals and the popularity of his idea of "religionless Christianity" among liberal scholars shows the breadth of interest in him. On the whole, I think Metaxas has navigated the rough waters well. He doesn't seem to excessively elevate Bonhoeffer, noting for instance that his family rarely if ever went to church while he was growing up or that his father was mostly opposed to religion, but he also doesn't shy away from Bonhoeffer's evident and deep faith that drove his thinking and acting. Instead he presents Bonhoeffer as a vibrant and scholarly Christian dedicated to living a life devoted to God but also willing to wade into complex waters without seeking simplistic answers but instead seeking to faithfully live as a disciple of Jesus. I greatly enjoyed this book, and was deeply inspired again by Bonhoeffer's life and his writings, which are liberally but not overwhelmingly excerpted and quoted throughout the narrative. Metaxas tells the story of Bonhoeffer's education and travels, details his involvement with the Confessing Church and its seminary, highlights his major theological writings without focusing on them in detail, and chronicles his involvement in the plots to kill HItler. It is compelling reading, and I highly recommend it.

Alister McGrath, The Passionate Intellect

I loved this book. Alister McGrath is one of the most distinguished scholars in the evangelical world. He spent 25 years teaching historical and systematic theology at Oxford University and is now head of the Centre for Theology, Religion & Culture at King's College, London. He also holds Doctorates from Oxford in both historical theology and molecular biophysics. And he has also written broadly at both an academic and more popular level, focusing especially on historical theology, the interplay of science and theology, and most recently of a Christian response to the New Atheism of Richard Dawkins and others. This all means he is ideally placed to comment in this present book on the importance of theological thinking and the importance of careful consciousness of the traditions of the past as living voices for the church today. The first half of the book is a series of investigations into the sources and methods of theology and an application of these methods to a couple of important theological questions--the role of ambiguity in faith, a Christian understanding of nature, and the role of apologetics and its relation to theology. The second half of the book is a series of essays engaging with important issues in our current culture from a historically oriented theological perspective. These essays focus on two main issues, the proper relation between science and theology and the (closely related) possibility of a robust Christian response to the new athiesm of Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens. And it is here that this book especially shines. McGrath's readable and lucid descriptions of how science and theology may be fruitfully related are outstanding and point in far more fruitful directions than are often assumed to be possible when the relationship is thought to be one of conflict instead of "reasonance" as McGrath describes it.

This book is a series of lectures given in 2008-9. This gives them a timely feel, as he addresses contemporary issues, and it also give the book a nice conversational and approachable tone. But, unlike many volumes of lectures, these have been been carefully reworked so they cohere nicely and smoothly and are well-annotated with relevant citations. This book demonstrates again McGrath's amazingly wide reading across historical and contemporary theology, philosophy, the natural sciences, sociology and literature, though he wears this learning lightly. His prose is always clear, and he makes his points efficiently. In all, I really loved this book. It was enjoyable to read and reinvigorated my passion for theology, even as it presented helpful directions for cultural engagement in our postmodern and post-Christian world.

The Passing of Theologian Donald Bloesch

Michael Bird at Euangelion notes the passing of theologian Donald Bloesch. I am very saddened to hear of his death. I have greatly appreciated his thoughtful theological writing. Bloesch, most notably for me, was an evangelical who remained within his mainline tradition (United Church of Christ), and wrote out of that context. This helped produce, I think, a wonderful blend of the biblical, historical, and theological. He drew heavily, though not uncritically, on Karl Barth. His great 7-volume systematic theology, Christian Foundations, contains some real jems: I especially appreciate God the Almighty, Holy Scripture,  and The Holy Spirit. I found great solace in his writing, especially as I myself was seeking to do theology out of a mainline context throughout Seminary while maintaining my evangelical sensibilities, and in fact seeking to enrich my thinking in both ways (drawing on the wonderful riches of the mainline heritage, i my case Lutheran, while also preserving the great and deep evangelical currents and especially the close ties to the Bible). Bloesch served as a great encouragement in this sense as this is precisely what his project accomplishes.

I recall one particular enlightenment I gained from him, on how to think through the meaning and purpose of the sacraments. It was through Bloesch that I gained an appreciation for the great nourishment and value of the sacraments, and how they could and would be a locus of the activity of the Holy Spirit, without at the same time falling prey to a view that attributes some type of automatic or salvation-giving power to the action in and of itself.

In all, I owe a great debt to Bloesch, and will continue to gain great insight from his work, which I richly commend. May he rest overjoyed in God's gracious presence.

