In 2014 I published In Quest of a Vital Protestant Center: An Ecumenical Evangelical Perspective, which I briefly summarize below. Additional information is available through the publisher, Wipf & Stock http://wipfandstock.com/in-quest-of-a-vital-protestant-center.html and through Amazon http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00TUJLCAY/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?ie=UTF8&btkr=1. Comments and/or questions welcomed.
Summary Overview
In Quest of a Vital Protestant Center probes into the relationship between Scripture
and culture in twentieth-century US theology and biblical studies. It points to
the necessity of turning to what Karl Barth has referred to as “the strange new
world within the Bible” for any revitalization of mainline Protestantism in the
tradition of the Protestant Reformers in critical dialogue with serious
evangelical theology. The study includes a historical overview underlying what the
author refers to as the “fundamentalist/modernist great divide,” which
continues to resonate powerfully in contemporary US Protestant thought and
culture. The book offers an in-depth exploration of four representative
twentieth-century Protestant theologians and biblical scholars, spanning from
the conservative evangelical theology J. I. Packer to the postliberal
dialectical theology of Walter Brueggemann. It also includes substantial
discussions on the theological perspectives of Lesslie Newbigin, Richard Lints
and J. Douglas Hall.
The book
addresses two consequential issues facing contemporary U.S. Protestantism:
acceptance of the Bible in its canonical integration as the primary source of
Christian revelation and the viability of creating a durable centrist position
between traditional and postconservative evangelical and postliberal,
predominantly mainline theological perspectives. The convergence I seek is
based on a common acceptance of the historic Reformation tradition on the
sovereignty of God, the incarnation, the Trinity, the atonement, and scriptural
revelation, which Donald Bloesch and others refer to as the Great Tradition. My
aim in this book is “the recovery of a centrist position standing thoroughly in
the tradition of orthodoxy but not averse to articulating the faith in new ways
that relate creatively to the contemporary situation.” (Bloesch, A Theology of Word and Spirit, 31). The
challenge of doing so is underlined by the persistence of the
modernist/fundamentalist divide on the interpretation and role of the Bible—an
issue that came to symbolic climax with the Scopes Trial of 1925. Mediating
theologies in both evangelical and mainline camps have moved well beyond the
intense polarization unleashed on both sides of this crucial divide. Still, its
enduring influence persists into the current era as a continuous strain
adversely impacting more comprehensive efforts toward the construction of a
vital theological center. That is one challenge.
This book builds on the current
dialogue between evangelical and postliberal theology as depicted in the
collection of essays titled The Nature of
Confession, edited by Philips and Okholm (1993). By incorporating the
neo-orthodox perspective, it provides an additional resource in the
construction of a centrist theological project that builds on the triple
pillars of canonical scriptural integrity, theological acuity, and ecumenical
comprehensiveness. The book is written in the spirit of two short books by Andover
Newton Professor emeritus, Gabriel Fackre (Ecumenical
Faith in Evangelical Perspective; Restoring
the Center). It is resonant in content with
Fackre’s more extensive theological work, as discussed in Chapter 5.
Given their respective impact across
the theological landscape of contemporary Protestant thought and culture and
the relative dearth of secondary work on the four main writers I focus on—J. I.
Packer, Donald Bloesch, Gabriel Fackre, and Walter Brueggemann—the profiles in
themselves help fill an important gap. Placing their work on an evangelical to
postliberal mainline continuum provides critical insight for drawing out and
working through the prospects and the challenges of establishing a centrist
Protestant culture through a comprehensive Protestant sensibility on the
centrality of the Bible in its critical role of encountering the culture.
