The Theological Mind

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The Theological Mind

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FEATURES 24

The American “Evangelical Mind” Today

BY MARK A. NOLL

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Theological Education Today: Ad Hoc Reflections

BY MICHAEL HORTON

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Theological Education for Christians

BY MICHAEL ALLEN

COVER ILLUSTRATION BY WILL HARVEY

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MODERN REFORMATION WEEKEND. C H O O S E F R O M F O U R L O C AT I O N S .

Join Michael Horton and the Modern Reformation team for a special weekend experience as we delve deeply into the topic of justification. Registered participants will receive materials to read and prepare in advance. Our guests will spend the weekend listening to stimulating lectures and engaging in lively conversation, challenging them to grow in their understanding of the doctrine of justification, and encouraging them to live in the light of what God has done for them in Christ.

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DEPARTMENTS 5

15 R E F O R M AT I O N RESOURCES

“The Modest Theologian” (Part 1)

by Herman Witsius T R A N S L AT E D

B I B L E S T U DY

Trash Talk: Why Words Are Such a Big Deal

BY ALLEN C. GUELZO

BY JOSEPH A. TIPTON

Worshiping with the Reformers

By Karin Maag REVIEWED BY M I C H A E L J. L Y N C H

The Person of Christ: An Introduction

By Stephen J. Wellum REVIEWED BY J O S H UA S C H E N D E L

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Fall Book Preview B Y N OA H J. F R E N S

BOOK REVIEWS

9 GLOBAL THEOLOGICAL FORUM

Theological Education in Africa A N I N T E RV I E W W I T H DAV I D TA R U S

Reformed Resurgence: The New Calvinist Movement and the Battle over American Evangelicalism

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by Brad Vermurlen REVIEWED BY D. G . H A R T

The History of Scottish Theology Edited by David Fergusson and Mark W. Elliott

B A C K PA G E

The Martyr Complex

BY MICHAEL HORTON

REVIEWED BY SAM BOSTOCK

MODERN REFORMATION Editor-in-Chief Michael S. Horton Editorial Director Eric Landry Executive Editor Joshua Schendel Managing Editor Patricia Anders Marketing Director Michele Tedrick

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Production Assistant Anna Heitmann Copy Editor Elizabeth Isaac Proofreader Ann Smith Creative Direction and Design Metaleap Creative

Modern Reformation © 2021. All rights reserved.

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LETTER from the EDITOR

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n this issue of Modern Reformation, we think about the theological mind. That’s a funny thing to say but an important thing to do. For Christians over the centuries, questions concerning the renewal of the mind, the maturation of Christian discernment and wisdom, and the charge and state of theological education have proven to be significant considerations. In the late sixth century, for example, Gregory I observed in his Book of Pastoral Rule that there were many “who, on account of being ignorant of how properly to estimate themselves, desire to teach what they do not themselves know.” There is a great need, he instructed, that one learn before one aspires to teach. Yet, on the other hand, he noted, “There are those who investigate spiritual precepts with cunning care, but what they penetrate with their understanding they trample on in their lives.” There is also great need for obedience to the learned word, for spiritual formation. The theological mind aims at that balance of learning and living, truth and love.

In 1995 in The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, Mark Noll asked a painfully insightful question: Why is it that American evangelicals (the largest single religious group in the United States at the time) had contributed so little to rigorous intellectual scholarship? For this issue, Dr. Noll reflects on the twenty-five years that have passed since the publication of his book. The vacuity of the term “evangelical”

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renders his main thesis still valid, Noll argues, but in terms of scholarship there may be reason for hope.

For decades now, Michael Horton has been a leading intellectual figure in Reformed evangelical and Protestant circles—and a heartening exception to the scandal poignantly demonstrated in Noll’s book. In our second feature, Dr. Horton looks back over the past half century or so, mapping one of those reasons for hope: what he sees as a genuinely encouraging renewal of theology.

Of course, renewal of theology is not simply to be equated with renewal of scholarship or academic institutions. It is also, even firstly, a renewal of the theologian. And a theologian is not simply to be equated with a professional academic. As Karl Barth once remarked, “In the Church of Jesus Christ there can and should be no non-theologians.” In our third feature, Michael Allen thinks through theological formation for the church.

Keeping to the themes of theological formation and education, we also include the first part of a beautifully instructive piece from Herman Witsius titled “The Modest Theologian,” and an interview with Dr. David Tarus about the state of theological education in Africa.

This issue of MR provides a rich array of resources for that important task of thinking about the theological mind. As you read and think, pray as well. Pray with us “that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him” (Eph. 1:17–18 ESV).

JOSHUA SCHENDEL exec utive editor

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PART FOUR OF FIVE

Trash Talk: Why Words Are Such a Big Deal

by Allen C. Guelzo

orry is the interest we pay when we borrow trouble. And if there is anything apparent about Jude in his New Testament Epistle, it’s that Jude is a worried man with a lot to worry about: people “who have crept into your fellowship and speak evil of whatever they don’t understand” (v. 10), people who “walk in the way of Cain” (v. 11), and “filthy dreamers” (v. 8). So, it’s inevitable that we wonder whether Jude also may have borrowed trouble he didn’t need to borrow. After all, what’s it to him whether the people he’s writing to have allowed

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some oddballs to creep in among them? What are these people guilty of exactly—bigamy? theft? adultery? murder? heresy? perjury? Or is it that they just have bad attitudes? And if that’s all that’s at stake, isn’t Jude being just a little paranoid?

It’s not until we reach verses 14–16 that Jude gets down to an indictment and points out the specific offense he’s so agitated about—and it comes (at least at first) as a real disappointment.

These people are the ones whom Enoch, in the seventh generation from Adam, wrote

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about when he said that the Lord would come with myriads [in Jude’s Greek, muriasin, which is the origin of the word myriad] of his saints [or possibly angels, since the word literally means “holy ones”] to declare judgment against all of these people and to rebuke the ungodly for all their ungodly deeds and all the hard-hearted things [the word here is actually sceleron, from which we get our word sclerosis, which literally means something like hardening of the arteries] they have spoken against him. For they are murmurers, querulous, ill-tempered malcontents, arrogant loudmouths, and flatterers who try to get people 1 to admire them.

THE POWER OF WORDS At this point, we want to say: Is that all? Jude is worried—and wants us to get worried—about people who have merely “spoken” what he calls “hard-hearted things” (v. 15), people who are just “loud-mouths,” playing up their own halfbaked reputations. For many of us, a good storyteller with a strong voice and loud laugh does a kindness to any dull, overly serious gathering (and in academic life, I attend a lot of

Words really do have power, and they have power entirely apart from deeds.

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these). Some of them may laugh too loudly or complain too much; some of them may think the put-down is an art form; and some of them may 2 just want attention. But are sarcasm and selfcongratulation really moral blemishes that need to be ridden down by God and all his angelic cavalry? They’re just words, aren’t they? Not sticks and stones, eh?

I suspect this is precisely what the Christians to whom Jude is writing thought: No, we don’t worry about how people talk; we worry about how they behave. After all, deeds are more important than words. These poor deluded souls are just talking, even if it’s from the pulpit, and we can handle that, can’t we?

Sticks and stones may indeed break your bones—but words and names can actually do far worse. They can puff up and convince those who use them that they have more authority than 3 they really possess. These words can destroy a reputation, blast a career, get a university admission withdrawn, or create a social-media firestorm. And that’s only in terms of social relations. Jesus, drawing the case even wider, said that calling your brother a fool would bring you as close to hellfire as you could get without the real article: “You have heard that the ancients were told, ‘You shall not commit murder’ and ‘Whoever commits murder shall be liable to the judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the judgment; and whoever says to his brother, ‘You good-for-nothing,’ shall be guilty before the highest judgment; and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell.” (Matt. 5:22) Words really do have power, and they have power entirely apart from deeds. Remember that God brought the heavens and the earth into being by speaking a word. Remember that the first work God gave Adam was about words: to bestow names on the animals. Remember that when people attempt to use their power

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to promote themselves, God defeats them by confusing their words (something we see on a large scale in Genesis 11 when God mystifies the speech of the builders of the Tower of Babel, and on a small scale when God demands in Job 38:2 to know “who is this that obscures my plans with words without knowledge?”)

Jesus had a particular objection to a class of words he called “idle” words: “Every idle word which people speak, they will answer for in the judgment” (Matt. 12:36-37). “Idle” in this case means whatever is useless, careless, or purposeless—the conversation Jude associates with “malcontents, arrogant loud-mouths, and flatterers.” Flattery, back-biting, and insinuation really do evil; and what’s worse, they compound that evil by failing to do good. Whatever doesn’t bring forth good fruit is, by Jesus’ reckoning, good for nothing but to be pruned away, stacked up, and burned.

Why do words have this power? Why are the “malcontents, arrogant loud-mouths, and flatterers” so worrisome to Jude?

First, because words are determined by our character and therefore reveal it. No one ever uttered a word that wasn’t a product of their character; even a fool’s gibberish is the real product of a disordered mind. Even words we utter “by accident” can reveal character, which is what we mean when we talk about someone committing a “Freudian slip,” when a word that reveals our real thinking slips into the place of another. This connection between words and character is so much a matter of common sense that even when we blurt something out unintentionally, people respond, “So that’s what you really mean!” One careless word gets dropped, and people naturally assume that that word, rather than our deed, is the revelation of our real intentions.

Words are also important because words not only reveal our character but they also shape it. Habits of speech can be as constructive, or as deadly, as any other habit and perhaps even more so. Wrap your mind around some superficial little sentiment, the words of some silly

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If what we tell ourselves to speak are words of faith, hope, and love, then we end up actually strengthening our Christian character.

song, or even a billboard, and soon the mind accustoms itself to these words. They become what we call memes. We absorb them into ourselves and develop a taste for expressions of that sort; and soon enough, we find ourselves in pursuit of what the words signal.

On the other hand, if what we tell ourselves to speak are words of faith, hope, and love, then we end up actually strengthening our Christian character and fortifying ourselves against the great torrent of nonsense flowing out of every radio, television, and website. This is why, for instance, the constant repetition of words of prayer and praise is important, because we are (sometimes without noticing it) confirming our Christian character more and more as we use them. The more we devote ourselves, week by week, to words that are good, perfect, and true, the more we actually come to prefer that which is good, perfect, and true. And so, we begin to understand King David when he said, “Your word I have hidden in my heart, so that I do not sin against you.” The words he memorized were not just words; he internalized them to the

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point where they actually became a disinfectant against sin.

But words are also important as giveaways.

Every major cult that has deformed Christian teachings has also invented a unique vocabulary of its own, as if they felt the impulse to form a new context for what they knew was a new religion. The church becomes a “Kingdom Hall” or a “ward,” and the cross becomes the “torture4 stake.” The urge to confect novel theological vocabulary is a way of achieving distinction, but it’s a distinctiveness that warns us that the content is a departure from what Jude earlier calls “the faith which has been delivered to all of you as saints” (v. 4).

STEWARDING THE GIFT OF WORDS Do words make Jude a worrywart? Is this preoccupation with “murmurers,” “arrogant loud-mouths,” and “flatterers” merely a bad case of hyperattention disorder? I don’t think so.

The famous English preacher, Richard Rogers, was once accosted by “a Gentleman” who liked Rogers’s preaching well enough, except that he was “so precise.” Rogers responded, “Oh, sir, I 5 serve a precise God.” What’s true in preaching is just as true in conversation.

If we admit that all of our days are gifts from God and we say with King David, “Teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts to wisdom,” then it stands to reason that the number of words we utter in those days are also gifts. If what we spend our time doing is talking trash, then that’s less of our limited store of words, in our limited store of days, to apply to wisdom, and in time, we will have to sustain some pretty severe questioning from God about how we wasted those gifts.

The funny thing is that when we come to our money, we behave so very differently. We want every penny accounted for on our bank statements; and if for some reason every penny isn’t, then we’re ready to call down thunder and lightning. Yet money doesn’t have half the power of

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words. Words have caused revolutions, wars, and reformations. Words have brought consolation, hope, and salvation. The great British prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli, said, “With 6 words we govern men.” No bank statement ever did that. Why, then, don’t we treat our words as we treat our money?

Jude understands that the best place to head off all the sensational crimes—bigamy, theft, adultery, heresy, murder, perjury—is at the mouth. Talk political violence and what you’ll get isn’t politics but violence; talk heresy and what you’ll get isn’t diverse viewpoints but betrayal; talk adultery and you’ll probably commit it. Jude also understands, though, that if you police your words, then the results will be entirely the opposite. Stop using angry words and you’ll starve out an angry disposition; stop lying and people will start trusting you.

Ultimately, the buck stops with our mouths.

How we speak sets the climate control for how others around us speak, and the words we tolerate from others set the pattern for the weaker brother and sister to pick up on the old monkeysee-monkey-do principle. Which is why Jude wants to return us next to the concern he articulated at the beginning when he told us to contend for the faith—and take up architecture!

ALLEN C. GUELZO is senior research scholar in the Council

of the Humanities and director of the Initiative on Politics and Statesmanship in the James Madison Program at Princeton University.

1. William Jenkyn, An Exposition of the Epistle of Jude (Port St. Lucie, FL: Solid Ground Christian Books, 2006), 305; Thomas R. Schreiner, 1, 2 Peter, Jude (Nashville: Holman Reference, 2003), 475.

2. Michael Green, The Second Epistle General of Peter and the General Epistle of Jude: An Introduction and Commentary (Grand Rapids: Tyndale, 1987), 193–94.

3. John Phillips, Exploring the Epistle of Jude: An Expository Commentary (Grand Rapids: Kregel Academic, 2004), 79; Richard C. Lenski, Interpretation of I and II Epistles of Peter, The Three Epistles of John, and the Epistle of Jude (1948; repr., Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2008), 642.

4. “Kingdom Hall” and “torture-stake” are the vocabulary of the Jehovah’s Witnesses; “ward” is that of the Mormons.

5. Richard Rogers, in Giles Firmin, The Real Christian, or A Treatise of Effectual Calling (Glasgow, 1744),71–72.

6. Benjamin Disraeli, Contarini Fleming: A Psychological AutoBiography (New York, 1832), 35.

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Theological Education in Africa an interview with David Tarus

e recently interviewed David Tarus, executive director of the Association for Christian Theological Education in Africa (ACTEA). Born and raised in Eldoret, western Kenya, Dr. Tarus earned his PhD in Christian theology from McMaster Divinity College in Canada. He also earned an MA in theology from Wheaton College Graduate School and a BTh from Scott Christian University in Kenya. He is the author of multiple articles and books, including A Different Way of Being: Toward a Reformed Theology of Ethnopolitical Cohesion for the Kenyan Context (Langham, 2019), Christian Responses to Terrorism: The Kenyan Experience (Wipf & Stock, 2017), and “Social Transformation in the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians” in the Africa Journal of Evangelical Theology. An ordained minister in the Africa Inland Church (AIC), he and his wife Jeane have two children, Berur (9) and Tala (5).

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MR: Please tell us a little bit about ACTEA and why

you are passionate about it.

D T : ACTEA is a project of the Association of Evangelicals in Africa (AEA) and a founding member of the International Council for Evangelical Theological Education (ICETE),

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a global partner within the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA). It was started in 1976 through the vision of the first general secretary of the AEA and the father of evangelicalism in Africa, Dr. Byang Kato. ACTEA’s central purpose is to assist theological schools throughout

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Professor Andrew Walls observes that “it is Africans and Asians and Latin Americans who will be the representative Christians, those who represent the Christian norm, the Christian mainstream, of the twenty-first and twentysecond centuries.”

Africa in their quest for excellence and renewal, which it seeks to achieve in three primary ways: by promoting quality theological training through institutional reviews and academic recognition; by providing institutional support services and capacitybuilding forums for leaders and faculty of theological institutions; and by facilitating networking and cooperation among Africa’s theological institutions. ACTEA currently has sixty-seven institutions affiliated to it from eighteen African countries.

I am excited about what ACTEA does because I am excited about quality holistic theological education. I believe in Christian scholarship that is committed to knowledge (knowing), inner formation (being), and vocational competencies (doing). These models borrow from the classic tradition of orthodoxy (right faith), orthopraxis (right living), orthopathos (emotional experiences), and doxology (right worship). I think ACTEA does this very well by inspiring institutions to be holistic in their theological education, and I am happy to be part of this movement.

MR: Can you tell us about the state of Christian theological education in Africa?

DT: Professor Andrew Walls observes that “it is Africans and Asians and Latin Americans who will be the representative Christians, those who represent the Christian norm, the Christian mainstream, of the twenty-first and 1 twenty-second centuries.” If this is true, and I believe it is, then how will the African church

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represent the Christian faith to the world?

What is the quality of that representation?

Sadly, the church in Africa is not representing the Christian faith well. We have an influx of the prosperity gospel, and there is also a lot of nominalism, syncretism, and compromise of biblical faith.

We need to train the untrained and provide them with the necessary resources to help nurture the church. In other words, we need to do more to scale up theological training in Africa, particularly for the 85 to 90 percent of church ministers who have little to no biblical or theological training. Congregations are being shepherded by untrained pastors. We recently held a theological consultation to talk about this huge need. The outcome of it was a theological compendium titled Scaling 2 Up Theological Training in Africa.

We have also seen some growing interest in nontraditional theological education.

Nonformal, off-site, online/hybrid theological education is gaining traction in some regions, although most denominations still prefer to send their students to colleges offering residential training, even though their Bible schools have declining enrollments. Churches fear, sometimes legitimately, that these formats of learning are not rigorous enough and do not take spiritual or ministerial formation seriously. Thus institutions embracing these nontraditional models of learning ought to think about quality measures.

Despite the reluctance to embrace online education, some institutions now offer online

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education, but it is not easy because of erratic power supply, intermittent Internet, poor infrastructure, and lack of trained tutors. Some institutions have tried to address the problem of power supply by installing solar energy, but the Internet remains expensive in many countries in Africa. ACTEA recently launched accreditation standards for online programs as well as guidelines for conducting virtual hybrid site visits. This is a new frontier, and we are excited to be part of it.

Colleges have also realized that they need to train their students in important life skills.

They need to equip students in intercultural skills that include issues of community development, conflict transformation, public theology, and public service. We also need prophetic education. Students need to engage in critical areas facing African societies such as corruption, sexual depravity, creation care, peacemaking, urbanization, and interfaith relations. However, not all schools have the capacity or the curriculum to train in these important areas.

There is also a trend among established theological institutions to shift to university status. They are motivated by many factors like sustainability and pressure from governments to offer other programs. However, these institutions are faced daily with dangers of secularism, loss of evangelical distinctiveness, a revision of their mission and vision statements, and a decline in Bible-centered education. Such institutions must find creative ways of staying true to their evangelical distinctiveness, even as they offer other programs.