Kevin Vanhoozer, The Drama of Doctrine

My blogging has been erratic of late, and I've had Vanhoozer's The Drama of Doctrine sitting on my desk to review for a couple months now, waiting for the time and the ambition to take on such a substantial task. I'd just skip it and move on, except it was such a spectacular book I have to at least make note of it.

I have to start by saying that I loved this book. Though it was over my head at points (he enters into many important theological discussions about theological method which I have but only a surface familiarity with, not to mention the philosophical theology and hermeneutics that continually arise in his discussions), its value is obvious even without grasping or appreciating all of the finer points.

Vanhoozer gives, in essence, an apologia for the importance of doctrine, asserting that it fills the essential role of guiding the church to "demonstrate faith's understanding by living truthfully with others before God" (xii). Throughout the entire work, one of the themes that continually arises is the importance of doctrine for life, in that doctrine is not an esoteric or abstract exercise but a concrete, lived reality with the utmost practicality. I think this point, made repeatedly, is one of the most energizing in the book, as it brings an excitement to doctrine when its horizon is broadened to include the way we live.

I will not attempt here a summary of this substantive proposal about the method of doing doctrine Christianly, but will simply say that it is clearly a tour de force, anchoring Christian wisdom firmly and faithfully to Scripture all the while using a robust hermeutic to reinvigorate the Scripture principle. This all deserves a careful unpacking, but suffice it to say that he sets for the Bible as the "script" that provides the authoritative direction, the "drama" in which we find ourselves players. This brings up another important dimension of this book, the sustained metaphor of drama that provides the framework for Vanhoozer's thought. The pervasive use of such a metaphor could be a distraction, but Vanhoozer uses it to good effect, carefully building may points and relationship off of this central idea. And once you've developed an ear for the way he uses and applies the various dramatic dimensions, with actors, script, drama, dramaturge, and so on, the metaphor serves to enlighten, instead of obscure, his points. In fact, it would seem that maybe "metaphor" isn't quite the right term for the role "drama" plays, because the correlation between doctrine as "drama" and the fact to which it referrs, that doctrine involves description and prescription concerning a narrative-infused world in which we live under God means that doctrine truly is dramatic.

I have only but scratched the surface of this programmatic proposal concerning doctrine, but I hope that doesn't obscure my excited endorsement. I look forward to working through this book again in the future and digesting further its deep insights and catching again its passion for the dramatic truth of the gospel. If you have any interest in theology and the role of scripture in it, do not miss this book.

Propositions in theology

One of the major developments in "late-modern" and "post-conservative evangelical" theology is a movement away from propositions as the central and sufficient way of enshrining the gospel message. I have watched and learned of this trend with mixed emotions. I warm to it in the sense that over-focus on propositions seems to tame the gospel into information or language games. On the other hand, I am cautious about overstating the folly of propositions, because, regardless of the exact status we ascribe to propositions in our theology, there is an irreducible propositional content to our talk about God, it seems to me, even if it is variably expressed. LeRon Shults, in a post from a couple years ago, talks about propositions with regard to the emergent movement. It gives some interesting food for thought. And while I agree with him that often "statements of faith" serve as means to exclude, and am continuously drawn to an approach that seeks to focus on the center rather than fixing the boundaries, I also worry that eschewing statements of faith, even as provisional tools, is equally a cause for concern.

F. LeRon Shults, Reforming the Doctrine of God

In Reforming the Doctrine of God, LeRon Shults takes a sustained look at theology proper, but he does it with an important contemporary twist. Shults asserts that theology must be done as a "messy reciprocity between our ideas about God and everything else" (12). That is, theology is (inevitably) conditioned by our understanding of the world, just as it conditions that same understanding. It is with this basic insight in mind that he sets out to reform the doctrine of God.

Why reform? The reason, as laid out in the first part of the book, is because too much of theology has been inextricably linked with outmoded philosophical categories that see God as immaterial substance, single subject, and first cause. These categories, he asserts, lead to problems with our thinking about God that are created more by the categories than by the reality they seek to illuminate. In the second part of the book, Shults looks at a number of "late modern" trends that can prove as resources to reinvigorate our thinking about God by overcoming some of the philosophical barriers of modern thinking. Specifically, he looks at divine infinity, the trinity, and eschatological ontology as three important streams of thought that are reshaping how we think of God.

In this review, I'm not going to try to expound either of these parts in detail, for a couple of reasons. First, and probably most important, philosophical theology is not my own specialty, and I fear any summary I give would only distort his points, rather than illuminating them. Second, he draws on a broad range of streams of modern and late modern thought in his critiques and constructions, and a concise summary would not do them justice, especially if you aren't already familiar with his subjects. But, a few comments will hopefully give at least some insight in to where he is going.