The book includes a
chapter on the neo-orthodox legacy as a mediating resource in bringing
evangelical and postliberal theology into dialogue with the core issues of
theology, biblical hermeneutics, and religious culture. As a summary reprise of
the argument carried throughout the book,
In Quest of a Vital Protestant Center concludes with a critically
empathetic review of the postliberal dialectical theology of Douglas J. Hall
and the redemptive-historical evangelical narrative theology of Richard Lints. In linking evangelical, postliberal, and neo-orthodox
theology to a common search for a vital Protestant center, this book
facilitates fruitful dialogue among divergent schools of Protestant thought
both in seminary circles and among theologically discerning clergy and lay
practitioners. In so doing, the book probes for current and potential commonalities
as well as areas of persisting differences. It also points to areas for ongoing
research in the quest for an invigorating Protestant presence in the midst of a
culture commonly depicted as postmodern, global, and highly secularized that in
surface and not so surface ways conflicts with the predominant presuppositions.
Additional Comments
Throughout the course of
the forty-one years since my conversion to Christianity, I have studied many
academic and lay-oriented religious texts on a wide assortment of themes. Much
of this reading has played out at the critical intersection between a sharply-attuned
critical evangelical sensibility and a more open-ended mainline Protestant
identity, largely within various Assemblies of God, American Baptist, United
Church of Christ, and United Methodist Church settings. It is within these
denominational contexts—in the realm of church affiliation, personal faith formation,
small group study, and in my stint as a campus ministry associate as a graduate
student in a state college—that I have placed theological exploration and
searching biblical discernment at the center of an ongoing faith formation
process. This book represents an imaginative integration of this process in
search of an invigorating theological center—a critical center which spoke to
me early on through Horace Bushnell’s 1847 essay, “Christian Comprehensiveness,”—to
which I have always been called.
Throughout this book I have taken
the position that any substantial revitalization of a theology rooted in the
tradition of the Protestant Reformers within mainline and evangelical
theological camps will require a substantial embrace of Barth’s biblical turn
as the primary theological source for interpreting the culture. However
problematic the Barthian turn may be, I maintain that the alternative of
positing some aspect of culture in the more privileged position than the Bible
is even more so. To do so would undercut the potential depth of what a
theologically sophisticated and ecumenically grounded faith commitment could
come to mean for a contemporary Protestant identity that seeks to be faithful
to the core kerygma in a manner that also
has the capacity to be profoundly culturally relevant. I view this latter
objective as a critically important secondary concern.
The critical issue for contemporary
Protestant life and identity formation remains the basic one on whether the
culture, in all that that implies, becomes the source for interpreting the
Bible or whether Scripture, in all that that implies, becomes the basis for
interpreting the culture. This is a matter that has attendant implications for
theology, congregational life, ethics, and personal piety. For all of the
complexity and nuance in the relationship between contemporary culture and
theological discourse, what cannot be avoided is that of prioritizing centers
of value. It is this realization—and the identification of radical monotheism
as the ultimate center of value underpinning all of creation as an
uncompromising ontological assumption—that requires sustaining epistemological
assent in the embrace in faith of whatever grace is given. It is this assumption
that opens the biblical text as the most singular viable entry point to the
strange new world of God’s revelation in Jesus Christ, who in faith, is “the
exact representation of his [God’s] being” (Heb 1:3).
This core summary statement provides
a compressed overview of the topics and these discussed in much detail in my
book In Quest of a Vital Protestant
Center: An Ecumenical Evangelical Perspective is about.
Chapter
Headings
Chapter One In
Search of a Vital Protestant Center
Chapter Two Theological,
Historical, and Autobiographical Explorations of Twentieth-Century Protestant
Thought and Culture
Chapter Three Defending
the Fundamentals of Historical Evangelicalism: J. I. Packer and the Written
Word of God
Chapter Four The
Mediating Theology of Donald Bloesch: Catholic, Reformed, Evangelical
Chapter Five Restoring
the Center: Gabriel Fackre’s Evangelical Ecumenism
Chapter Six Reading
Walter Brueggemann through a Fluidly Canonical Lens: Texts That Linger in a
Fragile World
Chapter Seven Re-Envisioning
the Neo Orthodox Legacy
Chapter Eight Postliberal
Dialectical and Evangelical Narrative Theology in Critical Juxtaposition
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