MR: What are the primary short- and long-term

challenges you see in Christian theological education throughout Africa?

DT: The main challenge is the sustainability of theological schools. A paucity of funds translates into reduced salaries and maintenance cutbacks. The coronavirus pandemic has intensified this problem, as the words of a seminary president from Ethiopia shows:

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If the situation continues like this, almost all of our income, which is derived from students’ tuition fees, will be stopped. Then, we will be unable to pay the salaries of our faculty and staff. We are not sure what we will do in this worst-case scenario. It would be a big blow to us, affecting whether we can 3 continue as an institution.

S u s t a i n a b i li t y co u ld b e a dd r e ss e d i f churches, councils, and denominational leaders supported their schools more. In fact, some theological institutions in Africa operate without stakeholder support. Institutional heads are expected to deliver top-notch theological education despite the lack of support.

Providentially, African institutions will have to cultivate homegrown solutions to their sustainability needs. Nevertheless, institutions will exhibit wisdom by building partnerships, without undue dependence, with their international partners.

Sustainability could be addressed if churches, councils, and denominational lead­ers supported their schools more.

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Other issues need to be addressed as well, such as training top executives in leadership and management. Faculty members, who are not adequately prepared for the various administrative tasks that are sometimes placed on their shoulders, need further training. We also need to help schools with leadership transitions, curriculum development, and quality assurance.

The difference between Africa’s theological education and Western theological education is our undying emphasis on the practical needs of people.

MR: What misconceptions would you like to correct

about theological education in Africa?

DT: The first misconception is that theological education in Africa must rely on Western support to survive. There is a lot of wealth in Africa.

Schools must tap into Africa’s resources, even as they partner with others around the world.

Another misconception is that theological education in Africa is not academic theology because of our emphasis on praxis. In The Future of Christianity, Alister McGrath laments Western society’s “disillusionment with academic theology” at the expense of practical concerns of 4 everyday life. The difference between Africa’s theological education and Western theological education is our undying emphasis on the practical needs of people. It is exceedingly rare that we engage in theological scholarship without praxis.

There are a lot of good theological engagements going on in Africa, despite limited research funds and inadequate libraries.

MR: What dreams and hopes do you have for the short and the long term of theological education throughout Africa?

DT: My prayer is to see more renewed, quality theological institutions. The process of renewal happens in many ways. Of course, we help with quality measures. The more schools comply with ACTEA standards, the more they become better schools. But many schools cannot meet these standards because of poverty and other structural challenges. The future is in collaboration. I have often talked about generosity in theological education. For example, generosity of resources and faculty. Larger institutions might consider providing credit courses for a wider group of

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students than their own. Perhaps the smaller institution’s faculty could still cover grading/ marking and organization, so the faculty of the larger institutions will not be overwhelmed.

Others might assist struggling institutions through the payment of subscription fees to access online materials, allowing free access to their online platforms, helping institutions with solar power installation, and so on.

Experts could help by teaching online, reading dissertations, revising curriculums, or other documents. Theological libraries from privileged countries should find ways of assisting institutions in Africa—perhaps by giving them free access to electronic materials, academic journals, library software programs, or helping with training of librarians.

MR: Can you share an example or two (perhaps

an anecdote, person, or an institution) as a brief sample of theological education in Africa?

DT: I will share the story of the Nigeria Baptist Theological Seminary (NBTS) in Ogbomoso, Nigeria, which started in 1898. NBTS is our model institution. It is an institution with a

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wealth of history but not without challenges— though they have addressed the challenges creatively. The success of the institution is attributed to many factors, but at the top is the able leadership of Rev. Prof. Emiola Nihinlola, who also serves as the ACTEA chair. He mentions that when he was chosen to lead the institution in 2013, he embarked on the assignment with two challenges in mind: “(1) How to integrate and balance spiritual, academic and ministerial formation; (2) How to function as a postgraduate institution (administration, finance, human resources, curriculum, stu5 dent services).” He was also concerned about faculty development, since most of the faculty members were going to retire within the next five years.

He started working on his vision, and he discovered he would achieve more by collaborating with others. He invited ScholarLeaders International to help through their Vital Sustainability Initiative (VSI). Through this initiative, the institutional vision was renewed and clarified, institutional sustainability through strategic actions was implemented, and the institution engaged in a rigorous process of development of academic and administrative competence. They now have a vibrant campus and well-resourced faculty.

With a lot of praise, they recently commissioned a 104,000-watt solar energy power

off-grid system, and 47.4 percent of the budget was raised locally. This project provides regular power supply for research, teaching, and the learning processes of staff and students of the seminary, and it is already contributing substantial cost savings to the institution. In addition to the solar power project, NBTS has been engaged in other projects like enhancement of ICT infrastructure, development of faculty, extension of the library, and establishment of an intercultural research center. Their academic programs have also undergone rigorous review, and NBTS is now a renewed institution.

M R : You have worked with many educators

and institutions around the world and throughout Africa. What do you envision and hope to see African leaders contribute to global theological conversations?

DT: African leaders and theologians have a lot to contribute to the world. Unfortunately, sometimes they are not given a chance or are not taken seriously. Forty-five years ago, Professor John Mbiti from Kenya penned the following words: We have eaten theology with you; we have drunk theology with you; we have dreamed theology with you. But it has been all onesided; it has all been, in a sense, your theology. . . . We know you theologically.

Th e q u e s t i o n i s, “ D o y o u k n o w u s

Professor John Mbiti from Kenya penned the following words: “We have eaten theology with you; we have drunk theology with you; we have dreamed theology with you.

But it has been all one-sided; it has all been, in a sense, your theology.”

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theologically?” . . . You have become a major subconscious part of our theologizing, and we are privileged to be so involved in you through the fellowship we share in Christ.

When will you make us part of your subcon6 scious process of theologizing?

Have things changed? Is the world listening to African theologians and leaders? If the world listened, then it could gain a lot from African Christianity. Take, for example, the robust theological engagements coming from African women theologians—particularly the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians, a panAfrican, multireligious, and multiracial society of women started in 1989 in West Africa. They have published hundreds of books in various areas, and they have held several workshops and academic conferences. But unfortunately, African women theologians must always reinforce their presence in the world for their authority to be heard.

The same can be said of African theology in general. The contributions of African theologians to global theology are still not taken seriously. This is something Western institutions need to do. They should make sure their students are familiar with other ways of theologizing. I would encourage Western institutions to invite African theologians to teach at their institutions, albeit on a short-term basis. The words of Andrew Walls need to be heard: “If you want to know something about Christianity, you 7 must know something about Africa.”

MR: How would you request and encourage us to

pray at this time?

D T : Pray for wisdom, understanding, and clarity in leading ACTEA and serving Africa’s theological institutions in this season of immense challenges. Pray for ACTEA institutions amid the pandemic. Africa’s theological institutions are really struggling.

Pray for our ongoing annual fee relief campaign to help ACTEA institutions by forgiving their annual fee requirement. We have so far

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Andrew Walls [needs] to be heard: “If you want to know something about Christianity, you must know something about Africa.”

raised 45 percent of the costs required. The fees will go toward ACTEA’s day-to-day operations, including capacity-building programs for institutions. By not paying their membership dues to ACTEA, these institutions will have extra funds for other urgent needs like salaries, student aid, medical insurance, improvement of information and communications technology, and so on.

Pray for ACTEA’s office project. We recently purchased office space at the newly built AEA Plaza in Nairobi. The purchase is complete, and the space is ready for fit-out, and we are trusting God for funds for this project.

For further information on AEA and ACTEA, visit their websites: aeafrica.org and acteaweb.org.

1. Andrew F. Walls, “Christian Scholarship in Africa in the TwentyFirst Century,” Transformation 19:4 (October 2002).

2. John Jusu, “Purpose and Design of the Consultation,” Scaling Up Theological Training in Africa, Association of Evangelicals in Africa, December 7, 2020, https://aeafrica.org/ scaling-up-theological-training-in-africa-2/.

3. Dr. Bruk Ayele Asale, President, Mekane Yesus Seminary, Ethiopia, email to David Tarus.

4. Alister E. McGrath, The Future of Christianity (Oxford: WileyBlackwell, 2002), 120ff.

5. From the NBTS Experience document shared at a meeting Dr. Tarus attended in Nigeria.

6. John Mbiti, “Theological Impotence and the Universality of the Church,” in Gerald H. Anderson and Thomas F. Stransky, eds., Mission Trends No. 3: Third World Theologies (New York: Paulist, 1976), 16–17.

7. “Of Ivory Towers and Ashrams: Some Reflections on Theological Scholarship in Africa,” Journal of African Christian Thought 3, no.

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“The Modest Theologian” (Part 1)

by Herman Witsius translated by Joseph A. Tipton

he following is a translation of a portion of De Theologo Modesto, an inaugural address delivered by Herman Witsius (1636–1708) to the students and faculty of Leiden University. Witsius held positions at Franeker (1675–80) and Utrecht (1680–98) before receiving the invitation to join the faculty at Leiden, the most prestigious university in the Netherlands. The original text of this translation comes from Hermanni Witsii Miscellaneorum Sacrorum, tomus alter (Leiden, 1736). Because the original length of the address far exceeds the limits of this column, a portion of the address is being presented in two parts. Look for part 2 in the September/October 2021 issue.

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AN INAUGURAL ADDRESS DELIVERED AT LEIDEN ON 16 OCTOBER 1698 I have chosen a topic for the present address, which I think will prove relevant to the present time and place, suited to my age and profession

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and welcome to your ears, kind gentlemen. I shall speak on modesty; more specifically, the kind of modesty that befits a theologian and must be scrupulously observed when one is engaged in religious studies. While modesty is of course a virtue praised and extolled by nearly

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everyone living, it so runs counter to the spirit of the present age that its appearance in theologians when they engage in written or verbal discussion, along with a host of important related virtues, is an absolute rarity.

When I say “modesty,” I have in mind a sense of fairness and composure. The one who has this quality thinks of himself humbly, of others highly, and attends to the affairs that are incumbent upon him with a judicious sense of order and propriety as befits the nature, character, and importance of each thing he addresses.

Show me a man who has neither disdain nor admiration for himself, who attaches without jealousy the correct value to the gifts God’s liberality grants to others, who has learned to control the way he feels and restrain himself, his tongue and his pen, who weighs each thing sensibly in the light of its true importance and carries it out in a way that corresponds to its importance, who is neither unbending nor a pushover, but reasonable, who is gentle without being timorous, patient without being ineffectual, serious without being severe, brave without being boastful, self-assured without being cocksure—show me a man like this, and I shall call him a truly modest man. And if this same man applies all these virtues to matters of religion and adds to them the reverence the awesome mysteries of our religion deserve, this same man I shall hail as a modest theologian. I shall rise for him. I shall rush and

greet him with a kiss. I shall pull him close to me and hold him tight in an affectionate embrace until I stamp his venerable image on my own mind so that it will come out in my actions.

It is hard to pull your eyes away from pleasing or marvelous sights, and if you do so by force they swing back to the sight on their own. In the same way, it is difficult to tear our mind away from contemplating ideas that at first sight work their way deep into our hearts with their alluring charms. Similarly, upon first glance, a priceless heirloom fashioned exquisitely of gold, studded with diamonds and pearls in a beautiful design, is bewildering and confusing to the eyes, with the rays of so many dazzling stones all converging to produce a single brilliance; but soon it so focuses the eyes on itself that they delight in examining every single part, from every angle, multiple times. In the same way, the image of the modest theologian I have fashioned in my imagination strikes the mind with such beauty and loveliness that I think it would be useful, and no less pleasant, to prolong our contemplation of the image and analyze more closely the individual parts that constitute it. It might just be our good fortune that the careful examination of the many virtues that here converge together transforms us into this same glorious likeness.

Therefore, come, gentlemen, let us examine one by one how the modest theologian learns, how he teaches, and how he lives.

[Modesty] so runs counter to the spirit of the present age that its appearance in theologians when they engage in written or verbal discussion . . . is an absolute rarity.

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No one can teach unless he has already duly learned, and no one will duly learn unless he takes as the foundation for his studies the virtue which the descendants of ancient Romulus found no name for, but we Christians call humility. The first step to true wisdom is the recognition of one’s own ignorance. We must realize first and foremost that however intelligent we might be concerning the natural and human sphere of things, when it comes to the spiritual and divine, we are dolts, idiots, blockheads, dim wits, and, as one reads in the ancient text of the Israelite Church [cf. Job 11:12], the foals of wild asses. This is what Job’s relative Zophar, Asaph, David, and Solomon, wise men par excellence, openly confessed about themselves. This is the only condition under which one gains entrance into the school of heavenly wisdom. For you must assume that its hallowed gate is inscribed with this excellent warning from Paul in golden letters: “Let no one deceive himself. If anybody appears to himself wise in this world, let him become foolish so that he can become wise” [1 Cor. 3:18]. People whose heads are swelled and puffed up from the conceit that they have mastered traditional learning are like children who have filled up their sacks with seashells and cockles they happened to come across on the seashore only to be obliged to empty them so that they can hold silver, gold, and actual treasures. So must we strip our minds of all false conceit of knowledge in order to make room for true wisdom. The emptier true wisdom finds the premises, the happier she is to enter and lavishly spread out her abundant riches.

When he has prepared his mind in this way 1 and has emptied it of the harmful ballast of preconceived notions, the modest candidate of divine wisdom should hand his mind over to God alone, the preeminent teacher of heavenly truths, to form and fashion. He should hang on his words and receive without exception and in the submissiveness of faith all divine utterances, which now are only to be found in the writings of the Old and New Testaments. His sole and primary aim should be to wholly envelop himself in

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The modest candidate of divine wisdom should hand his mind over to God alone, the preeminent teacher of heavenly truths, to form and fashion.

the crystal-clear light of the Holy Spirit in order to be convinced with clear and certain proofs and firmly persuaded beyond the shadow of a doubt that it is God who speaks in Scripture.

Once this conviction is firmly settled in the mind, all the contrary grumblings, all the objections raised by counterfeit learning, all the casuistry of contentious flesh will as a matter of course grow dim in the light of such brilliance. And this is brought about by one argument, which is enough for the modest mind, that when God speaks the human intellect is to be silent, listen, and believe. This is not the foolish gullibility of a pusillanimous spirit ignorant of its own nobility, as the prating of some people contends, but the high-minded submission of an informed intellect to the clearly perceived reliability of ultimate truth. It stands to reason that heavenly wisdom has its hidden mysteries that our human minds cannot penetrate, mysteries that blaze with a light of their own that befits God, yet as far as our understanding

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is concerned, they are wrapped in a solemn darkness which curiosity must not profane in its desire to get a closer look. It is the pride of a demented wisdom that refuses to factor in these mysteries unless every inch of them has been examined and weighed in the scales of our usual modes of reasoning.

On the other hand, a theologian endowed with a spirit of modesty concludes that when God bears witness about himself, he ought to believe him in everything for the sole reason that he bears witness. He is persuaded by valid reasons that it is consonant with the enormity of divine perfection to reveal things about itself and its counsels that wildly surpass the narrow limits of man’s intellect. When it comes to this, it is the pinnacle of wisdom to stand in awe, not 2 to scrutinize. Our very thirst for knowledge, however commendable it is under other conditions, has to be bounded and hemmed in by this modesty. It is praiseworthy not to know many things that you cannot examine except through an irreligious effort destined for failure.

I am certainly not saying this so that idleness can have a wall to hide behind. A vast gulf separates the traits of idleness and those of modesty. Forgoing learning about God, deliberately remaining ignorant of things that can be known, being deterred from striving to the top by the effort involved in climbing, lazily hanging back on lower ground and priding oneself on this as though it were the safest and most sensible course of action, all the while scornfully criticizing the efforts of those who doggedly strive to make progress and, as Paul instructs, leave the elementary doctrine of Christ to press on toward 3 maturity —this is not, trust me, gentlemen, this is not praiseworthy modesty but blameworthy and damnable sloth and indolence, whatever specious pretext it hides behind. However self-satisfied such a shiftless and malingering person may be with himself, he shall hear the Lord call him bankrupt and good for nothing.

The theologian should exhibit the same spirit of modesty in teaching as he does in learning.

He should above all remember that he is but

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[The theologian] should above all remember that he is but the interpreter of God’s words; to these he may not add or take away anything.

the interpreter of God’s words; to these he may not add or take away anything. When dealing with the utterances of God he must comport himself with the utmost good faith, discretion, and conscientiousness. Imposing a meaning drawn from his own ideas or from anywhere else on them, or twisting them in any way, even the slightest, so that they harmonize with one’s preconceived notions is reprehensible—it’s well-nigh a sin! On the contrary, one must uncover the true and genuine meaning on the basis of the most meticulous analysis of the language and all relevant information, and then communicate it to the consciences of one’s audience in straightforward speech so as to clearly bring out the wisdom, holiness, genuineness, grandeur and what the Greeks ele4 gantly called transcendent character of Holy Scripture. When it comes to religion, daring to say nothing except what you have heard God say and have gathered from what God has said

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after exerting all your mental effort—this alone is true modesty in a theologian.

Conversely, claiming a kind of autocratic authority for oneself over the hallowed pronouncements of the All-Wise God and, as some do, marking up with your red pen the language they are written in, expunging this, adding that, rearranging this, replacing that and using your own conjectures to correct them, and thinking you are being lenient with the prophets and apostles whenever you pardon them for an awkward expression—this we should not simply call lack of modesty. That is putting it too gently. We should call it presumptuousness, impudence, contemptuousness, ungodliness.

And similarly, when dealing with the content that is found in these enigmatic books, the case is no different: Having the license, as some people demand having, to remove anything extraordinary, miraculous or far-fetched by a far-fetched wrenching of the books’ simple language whenever they depart from the normal course of nature and require a complicated explanation that perhaps cannot be arrived at by the logical capacity of our minds is just as ungodly. In our sacred literature, not everything is equally obvious to everybody. The way some things are presented is fairly obscure due to ignorance of the past and the language.

Other things are beyond the understanding of many simply due to their complicated nature.

Being modest means that you explain them in such a way that you make no rash pronouncement and dictate no imperious rule, but rather modestly state what you think is most probable and likely after you have considered every angle, leaving room for the more well-versed among your audience to disagree.

For in all truth, nothing is so foreign and so at variance with the spirit of Christianity and New Testament freedom as the emergence of one person who elevates himself above his brothers who are his partners in an equally precious faith, makes them second-class citizens, and causes them to swear an oath of allegiance to his words. A man who knows himself and has learned, even from his daily efforts at making progress, what his shortcomings are and how many times he has been mistaken, even on occasions when he was fully confident he was right, should clearly have nothing to do with such an impulse. All of us who are instructors in the Christian faith are brothers sitting on equal terms at the feet of Christ, the Sole Teacher.

