Gabriel Fackre’s work loomed large
in the conceptualization of In Quest of a Vital Protestant Center even
as from the beginning of my Christian walk (1972) I have consistently taken a
comprehensive approach. Early on I had read and agreed much with Horace
Bushnell's 1848 essay, “Christian Comprehensiveness,” which I view as having
much contemporary relevance. As a result of what I can only describe as a
most authentic born again experience, I linked up with the Pentecostals in
1974, which was my entry into evangelical thought and culture (obviously, there
was a big piece missing, namely the Reformed perspective, which I didn't begin
to grasp till decades later). I appreciated very much the Pentecostal
emphasis on the Holy Spirit as well as on the Bible, but never seriously took
in their dispensationalist theology, their literal interpretation of the Bible,
their interpretation of evolution and geology, and social and political
conservatism. My stock line was that I take the Bible most seriously, but not
necessarily literally, especially where it did not apply; namely science and
history. In my role as a Campus Minister Associate, while in graduate school, I
led student groups that consisted both of mainline Protestant and evangelical/Pentecostal
members.
I typically sided with the
evangelicals on basic issues related to the centralities of the Grand
Tradition, while veering toward the mainliners in terms of temperament, the
rejection of an inerrant biblical hermeneutics, which I felt went beyond what
the various writers of the Bible attest to, and in my understanding of the
difference between history and theology, and my appreciation for evolutionary
science. My book is a distillation of such issues in an effort to carry on
this evangelical/mainline dialogue in a more formal, scholarly manner, in a way
also, that contains significant aspects of my own evolving spiritual odyssey.
In terms of comparisons, beginning
with Ch. 4 on Bloesch, I open each chapter with a comparison of that person and
the author in the previous chapter; in Ch. 4 on Bloesch and Packer. Ch. 5
opens with a brief comparison between Bloesch and Fackre, where I speak of
Fackre's greater willingness to embrace a hermeneutics of suspicion and greater
swaths of theological liberalism even if, ultimately, only through the
distanced voice “critic-in-residence.” This is followed by a section
titled, “Fackre's Theology in Brief.” Both of these introductory sections were
designed to prepare the reader to launch into the more extended and substantive
aspects of Gabe's theology of Scripture and narrative theology of God. Ch
6 opens with an extended comparison between Fackre and Brueggemann that
included commentary on the biblical theology of Brevard Childs. I
titled this introductory section, “Brueggemann and Fackre Compared: Narrative Theologians
in Divergent Veins.” A major difference is the contrast between Brueggemann's “angular”
reading of particular texts contrasted to Fackre's emphasis on the ultimate
harmonization and importance of the entire Scripture.
I would encourage those working out
of UCC perspectives to look closely at the chapters on Bloesch, Fackre, and
Brueggemann, who, respectively, represent the conservative, centrist, and
moderate liberal wings of the denomination, and in a more general sense, the
mainline Protestant perspective. I would hope that chapter 7, on
neo-orthodoxy, would also be of interest to those influenced by traditional
mainline theological perspectives, where the collective impact of Barth,
Tillich, Bonhoeffer, and the Niebuhr brothers, at least, at one point in time,
loomed so large. In addition to the original neo-orthodox writers, I also
drew on Douglas Hall's Remembered Voices: Reclaiming the Legacy of
"Neo-Orthodoxy" and Gary Dorrien's, The Barthian
Revolt in Modern Theology. While there are various reasons why
contemporary evangelicals and mainline Protestants would marginalize or
outright reject the significance of the neo-orthodox perspective, in my view,
there are valid reasons—not the least of which is the recent Barthian revival
and the enduring significance of Bonhoeffer—for viewing it as an important
theological thread in constructing a vital center.
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