Shults demonstrates, successfully, I think, that some of the classic dilemmas in theology, such as how God works in the world or how divine sovereignty and human freedom are compatible, are at least in part caused by assumptions and categories that are foreign to the Bible. His second point, worked out in part two, is that many late modern thinkers have begun to rethink some of these basic assumptions and have collectively reclaimed some important ways of thinking about God that have been too often lost or diminished in modern theological thinking. And in each chapter he surveys a number of important thinkers from a variety of perspectives, such as Karl Barth, Jürgen Moltmann, Wolfhart Pannenberg, and John Zizioulas, to show the sources and contours of these important developments. The three streams that are recovered focus on God's infinity (God is more than just "extensively" greater than creatures but is genuinely "other"), trinity (God is not a single substance or mind but is dynamic relationality in himself), and futurity (God relates to time not only as its originator but as its upholder and as its future hope and consummation). All of this is helped by what he calls a "turn to relationality" in philosophy, with a movement away from a more substance-based view of reality to the acknowledgment as relationship or relationality as basic to the constitution of what it means to be person.

It is in part three that the the real "reforming" takes place, as Shults seeks to rebuild the doctrine of God through a critical appropriation of many of the late modern trajectories into a constructive exposition of theology. He looks at God's knowing, acting, and being through the themes of omniscient faithfulness, omnipotent love, and omnipresent hope. As with the first two parts, I won't try to recreate the flow of his argument. Instead, I want to note that he takes head on three of the thorny (and fascinating) issues that confront theology, the "antinomies" of divine foreknowledge, divine predestination, and divine timelessness. In each case, he surveys the state of the discussion and proposes a way forward that liberates the discussion from the classic categories that create the problems in the first place. In each case, I found his proposals to be insightful and liberating while remaining true to the core biblical insights that provide the foundation for the discussions. Just these three discussions are easily worth the price of the book, but I think the book's greatest value is that the "solutions" to these three problems point toward a richer and more dynamic doctrine of God.

I read the whole third part of this book with growing appreciation and excitement, and I look forward to delving in to Shults's other books and seeing how his vision plays out across the various ares of theology. But I know that the groundwork laid here is deeply valuable. It certainly struck a chord with me both in its freshness and its faithfulness. I look forward to rereading these final chapters again as I reflect on who God is and how we think of him. This book is highly recommended, though it certainly contains a lot of technical language. It is at times a rather difficult read, but it will repay a careful reading. For anyone who is interested in contemporary evangelical theology, this book is essential reading, and is a profound example of a vibrant and delightful investigation and appreciation of who God is.

Allan Coppedge, The God Who Is Triune

In The God Who Is Triune, subtitled Revisioning the Christian Doctrine of God, Coppedge undertakes a systematic exposition of the doctrine of God. The key to the book, though, as its title makes clear, is that Coppedge draws on the triunity of God as the key for his reconstruction. The book opens with two chapters laying out the New Testament evidence, larger biblical "frame," and early theological developments toward understanding God as triune, making a case that understanding God as three in one and one in three, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is essential to understanding who God is. He then goes on to construct a fuller doctrine of God, covering the classic themes of God's attributes, creation, and providence, but he does it all after laying the trinitarian groundwork and in light of these fundamental insights. This makes Coppedge's book a valuable contribution to the field.

Coppedge's material on the Trinity is very well done, and I think he lays out very clearly and helpfully the essentials necessary for constrcting a theology of the Trinity. He shows much sympathy toward an Eastern approach to the Trinity that starts more from God's threeness and goes on to assert God's unity, though he also shows sympathies toward the more Western, Augistinian approach of starting from God's unity. Overall, though, this Eastern trend helps give the trinitarian drama to his whole presentation, as it keeps the vibrant interrelational life of God center stage as moves on to discuss God's being and attributes and God's relation to creation.

One of the defining insights of the book is that a Trinitiarian starting point means that when one moves to discussing God, the traditional four categories of attributes are still discussed--personal, moral, relative, and absolute--but they are approached in a different order. Coppedge begins with God's personal attributes (discussing attributes such as God's social nature, life, heart, moral capacity, freedom, creativity, and responsibility) and moral attributes. Only then does he move on to God's relative and absolute attributes. This means that God's sociality, will, freedom, and righteousness come before and exercise a controling role over attributes such as omnipotence. The result of this is that a picture of a vibrant, alive, relating God comes to the fore. This doesn't lessen God's glory or holiness, or diminish God's transcendence, but it means that who God is isn't lost in discussions of what God is capable of. Instead of focusing on God's being in himself, with a focus on God's unity as the omnipotent and omnipresent being above and beyond the universe one meets God as Father, Son, and Spirit, forever relating as living, loving, active beings who come to meet us in holiness and invite us to enter into their trine life. That, to me, is the refreshing aspect of this book. The Doctrine of God doesn't become abstract philosophical discussions about categories of being, though it does contain that, but it focuses instead on God as he makes himself known in a personal way. The focus is thereby supremely on God as made known in Jesus Christ, who becomes the key for our understanding of who God is.