Whoever claims authority for himself over his fellow students is insubordinate to the Teacher and wantonly tramples underfoot the basic rules of the classroom.

Conversely, willfully submitting to such authority, be it of one man or of several who conspire to establish a single tyranny, placing your neck under such a yoke and putting your legs

All of us who are instructors in the Christian faith are brothers sitting on equal terms at the feet of Christ, the Sole Teacher. Whoever claims authority for himself over his fellow students . . . wantonly tramples underfoot the basic rules of the classroom.

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into such stocks is not principled humility, but a craven want of spirit, and something unworthy of Dutch liberty. Let whatever spineless man so desires slip his feet into these shackles. They do not fit mine, nor will they. If students happen to gain insight into something outside of class, it is perfectly all right for them to divulge their opinion before the instructor, provided they do so with humility. If one deprives them of the freedom to do this, it is as though he keeps a rightful heir from entering upon his inheritance from his father, as the Hebrew proverb runs.

And so, the modest theologian does not forcefully impose his own opinions on anybody, nor does he spinelessly and naively adopt opinions others force on him. However, he is happy to grow as a result of other people’s insights and gladly gives them due credit with thankfulness. It is an absolutely absurd kind of pride, and even one the poets have lampooned, to use poorly concealed plagiarism to heap up a store of riches and adorn oneself with another bird’s feathers, all the while claiming for yourself the glory of having thought of something first. The well-known and memorable example of Nepotianus naturally comes to mind. Jerome wrote the finest epitaph for him, in which in addition to his other praiseworthy traits he commends him for the kind of modesty we are dealing with now.

Although Nepotianus by constant reading and long reflection had turned his mind into a library dedicated to Christ, he openly made known what author he got anything from out of an innate modesty that was an adornment in one so young. Yet in this way, by disowning a reputation for learnedness, he was held to be exceptionally learned. “This is what Tertullian said,” he used to say, “this is what Cyprian said.

Lactantius said this, Hilary said that. Minucius

The modest theologian does not forcefully impose his own opinions on anybody, nor does he spinelessly and naively adopt opinions others force on him.

Felix spoke to this effect, Victorinus to that, and Arnobius in such and such a way.” What an admirable and praiseworthy example!

JOSEPH A. TIPTON is a researcher in the field of early modern literature. His primary focus is on the Reformers’ use of classical Greek and Latin literature to represent and forward their own project of reform. He has published on the German neo-Latin poets Petrus Lotichius and Simon Stenius. Also active as a translator of Greek and Latin texts, Dr. Tipton has translated books two and three of Peter Martyr Vermigli’s Commonplaces for the Davenant Institute and is currently working on Samuel Rutherford’s Dictates on the Doctrine of Scripture for Reformation Heritage. Dr. Tipton lives in Orlando, Florida, where he teaches Greek and Latin at The Geneva School.

1. Saburra, or ballast, is a particularly nice metaphor Witsius uses here. Just as the unequally distributed weight of a ship’s ballast can cause it to tilt in one direction or the other, so one’s preconceived notions can create a bias for one idea over another.

2. Witsius employs a clever word play here: “Stand in awe” is mirari, while “scrutinize” is rimari. Not only is there strong assonance, but the words are made up of the same letters, differently arranged.

3. A reference to Hebrews 6:1 (and interestingly after Erasmus’s Latin text instead of Beza’s, or in Latin that is more reflective of the Greek).

4. Witsius uses a Greek word, θεοπρέπεια, to express this idea.

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NO ONE COMES TO THE BIBLE ALONE, WITHOUT PHILOSOPHICAL AND THEOLOGICAL PRESUPPOSITIONS FORMED WITHIN A PARTICULAR CONTEXT. WE NEED TO BE AWARE NOT ONLY OF THOSE PRESUPPOSITIONS IN OTHER BIBLICAL INTERPRETERS BUT ALSO IN OURSELVES.”

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THE AMERICAN “EVANGELICAL MIND” TODAY

THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION TODAY: AD HOC REFLECTIONS

THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION FOR CHRISTIANS

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The American

BY

MARK A. NOLL

Today AT LEAST FOUR QUESTIONS are pertinent for any attempt to assess the current state of evangelical intellectual life in the contemporary United States. What do we mean by “evangelical”? How should the contemporary academy be viewed?

What kind of scholarship are evangelical or evangelical-connected thinkers producing? And what is the theological vision grounding such scholarship? If we stopped with just the first two questions, it would be a dismal picture. Going on to the others may give reasons for hope.

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The examples that come first to mind when addressing such questions will strongly affect how they are answered. Thinking first of the American political sphere obviously tilts responses in one direction since pundits, publicists, popular preachers, partisan operatives, and masters of social media have slotted “evangelicals” as the most reliable supporters of our era’s most aggressively populist politicians. It should surprise no one that the marks of scholarship (patience, wide-ranging research, care in

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“Evangelical Mind” I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y

defining the objects in view, eagerness to engage critical responses, and willingness to examine problems from multiple perspectives) are not the stock in trade of these voices.

The choice of which organizations to consider, either sponsored by self-professed conservative Protestants (= evangelicals) or known to be supported by such Protestants, also makes a great difference for assessments of contemporary intellectual life. Think, as an example, of groups promoting biblically faithful views of

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W I L L H A RV EY

humanity’s primal history and modern evolutionary theory. Visitors by the tens of thousands come every year for enlightenment on these questions to Ark Encounter, “a Christian religious and creationist theme park” in Kentucky.

Although its picture of early human history has no standing among formally credentialed scientists, its account of the world as perhaps ten thousand years old and its dismissal of human evolution enjoy great credibility in the American evangelical world.

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By contrast, Christians who are practicing scientists sponsor the Biologos Foundation, founded by the current director of the National Institutes of Health, who has written about how much C. S. Lewis aided his journey to Christian faith. The stated purpose of this organization is to affirm both the bedrock truth of the Scriptures and the main results of both modern biology concerning the evolution of humankind and modern geology concerning the age of the earth. Since both Ark Encounter and Biologos may be considered evangelical in meaningful senses of the term, it is difficult to take both into account for the purpose of assessing a contemporary “evangelical mind.”

“EVANGELICAL”?

Considered by itself, without careful discriminating nuance, the word evangelical is now next to worthless for serious investigation of questions about Christian faith and contemporary scholarship. The difficulty does not lie with a theological or religious understanding of the term “evangelicalism.” The fourfold characterization David Bebbington provided in his 1989 book, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, has been widely used because of how well it identifies a certain kind of Christian faith that came to prominence in the Atlantic region during the eighteenth century and has now spread throughout the world. In his terms, evangelical Christianity is marked by an emphasis on conversion, “the belief that lives need to be changed,” or in broader perspective that humans need a vital personal relationship with God. It also emphasizes that “all spiritual truth is to be found” in Scripture; that all believers, especially the laity, should be active in their Christian faith, especially in sharing the gospel; and that the key to reconciliation with God is the aton1 ing death of Christ on the cross.

The problem for assessing evangelical intellectual life does not come from this characterization, but from the fact that these evangelical characteristics connect only randomly with intellectual efforts.

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• An evangelical’s attitude to the results from respected centers of modern scientific research may be skeptical or trusting.

• An evangelical’s assumptions about the trustworthiness of social media may lead to crediting whatever has come across the internet about the 2020 American presidential election or never believing anything read on the internet.

• In China, an evangelical’s views about honoring the “powers that be” may lead to membership in a Three-Self Patriotic church or to identification with an unregistered church.

• An evangelical’s understanding of the Holy Spirit in relation to the human body may predispose that evangelical when ill only to pray, only to visit a doctor (understood as helpful because of God’s superintending providence), or both.

• What an evangelical takes for granted about hermeneutics, how to interpret the Bible, could lead to interpreting Genesis 2:7 (“then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground”) primarily with an eye on passages in the New Testament about Adam or primarily with an effort to understand the conventions of cosmological thinking in the ancient Near East.

CONSIDERED BY ITSELF . . . THE WORD EVANGELICAL IS NOW NEXT TO WORTHLESS FOR SERIOUS INVESTIGATION OF QUESTIONS ABOUT CHRISTIAN FAITH AND CONTEMPORARY SCHOLARSHIP. VOL.30 NO.4 JULY/AUGUST 2021

Evangelical scholars researching the development of evangelical traditions have valued David Bebbington’s characterization, but they now regularly specify how the evangelical characteristics have operated. This concern usually leads to a stress on the plasticity or malleability of the characteristics in different groups at different times. Some years ago, I tried to capture that reality by calling evangelicalism “culturally adaptive biblical experientialism,” a phrase 2 that unsurprisingly has not caught on. In their Short History of Global Evangelicalism (2012), Mark Hutchinson, an Australian Pentecostal, and John Wolffe, a British Anglican, spell out much more clearly what I attempted: Analysis of evangelicalism needs to start from the recognition that it is a fluid and diverse phenomenon. . . . It is this fluidity that has given it much of its power, even as it contributes to confusion about evangelicalism on the part of opinion makers in the 3 public square.

In his forthcoming book on evangelicalism for Oxford University Press’s Very Short Introduction series, the Canadian theologianhistorian John Stackhouse makes a parallel point by defining evangelicals and evangelical movements by a particular “style” as well as by features similar to Bebbington’s characteristics. In Stackhouse’s careful account, that style is inherently popular, it relies on voluntary mobilization, and it is concerned with gaining the widest possible response from individuals. In other words, evangelicals are not only those groups and individuals identified by the Bebbington characteristics, but identified also by the fluid, popular, and adaptive ways those characteristics have been expressed.

This expansion of Bebbington’s characterization explains why “evangelical intellectual life” is oxymoronic. George Marsden recently commented on the strengths and weaknesses of evangelicalism understood in this way. As he, David Bebbington, and I were preparing a book published by Eerdmans in 2019 (Evangelicals: Who They Have Been, Are Now,

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and Could Be), George commented in an email: Evangelical religion is strong because it can evangelize every tribe and nation. It is weak because, being market-driven, it cannot challenge most tribal prejudices—and will 4 even reinforce those when plausible to do so.

Applied to recent United States history, this insight accounts for the state of evangelical intellectual incoherence. A minority of contemporary American evangelicals, who are invested in the culture of contemporary academia, have internalized at least some of the tribal prejudices dominating that sphere (for example, respect for critically examined evidence and views on public morality committed to justice for minorities, as well as traditional sexual ethics). By contrast, many white evangelicals outside of university worlds are invested in partisan American politics and have internalized its tribal prejudices (for example, relative unconcern for critically examined evidence and laser-like focus on defending traditional sexual ethics). The fact that evangelicals are acclimated in the competing “tribes and nations” of contemporary American life shows why it is impossible to speak of an American evangelical mind.

THE CONTEMPORARY ACADEMY If an “evangelical” designation implies little about intellectual standing, so too might contemporary American intellectual life seem to be utterly opposed to anything even remotely Christian. The hostility to traditional Christian thought, traditional Christian morality, and even traditional morality of any kind is now widespread in American colleges, universities, and the media associated with them. To be sure, the hostility does not prevail everywhere and not to the same degree where it does exist.

Yet as attested by enough well-publicized examples, standing up for what were once Christian or Christian-friendly commonplaces has led to the skewing of hiring decisions, the denial

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of tenure, the dis-invitation of outside spea­k­ ers, and the ridicule of Christian perspectives in classrooms. Effective exploitation of advocacy strategies taken from the Civil Rights Movement has enabled previously marginal groups to mobilize for promoting their rights. In some places, the ideologies of those groups have become unforgiving arbiters of what can and cannot be said on campus and in publications.

Put differently, principles of unrestrained personal freedom and aggressive efforts to redress perceived injustice now rule in some regions of the academia.

The reality of academic specialization has also complicated the picture. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, I was privileged to lead several yearlong seminars for groups of Wheaton College faculty aimed specifically at promo­ ting Christian reflection on the subjects of the participants’ disciplines. Some of the seminars succeeded, others did not. When they failed, a fact of contemporary Christian life was at least partially responsible, but also a fact of modern academic life. Among faculty who shared strong Christian commitments, there could be a gross disparity between the level of academic preparation in a particular discipline and the level of theological sophistication and hermeneutical awareness. As a consequence, some scholars who were expert in the particulars of their disciplines found it difficult even to begin to think about how patterns of Christian truth or assumptions about scriptural interpretation might relate to the taken-for-granted conventions of those disciplines.

In addition, because the learning required to function responsibly in many disciplines had become so deep, it was often difficult to find a common language or a shared intellectual framework for conversation across the disciplines—among, say, physicists, music theorists, foreign language pedagogues, psychologists, historians of modern America, historians of India or sub-Saharan Africa, specialists in Shakespearean literature, specialists in nonWestern literature, organic chemists, physical chemists, New Testament scholars, and theological ethicists—all of whom knew their own

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subjects very well but sometimes not too much more. Specialization has produced wonders in all of the sciences and to at least some degree in the social sciences and humanities. Yet as specialization increases, communication among specialists on universal considerations, like the bearing of Christian faith on intellectual effort, has become increasingly difficult.

CHRISTIAN SCHOLARSHIP

BY EVANGELICALS An observer aware of the intellectual vacuity of “evangelical” taken by itself or confronted by the difficulties facing Christian believers in the modern academy might reasonably conclude that it was the worst of times for meaningful scho­l ar­s hip by evangelicals or evangelical-connected individuals. Nothing, however, could be more mistaken. Christian learning is now actually advancing on many fronts. It flourishes in some domains. And evangelicals are contributing their fair share. It does, however, require particular angles of vision to reach this conclusion.

Christian intellectual life, first, no longer has much to do with the way that churchmen promoting an Aristotelian-Thomistic framework regulated medieval intellectual life—or how college life at Oxford and Cambridge could inspire John Henr y Newman’s Idea of a University—or before the university era when the presidents of American colleges, who were invariably clergymen, could deploy a comfortable blend of Common Sense philosophy and generic Protestantism to prepare responsible Christian gentlemen for public service. The current situation is also quite different from the American university world that existed into the 1960s, which featured a mostly secular consensus with its almost entirely male participants policing a narrow range of intellectual perspectives—but which was only occasionally overtly anti-Christian.

From that world before 1960 there has been one survival, though not without challenge in some of the humanities. It is the respect for

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CHRISTIAN LEARNING IS NOW ACTUALLY ADVANCING ON MANY FRONTS. IT FLOURISHES IN SOME DOMAINS. AND EVANGELICALS ARE CONTRIBUTING THEIR FAIR SHARE.

standards of evidence, arguments, and demonstrations that rely on carefully researched and critically ascertained facts (in other words, a respect for empirical realities in the sciences and for a broader Wissenschaft in most nonscientific disciplines).

Otherwise, except for the hard sciences, it is now an intellectual Wild West.

Powerful challenges by advocates of civil rights for African Americans, other ethnic minorities, women, gays and lesbians, along with disillusionment about “the American dream,” have ended the deference to consensus.

Partisan politics has added further fractures.

For the most part, scholarship that now gains a hearing is not restricted by subject matter or interpretive conclusions, but by depth and breadth of research, persuasive organization of evidence, and articulate argumentation. For Christian scholars, the present resembles what the Jesuit Matteo Ricci experienced at the imperial court of late-sixteenth-century China where

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he could win respect for his learning, but where he enjoyed neither preference nor hegemony.

To be sure, limits still apply. As obvious examples, scholarship denying the Holocaust or defending the antebellum slaveholding South has no future. In addition, although scholarship grounded in a specific Christian tradition may be important for members of that tradition, it will usually not register in the general intellectual marketplace. From my admittedly limited perspective, I would conclude that much highquality theology is now being written—and also being read in at least some parts of the broader evangelical world. Some of that theology may indeed be helpful for indicating how charismatic, Mennonite, Kuyperian, covenantal, Wesleyan, Anglican, or Lutheran theological grounding might propel more general intellectual efforts for adherents in these communities.

Yet it is hard to imagine that the current intellectual environment could ever be convinced by charismatic interpretations of American foreign policy, Mennonite cancer research, Kuyperian sociology, covenantal musicology, Methodist string theory, Anglican economics, or Lutheran literary criticism.

It is different for scholarship with general Christian foundations. As perhaps the prime example, several university presses, especially Cornell University Press and Oxford University Press, have published many books in recent years with sophisticated philosophical arguments defending traditional Christian beliefs—including the Trinity, the two-natures/ one-person Christology of the classical confessions, and the necessity for atonement between God and humanity (though sometimes explained in new ways). Such works were rare to the point of nonexistence two generations ago.

Now, though sometimes generating strong criticism, they are commonplace. Similar advocacy can be found in other disciplines, though more often as empathetic treatment of Christian believers where that belief is given as much credibility as economic, gender, political, or social forces. As a feature of modern intellectual life, such studies appear alongside empathetic treatments of Mormons, Muslims,

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Eastern religions, and the reform causes that have proliferated so widely in recent decades.

The current advances of Christian-inflected learning do not herald a new day of Christian preeminence, but they do testify to an intellectual pluralism that did not exist when various Christian frameworks or, later, a secular consensus prevailed.

A second matter of perspective concerns the evangelicals who are participating in the revival of Christian-friendly learning. Even as instances of scholarship abound from growing numbers of (as the neologism has it) “self-identifying” evangelicals, who teach in evangelical colleges and universities, or who may be considered evangelical fellow travelers, that scholarship is much more generally Christian than distinctly evangelical. If it does concern evangelical subjects, traditions, individuals, or movements, it more likely features empathetic explanation than overt apologetical intent.

When evangelicals make distinctively Christian arguments or examine Christian phenomena with respect for their Christian character, those contributions rarely feature the Bebbington evangelical characteristics.

Such scholarship, while almost always respectful of Scripture and biblical values, is almost never grounded in a particular view of inspiration or a detailed explanation of how the Bible functions as a supreme authority. Specific attention to the atonement and conversion is also rare. Scholarship concerned about evangelical activism is more common but is usually focused on social or cultural matters rather than evangelism. When evangelism is the subject, as in David Kling’s recent A History of Christian Conversion from Oxford University Press, the treatment is descriptive rather than itself evangelistic.

One other feature of contemporary intellectual life is also significant in light of the evangelical history that stretched from the early sixteenth century to the mid-twentieth. During those years, “evangelical” came close to meaning simply “anti-Catholic.” Now evangelical scholars frequently share perspectives with Catholics,

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cooperate on joint projects, or build deliberately on their work.

A good example of that kind of Christian assertion now gaining a wider hearing is provided by the distinguished Gifford Lectures sponsored by Scottish universities and funded with a bequest “to promote and diffuse the study of Natural Theology in the widest sense of the term—in other words, the knowledge 5 of God.” During the first two decades of this

THE CURRENT ADVANCES OF CHRISTIANINFLECTED LEARNING DO NOT HERALD A NEW DAY OF CHRISTIAN PREEMINENCE, BUT THEY DO TESTIFY TO AN INTELLECTUAL PLURALISM THAT DID NOT EXIST WHEN VARIOUS CHRISTIAN FRAMEWORKS OR, LATER, A SECULAR CONSENSUS PREVAILED. VOL.30 NO.4 JULY/AUGUST 2021

century, Gifford Lecturers have promoted a smorgasbord of possibilities for construing “the knowledge of God,” but prominent in that number have been a number of figures whom most observers would call evangelical or recognize as having meaningful evangelical convictions. The subjects they have treated, however, have not been specifically evangelical in the Bebbington terms.

Alister McGrath, the biographer of C. S. Lewis and J. I. Packer, explained how theories drawn from biochemistry and evolutionary biology point to a universe fine-tuned by the Trinitarian God of classical Christianity. N. T. Wright’s conclusions about the Jewish character of the New Testament and the nature of justifying faith have not been accepted by all evangelicals, but he is well known for his many books from InterVarsity Press and similar evangelical publishers, as well as for his academic defense of the resurrection of Christ as a historical reality. Wright lectured on how the depiction of Jesus in the Gospels could ground a distinctive form of natural theology. At the time when they delivered their lectures, two philosophers were active members of the same congregation of the Christian Reformed Church in South Bend, Indiana. Alvin Plantinga argued that clashes between science and theology were due to ideological perspective rather than anything empirical, and Michael Rae meditated on the hiddenness or darkness of God. Besides these evangelicals and evangelical fellow-travelers, the lecturers included several others with evident evangelical connections or who were known as sympathetic supervisors of advanced evangelical students. Their subjects examined the religious beliefs of scientists from different parts of the world, the ways that physical location had influenced the reception of Darwinism, traditional Christian responses to the problem of evil, concepts of sovereignty derived from classical theology and modern government, ways for traditional Christian theology to appropriate modern evolutionary theory, and what it means to love the neighbor as oneself.

This varied collection of Gifford Lectures, all connected meaningfully to evangelicalism, were

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resolutely theistic, often specifically Christian, but not evangelical in a specific sense.

Publication from well-established university presses is not the only gauge of a culture’s intellectual life, but it can serve as a shorthand indication. Even the most superficial survey of noticed books from these publishing leaders reveals a remarkable flourishing of Christian, Christian-friendly, or Christian-alert scholarship by evangelicals or evangelical-connected authors. Again, however, this is “evangelical” scholarship as contributing to more general Christian assertion or as drawing on insider familiarity with evangelical communities. A skewed, impartial list results from the books I happen to know about, but those results are still impressive, especially compared to the relative absence of such works by such authors less than a half-century ago: • A critically balanced but mostly positive life of Billy Graham from Harvard University Press (by Grant Wacker); • A detailed and again critically balanced but warmly sympathetic study from Oxford University Press of the missionary work begun by the five American missionaries killed in outreach to the Woarani of Ecuador (by Kathryn Long); • A bulging handful of detailed historical studies from Yale University Press by Baylor University historian Thomas Kidd (on the colonial Great Awakening, the religious lives of Benjamin Franklin and Patrick Henry, religion in the American Religion, and more); • An equally impressive publishing record from Baylor philosopher C. Stephen Evans who—besides numerous titles from InterVarsity Press, Eerdmans, and other Christian publishers—has brought out a number of studies from Oxford and Cambridge University Presses on Søren Kierkegaard, theistic arguments, divinely ordained ethical obligations, and related subjects; • A book in 2019 from Oxford University Press by Baylor education professors, Perry Glazer and Nathan Alleman, The Outrageous Idea of Christian Teaching, that riffed on an earlier book by George Marsden, also from Oxford (1997), The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship; • Important studies from Oxford by professors from Asbury University on the worldview of C. S. Lewis (Michael Peterson, editor of the journal Faith and

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Philosophy) and on analytic Christianity and a theological approach to the New Testament (Thomas McCall); • At least fifteen titles from Oxford and Cambridge on different questions involving Christianity and the law by Emory University professor John Witte and an equal number edited by Witte for a Cambridge series on other aspects of the same relationship; • A series of creative historical studies from Oxford University Press by Wheaton College professor Timothy Larsen on the religious life of John Stuart Mill, the surprisingly deep Christian commitments of leading twentieth-century anthropologists, and the remarkable number of skeptics in the Victorian era who returned to Christian faith; • From Christian Smith, forthright challenges to the unthinking secularism of contemporary American sociology, as well as a long list of books detailing his own empirical research published by major university presses—the first of which appeared when he was still identified as an evangelical, the latter after he became a Catholic (but with no real change in his evisceration of the skeptical inability to credit the reality of religion); and

IF THERE HAS BEEN A SCANDAL OF THE EVANGELICAL MIND AND IF IT IS POSSIBLE TO OVERCOME SUCH A SCANDAL, IT WILL COME AS BELIEVERS UNDERTAKE UNEMBARRASSED, UNENCUMBERED STUDY OF THE WORLD AND ALL THAT IS IN IT.

• A series of edited and authored books from major university presses by Timothy Samuel Shah that employ the standard tools of political research and political theory to document conditions of religious freedom and religious persecution around the world.

These individual examples could be multiplied many times over and for many disciplines.

The lists include many women authors, authors representing a broadening range of ethnicities, and an increasing number whose scholarship looks far beyond the United States and agendas set by American national life. Many of these authors also write for the religious presses (including Baker, Eerdmans, IVP, Westminster/ John Knox) that have long served evangelical and related constituencies and whose support for the renewal of Christian learning by evangelicals has been too little appreciated.

That renewal, to repeat, has not created a flourishing “evangelical mind.” Large numbers of evangelicals defined by demography, politics, or denomination pay no attention to such work or regard it with suspicion. But the number who do take part is significant. Where non- or anti-Christian learning abounds in American intellectual life, so now does evangelical-sponsored learning that is in some sense meaningfully Christian also abound.

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THEOLOGICAL GROUNDING The theology underlying such recent examples of Christian-friendly scholarship produced for general consumption and treating nontheological subjects has been generic and implicit, rather than denominationally specific and explicit. A wide range of factors helps explain why the renewal of Christian learning to which many evangelicals are contributing has taken this theological shape. A few years ago, I was privileged to write a short essay on why George Marsden in 2004 could be awarded the Bancroft Prize, the most distinguished honor bestowed on books in American history, for his 6 magisterial study of Jonathan Edwards. In preparing that essay, it was relatively simple to specify more than a dozen features of postwar American

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life that in one way or another made this honor possible. Several concerned economic, social, generational, and political developments that reconfigured the course of American intellectual development. Some of course were personal and more obviously theological, as exemplified

by Marsden’s generally Reformed perspective worked out over decades of careful scholarship, but exemplified as well by other singularly influential historians such as Timothy L. Smith, a Nazarene of Arminian persuasion.

Smith and Marsden were pacesetters, soon joined by many other historians, who followed the lead of the postwar neo-evangelicals (Carl Henry, E. J. Carnell, Bernard Ramm) who set aside the narrow absolutes of fundamentalism in order to promote themes closer to general Christian orthodoxy. In succeeding decades, many scholars with evangelical convictions went further to research and write with those themes operating as deep, but unstated, contextual background for their work. Although they may have been personally guided by the specifics of their individual theological traditions, they opted to accept the conventions of contemporary American Wissenschaft. The modest notice they have gained in taking advantage of possibilities opened by the contemporary academy’s ideological free-for-all has come from operating where differences between Christian believers are less important than points of intersection among Calvinists, Wesleyans, Mennonites, Lutherans, charismatics, often Catholics, sometimes Seventh-day Adventists, and sometimes even Mormons.

Put differently, C. S. Lewis’s winsome presentation of “mere Christianity” seemed a program for which many evangelicals were waiting. They have, in effect, taken Lewis’s observation that “God is no fonder of intellectual slackers than of any other slackers” as marching orders for doing their best in the American intellectual world as it currently exists. As guidance for operating in that world, most seem also to have taken to heart Lewis’s admonition that “whatever you do, do not start quarrelling with other [believers] because they 7 use a different formula from yours.”

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Yet given the almost completely unorganized state of American evangelicalism, it is not surprising that many evangelicals could not care less about what the denizens of the discredited Ivory Tower were up to, even if they called themselves Christians. Others have regarded evangelical academic efforts with suspicion as manifesting intellectual cowardice or simply selling out to “the world.” This indifference and this critique deserve to be taken seriously by individuals like myself who believe the Ivory Tower is actually important for life in general.

If “the wounds of a friend” are life-giving, however tenuous the friendship, they deserve attention (Prov. 27:6).

Considered more generally, if there has been a scandal of the evangelical mind and if it is possible to overcome such a scandal, it will come as believers undertake unembarrassed, unencumbered study of the world and all that is in it. If those who undertake that study can follow the Pauline injunction—“Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves” (Phil. 2:3)—it may be possible to build bridges not only to the American academy but to other American evangelicals as well.

MARK A. NOLL is the author of The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Eerdmans, 1994), Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind (Eerdmans, 2011), and works on the history of Christianity primarily in North America.

1. D. W. Bebbington, “Evangelical Characteristics,” Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 2–17.

2. Mark Noll, “Revolution and the Rise of Evangelical Social Influence in North Atlantic Societies,” in Evangelicalism, ed. Mark Noll, David Bebbington, and George Rawlyk (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 113–36.

3. Mark Hutchinson and John Wolffe, A Short History of Global Evangelicalism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 18.

4. This book brought together previously published essays on writing the history of evangelicals with commentary on the recent support

by American white evangelicals for Donald Trump.

5. For more on the Gifford Lectures, see https://www.giffordlectures. org, accessed January 28, 2021.

6. Mark Noll, “How an Evangelical Won the Bancroft Prize,” in American Evangelicalism: George Marsden and the State of American Religious History, ed. Darren Dochuk, Thomas S. Kidd, and Kurt W. Peterson (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014), 468–86.

7. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan, 1952), 61, 142.

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Theological Edu

Ad Hoc I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y

“SECULAR WRITERS HAVE BEGUN TO discover theology.” This verdict by Boston College po­litics professor Alan Wolfe appears in his New York Times review of economist Benjamin M. Friedman’s new book on the Arminian roots of capitalism. Wolfe relates that “if someone had told me that a former chairman of the Harvard economics department would write a major work on Calvinism and its influence, you would have had to consider me a skeptic.” But then, Friedman is hardly alone as a nontheologian

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W I L L H A RV EY

taking theology seriously for understanding his own discipline. Noting other examples of taking theology seriously in secular disciplines, Wolfe concludes, “Employed by a Catholic university, I found theology a far more humanistic disci1 pline than political science.”

Roger that. Just yesterday I found in my in-box a notice to members from the American Academy of Religion denouncing the Capitol Hill insurrection. Weeks after just about every serious and not-so-serious person in America

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BY

MICHAEL HORTON

cation Today: Reflections had commented publicly on the calamity, the learned society apparently reached agreement that the nation was still awaiting its solemn verdict. And the judgment was a predictably progressive screed that could have been (and was in fact) proffered by any university department. Gone are the days, it seems, when someone like Franklin D. Roosevelt invited a liberal theologian like Reinhold Niebuhr to explain original sin in order to help him get his arms around the phenomenon of Adolf Hitler. Today,

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theologians themselves would most likely punt to psychologists, social historians, or cultural anthropologists—or play one on TV.

A QUEEN DETHRONED Though there are a few great exceptions, the most toxic major in college today is religious studies. For a very long time, academic study of religion and theology has been the province

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not of liberals but of radicals united by an utter contempt for traditional religious communities in which many students were reared. Since such radical theologies now dominate mainline churches as well, it is increasingly the case that fewer students are in fact reared in such backgrounds. Thus the exhilarating era of theological bra-burning is over. Nobody really cares what religion or theology professors think. But, apparently, some astute colleagues in other departments still believe that theology matters.

In terms of the long history of academia, this is a recent development. The theology department was the cradle of the European university.

What we call the hard sciences were then called natural philosophy, which was a handmaiden to theology. The most important academic debates for a millennium were theological ones. Nearly any major figure in the history of all the disciplines we group under “the arts, sciences, and letters” was trained in theology. Most scientists were priests; and psychology, political thought, architecture, and medicine were all dependent on the “queen of sciences.” Even Copernican cosmology was an in-house controversy among scientists who were still considered in some way also theologians. Just as medieval abbeys were the nursery of evolving universities, new theological academies—seminaries—became the nucleus of universities in the Reformation.

When Edward VI and Archbishop Cranmer wanted to deepen and expand the Reformation’s impact on England, they persuaded leaders Martin Bucer and Peter Martyr Vermigli to immigrate: the one dispatched to reform Cambridge and the other, Oxford.

The same is true in colonial America. Two years after the organization in 1636 of a school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for the training of ministers, clergyman John Harvard gave his library and name to the fledgling institution.

There, future pastors learned the Bible in its original languages and the systematic theology of Puritan William Ames. They also read classical and Roman authors and followed with interest advances in wider scholarship, especially the sciences. Whenever universities began to move away from orthodoxy, they usually

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began in the theology faculty. This was true at Harvard, which eventually shifted toward Arminian and then, very quickly thereafter, to Unitarian sentiments. So, the disgruntled orthodox went off to found Andover-Newton and Yale. Meanwhile, Presbyterians in the middle colonies established a seminary in Princeton, New Jersey, which became the nucleus of Princeton College.

Eventually, many who came to these seminaries wanted to pursue fields other than ministry.

It seemed expedient in some cases to separate the divinity school from the undergraduate college. But then the Enlightenment washed upon American shores. The principal leaders of this movement, especially in Germany, were also seminarians. In fact, nearly all of them were Lutheran pietists preparing for the ministry. Critical of orthodoxy, they began to rethink the doctrine of God, the Trinity, and the deity of Christ, as well as supernatural miracles, the atonement, and justification through faith alone. Instead, they came to believe that the main business in religion

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is inwardness and universal morality. The “inner light” of mystical movements became the “inner reason” of the Enlightenment. As a consequence, authority shifted from an external word to an inner autonomy.

Reared in pietism, Immanuel Kant (1724– 1804) contrasted “universal religion” (i.e., moral duty) with “ecclesiastical faiths” (doctrinal orthodoxy). In his mature philosophy, Kant argued that we can’t know God through reason or revelation, but we must presuppose his existence as necessary for morality. What this meant for theological education is that theology no longer had any basis as an academic discipline in the university. We may know the phenomena of religion (what people believe about God and how that affects them and their societies), but not objective truths about God himself.

It took a little while in America, but by about the middle of the nineteenth century, janitors were scraping off “Theology Department” from the entrance to replace it with “Religion Department.” The queen had been demoted to a lady-in-waiting, a servant of disciplines over which she once reigned. In fact, her empire reduced rather quickly to a host of new territories that, having lost their center, became increasingly balkanized. Ironically, many churches that insisted on keeping their colleges and universities became increasingly secularized themselves.

Today, growing numbers of Americans—and Europeans—consider themselves “spiritual but not religious.” While this development can hardly be attributed exclusively to the location of theology or religion in the university, it’s at least in my experience precisely in that department where one is most likely to find faculty who embrace that basic self-identification. Where theology once concerned the truths that, for all the debates, we considered most certain and worthy of knowing, its academic study became governed by relativism. There is no “chief end of man” and even if there were, we cannot know it. Instead, we know what makes us happy here and now. Not even Kant’s “pure religion” of universal morality is sustainable, which the Köningsberg philosopher should have known.

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The only “truths” in this field are subjective, based on the empirical and not-so-empirical research of other disciplines such as cultural anthropology, social psychology, economics, and maybe political history. And the only value that such knowledge has for us today is how we can use it for a purely secular “flourishing.”

From this brief summary, I don’t mean to suggest that theology should be unyoked from other disciplines. It never has been. Neither Thomas Aquinas nor Galileo, Luther nor Newton ever thought it could be. And in fact, it’s not today, either. The study of religion in the universities today is toxic, not because it learns from other fields (the “Book of Nature”), but because it is itself committed largely to the religion of metaphysical naturalism it promotes with evangelistic zeal and enforces with inquisitor­ial powers. Truth be told, the average mainline theologian or religion professor does not actually share Kant’s epistemic skepticism, but seems to have very dogmatic beliefs about God, humanity, salvation, and eschatology. And that’s why, in large measure at least, most people—including their own colleagues in other fields—don’t bother to read their books. Apart from help coming up with lectionary sermons, does anyone still read The Christian Century?

GRASSROOTS THEOLOGY And now, for something completely different. For the rest of this article, I want to focus on the revival of theology—even Reformation theology—today. I have been blessed by the Lord to see this phenomenon up close over the past four decades. Under the direction of Dr. James M. Boice, the Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology spawned a litter of smaller venues across the nation. Founded in the hinterlands of western Pennsylvania in 1971, R. C. Sproul’s Ligonier Ministries broadened the movement of grassroots Reformed theology.

J. I. Packer’s Knowing God (1973) became the first theology best-seller of a generation. And the rest, as they say, is history.

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Theology may be more or less moribund in the university, but it thrives where it did during the Reformation: in homes, schools, churches, and parachurch networks. Reflecting different social locations, mainline academics tend to assume a trickle-down theory of change, while evangelicals tend to be populists. The Reformation, however, was both a university movement and a popular phenomenon. Getting that circulation right is more a matter of God’s secret providence than anything that could be engineered—and there are signs of this circulation in evangelical theology today.

Much has been said in our circles, pro and con, about the “Young, Restless, Reformed” movement of recent decades. Evangelicals have never been short on young and restless, but in conservative Protestantism “Reformed” was sort of a nasty word. To many it meant “tribalism.”

Fundamentalism was tribalistic in its own way. The vision of J. Gresham Machen and others was to recover the fundamental truths of the Christian faith—its supernatural core— from the wreckage of the modernism described above. Even hostile secular critics observed then and since that Machen’s Christianity and Liberalism was not only equal but superior to the programmatic essays of the latter. That vision was short-lived, however. Grounded mostly in Arminian revivalism, dispensational premillennialism, and an anti-intellectual biblicism, it nevertheless played down “secondary” doctrines that Reformed folks—as Lutherans, Roman Catholics, and others—actually consider pretty important. Fundamentalists had no trouble fighting for things they believe in.

It was just that there was not much interest in theology or history. After all, theologians had ruined everything.