I found Coppedge's expositon of the entire doctrine of God based on a trinitarian starting point to be supremely helpful. It helps to illumine all of theology by adding a relational element to God's very existence. It also points Coppedge (a Weslyan) toward an understanding of providence and freedom that entails God inviting human persons to enter into genuine relations with God and each other in true freedom. In short, I think it is one of the most helpful defenses I have read of a Weslyan (that is, essentially an Arminian) understanding of providence and free will, drawing as it does on God's very nature as the ground for its theological reasoning.

I highly recommend this book as a great resource on the doctrine of the Trinity, but more than that, I think it is essential reading for an example of how Trinity matters to all of Christian life and thought, instead of being a mere appendix to the doctrine of God to set it apart from other non-Christian expositions of theism. Not only did I benefit from it, but I enjoyed reading it. And further more, I was drawn closer to God through it, by being reminded that God isn't an amorphous being up there but is instead chooses to be known as Father, Son, and Spirit: in short, God lets us know who he is, and that's a lot more intimate than focusing on what or that God is.

Glorifying God

One of the areas of tension that I see in envangelical theology today has to do with the place and role of God's glory in our understanding of God and creation. There are streams of thought, mostly reformed in orientation, that assert God's glory is God's chief purpose in end in all that he does, while there are other streams of thought that speak more freely of God's love and God's orientation toward the other. I admit that even trying to divide the camps like this is an inadequate characture, but hopefully it gives us a place to start.

I'm currently reading Alan Coppedge, The God Who Is Triune, and he has a great perspective on this, which I will quote here:

But is gloryfing God a creation purpose or a result of creation? If gloryfing God is God's own purpose, it would seem to be a self-centered purpose rather than a self-giving purpose. Does God have some innate need to be glorified and constantly have others' attention? Alternatively, if glorifying God is a natural result of God's purpose in creation, its role changes. If glory is a result of what God has done, it leads others to God's purpose for them, and it is therefore an other-oriented factor rather than a self-centered one. From the nature of the triune, self-giving God, it seems that God's glory as a result of creation is preferable. If this is the case, then God does need to be glorified, but as a result of what he has done, not as a chief end in itself. Our shift in perspective comes with a move from seeing God primarily as sovereign King to understanding him as the tripersonal God. (272–73)

I. Howard Marshall, New Testament Theology

I. Howard Marshall is one of the most distinguished evangelical New Testament scholars of the past twenty-five years. And the adjective "evangelical" is not necessary to make that statement true: he stands tall in any scholarly company. His work has been devoted to the documents of the New Testament, from Luke-Acts to the Pastoral Epistles, with many important works of biblical theology as well. This work, New Testament Theology, is clearly the fruit of his long career.

First, a word about general format. Marshall begins with an introduction about the nature of New Testament theology. He then proceeds systematically through the documents of the New Testament, with periodic breaks for synthesis and comparison. He sums up the theology of the Synoptics and Acts, for example, before proceeding to Paul, and after discussing the Pauline corpus document by document, he synthesizes Paul's letters and then proceeds to carefully compare the theology of Paul's letters to the theology of the synoptics and Acts, and so on throughout the collections of literature that make up the New Testament. In each book, Marshall begins with some introductory comments about the book, it's setting, authorship, etc. He then tells the "theological story" of the book by moving chunk by chunk through each book, dealing with the major teaching units and their content. After moving through the book this way, he synthesizes the theology by approaching the book's content in a more theologically organized way, looking at things like "God the Father" or "Spiritual Gifts" or the like. This allows the book's theology to speak to itself, but also helps the book's theology to speak toward the categories of systematics and helps piece together an author's theological perspective.

I have really enjoyed reading this book, and though I haven't yet read it cover to cover, everything I've read has been well informed and uniformly excellent. I have also really enjoyed his synthesis and comparison articles, such as the article dealing with the synoptics and acts in relation to Paul, which help to explore some of the really important and pressing issues that are often so formative to a New Testament theology. I also really enjoyed his article on the theology of the Pauline letters. His synthesis was concise and clear, bringing out important themes. He is certainly conversant in the latest developments in Pauline studies, but defends a very balanced approach. He also deals delicately but effectively with the "authorship" questions by synthesizing Paul's earlier theology of the undisputed letters and then discussing the data from the disputed (and almost uniformly considered to be later if genuine) epistles in relation to this basic formulation. This allows the later letters to modify and support the undisputed letters without making authorship a stumbling block to the whole enterprise.