This muting of theological distinctives was true doubly for neo-evangelicalism. Seeing itself as the soul of the nation, American Protestantism had long suppressed confessional differences in order to maintain its moral and institutional hegemony. Basically a conservative movement within mainline denominations, neo-evangelicalism was embarrassed by its fundy cousin and wouldn’t tolerate

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further divisions over confessional wrangling.

Make no mistake: it wasn’t a matter of courage. Nor was it a matter of anti-intellectualism.

A cursory examination of early Christianity Today issues—with contributors from Baptist, Lutheran, Anglican, Reformed, Presbyterian, and Methodist traditions—disabuses one against this verdict. It was simply that the pan-evangelical alliance could brook no controversies that might threaten the movement.

That’s the problem with movements as opposed to churches. Intellectually, neo-evangelicalism tended to sympathize with Reformation traditions. In the pew, however, the default setting of the movement itself was largely the same as that of fundamentalism: vaguely Arminian, pietistic, and revivalistic.

Urbana, InterVarsity, and Campus Crusade for Christ (now Cru) swept through youth groups like mine. I admired Billy Graham, John Stott, Tom Skinner, Rebecca Manley Pippert, and Tony Campollo. But, being a little bookish, I joined the “dead theologians society” and soon came into contact with some living ones. In my early teens, I attended my first Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology (PCRT) led

by James Boice, who from that time on became a mentor. He introduced me to R. C. Sproul, J. I. Packer, and others who would mark my life as they would so many others. The PCRT was for me a yearly Super Bowl. The rest of the year, I felt like it was pretty lonely being Reformed in America. I began reading The Presbyterian Guardian (later merged with the Presbyterian Journal). Founded by J. Gresham Machen, the de facto magazine of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church was cheaply printed, unattractive, and packed with amazing insight on every page.

Rifling through the phone book, I found a meager entry for a Bible study by a Reformed Presbyterian pastor who helped answer my questions and lead me to great sources. That was then.

This has now changed—a lot. As I look back on my experience in a conservative but mostly Arminian evangelical world, I am amazed by the extent to which the Lord has prospered the growth of seeds planted by those faithful

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YOU HAVE TO THINK ABOUT THE TRINITY IN LIGHT OF THE WAY CHRISTIANS IN THE PAST HAVE DISCUSSED THIS CENTRAL TRUTH.

servants. Many of those same churches and schools I attended that had been skittish of Reformed theology are today rather open to it.

Young and restless, to be sure—but Reformed?

Let’s set aside for the moment debates over what that label means. There’s no doubt that this movement, most recognizable today under the umbrella of The Gospel Coalition (TGC), has had a phenomenal impact. For many younger pastors and church leaders today, it has been a major gateway to a biblically grounded, Christcentered, and gospel-driven theology. Targeting pastors, TGC is right at that middle part of the funnel between academic theology and the person in the pew. It is not a church, but it plays a crucial mediating role, which is what a good parachurch organization is supposed to do.

In fact, a movement is helpful only to the extent that it knows this. A broad movement must decide on certain principles of unity for a coalition but shouldn’t mistake this as the “primary things” or “gospel issues” while demoting

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crucial doctrines to secondary status. You don’t have to agree on everything to be part of a coalition, but church unity is deeper, broader, and richer.

Organizations like TGC or WHI are at their best when they don’t pretend to be a church, seeing themselves instead as a like-minded association of people from different churches. As I argued above, the idea of an “American Church” or an “Evangelical Church” is a Platonic idea.

It has been the Achilles heel of American Protestantism, which neo-evangelicals tried to rehabilitate. The upside of Christ-centeredness and the gospel is that people actually come to understand who God is and why it matters. The downside is that not everything is a “gospel issue.” There is more to Christ than the atonement. The incarnation is part of the gospel, too.

And there is more to the Trinity than the Second Person. And there is more to the Christian faith than the gospel.

If you don’t have the gospel and Christ at the center, then everything is lost. But you have to think about everything in light of the Trinity, for example, or even your Christology gets fuzzy. And you have to think about the Trinity in light of the way Christians in the past have discussed this central truth, because they have the age lines in their faces to prove that they had to battle heresies of their day that reappear with only cosmetic changes in other eras, including our own. The Trinity is a “gospel issue.” The church is a “gospel issue.” The sacraments are a “gospel issue.” That is why Lutheran, Reformed, and Baptist churches have not been able to become one visible body.

Even things that are not considered a “gospel issue” are important. Jesus’ Great Commission is to “go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:19–20). Evangelicals stood up for the gospel again and again in the past but often lacked both the depth and expansiveness of the Christian faith, so that while the frontline was valiant, the backfield was a bit sketchy. It never takes long for a new

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generation to make the same plays, especially when it doesn’t know what went wrong in the backfield.

Making deep confessional commitments secondary to a movement-mentality will always end up watering down even the principles on which the movement initially agreed. For example, “Reformed,” having suffered the divisions of liberal apostasy, is now at risk of being absorbed into a “Five-Point Calvinism.” Not our confession, but Jonathan Edwards, becomes the tie that binds. Movements like YRR are introducing mainstream evangelicals to a richer and more Christ-centered emphasis—and to deeper resources of the Reformation traditions that many churches in those traditions have forgotten or taken for granted. At the same time, it’s hoped that the fruit will be more than a more Reformation-infused American Protestantism; it’s hoped that it will be a rich dialogue between different confessional traditions on issues that still divide us. If we don’t appreciate the differences that divide us, reducing them to nonessentials, then we won’t grow deeply in our own convictions on those same issues. But let me conclude this section on a justly positive note: Groups like TGC, WHI, and Ligonier are playing a major role in awakening an interest in theology not only in the United States but around the world.

PUBLISHING Right up until the early twentieth century, at least in Britain and America, theological books—even by conservatives—were published by the leading houses in London and New York. As the century progressed, they became the province mostly of companies owned by mainline denominations, and now these are in financial trouble. In sharp contrast, evange­l­ ical theology is a booming business, at least in the United States. When I was growing up and cutting my teeth on Christian doctrine, most evangelical publishers were interested in a farrago of Amish fiction and end-times conspiracies that seemed closely related in genre.

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There were a few republications of solid class­ics with ugly covers (mostly by quite small houses), commentaries, and some very helpful Bible study aids.

Needless to say, this has changed significantly for the better. Many of those same publishers now have impressive imprints not only for Bible studies and commentaries but for academic theology. Since a number of these houses are owned by secular companies, there must be a market for this proliferation of divisions with “Academic” after their trade name. In fact, a number of secular publishing giants have added theology divisions or acquired respected brands. The same goes for theological journals. Although I don’t have

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any supporting data, my sense is that there are more such entities in the world today and that they thrive on contributors from a more conservative Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox orientation. And the majority of writers as well as publishers appear to be from the United States. This sense was confirmed for me in a recent doctoral defense in which I was an external examiner. It was an engagement with the late John Webster, a friend to many of us engaged in this project, and was deeply informed by the Reformed and ecumenical heritage. The thesis was so good that I suggested it should be published. The internal examiner, a leading and quite liberal Scottish theologian, concurred. But which publisher? After offering several names, both of us realized that they were all publishers in the United States.

Not only is there a noticeable spike in interest among younger Christians in theology, but they’re also better informed than previous generations. In Protestant and Roman Catholic academia, liberal and conservative, the twentieth century continued the previous century’s scorn of “scholasticism” in particular and historical theology in general. The rage was various “theologies of”—theology of liberation, feminism, existence, absolute concern, death-of-god. There was a panoply of “posts” as well: postmodern, post-Christian, postreligious, post-secular, and so on. Creativity was actually pretty dim. Theology was like a refrigerator of leftovers variously combined into meals.

In more conservative circles, exegesis remained on a firm footing. Evangelicals were already among the most highly regarded biblical scholars. The latest repackaged Bultmannian porridge from mainline presses today can’t compete with the breadth and depth of Craig S. Keener’s Christobiography, for example. It is indeed a good day for evangelical biblical scholarship, and it has been for a while.

Only now, however, are we seeing a resurgence in theology to match.

In 1997, leading New Testament scholar Francis Watson pointed that a major reason for the chasm between biblical studies and

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theology in the Anglophone world is the dominance of evangelicals in the field.

Pietism always tended to set the Bible in opposition to the church and official dogmas, with fateful results in Protestant liberalism. Yet that tendency remains in much of evangelical bibli2 cal scholarship today, Watson contends.

Even in conservative Reformed schools, the attitude toward historical theology ranged often from respectful glance to indifference to outright suspicion. And “Reformation theology” tended to be recast according to the emphases and eccentricities of a particular contemporary agenda. One need not consult the Reformed systems of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, because they are either irrelevant to our contemporary world or, worse, returned to the dregs of popery. In contrast with Reformed theologians elsewhere, American Calvinists were enamored of Jonathan Edwards but in the main had scant firsthand knowledge of the confessional theology he was shaped by and in some ways departed from.

Moreover, a number of prominent evangelical theologians repristinated Socinian and liberal Protestant critiques of classical theism, the substitutionary atonement, justification, and final judgment. Poorly informed by the actual arguments of traditional orthodoxy, these critiques created a straw opponent. Not only historical theology but also philosophy is essential if we want to know how doctrines were formulated from exegesis to system. No one comes to the Bible alone, without philosophical and theological presuppositions formed within a particular context. We need to be aware not only of those presuppositions in other biblical interpreters but also in ourselves.

Having been in the middle of some of these debates, I’m cheered to see the tide turning.

Especially in Reformed and Lutheran circles, there is a significant trend of ressourcement or “retrieval.” Precisely in encountering the great orthodox systems of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, we have come to discover medieval theologians and, behind them, patristic sources. Of course, there is always the danger of veering from the faith by intellectualism and

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pandering to the academy. However, some of the dominant evangelical systematic theologians of the past fifty years, especially in the United States, have been cut off to some degree from the aid of philosophy and historical theology—which is, after all, the history of modern biblical interpretation. The recent kerfuffle over the Trinity in the Evangelical Theological Society is a good place to see this change. Embracing a biblicistic method unchecked by the consensus of long debates, big mistakes were made on this crucial doctrine and on the divine attributes. Those who vocally said so were mostly younger scholars sensitive both to exegesis and to the actual arguments put forward by our orthodox forebears.

It was the goal of Lutheran and Reformed scholastics to demonstrate not only differences but wide areas of continuity with the whole Christian tradition. One work by the Anglican Puritan William Perkins is titled The Reformed Catholic, and Franciscus Junius wrote an important Reformed defense of the Trinity against contemporary Socinians called A Defense of the Catholic Doctrine of the Trinity.

These older theologians were as likely to appropriate an argument from the Cappadocian fathers as from Luther or Calvin. Again, at first one could count contemporary scholars of this ilk on one hand. But this is no longer the case.

Lutherans like Robert Preus and Reformed scholar Richard Muller were soon joined by a choir of colleagues and students. A good example of this fruitful development is the programmatic title by Michael Allen and Scott R. Swain, Reformed Catholicity: The Promise of Retrieval for Theology and Biblical Interpretation (Baker Academic, 2015).

SEMINARIES In my humble opinion, seminaries offer another indicator of theological depth and maturity. As conservatives, we’re always waiting for the fateful news that another bastion has fallen, and there is plenty of history to justify that anxiety.

But we must dispel the rumor that infidelity is the only thing that starts in the seminaries.

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Without being too specific, I may again draw merely on my own observations.

Apar t from a handful of conservative Reformed seminaries, the lion’s share of theological education over the last half-century or more has belonged to the neo-evangelical mainstream. In such contexts, the curriculum is not united by a particular confessional orientation. In some cases, in fact, Christian doctrine, biblical languages, and a commitment to the church’s pastoral ministry have taken a backseat to cultural anthropology, psychology, business, politics, and a host of electives such as “Sports Ministry” or advanced professional degrees such as the DMin. In many of the cases where this shift occurred, a familiar path is exposed that we have seen in liberal Protestantism.

It’s not because of theology but because of the abandonment of theology for more ostensibly interesting and relevant pursuits that some evangelical seminaries have lost their way.

The renaissance of interest in Reformation theology among younger generations is felt in the improvement and growth of seminaries that are intentionally committed to a curriculum that takes them deeper into it. I detect more interest in theology—indeed, Reformed theology—in a number of conservative evangelical seminaries. Moreover, there are more Reformed seminaries. And the ones particularly thriving right now are the most dedicated to confessional integrity.

IN THE TRENCHES There is still a wide gap between academic theology and the life of the church. Indeed, it reflects a wider gap in American society between elite and popular culture. The disparagement of theology among many evangelical brothers and sisters is bound up with a wariness, if not hostility, toward intellectuals (especially academics) more generally. Given the history, this is understandable. Even here, however, I see the tide turning a bit. After all, the impetus for the revival of Reformation theology today came not from academic

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IT IS HERE, IN THE LOCAL CHURCH AND IN THE HOME, WHERE THEOLOGY TOUCHES GROUND AND TRANSFORMS LIVES.

theologians but from pastors and teachers.

That, in turn, has yielded a crop of theologians working in the academy as well as the church.

This is the circulation that needs to continue and widen in order to see greater interest in theology on the ground.

Across the evangelical world today, doctrine is subordinated to practical, especially social and political, concerns. Even on these issues, though, the substance is thin. For those on the Left and the Right, it’s primarily action on a set of predictable policies that matters. Again, this is due at least partly to the paucity of theological reflection on distinctively Christian teachings.

Evangelical engagement compares poorly with Roman Catholic social thought. For a culture war, an army is required—one’s platoon matters little. Roman Catholics have centuries of deliberation on the relevance of the imago Dei and natural law as well as the light of Scripture.

For children of the Reformation, this heritage of patristic and medieval thought belongs as much to us as it does to Rome. This was at least the view of the great theological systems of our

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forebears. Reformed theologians like Johannes Althusius related covenant theology to political thought and in the process played a major role in modern constitutional theory. If we read them on these topics, we also meet Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus, Bonaventure, Gratian, Anselm and Augustine, Gregory of Nazianzus and Irenaeus. The deeper we go into this attic, the more treasures we find for a more robust—and indeed more Christian—approach to social and political engagement.

Even here, though, there are signs of better days. For example, there is David VanDrunen’s Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms: A Study in the Development of Reformed Social Thought (Emory University Studies in Law and Religion; Eerdmans, 2009). His more recent Politics after Christendom (Zondervan Academic, 2020) is a good example of applying theory to practice for general readers. But projects like this grow out of a deeply informed connection with Scripture and the history of theological reflection.

In the trenches, pastors and teachers are, of course, the mediators of theology to the rest of Christ’s body. Academic publishing serves seminaries, which in turn serve churches. Ideally, seminary professors should be ordained ministers, with their instruction as an extension of their call to the church. In turn, churches should afford pastors sabbaticals not only for reading commentaries and preparing sermons but for working through their stack of “mustread” theology books. This is essential for the pastor’s health and for that of the whole congregation. It is here, in the local church and in the home, where theology touches ground and transforms lives.

MICHAEL HORTON is the editor-in-chief of Modern Refor-

mation and the J. Gresham Machen Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary California in Escondido.

1. Alan Wolfe, review of The Religious Roots of Our Free Enterprise System, by Benjamin M. Friedman, New York Times, January 26, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/26/books/review/religion-and-the-rise-of-capitalism-benjamin-m-friedman.html.

2. Francis Watson, Text and Truth: Redefining Biblical Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 141.

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Theological Edu for

I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y

W I L L H A RV EY

INTRODUCTION: LEARNING THEOLOGY IN ONGOING WARTIME be a distraction in times of crisis, but such tumultuous times actually demonstrate the need for that kind of doctrinal formation. It’s a perennial reality that great unrest raises the question of justifying the investment of time, money, or passion in preparing for the future when things are so dire now. We should explore that sense

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of needing justification as well as the unique opportunity presented in such times.

First: On a Sunday in October 1939, Oxford don C. S. Lewis offered a sermon to university students titled “Learning in War-Time.” He said that they might be wondering why they should study Tennyson or Thucydides when a second war with Germany had just started. Lewis then reminded them that, in one sense, it’s always wartime and that education involves real worth no matter what the circumstance. Crises don’t

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MICHAEL ALLEN

cation Christians make learning a luxury that can’t be afforded; otherwise, no one would ever be educated (for truly the crisis, the pressing need, and the call to action never recede).

Second: Pandemics, social unrest, political polarization, racial injustice, and severe economic challenges all demonstrate the need to think with wisdom and prudence, yes, but also with a deep sense of priorities and principles.

Political societies might turn to first principles (watchwords being “freedom,” “equality,” or

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“the rule of law”), and yet Christians will want to turn to distinctly Christian language to order our thinking and action. Crises don’t make theological formation moot. They demand its mature functioning.

In this essay, I want to explore why theological education matters for Christian men and women, not simply for ministers or elders but specifically for laypersons. Then I want to address at least some significant aspects of how that theological education happens.

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WHY DOES THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION MATTER TO LAYPERSONS? Wisdom Laypersons don’t need to administer sacraments or preach sermons, but they are called to any number of Christian actions. In fact, one angle would be to say that all they are ever called to do are Christian acts. Christian store clerks are meant to follow their vocational training, show common courtesy, and the like, but much more importantly, they’re called to do everything to the glory of God. Their life and work are meant to express love for neighbor, yes, but as an extension of the love of God. How can their diligence manifest love for God? How can the way their conscience guides their business decisions manifest devotion ultimately to God? Wisdom is needed here.

Wisdom helps one apply principles and convictions in an appropriate and fitting way. When does this medical concern guide treatment, or when should that other malady be kept front and center? A wise physician knows how to foreground and background various matters in diverse circumstances. Wisdom not only knows principles and rules, but it can also think proverbially about the best contexts for putting each to work. For Christians, wisdom enables them to know how to bring the love of God to bear on various situations or duties or, put otherwise, how to bring those opportunities and challenges to the love of God. “Fear of the Lord” “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Ps. 111:10). Those words are repeated regularly in Scripture, in both the Psalms and the Wisdom literature. When Scripture speaks of a “beginning” to wisdom, it doesn’t mean to draw our attention primarily to the first moment in which we may have exercised wisdom. This isn’t about the first experience of prudence. It’s rather a statement about the abiding fundament or ground of all wisdom, from the moment of conversion to the final breaths of a Christian’s

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earthly life. This fear of God always serves as root and rock for any act of Christian prudence and discernment.

What is this “fear of the Lord” that always grounds Christian wisdom? Well, we may begin with what it isn’t. “Fear” can mean anxious demurral owing to the anticipation of judgment or ill treatment; that kind of “fear” is talked about in the Bible. Yet, “perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18). What is this wise fear of God? It’s a fear that is “clean” and “endures forever” (Ps. 19:9). To be most specific, it is single-minded attention given to God in any and all circumstances.

Theologians such as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas would distinguish between those kinds of fear. A fear of God’s judgment is “servile” and keeps one away from any intimacy with God, ever worried that his hand of embrace will be replaced with a smack from a hidden hand behind his back. That’s the fear the gospel of Jesus Christ casts out, now and evermore. It’s telling that two of the most repeated words of our Lord are “fear not!” And yet fear isn’t gone, for a “filial” fear remains and endures and even ought to aid us in “bringing holiness to completion” (2 Cor. 7:1). The kind of fear that endures and helps bring us to our intended end could be characterized as devotion, awe, and reverence. It involves a God-centered gaze that ever and always seeks to remember the Lord.

Why does this fear help work or ground the practice of wisdom? Well, we are prone to forgetfulness and to distraction. The urgent can tyrannize. The immediate can dominate. The evident can fill our gaze. The work of theological education, therefore, fills a unique need in helping us remember to always center our thoughts, our perception, our attention, and our imagination on the living and true God. The fear of the Lord helps us consistently center our being and action—our whole being and every action—on the Lord. To help parse out the kind of formative power involved, we can explore how training in the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love requires theological education.

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THREE MARKS ENDURE INTO THE ESCHATON, AND THREE VIRTUES MARK THE CHRISTIAN: “SO NOW FAITH, HOPE, AND LOVE ABIDE” (1 COR. 13:13).

Faith The apostle Paul says that these three virtues abide. There are many wonderful gifts and provisions. There may well be diverse ministries and roles in the kingdom. But three marks endure into the eschaton, and three virtues mark the Christian: “So now faith, hope, and love abide” (1 Cor. 13:13).

How does faith involve or require fearful attention to God? Faith or belief involves the trusting wager that there’s more than the empirically obvious—that the unseen is as real and determinative, as significant and serious, as the seen. We live by faith not sight, then, when we journey trusting God, his works, and his covenant promises.

The call to faith constantly alerts us to the need to avoid the narrowing of the circumstances and return trustingly to the broad, good way of God. That diagnosis may seem to leave you alone in a room with your cancer, eating away at your organs, bone, or blood. Faith, however, calls your attention back beyond yourself to that most interesting of characters in just this situation—to One who is neither cellular nor human but divinely transcendent. Faith doesn’t involve the denial of our finite limits and losses, but it does demand of us that we see more than those would suggest. We see not only bodily decay and a road to death. We also see a divine healer and comforter who has placed his name on us, whether he takes it up now or in the life hereafter.

Hope Not simply faith in the perceptions of this day, but also hope and our imaginations of the future put the fear of the Lord to work. History won’t unwind, and it sure won’t simply progress to some apogee. The end of history will come when this divine One intends for it to reach its fitting conclusion. We don’t look for the denial of time or the triumph of time but always for the “fullness of time” (Gal. 4:4). To say that Christians are called to a gospel hope reminds us that our aspirations and desires must also be centered

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on God. Other things are well and good—sin excepted—but they are never primary, never ultimate, never desirable entirely for their own sake. God alone can be desired or aspired to for his own sake.

So many other visions swoop in to settle in our desires and yearnings. Advertisements and marketers spend billions of dollars and employ detailed algorithms to feed and direct various wants. Politicians cater to and sometimes call us toward different visions of the good life. Competing eschatologies can be relatively benign matters of preference (such as my desire to avoid some foods and feast on others), but they can also enter significantly weighty terrain (such as the presence of worship in that eventual bliss, whether worship of the one true God or of competing gods). The fear of the Lord helps us always consider the benign as well as the cataclysmic in light of God’s own presence and action. Only in so doing can we look with yearning to other things without thereby turning them into idols.

that’s not ultimately fearful of God rather than humans will eventually be motivated by some creaturely promise of blessing or curse. Loving agency can turn into works righteousness just as much as anything else, and all it takes is for us to shift our gaze from the promises of our covenant God toward our own ability to manipulate, control, and provide for ourselves.

Love Not merely thought, or even simply yearning, but also our agency must be shaped by the fear of the Lord. There are three ways by which fear of God helps shape our agency. First, it reminds us that all action should tend to God’s greater glory rather than our own lesser glory. Second, all action should be guided by God’s word, not simply by our own intuition. Third, all our action should be sustained and strengthened by our trust in God’s promises; this is why Paul summons the Roman Christians not merely to action or obedience but more specifically to the “obedience of faith” (Rom. 1:5; 16:23).

In other words, fearing God helps shape our end, our intuition, and our motivation for love and good works. Seeking to love apart from fearing God will invariably twist and turn toward building up our own reputation or glory. Trying to love without the fear of the Lord distorts our action in objectively wayward patterns, hurting and calling it “helping” or telling lies in the name of truth. Finally, any attempt at love

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THE FEAR OF THE LORD HELPS US ALWAYS CONSIDER THE BENIGN AS WELL AS THE CATACLYSMIC IN LIGHT OF GOD’S OWN PRESENCE AND ACTION. VOL.30 NO.4 JULY/AUGUST 2021

INTENTIONAL FORMATION IN WISDOM We need wisdom to act like Christian men and women. Doing so involves fearing God above all else, whether in terms of our perception, our imagined end and desire, or our active agency.

And yet, we have to admit that this fear of the Lord and this Christian wisdom are a summons, not the natural status quo. They demand formation and intentionality, not least because they’re unaided and often abetted by extraneous forces or the sheer tyranny of the urgent. To remember the Lord and his ways, the living and true God and his promises, involves a repentant turn from forgetfulness and a trusting, hopeful, loving posture of intentional attentiveness to this Holy One. To fear the Lord—whether shaping thought, desire, or deed—requires a real and holistic education, the sort of formation that shapes every nook and cranny of our being.

We’re called to grow in a wisdom that involves knowledge of God as well as the prudent application of that knowledge to real-life circumstances. In other words, we’re called to know ourselves and our world as they relate to God, to our love for self and neighbor as it relates to our love of God and, even more importantly, his love for us. Wisdom therefore involves all sorts of knowledge, and we dare not minimize or trivialize that calling. It’s a real summons, and it’s a challenging one for those like us who live in an anti-intellectual age and likely experience a religious culture that’s often bought into that anti-intellectualism. But wisdom not only sees, it also raises knowledge by putting that knowledge to use through the application of genuine know-how. It’s engaged knowledge that can offer focused attention on God and also fix our sights on how God relates to anything and everything else.

HOW DOES THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION HAPPEN FOR LAYPERSONS? God is Lord of all and provides for all. That’s the claim of the famous Shema from Deuteronomy: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is

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one” (6:4). God doesn’t only reign over Israel or certain areas of life. God is the one God over all, by way of contrast with the lesser gods of Egypt behind and Canaan ahead. But the global nature of this God’s reign leads to the equally global imperative of his lordship: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your might” (6:5). Because God reigns in every area of life, all aspects of our being should be given over to him in loving devotion. Abraham Kuyper helped us appreciate that “every square inch” of the globe comes under God’s rule, and we need only match that cosmic emphasis with a paired personal word—namely, that every nook and cranny of each Christian self ought to be given to this Lord in loving devotion.

Communally Theological education happens as part of a common project of growing in maturity and being built up in this love, bringing holiness to perfection in the fear of God. Training involves generational commitment to passing along knowledge of the works of God and commending the praise of God. God can work miracles, of course, but even Damascus Road incidents tend to bring fresh light to long-given instructions that one would have received from a scriptural and moral formation (as Saul had received in his Jewish upbringing). Communal training isn’t primarily or exclusively defined by the biological family unity, though it may most frequently occur there. It is the people of God, the temple of the Spirit, the body of Christ that passes along to the next generation the good news of the gospel and the all-consuming summons to kingdom living.

Ordained officers play a key role in that educational community as they “equip the saints for the work of ministry” (Eph. 4:11–12). They teach the word, whether in starting or sustaining a church, and they do so in such a way that laypersons are equipped to discern and dispense Christian wisdom. In that model, ordained officers don’t make all the decisions or coopt the responsibilities of laypersons, but they provide the imaginative and moral lineaments within

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which that kind of Christian judgment and intuition will be exercised. They train them in the basics, drill them in the rhythms, and then send them out to actually practice the Christian faith. Not only that, but they also train them in the word of the risen Christ rather than in their own words. Ordained leaders aren’t gurus, and they don’t build codependency. They are emissaries or ambassadors, and they train more attentive hearers and doers of the word.

Even Paul, for all his moral and theological accomplishment, refers to himself simply as an “apostle” or a “sent one” from Christ Jesus when he addresses Christians.

The “communion of saints” also plays a role in terms of the ongoing witnesses of the now-departed men and women whose lives and words continue to testify to God’s truth.

Intergenerational commendation of Christian wisdom surely happens locally, in most contexts or at least in well-functioning ones, but it also takes place historically. We can glean from the successes and failures of those saints who lived in other times and diverse places: How did they attend to God? What did they hear in his word?

In what ways were they led to lives of service and mission? What sort of perception, imagination, and wisdom did they model, for good or ill?

We dare not let any “chronological snobbery” lead us to believe that we’ll fare well apart from tending to their chorus. They are a “great cloud of witnesses” and help equip us not merely to repeat their lines but to “run the race set before us” (Heb. 12:1).

Wholeness Education really does involve the training of every aspect of the human life to be devoted in love to God. To do so requires the “whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:28). Paul felt a sense of comfort in leaving Ephesus, only after he had commended the whole word to the church there, knowing they wouldn’t be left ill-prepared or underequipped.

For us, it might be tempting to think we’re well provided for, so long as we have our Bibles.

But possession of a Bible isn’t the same as being equipped with the word. We can and should

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always ask about the functional canon of a person, church, or tradition. What is the actual canon that is read, prayed, sung, preached, and meditated on by that person or congregation or denomination or school of thought? A church can turn to the red letters of Jesus or the Pauline Epistles or the New Testament only, and they will be emaciated and malnourished. Paul himself told us of the importance of wholeness.

When offering counsel about Scripture itself, he famously said, All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

(2 Tim. 3:16–17) Notice that he begins with the word all and concludes there by using every. We might paraphrase: “All Scripture” serves to prepare or equip the Christian for “every good work.” To the extent that we don’t prayerfully meditate on the whole word of God, we won’t be readied for every circumstance and loving act of service to God and neighbor.

Christian theological formation, therefore, must involve wholeness by seeking to equip men and women, adults and children, for faithfulness in every area of life and every fiber of their being by commending to them the entire word of God. (This is why plenary, or full, verbal inspiration matters so much to the Christian doctrine of Holy Scripture.)

Maturing Training shapes one for the journey and inevitably involves progress. The Christian is a pilgrim on a journey, no longer dead in Egypt to be sure, but also far short of Canaan’s fair and happy land. Theological education marks the walk of the one who’s on that way or path. The real goal in the here and now, then, can be identified as increasing maturity (not conclusion but also not mere repetition). Paul gives us words to clue us in to what’s desired: equipping with the word

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and ministry by the saints is intended to “build up the body of Christ” until they experience “mature manhood, the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:12–13). That language variously and repeatedly summons us to grow up in Christ (which was Eugene Peterson’s favored phrase for the message of Ephesians as a whole and the Christian life by consequence).

Now, evangelical progress never ends. Gregory of Nyssa tells us that perfection will never cease, precisely because it’s a sharing in the very life of God. Since God himself is infinite, our sharing in his life as creatures will never come to an end. The very nature of Christian perfection will be unending growth in enjoying God’s presence. That’s the main message of Gregory’s book The Life of Moses. Yet Moses didn’t simply

experience a homogenous kind of spiritual reality; rather, his life was marked by ups and downs (portrayed more often than not by literal ascent or descent of mountains) and had a demonstrable trajectory across it.

Christian theological education will involve perceiving limits and even sins more pointedly over time. That’s one of the great gifts of Martin Luther—namely, his development of a spiritual perception and a real intimacy with God that involved a growing, not shrinking, sense of his own sin. He wasn’t sinning more, mind you, but he was all the more aghast at how tragic were his failings, precisely because he was maturing in his knowledge of who God is and what God intends for us.

So, one of the great signs of Christian maturity is an increasing ability to lament pointedly and powerfully. Lament needs to be pointed because it’s not mere tears. Lament is sorrow over fissures between creatures and their God (a far greater tragedy than mere inconvenience or personal disappointment). But that kind of renewed focus on lament inevitably leads to a more powerful sorrow in this life, as we bear the burden of knowing how little we enjoy and return God’s favor. One day we should know fully, love completely, and lament no more. In this life and in our theological education now, however, we need to remember that growing maturity will involve not merely a clearer sense of God’s deliverance but also a greater gut-level perception of our tragic condition as we are still walking with God through a real wilderness.

Catechesis

GREGORY OF NYSSA TELLS US THAT PERFECTION WILL NEVER CEASE, PRECISELY BECAUSE IT’S A SHARING IN THE VERY LIFE OF GOD. MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

Mindful that we’re no longer dead and cognizant that we have a way to go, Christian theological education is intentional and directive. God gives us a “broad place” or a safe way in which to walk, something the psalmist as a young man understood so poignantly because he tried to guide sheep through treacherous, small mountain ways. God gives us the peace of a wide berth, and he does so in granting us his law. That term means not merely his command (though it can sometimes mean just that moral imperative,

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as is crucial for us in rightly distinguishing law and gospel, a remarkably important theological need). That term refers to all of God’s instruction. We delight in his law, or instruction, because we long to know more of him.

Christians also learn to delight in aids that help them better hear, meditate, and follow that word. Traditionally, they have found that three such tools are needed. The creed (or broader confessions) helps them glean what is to be believed. The Lord’s Prayer (and the Psalms more broadly) provide a pattern for what is to be desired or hoped for. Finally, the Ten Commandments (and the general equity of the wider legal teaching) provide a sketch of what’s involved in love or the good life of action before God and neighbor. For centuries, Christians of various traditions have used those three texts—the creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Decalogue—as instruments of discipleship, or catechesis, for new Christians.

Like CliffsNotes or a Wikipedia entry, they help sum up the main headings of a larger book.

Although they don’t replace reading the book itself, they do give us categories drawn from the book to help us better engage the book on its own terms.

Those instruments of catechesis aren’t simply a one-time affair either, because we’re pilgrims still seeking ever-greater maturity.

That’s why I pray the Lord’s Prayer repeatedly every day, trusting it will prompt and redirect my own desires, fears, and yearnings that find expression in my own daily prayer. That’s why I recite the creed at home and in gathered worship, knowing that no matter how long I’ve been reading the Bible and theological texts, I still need to be returned to matters of first importance. That’s why I’ll read and pray over the Ten Commandments, searching out ways in which, decades into my Christian journey, I still need to turn in gratitude to God when I’ve loved and in repentance before God when I’ve failed to do so. In using these tools, I’m equipped to engage the wider resources of Scripture. John Calvin reminds us that Scripture itself serves as a set of lenses or spectacles, by which we’re equipped to engage wider aspects of human existence in

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JOHN CALVIN REMINDS US THAT SCRIPTURE ITSELF SERVES AS A SET OF LENSES OR SPECTACLES, BY WHICH WE’RE EQUIPPED TO ENGAGE WIDER ASPECTS OF HUMAN EXISTENCE IN A TRULY CHRISTIAN MANNER.

a truly Christian manner. Catechesis or intentional discipleship training helps guide and shape that kind of perception and preparation.

Contemplation and Activity In his essay “Meditation in a Toolshed” (found in God on the Dock), C. S. Lewis differentiated between “looking at” and “looking along” a beam of light. Looking at the light perceives its brilliance and force, standing out against the background. Looking along such a beam enables sense of other things, as they are illumined more fully by glancing from that newfound clarity. Both are vital, though they are truly distinct ways of seeing.

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Christians have traditionally identified the importance of both the contemplative and the active life. They are summoned to contemplate God, to remember him, to study his great works, and to fear him above all else.

Such theological and spiritual work requires focused attention (among other things). God must be the direct object of our gaze. But such contemplation doesn’t absolve us from the task of loving our neighbor; indeed, it equips us to do so more effectively as a mode of expressing our ever-deeper love of God (who is loved in our neighbor). That act of love, however, itself requires Christian thought and intentionality, so that it’s not an animal or irrational act.

We also need active or practical reasoning, seeking to perceive neighbor and circumstance as occasions of engaging God in everyday life.

As the medievals might have put it, we need to trace back or reduce (reductio is the favored Latin term) all things to God, so we can know how to love all things appropriately and not idolatrously. If we don’t look along with God at everything else, then we’ll have far too diminished a notion of what God wants. But if we move from looking at God to looking along with God at ourselves and our world, then we’ll perceive how God—who is all glory in himself—also delights to share that glory and calls us to live as befits that glory in all manner of circumstances.

Theological formation involves preparation in tasks both of contemplation and action, in looking at God and looking along God at everything and everyone else.

WHY THEOLOGICAL FORMATION MATTERS: 2020–21 AS CASE STUDY Far from negating the call to theological formation, might I suggest that recent tumults each reveal the significance of that intellectual and spiritual discipleship? Sadly, churches don’t always manifest the kind of maturity we might wish for. Mind you, churches don’t have a monopoly on immature behavior, which seems to strike everywhere, but it’s especially improper coming from Christians. When Paul spoke of the

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equipping role of training in the word, he identified these learning objectives: Until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.

(Eph. 4:13–14) This past year has provided enough evidence of cunning, craftiness, and deceitful schemes, which oftentimes professing Christians have fallen into. In recent times, fright, falsehood, and fads surely marked much of purportedly Christian life. These are sad signs of a lack of equipping among many Christians.

But Paul commends a “mature manhood” for which God has intended us and also a design by which “speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ” (Eph. 4:15). In recent times, there have also been witnesses to that fullness, maturity, and community. They avoided the deceitful schemes of the conspiracy theorists. They acted out of conviction, not flippant fads of the Left or the Right. They appeared in public witness—sometimes overtly, but often quite underappreciated—which reveals a real confidence in the word of Christ. They stood up to the crowd when needed. They refused to call evil “good” and insisted on gracious and truthful integrity. They are here, and even if they aren’t clickbait, they’re not silent.

If ever there were a year that showed the need for intentional theological formation of every facet of Christians’ lives, then the past year or so has been a remarkable matrix for revealing the presence or absence of true discipleship. Let’s seek training so we’re better equipped for the next crisis.

MICHAEL ALLEN (PhD, Wheaton College) is the John Dyer Trimble Professor of Systematic Theology at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando.