In short, this is a great book that I highly recommend. Marshall's writing is clear and learned, and this book has proven to be both good reading and an essential reference work.

Stephen Westerholm, Perspectives Old and New on Paul

Pauline studies have been an interesting and contested field for the past thirty years or so. Even the most fundamental tenets of Paul's theology have been brought into question. Central to the debate has been the question of whether the "Lutheran" reading of Paul and his gospel, which has held sway in the West since the 16th century (or the 4th if you go back to Augustine), is faithful to the essence of Paul's preaching or whether it distorts Paul's intent.

Westerholm, in this spectacular book, provides a great entry point into the debates, careful analysis of the various positions, and a clear, mature assessment of Paul and the modern debates about him. I think this book provides an ideal starting point for people who want to get the lay of the land in current study about Paul, while also interacting (mostly in the notes) with these positions. He then, with surprising humor and wit, puts forth one of the clearest statements I've ever read concerning how Paul understood "law," "righteousness," and "justification by faith." Westerholm brings in the best of the "new perspective on Paul," taking into account a fuller understanding of the Jewish backdrop of Paul's writings and a fuller account of Paul's own thinking on these matters, while also showing that the essential core of the "Lutheran" Paul, especially when augmented and corrected at points, helps present a full and accurate view of Paul's thinking.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It is very well written, surveys the most important historical figures in the debate, the most important current contributions, both for and against the "Lutheran" Paul (with frequent use of their own words, so that each author's own flavor and emphasis comes out), and then brings this all together with a great presentation of Paul's thought. His work on the role of the law, summed up in nine theses in chapter 19, is especially good. I hope you enjoy this book as much as I did. It has given me a grasp of all of these issues and debates, and a grasp of Paul's own thinking, that seemed almost too elusive to grasp before.

EFCA Statement of Faith

The EFCA (Evangelical Free Church in America), the denomination to which I belong, has recently updated its Statement of Faith. Collin Hansen at CT wrote a short article praising the church for being proactive in modifying its statement. And I tend to agree that the new statement is an improvement. David Neff has a great piece on his blog about the change in the statement with regard to the "ordinances" (sacraments for those of you in other traditions). I think this helps fill an important hole in much evangelical theology, with a tendancy to ignore the sacraments for fear it will look like they convey salvation. I do think they have an important role to play in the life of the church as they enact the gospel message in a tangible way and as they serve as a vehicle that the Holy Spirit uses to work in people's lives. I haven't had time to go over the statement in detail, but there was one thing that jumped out at me, which is the inclusion of premillenialism in the statement, an article I'm going to need to think more about. But overall I think the EFCA has a very strong statement of faith, partly because of its brevity.

Vanhoozer MP3s

I'm always on the lookout for great MP3 lectures to listen to in the car or while I'm busy with other things. I've also found lectures are a great way to learn. And there is so much out there. I recently came across two lectures by Kevin Vanhoozer at Asbury Theological Seminary regarding doctrine and discipleship that I highly recommend. In the first lecture he goes through the basic thrust of his book The Drama of Doctrine (which is high on my Amazon wish list). In it he discusses the import of doctrine for evangelicalism and the church and explains how the metaphor of drama is a useful way to approach what theology is and does. The second lecture continued these themes with a discussion of how doctrine and theology should play a vital role in our church life. He then uses the doctrine of atonement as an example of how doctrine provides direction and helps us live out the "script" in a faithful way. I think Vanhoozer is an important and vital voice of a renewed and resurgent evangelical theology and I appreciate his keen insight into how doctrine must be lived.

Reformed and Always Reforming, Roger Olson

Reformed and Always Reforming: The Postconservative Approach to Evangelical Theology is a descriptive and prescriptive account of the move of some evangelical theologians to what has come to be termed a "postconservative" style of doing theology. Olson finds himself among this growing group, and seeks to set out the methodology that underlays this shift. Thought that may in fact sound a bit dry, Olson in fact turns in a compelling story of the development of a new brand of evangelical theology.

He begins by identifying just what this "postconservative" theology is by first describing "conservative" theology. He lists ten characteristics:

1. Correct doctrine as the essence of Christianity.
2. Revelation is primarily seen as propositional.
3. There is the tendency to elevate some tradition to the level of magisterium.
4. Suspicion of the constructive task of theology.
5. Evangelicalism is a bounded set: people are either in or out.
6. Many who call themselves evangelicals wouldn't be considered evengelical by conservatives.
7. High levels of suspicion toward modernity and postmodernity in favor of the ancient or traditional.
8. Tend to think that it is possible to do theology relatively uninfluenced by culture or history.
9. Tendency toward harsh, polemical rhetoric, staying close to fundamentalist roots.
10. Tends to be done "in the grip of fear of liberal theology" (25).