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68 Fall Book Preview

Book Reviews 56

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Reformed Resurgence: The New Calvinist Movement and the Battle over American Evangelicalism

The History of Scottish Theology

Worshiping with the Reformers

The Person of Christ: An Introduction

Edited by David Fergusson and Mark W. Elliott

By Karin Maag

By Stephen J. Wellum

REVIEWED BY

REVIEWED BY

REVIEWED BY

REVIEWED BY

D. G. Hart

Sam Bostock

Michael J. Lynch

Joshua Schendel

by Brad Vermurlen

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Reformed Resurgence: The New Calvinist Movement and the Battle over American Evangelicalism

By Brad Vermurlen Oxford University Press, 2020 304 pages (hardcover), $99.00 hat is the health of Reformed Protestantism, and how do you administer the physical exam?

Brad Vermurlen’s new book on the New Calvinist Movement (hereafter NCM) answers this question by looking at the influence of popular pastors and their networks (chiefly but not exclusively The Gospel Coalition).

On his first page, Vermurlen asserts that “one of the biggest happenings in American Evangelicalism” is a groundswell of “commitment” to the thought of John Calvin. That is a remarkably specific assertion on two levels.

What is a “commitment”?

Since much of the book relies on analyzing social media, does such an intention involve spending more than ten minutes each day reading the tweets of the New Calvinists?

Subscribing to their Patreon accounts? Going to The Gospel Coalition’s website three times each week? And what about narrowing Calvinism (not the preferred word among Reformed Protestants) to John Calvin? The book that gave New Calvinism an identity, Collin Hansen’s Young, Restless, and Reformed, used a graphic on a T-shirt that read Jonathan Edwards Is My Homeboy. Pointing out these discrepancies may seem nit-picky, but a book based on a dissertation in sociology invites expectations for precision.

The trick to understanding the NCM and its resurgence has less to do with actual

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institutions, influential figures, or website clicks. Instead, Vermurlen’s subject is the “perception of a religious movement.” “A lot of people” are talking about New Calvinism and for that reason it merits analysis. To justify his study, Vermurlen recounts the buzz the NCM generated since Collin Hansen’s 2006 article for Christianity Today. In 2009, New Calvinism was one of Time magazine’s “10 Ideas Changing the World.” By 2014, it had even caught the attention of writers for The New York Times. Mark Oppenheimer identified Mark Driscoll, John Piper, and Tim Keller as part of a “Calvinist revival.” That declaration may have set the agenda for Vermurlen’s research, since he embedded himself in Driscoll, Piper, and Keller’s congregations between 2012 and 2013. He also conducted interviews with evangelical leaders from its four “tribes”—New Calvinists, “progressives,” Neo-Anabaptists, and “mainst r eam.” Hi s idea wa s t o describe the NCM and locate it within the wider world of evangelical Protestantism.

The identity of the NCM is not confined to Driscoll’s, Piper’s, or Keller’s congregations but extends to the Acts 29 Network, Southern B a p t i s t S e m i n a r y, T h e Gospel Coalition, Together for the Gospel, the Passion Conferences, Crossway publ i s h e r s, a n d t h e C o u n c i l on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. (The inclusion of Driscoll is a bit of a wrinkle since the Seattle pastor had to leave The Gospel Coalition and later rebranded himself.

Vermurlen acknowledges this, but the book is based on research started before Driscoll’s controversy.) The specific identity of the NCM is hard to pinpoint since Vermurlen relies more on tendencies (complementarianism, continuing manifestations of the Holy Spirit, social

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conservatism) than theological definition. But when distinguishing the NCM from the neoCalvinism of Dutch Reformed Protestantism, he asserts that the former stresses God’s sovereignty over salvation, while the latter emphasizes God’s rule over all of creation.

To compare the NCM to Kuyperianism points to an anomaly that haunts the book.

How, for instance, do you account for Reformed resurgence without mentioning the influence of neo-Calvinists from Calvin College and Seminary, Francis Schaeffer (who popularized Kuyperian arguments), not to mention the popular speakers and pastors of the 1970s such as R. C. Sproul, James Montgomery Boice, John Gerstner, the Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology, or even the work of Michael S. Horton at the White Horse Inn, Christians United for Reformation, or the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals?

Vermurlen’s answer follows the science of his academic training—namely, sociology.

This form of investigation leads to some of the more challenging chapters in the book, such as when he describes “a field-theoretic model of religious strength.” Nonacademic readers will find plenty of pages that are accessible, but the author’s intention to make a contribution to the sociology of religion also explains the sections that are rough going. The implement that Vermurlen selects from his sociological toolbox is field theory. Its categories allow him to conclude that New Calvinism emerged through “social processes of game-like contestation,” in which leaders battled with “their competitors for a more advantageous position in and over their field, which is defined by possession of symbolic capital and power.” This is a sociological way of saying that a “real power struggle” is going on in evangelicalism and that the NCM arose to counteract unhealthy tendencies in the broader church world. Through social media and the influence of celebrity pastors, the NCM gained a higher level of visibility and became a competitor within American evangelicalism.

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Historical science indicates that figures like John Piper and Tim Keller emerged from an older Reformed resurgence.

That may be a scientific explanation by the lights of sociology, but historical science indicates that figures like John Piper and Tim Keller emerged from an older Reformed resurgence.

Those Reformed Protestants had an ambiguous relationship with the mainstream evangelicalism well before the NCM tapped frustration with the megachurch movement that older institutions such as Fuller Seminary, Wheaton College, or Christianity Today enabled. Prior to the neo-evangelical movement, J. Gresham Machen, Westminster Seminary, and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church forged ties to the Dutch Reformed world of Calvinism

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in Grand Rapids. For a time, the OPC and Christian Reformed Church even pursued church union with some vigor. These Calvinists were not anti-evangelical but remained aloof from evangelical institutions because they recognized significant disparities between born-again and Reformation Protestantism.

With the formation of the Presbyterian Church in America (1972), another vehicle for Reformed resurgence surfaced. In turn, the PCA became a vehicle for the sort of Calvinism that Boyce, Sproul, and Gerstner made popular. It was also the home to Francis Schaeffer, who popularized Dutch Calvinist ideas (Kuyperianism) for non-Reformed evangelicals. Vermurlen pays little if any attention to these older forms of Calvinism, their critique of evangelicalism, or their influence on the NCM, which is important if only because Keller taught

Reformed Resurgence is not designed to be history, but even without historical context Vermurlen’s analysis leaves the impression of seeing coherence where the data is actually variegated.

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at Westminster and ministered in the PCA and Kevin DeYoung teaches at Reformed Seminary (Charlotte) and is also a PCA pastor. The world of conservative Protestantism would be different—evangelicalism included—if not for earlier Reformed expressions.

Of course, Reformed Resurgence is not designed to be history, but even without historical context Vermurlen’s analysis leaves the impression of seeing coherence where the data is actually variegated. The artificiality of the book becomes especially noticeable in chapter 6 where Vermurlen tries to prove the veracity of his model. From one angle, the NCM functions for the author as the Jordan Peterson of evangelicalism (not his analogy).

It has positioned itself by “having clear, compelling, ‘black and white,’ answers to pressing ethical, social, existential, and doctrinal questions, and especially to young persons.” So too, the NCM promotes “traditional, conservative gender roles for both men and women, especially in light of feminism and the gender revolution.” Whether those assertions apply as much to Tim Keller as to John Piper is questionable, since the former has not been part of the Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. (Redeemer NYC has also taken the lead in permitting deaconesses as an official position in the congregation.) Furthermore, Vermurlen’s inclusion of Driscoll and James McDonald as part of the NCM undermines his case, since both authors ran afoul of their own churches and needed to break with The Gospel Coalition. The author also contends that the NCM is apolitical and nonpartisan, partly as a way to put daylight between its leaders and the Religious Right. But again, the intervening history since the election of Donald Trump forced Vermurlen to adjust the story. The Trump presidency prompted many NCMer’s to repudiate the Republican, a switch that should have forced Vermurlen to admit that although New Calvinists tried to be apolitical, the climate around the former POTUS would not allow them to remain so.

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The author seems to understand the squishy nature of his findings. Toward the end of the book, he writes that the NCM’s strength is “strategically and relationally constructed” and “ontologically emergent.” To conclude that such strength is not real is a “mistake.” Every organization “is relationally constructed and ontologically emergent,” and that does not make “such things any less real or powerful.” Why? The field-theoretic model of religious strength says so. I am not so sure. In fact, the book reads like an author in search of an intellectual argument for writers he values and trends with 1 which he identifies.

The use of science to prove personal preference is not especially unusual—many scholars write on subjects with which they identify.

Vermurlen’s looks especially orchestrated in light of alternative media phenomena. What if Vermurlen had compared the NCM to the influence of the Salem Radio Network, which includes full-time Christian broadcasting and conservative talk radio (from Hugh Hewitt to Dennis Praeger)? The Christianity Today podcast “Quick to Listen” hosted an interview with Mark Ward, a professor of communications at the University of Houston, to talk about Rush Limbaugh that turned into a jaw-dropping account of Salem Media Group’s presence.

Not only does Salem provide nonstop voices (religious and political) on the radio, but it also produces educational materials for youth groups, Sunday school, childrearing, devotions, and even resources for churches that need pulpits, Communion tables, choir robes, and Communion cups. Ward remarked that Salem was its own kind of denomination, a one-stop shop for congregations that have no denomi2 national home.

This is something the NCM has also tried to be, especially through outlets like The Gospel Coalition. But when you compare the NCM to presences like Salem Media Group, you wonder why New Calvinist voices look so important.

Maybe a Reformed Resurgence is the comforting thought that Reformed-ish evangelicals

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The book reads like an author in search of an intellectual argument for writers he values and trends with which he identifies.

have about their place in a media landscape dominated by voices and outlets that pay them no attention. The NCM has been successful in promoting their notable preachers and writers within a certain sector of American Protestantism. But all of the sociological science that practitioners like Brad Vermurlen display cannot change the reality that NCM is a small presence in the big, vacuous, and unmanageable world of American Protestantism.

D. G. HART teaches history at Hillsdale College and is the author of American Catholic: The Politics of Faith During the Cold War (Cornell University Press, 2020).

1. At his website, http://bradvermurlen.com, Vermurlen lists authors who have influenced him, including Ryan Anderson, Greg Bahnsen, David Bebbington, Kevin DeYoung, Ross Douthat, Rod Dreher, Mary Ann Glendon, John Inazu, Tim Keller, Yuval Levin, George Marsden, Russell Moore, Mark Noll, Alvin Plantinga, Vern Poythress, Roger Scruton, James K. A. Smith, R. C. Sproul, Carl Trueman, Kevin Vanhoozer, Adrian Vermeule, and Peter Wehner.

2. See Mark Ward, “A New Kind of Church: The Religious Media Conglomerate as a ‘Denomination,’” Journal of Media and Religion 17, nos. 3–4 (2018): 117–33.

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The History of Scottish Theology Edited by David Fergusson and Mark W. Elliott Oxford University Press, 2019 1,280 pages (hardcover), $125 per volume (3 vols.) hat comes to mind when we read the title of these volumes? Maybe the “Great Scots” worthies like John Knox, Samuel Rutherford, or Ebenezer Erskine, or perhaps the dramatic events that punctuate Scottish church history, such as the Covenanter rebellion of 1638 or the Disruption of the Kirk in 1843. Even the reader for whom these names mean little will probably still be aware that Scotland is the soil in which the branch of Christ’s church we call “Presbyterian” first took root and flourished. It is both the strength and the weakness of this valuable publication from Oxford University Pr ess t hat, although these familiar themes are given their place, introduces us to a significantly broader, and arguably richer, overview of the theologians, theologies, and theological cultures that have developed in Scotland’s fertile ground from the Middle Ages to the present day.

These three reasonably substantial volumes have been edited by David Fergusson (incoming Regius Professor of Theology at Cambridge and previously at Edinburgh) and Mark Elliott (of St Andrews and latterly Glasgow). Most of the essays were delivered at a series of three specially organized conferences, with public funding from the United Kingdom Arts and Humanities Research Council. The contributors include many luminaries, such as Richard Cross (on Duns Scotus), David Bebbington (on dissenting theology),

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Andrew Holmes (on Scottish influences on Irish Presbyterianism), Donald Macleod (on the ongoing significance of the Westminster Confession), and Bruce McCormack (on Scottish kenoticism), as well as earlier career scholars, of whom Whitney Gamble and Stephen Myers might be familiar.

It will be apparent from the foregoing that this work is very much a product of the modern academy. Noting the practical, spiritual bent of much Scottish theology, the editors comment wryly that they wonder how some of their subjects would have fared in a contemporary research assessment exercise. One obvious result of this provenance is that slightly cacophonous diversity is the order of the day. Here, an essay on seventeenth-century federal theology rubs shoulders with an introduction to the Carmina Gadelica, a collection of apparently ancient Gaelic prayers published at the start of the twentieth century and the fountainhead of the Celtic Christianity movement.

The Marrow Controversy is brilliantly analyzed by Myers, as is the late twentieth-century feud between the theological fa culties in Bar thian Edinburgh and Bultmannian Glasgow. To be sure, the three v o l u m e s co v e r a le n g t hy period (the Middle Ages and Reformed or thodoxy, the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and a “long” twentieth century), but there is a conscious effort here to reflect as much as possible the breadth of what Scottish theology has been.

In the context of Scottish theology today, this decision to aim at breadth is itself something of a theological statement. Fergusson and Elliott acknowledge that they are building on the work of Thomas F. Torrance, one of the most influential of recent Scottish theologians and himself an important figure in the final volume.

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His 1996 Scottish Theology began with John Knox, but ended tellingly with John McLeod Campbell, a controversial figure who significantly recast the Westminster Confession’s doctrine of Christ’s satisfaction. Torrance was quite explicit about his desire to relativize the totemic status of the confession in Scottish theology, which he repeatedly described as 1 “rigidly logicalized” and ultimately legalistic.

For Torrance, Westminster’s federal theology pressed Calvin’s more biblical understanding of the covenant into a sharp bifurcation between an unremittingly legal (as Torrance saw it) Covenant of Works, made with Adam before the fall, and the Covenant of Grace, which although proceeding from the infinite love of God could never quite escape the contractualism implied by its connection to the Covenant of Works.

As the editors hint, Torrance’s historical claims have been seriously undermined in the past two decades by a wave of historians working in the wake of Richard Muller’s less dogmatically driven studies of the Europe-wide Reformed scholastic movement that shaped the authors of the Westminster Confession. But while they place a question mark beside Torrance’s reading of history, in practice these volumes further extend Torrance’s theological effort to decentralize the High Calvinist tradition, which has historically dominated Scottish theology, by widening the scope to include Episcopal, Roman Catholic, and dissenting traditions, and by stretching the timeframe both earlier and later than Torrance did. Although hardly absent, the Westminster tradition is here just one among 2 many strands in Scottish theology.

There certainly are gains from this more pluralistic approach to Scottish theology, with valuable examinations of figures as diverse in time as the late medieval scholastic John Mair (Major), whose lectures Calvin may have heard in Paris, and the analytically inclined twentieth-century academic John Baillie. But there is also a significant loss. The question has to be confronted: Understood this broadly, is there such a thing as Scottish theology? At least,

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The question has to be confronted: Understood this broadly, is there such a thing as Scottish theology?

anything more than the historical accident of a connection to the northern third of Britain?

Torrance’s Scottish Theology remained anchored in the broadly Reformed tradition and so offered “a continuous stream of Scottish theology over four centuries,” with a sustained description of a running battle for the heart of Scottish theology between the noxious federalism and glorious Christocentrism. But as the editors survey the account of Scottish theology offered in these volumes, they confess that they “see little evidence of a single, distinctive tradition . . . or a single universe of discourse or a social purpose that sets Scottish theologians apart from other traditions.” While being thankful for the diversity of historical theology

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collected in these volumes, readers cannot help but regret that the opportunity for a large-scale and academically robust appreciation of the distinctive contours of Scottish Reformed theology has been missed.

It would be churlish, however, to overemphasize this structural point. While the collection may be less focused than it might have been, and readers are duly warned about what to expect, it remains obvious that we are treated to a large number of academically rigorous road maps into one of the most important, and complex, theological cultures on the planet.

A publication of collected essays always risks being patchy, and these volumes are no exception. But more often than not, the editors’ assignment of titles and authors has born great fruit. In the first volume, Simon Burton shines a light on the influence of Duns Scotus on his homeland through an examination of the littleknown medieval theologian John Ireland. Ian Hazlett manages to provide an excellent orientation to the theology of Reformation Scotland through an examination of the confessional statements that were given various degrees of authority by the Kirk. Similarly, Scott Spurlock’s essay on the boundaries of orthodoxy in late seventeenth-century Scotland not only introduces us to the national concerns of men like Rutherford, but it also prepares us to interpret the changes that the Kirk would experience in a more fragmented society in the following century. Those reflecting on the spirituality of the

church in a modern context will find much food for thought here.

The collection’s center of gravity is in the longest middle volume, which moves from the early Enlightenment to the late Victorian period. As Scottish churches moved fully into the modern period, we have useful surveys here of the preaching of the Moderate party that rose to dominate the Church of Scotland and of a succession of Kirk theological professors who felt a tension between affirming a natural knowledge of God that left humanity inexcusable, without undermining the necessity of special revelation. The dialogue between faith and reason surfaces repeatedly in these volumes, and the friendly relationship between the Church of Scotland and the Enlightenment is emphasized.

The editors wanted to cover not just individual theologians but also “themes, movements, and challenges”; and so alongside faith and reason, we have essays on the reception of Darwinism, the Scottish Missionary Movement of the early twentieth century, and ecumenism.

As we move, however, into the twentieth century in the final volume, we are given a number of essays of individual theologians: Forsyth, Denney, the Bailies, Gregor Smith, and Torrance. Given that Torrance himself regarded Rutherford as “undoubtedly one of the great and most influential theologians in the Calvinist and Presbyterian tradition of the post-Refor3 mation Kirk,” it does seem surprising that such older figures did not merit similarly focused

While the collection may be less focused than it might have been, . . . it remains obvious that we are treated to a large number of academically rigorous road maps into one of the most important, and complex, theological cultures.

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treatment. However, it is still enormously valuable to have a first pass at an assessment of figures who personally shaped the Scottish theological educators of today, many of whom author these essays. The final volume continues to provide significant thematic essays: on gender and ordination, Scottish national identity, and Scottish literature, among others. There are also essays on the dispersion of Scottish theology around the world, which, given the dilution of the concept to mere geographical connection, feel slightly token. Overall, the editors have been wonderfully astute in selecting essay subjects that cover the necessary ground while also offering stimulating perspectives of their own.

The opening and closing essays in these volumes offer something of a lament for Scottish theology, at least in its contemporary academic setting. The long legacy of university theology in Scotland is under sustained pressure to turn to the study of comparative religion. An increasingly fragmented academy speaks to itself and not to the faith of ordinary people.