After setting the stage with a sketch of "conservative" evangelical theology, he moves briefly through a discussion of shared ground, before then beginning to explicate the "style" of theology that he terms postconservative. It is in fact the task of the rest of the book to lay this out, but some major trends and themes can be listed as distinctive (in essence, they are the flip sides of the ten things he has pointed out about conservative evangelical theology listed above). Some of the important aspects might be layed out as follows (the choice and numbering are my own:

1. Consider relveation's purpose to be transformational more than informational.
2. The constructive task of theology is cointinuing; there are no "closed, once for all systems" of theology that have perfectly enshrined the truth about God (55).
3. Concern about the deep roots of conservative evangelical theology in modernity and the desire to move beyond foundationalism.
4. See evangelical theology as a "centered set" rather than a "bounded set"; that is, less focus on who is in and who is out and instead focusing on who is closer to the center and who is moving away from that center. This includes some comfort with ambiguity that is often lacking in conservative evangelical theology.
5. Recognize that the core of evangelical faith is spiritual experience rather than doctrinal belief. This doesn't mean it doesn't have informaitonal content (it's not merely generic belief itself or belief in some anomalous "ground of being") but that this language is "second order," the communal expression of the experience of God in revelation.
6. While tradition is greatly respected, it is not enshrined as definitive; this means systems and theologians of the past can be helpful and essential conversation partners but the assumption should never be made that they have provided final formulations equal to the status of scripture or fully authoritative as interpreters of the Scriptures.

Throughout the remainder of the book, Olson fleshes out these elements of the postconservative style of theology, looking often at important postconservative thinkers who embody these trends. This includes frequent discussion of Stanley Grenz, John Franke, F. LeRon Shults, and Kevin Vanhoozer as especially lucid expositors of this style of theology. He also undertakes detailed discussions of some proponents of the conservative style, such as D. A. Carson, and Carl Henry, with frequent references to Charles Hodge.

For myself, I have found Olson's vision to be a compelling one, in that he illumines many of the weaknesses that I myself have found with traditional "conservative" evangelical theology, such as it's seeming obsession with who is in and out, and it's often harsh polemic tone in discussions within and outside the evangelical family, and with its sole focus on proposition in revelation. As Olson points out, even taking these points, one is still "conservative" in the larger scheme of theology; they don't make one a "liberal," in any meaningful way (contrary to what many "conservative evangelical" theologians might claim). I think this great book shows the promise of evangelical theology as a vibrant and faithful exponent of the faith into a new century. It makes a great intro to these important themes and to the theologians who are on the cutting edge of evangelical thinking about God.

Kenosis

For a long time now, amazingly enough more than ten years, the theme of kenosis and God's self-limitation has been one that has held my rapt attention. It all started with a paper on God's hiddenness and Luther's On the Bondage of the Will, was further encouraged by Professor Ernest Simmons at Concordia College (Moorhead, MN), fully flowered in a senior paper and religion honors presentation in college, and was further developed with some investigation into Creation and Kenosis for a Masters' Paper. Much of my past work is reflected on my Web site, which contains both some more comprehensive statements and some fragments of further research and thought. But I think what has continued to hold my interest is how this theme, though much neglected in a lot of theological thinking, keeps popping up as a fruitful and important element in our doctrine of God and has important implications for theological thinking about a vast array of topics.

Most recently, I have been reading John Stackhouse's Finally Feminist, where God's self-limitation comes up as an important element in his reflections. He discusses the idea of progressive revelation, similar to William Webb's redemptive-movement hermeneutic. He recognizes that Scripture points us to an important understanding of God's providence that points to some measure of restraint or limitation in revelation: that is, that God often reveals his truth progressively, strategically, giving us only what we can handle or doing only so much to accomplish what he intends at that time. He concludes, "We trust that God's self-limitation is somehow for the greater good of his ultimate purpose" (40). In Jesus, God's kingdom decisively and revolutionarily breaks in to the world, but it doesn't do so completely and all at once.

I'd never explicitly connected self-limitation with a redemptive-movement hermeneutic, but it seems an essential move to making sense of the Scripture that God has given us. There is so much more to reflect on here, and I welcome your thoughts and reflections.

Theological Persuasion quiz

Hmm. Interesting little exercise.

What's your theological worldview? created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan You are an evangelical in the Wesleyan tradition. You believe that God's grace enables you to choose to believe in him, even though you yourself are totally depraved. The gift of the Holy Spirit gives you assurance of your salvation, and he also enables you to live the life of obedience to which God has called us. You are influenced heavly by John Wesley and the Methodists. Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan 82% Neo orthodox 68% Emergent/Postmodern 57% Reformed Evangelical 54% Fundamentalist 36% Charismatic/Pentecostal 36% Classical Liberal 32% Roman Catholic 32% Modern Liberal 11%

Donald Bloesch, A Theology of Word and Spirit

A Theology of Word and Spirit is the first volume in Bloesch's Christian Foundations series, a seven-volume systematic theology. In it he outlines the methodology behind his theology, looking at a umber of important issues in the way theology is done.

Bloesch takes on some very important theological issues in this opening volume of his series, such as the role of rationality and the mind in faith and the place of natural theology. His discussions are much too comprehensive to simply summarize here, but we can at least illumine a few of his main themes. One of the most important is his understanding of the role of the mind in faith, what he calls "fedeistic revelationalism," a position that intentionally stands between "fedeism" (faith is an act of the will apart from rational thought, or in fact an irrational decision) and "rationalism" (faith is a reasoned decision based on the evidence). For Bloesch, both of these positions preserve important facets of how we believe, but also distort the truth of the gospel. Bloesch emphasizes that faith is a response to God's revelation, not simply a summing up of the evidence, nor a decision that is made completely without warrant. God's Spirit plays a key role in this whole process. This points to another important theme in Bloesch's theology, that it is a theology "of Word and Spirit." He is committed to a theology that is anchored to God's Word, Jesus Christ, revealed in Scripture, and always gives full credit to the moving of God's Spirit, who illumines God's words and guides God's people. This makes for a theology that is Christ-centered, Scripture-based, and always sensitive to God's Spirit.

Bloesch is a "mediating theologian," an evangelical that finds himself in between the progressive theology of liberalism and the conservatism of much evangelical theology. In his irenic theology, he dialogues with both, but points out extremes and misunderstandings in both systems of theologizing. His theology shows much evidence of the stamp of Karl Barth, and in many ways it is an "evangelical" morphing of Barth's theology, especially as it is an outworking of Barth's threefold doctrine of the Word of God. In many ways, I think this is a profound strength, in carrying out a profoundly evangelical theology that is based on God and his revelation found in his Word, instead of based primarily on a rationalistic doctrine of Scripture. Bloesch can uphold the importance of Scripture as a locus of God's revelation and the norm for theology without flirting with bibliolotry. How successful he is will have to be decided after a more careful look at the second volume of his Christian Foundations on Holy Scripture.

Over all, Bloesch's A Theology of Word and Spirit is a very worth-while exercise in theology. It gives evidence of a lifetime of prayerful reflection on these things, and is truly a mature theology that is aware of the great thinkers of theology through the centuries.

God's Persistence

I've been away from blogging for quite a while. Life has been crazy, moving back to the North American continent, changing jobs, moving into a rental house tomorrow . . . You get the picture. But during my travels recently, I was using my time in the car to reflect on God, or more specifically on God's persistence. I've seen a lot of lists of God's attributes, organized, categorized, and discussed in a variety of ways. And I have read my share of theological treatises attempting to unveil for us God's very being by way of these attributes. And of course, each one claims to fall short, as they do, of unfolding God's majesty. It seems that the more you read, the more you appreciate the Bible's approach: stories. How better to get to know God than by what God says and does and how God interacts with people over time. This isn't to take away from the impulse to do systematic theology, and in fact, the more I read stories, and appreciate who God is, the more I am driven to revisit my own semi-systematic understanding of who God is.

One of the interesting (to me) historic discussions has to do with God's immutability. For me, about the most perceptive piece I've ever read has been Hendrikus Berkhof's Christian Faith, where he talks about the "Changeable Faithfulness" of God. This seems to capture the "historic" and personal nature of God's existence quite well. But today, my own little contribution, far from original, I'm sure, has to do with God's persistence.

In my own experience, I've found God to be persistent. God's call, conviction, and guidance persist through my on deafness, stubbornness, and failure. And it seems that this same persistence is also reflected throughout the pages of the Bible, and especially in the Old Testament, as God persistently pursues and blesses his covenant people, despite their copious failings.

These are only the beginnings of some thoughts, but seem to point to some interesting areas of reflection.

Studying Paul with J. D. G. Dunn, 2

I've been continuing my study of James Dunn's Theology of Paul the Apostle. And I have been really ejoying his comprehensive and systematic treatment of Paul's thought. His work is so encyclopedic that I won't even try to "summarize" it in the traditional sense. But instead, I want to continue working through the various pieces of the book, and glean some insights for understanding Paul better. Chapter Two of the book concerns God and Humankind.
Dunn's discussion of God focuses on the "taken-for-granted" nature of Paul's talk about God. God is clearly at the center of Paul's thinking, but at the same time Paul doesn't really expound in any systematic way who God is. But it is emminently clear that Paul's God is the God of the Jews, and further, that God is one. (And Dunn points out that this is actually a source of some tension in Paul's thinking that the one God is in fact the God of the Jews, as he understood himself as the one called to preach this God to the Gentiles.) Really, there isn't too much that is surprising in Dunn's treatment of God, but it still provides an indispensable starting point for a systematic exposition of Paul's theology. And it is worth keeping in mind that Paul considers God's existence and basic character as essentially axiomatic.
The second focus in this chapter (§3) is humankind. Dunn advances his discussion by looking carefully at the important terms that Paul utilizes to discuss humanity: soma, sarx, nous, kardia, psyche, and pneuma. And each discussion proves to be fruitful. But I think the central insights have to do with "body" and "flesh" (soma and sarx, respectively). The core point that Dunn advocates with regard to soma is that Paul understood persons to be fundamentally embodied. That is, when Paul speaks of "body," he dosen't simply mean the physical material that is occupied by a separate "spirit," but more it denotes "the person embodied in a particular environment." The point, then, is that there doesn't exist for Paul a simple spirit-body dualism, but that body denotes an embodied "I" that is more robust, for Dunn more relational, that simply a fleshly shell. The other key point that Dunn makes (and this one is less controversial) is in regard to "flesh." Dunn carefully notes the variety of ways that Paul uses sarx, and lays them out on a spectrum, from simply denoting the physical body to denoting the source of corruption and hostility to God. In this spectrum, he finds the link in the notion that sarx, flesh, is "what we might describe as human mortality." It is closely related to that whithin humans that is fallen, but is not itself the source of that fall, and neither is it in itself evil. It is instead the weak and corruptible material of human existence. Thus, Dunn concludes that flesh was "neither unspiritual nor sinful."
The variety of insights go much further and deeper than these few highlights, but they go to demonstrate the quality of Dunn's work, and also help to illumine some important foci of Paul's thought. And they will lead us into a further discussion, shortly, about the nature of humankind as fallen.

Philippians 2:5-11: Who is Jesus?

Few questions are more important or fundamental to Christianity that who Jesus is. And there have been centuries upon centuries of reflection on this topic, leading to sometimes complex discussions of philosophical terms and etherial concepts. And I think that's great. For Jesus' identity is a deep and multi-faceted truth that deserves to be investigated to the full. Here I just want to reflect a bit on what this passage in Philippians says about it. This isn’t Paul’s major focus here (he is focusing on Christian love and unity with humility), but nonetheless, Paul makes a clear statement of Christology to make his point. This is one of the few places in Paul's letters where he could be said to be expressing "Christology," as opposed to his very common theme of "soteriology," for so often he focuses on who Christ is for us. This certainly isn't to take anything at all away from Paul, but to point to the importance and uniqueness of this passage. So, who is Jesus?
A. Jesus is God from all eternity, preexistent and fully one with God the Father.
-Jesus was “in very nature,” in the “form” of God.
-Jesus could have grasped equality with God, but chose not to (that is, it was
within his power and right to be honored as God)
-He emptied himself of something, namely the glory and prerogatives of divinity
B. Jesus became a human being.
-Jesus took on the “very nature” or “form” of a slave.
-Jesus was “found in appearance as a man;” that is, it was plain for all to see
that Jesus was human.
-He suffered and died. (This was no illusion, no appearance of humanity!)
C. Jesus was the God-man.
-Jesus was “in very nature” God and “in very nature” a slave.
-Jesus divinity at no time ceased, and his humanity was genuine, including even
death.
D. Jesus the crucified is also God the Son, exalted above all, one with the Father. We get some extremely important and valuable Trinitarian insights from this passage. Jesus is God from all eternity, he is obedient to the Father, he is exalted as Lord and as YHWH, he is recognized as being the One God (note Paul's allusion to Is 4523-24, a clear ). Clearly there is a sense of plurality and differentiation within God, but at the same time God is One God, the only God. You can clearly see here how the church in the next few hundred years, especially as it worked out its understanding of who Jesus is, was led to formulate the doctrine of the Trinity. Though “Trinity” as such isn’t enumerated in Scripture, this passage is a perfect example of how the trajectory toward just such a doctrine is clearly embedded in the Bible and especially the New Testament.