Scottish pulpits offer too many empty words and not enough substance. There is a sort of prayer here for a return to a full-throated and integrated theology that will enable the gospel to be communicated meaningfully and the church to be enlivened. In a way, the very breadth of this collection feels symptomatic of the problems mainline Scottish theology faces in the twenty-f irst centur y.

And yet if we listen carefully, we can hear just the hint of a plea within these pages that a country that, since the Reformation has always been close to the vanguard of theological development, might again recover her good confession.

In the meantime, this is a valuable resource that should be a first port of call for students looking for a cutting-edge

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orientation to the rich Scottish theological heritage. It will prove to be a rewarding investment for the interested layperson or pastor.

SAM BOSTOCK is a doctoral student at Union Theological

College in Belfast, where he is researching the doctrine of the atonement in British Reformed Orthodoxy. He previously served as assistant minister at Bloomfield Presbyterian Church.

1. Thomas F. Torrance, Scottish Theology: From John Knox to John McLeod Campbell (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000), x.

2. For a recent history of Scottish theology that centralizes this Westminster tradition without exclusively focusing on it, see Donald Macleod, Therefore the Truth I Speak: Scottish Theology 1500–1700 (Fearn, Ross-shire: Mentor, 2020). Readers interested particularly in the application of Muller’s approach to the study of Scottish theology will get more from Reformed Orthodoxy in Scotland: Essays on Scottish Theology 1560–1775, ed. Aaron Clay Denlinger (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2015).

3. Torrance, Scottish Theology, 93.

Worshiping with the Reformers

By Karin Maag IVP Academic, 2021 248 pages (paperback), $24.00

K

arin Maag is probably not a household name among Modern Reformation readers. Yet she has for some time been well-known and respected among historians of the Reformation.

Worshiping with the Reformers is a rare glimpse, written at a popular level, of her vast research into the worship practices of the Reformation.

The goal she attempts in this work is by no means an easy one—to sketch the various worship practices of all the major religious sects in the Reformation: the Anabaptists, Lutherans, Roman Catholics, Reformed, and the Church of England. Each of these would

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seemingly require their own volume if one were attempting to describe carefully and accurately how they worshiped. Maag, however, succeeds in her goal. She has written a work popular enough to survey the worship practices of the differing Reformation traditions without getting bogged down in the details, yet accurate and detailed enough to be of some benefit for making sense of these differences. Notably, Maag herself is acutely aware that even though she attempts to paint a faithful picture of such various groups, these “worship practices were not set in stone within any one confessional group, nor were confessional borders rigorously policed. In other words, there was more flexibility and diversity in Reformation-era worship practice than one might think” (4).

One of the main goals of Worshiping with the Reformers is to describe not only the various worship practices among early modern Protestant and Roman Catholic communities but also to explain why there exists such variety. In other words, Maag’s project is descriptive of the great diversity of early modern worship practices, while also including the logic behind these practices. For example, why did many of the Reformed eschew religious images in their churches? Or, why did Anabaptists insist on baptizing adult believers? These questions, and many others like it, shape the main content of Maag’s work. We have already noted the diversity within traditions; but one of her other conclusions, evident throughout the book as she surveys early modern worship, is that there was also a significant amount of continuity among the differing theological perspectives. As she puts it, Whether Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican, or Reformed, clergy and government leaders alike expected punctual attendance, quiet and reverent attention, and active participation in worship services. They all condemned those who arrived late or left early, who gossiped or chatted with their neighbors, or who failed to turn up at all. (198)

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Maag’s project is descriptive of the great diversity of early modern worship practices.

Maag observes that changes to communal worship by church leaders or the civil magistrates often begat a multitude of difficulties. In accordance with the adage that “old habits die hard,” so medieval worship traditions as they inevitably bumped into reformational changes proved quite difficult to get rid of. Indeed, what happens when the civil magistrate forbids, in the name of stomping out superstition, parents from naming a child after the name of a relative simply because that name happened to be one of the legendary names of the three wise men?

Issues like these may seem crazy to us today, but such conflicts were a direct result of the changing theological landscape of early modern Europe (99–100). With a dose of healthy skepticism, Maag consistently accounts for the often wide gap between what the civil magistrates or church leaders had in mind for a particular community and what was actually feasible to reform given local traditions and the local populace’s wants and needs.

Each main chapter follows a fairly predictable—yet admittedly welcome—structure. Maag usually begins with an early modern vignette or two highlighting the importance of or controversy surrounding a given worship practice.

She then enumerates the various questions and debates that surrounded a particular worship practice, finally expounding on each of these questions through the lens of the various religious groups. So, in chapter 6 touching on the Lord’s Supper, she begins with a controversy

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that arose in 1543 among the Lutherans over how leftover consecrated wine was to be properly dealt with. She then summarizes the various theologies of the Lord’s Supper among the five aforementioned groups and looks at the practice of this sacrament from various angles.

Accordingly, she describes how they prepared generally for Communion, how they prepared for their first Communion, the relationship between Communion and church discipline, the frequency of Communion, whether the place where the elements were set aside in worship should be described as altars or tables, its elements, and how Communion itself was taken.

As we can see, it’s quite comprehensive, albeit short and to the point. Moreover, were someone so inclined to read more on a given subject, each chapter includes a helpful bibliography at the end for further reading.

Maag’s Worshiping with the Reformers is perhaps most insightful precisely because it was not written by a generalist but by a historian of the period. Her book, unlike other treatments of early modern worship, provides a corrective to modern myths that have been perpetuated about the period. Accordingly, she pushes back against the popular and polemical but ultimately misguided notion that just because Protestants emphasized preaching, sometimes juxtaposing it with Roman Catholic practices, medieval worship or Roman Catholics minimized the role of preaching (e.g., 51–52).

Readers might be surprised to find that one of the decrees of the Council of Trent, known for its anathemas against Protestantism and Protestant distinctives, decreed that “all bishops, archbishops, primates, and all other prelates of the churches be bound personally—if they be not lawfully hindered—to preach the holy Gospel of Jesus Christ” (61).

Worshiping w ith the Reformers is a model for how

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popular Reformation history ought to be written. It rests on primary and secondary literature, overturns some common polemical tropes about the Reformation, and furnishes us with an easily accessible and a reliable portrait of early modern Christian worship among Protestants and Roman Catholics. If you fall into either group, one can safely say you will come away knowing better what your tradition believes, why they believed it, and how they have practiced such belief.

MICHAEL J. LYNCH teaches language and humanities at Delaware Valley Classical School in New Castle. He is the author of John Davenant’s Hypothetical Universalism: A Defense of Catholic and Reformed Orthodoxy (Oxford University Press, June 2021).

The Person of Christ: An Introduction

By Stephen J. Wellum Crossway, 2021 180 pages (paperback), $18.99

T

he two great mysteries of the Christian faith are the doctrines of the Trinity and the incarnation. In his writing on the latter, De Incarnatione Filii Dei, the late sixteenth-century Reformed theologian Jerome Zanchi noted that out of Paul’s “briefest of descriptions” of Christ in Philippians 2:6–7 had arisen a long commentary tradition on both mysteries of the faith. Nearly all interpreters, Greek and Latin he says, longed to search out three wonders. First, what Jesus was prior to b e coming flesh; second, what he is in the flesh, as evidently both true God and true man; and third, for what

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purpose he became man. In our contemplations of these questions, we do not pretend to ascend the heights or plumb the depths of the great mystery of God made flesh but, as Peter Lombard said centuries before Zanchi, so that “we may be able to utter some little thing on these ineffable matters.” This is not to say that such contemplations are vain pursuits. John Owen, writing a half century after Zanchi, spoke wisely on this point: “But, alas! after our utmost and most diligent inquiries, we must say, How little a portion is it of him that we can understand!” And yet, he continues, This [mystery] deserves the severest of our thoughts, the best of our meditations, and our utmost diligence in them. For if our future blessedness shall consist in being where he is, and beholding his glory, what better preparation can there be for it than in constant previous contemplation of that glory in the revelation of it made in the Gospel.

With The Person of Christ, Stephen Wellum speaks similarly:

Taking on the deep topic of the person of Christ, Wellum follows that great tradition of the East and West.

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My goal in writing this book is to call the church back to what is central: the glory of Christ. My hope is that this volume will help equip the church to know better the basic scriptural data regarding Christ and the church’s theological confession of him. (179) H i s r h e t o r i c o n t h i s p o i nt s e e m s a t times slightly hyperbolic, as when he says, “Christological formulation is not easy, yet it’s our highest calling as Christians. There is nothing greater than to think rightly about our Lord Jesus Christ” (144). One should exercise caution in how one understands Wellum’s attempted emphasis here. The goal of the Christian life is not, of course, simply theological formulation— whether of God, Christ, or any other Christian doctrine. So, I’m not sure that christological formulation ought to be called our “highest calling.”

Though the completion of human nature is the vision of God—or, in its more Reformed inflection, the vision of God in Christ—this vision is more than simply “thinking rightly.” But it is not less than thinking rightly. With that qualification, I am grateful that Wellum has set this emphasis as the goal of his book.

This book is part of the Crossway Short Studies in Systematic Theology series, which “aims to present short studies in theology that are attuned to both the Christian tradition and contemporary theology in order to equip the church to faithfully understand, love, teach, and apply what God has revealed in Scripture about a variety of topics.”

Taking on the deep topic of the person of Christ, Wellum follows that great tradition of the East and West, addressing all three of Zanchi’s questions. Readers are first treated to an overview of the biblical instruction on who Christ is, first in the Old Testament (ch. 2), then by Christ’s selfidentification in the Gospel accounts (ch. 3), and finally in the teaching of the apostles (ch. 4). The import from this overview: “From beginning to end, Scripture unveils from shadow to reality that Jesus is God the Son incarnate” (85). These are not, however, treated as so many proof-texts of

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Readers of this book will be led to contemplate the glory, the wonder, of that most marvelous mystery: God incarnate for us and for our salvation.

Jesus’ divinity. Wellum insists that they are not the end of christological reflection. Rather for the church they are, and have always functioned as, an invitation to further christological reflection.

He takes up this invitation in part 2. As he writes, “To think rightly about the Incarnation, we must also reflect on the Son’s relation to the Father and the Spirit. God as Triune grounds Christology” (153). Over the course of the book, there are several sections in which the classical (and Thomistically accented) doctrine of the Trinity is expounded, along with several chapters devoted to the long historical development of that classical doctrine. These discussions are a welcome counter to much evangelical theological malaise on just this point. (That is, with one exception, where Wellum, wrongly by my estimation, endorses Donald Macleod’s contention that even though God is omniscient, his knowledge “falls short of personal experience,” and therefore the incarnation brings about a new possibility for God [105]. On the classical view, this statement as it is made cannot be affirmed.)

The discussion of the Son “prior to” or “apart from” the incarnation enables Wellum, as he puts it, “to theologize further about the incarnation” (153). The majority of the second half of the book is taken up with the incarnation, and provides explorations of the two remaining topics Zanchi said all theologians long to search out: What was Christ in the flesh and why did he become flesh? In all, then, Wellum attempts to demonstrate in these pages that

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“the kind of Redeemer we need must be fully God and fully human” (141) This is reminiscent of an Anselmian line of argumentation, though it must be said that as formulated, it is somewhat clumsier than Anselm. Thus, while in the flesh, the Son incarnate is truly God and truly man. According to Wellum, this need be for the accomplishing of the purpose of his incarnation. In its Old Testament idiom, Wellum argues that the Scriptures teach that only “the obedient-image-son-priest-king—a greater Adam—who is also identified with Yahweh” is able to accomplish God’s purpose of saving the sinful fallen human race (148). In its more New Testament idiom, it may be put: “What we need is a Savior who can render human obedience and satisfy God’s righteous demands against us. Jesus, as God the Son incarnate, is such a Mediator” (116). Thus “our Savior and Redeemer is unique in both who he is and in what he does. Because sin makes our plight so desperate, the only Person who can save us is God’s own dear Son” (174).

In this reviewer’s estimation, The Person of Christ not only admirably meets the goal of Crossway’s Short Studies series but also Wellum’s own goal. Readers of this book will be led to contemplate the glory, the wonder, of that most marvelous mystery: God incarnate for us and for our salvation.

JOSHUA SCHENDEL is the executive editor of Modern

Reformation.

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Fall Book Preview

by Noah J. Frens

A Companion to the Theology of John Webster Edited by Michael Allen and R. David Nelson Eerdmans, June 2021 336 pages (hardcover), $50.00 When it comes to the late John Webster, my general philosophy is that if he wrote something, you should read it. While Webster’s sudden death in 2016 was a great loss for the church, this attempt to summarize and capture his insights on a number of theological topics looks promising.

The book covers the whole range of Webster’s writings, from his earlier work on Eberhard Jüngel and Karl Barth to his turn toward constructive theology since about 2001. The most significant part of the book is the section that looks to sketch out Webster’s thought on traditional dogmatic loci, from Scripture to soteriology to ecclesiology—an attempt by his former colleagues, friends, and admirers to

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draft the planned systematic theology he was never able to write. This volume should also pair well with the recently published T&T Clark Reader in John Webster, also edited

by Michael Allen.

Contemporary Arguments in Natural Theology: God and Rational Belief Edited by Colin Ruloff and Peter Horban Bloomsbury, July 2021 352 pages (hardcover), $108.00 Athough there has been no shortage of volumes on natural theology over the past couple of decades, this collection of seventeen different arguments for the existence of God, by a lineup of accomplished scholars, looks quite interesting. The chapters cover some of the typical arguments for the existence of God, such as the ontological argument, as well as some that people may not have come across, such as 1 the argument for mathematics.

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But even though a number of “typical arguments” for the existence of God are discussed, readers will likely find the arguments presented here to be fairly new. For example, Joshua Rasmussen, author of the first chapter, has in the past few years presented his own version of the argument from contingency with 2 which readers may not be familiar.

Quite a few of the authors writing on some of the traditional arguments for God will likely present their own versions of the arguments that readers may not be aware of unless they read widely in contemporary philosophy of religion. A couple of chapters also look to present new arguments not published at length elsewhere.

Both Greg Welty (“The Conceptualist Argument”) and William Lane Craig (“The Argument of Mathematics”) have offered sketches of their arguments in other publications, but not any sustained essay-length arguments (to my knowledge). Those interested in recent developments in natural theology will want to pick up this monograph.

The Oxford Handbook of Calvin and Calvinism Edited by Bruce Gordon and Carl R. Trueman Oxford University Press, July 2021 704 pages (hardcover), $145.00 For many years now, I have been looking forward to this volume. It has been in the works for a long while and is now finally going to be published. Though the volume’s title is The Oxford Handbook of Calvin

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and Calvinism, it focuses more on Calvinism than on Calvin. What intrigues me most is how the volume covers a wide chronological range, from the sixteenth century to the present, while also touching on the global influence of Calvin and Calvinism. Typical topics, such as Calvin’s influence in the English Long Reformation, are placed alongside the influence of Calvin and Calvinism in Korea, China, Ghana, and Brazil. It’s a mixture of classic Calvin scholarship, while also showing influences from the recent trends in scholarship, such as the turn toward Global Christianity. There are also a number of essays on topics readers may not always associate with Calvin and Calvinism, such as William Dryness’s essay on visual culture or Kenneth Minkema on angels.

Sin

By Gregory Mellema Notre Dame University Press, August 2021 130 pages (hardcover), $30.00 This looks to be an intriguing and shor t volume on sin. Mellema, emeritus professor of philosophy at Calvin University, has spent much of his academic career writing on various topics in ethics, especially on complicit action and collective responsibility, and I’m interested in how he applies this work to the topic of sin. For whatever reason, over the years Protestants haven’t always been good at developing a doctrine of sin (or a rich practical ethic) outside of the fairly narrow topic of original 3 sin. In this vein, the book’s coverage

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of being an accessory to another’s sin looks tempting—as well as how Mellema understands and distinguishes mortal and venial sins, a topic usually eschewed by Protestants. The book aims at a wide audience and should provide insightful observations for anyone on the thorny subject of sin.

Fountain of Salvation: Trinity and Soteriology

By Fred Sanders Eerdmans, September 2021 248 pages (paperback), $24.99 In recent years, the doctrine of the Trinity has garnered a lot of attention and heated debate, and one of the most important Protestant authors on the topic has been Fred Sanders.

While the aftermath of these debates has produced a number of excellent works defending classical views on the Trinity, what separates Sanders’s work from much of the rest is his emphasis on how the Trinity shapes all aspects of Christian thought and practice: e.g., his The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything (Crossway, 2010). This monograph will certainly be a nice addition to his previous work, outl i n i n g h o w t h e Tr i n i t y e ch o e s throughout all the various loci of theology related to salvation, from the atonement to the Christian life.

In recent years, the best works on the topic have tended to be Roman Catholic works. I’m thinking particularly of the works of Gilles Emery, O.P., Matthew Levering, and Dominic Legge, O.P. While these

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are quite good, they definitely have a Catholic bent that can’t completely be harmonized with Protestant beliefs. Thus Sanders’s work should provide a helpful Protestant account of the Trinity and salvation.

OTHER TITLES TO LOOK FOR From Christ to Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the Church in Less Than a Century

By James R. Edwards Baker Academic, April 2021 304 pages (hardcover), $49.99

Hearing and Doing the Word: The Drama of Evangelical Hermeneutics Edited by Daniel J. Trieier and Douglas Sweeney T&T Clark, October 2021 320 pages (hardcover), $190.00

In Quest of the Historical Adam: A Biblical and Scientific Exploration William Lane Craig Eerdmans, September 2021 420 pages (hardcover), $38.00 NOAH J. FRENS (Philosophy, Calvin College;

MAHT, Westminster Seminary California) is currently a history of Christianity PhD candidate at Vanderbilt University.

1. The only comparable work I am aware of is Jerry L. Walls and Trent Dougherty, eds., Two Dozen (or So) Arguments for God: The Plantinga Project (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018).

2. See Alexander R. Pruss and Joshua L. Rasmussen, Necessary Existence (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), ch. 3.

3. One recent exception that comes to mind is Thomas McCall, Against God and Nature: The Doctrine of Sin (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2019).

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HELP THE NEXT GENERATION. B E C O M E A PA R T N E R T O D AY. In a time when the “nones” (or those claiming no religious adherence) are, according to pollsters, growing and when our own churches are stagnant or shrinking, it is more important than ever to identify and celebrate the gospel: the glory of God manifested in the grace he shows to those who deserve the very opposite. This is Christcentered Christianity at its best, and with the support of our partners we produce resources that help transform churches, prisons, families, and individuals.

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B AC K PAG E

The Martyr Complex

by Michael Horton

f the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.

If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you” (John 15:18–19). With these words, Jesus prepared his future apostles for their difficult and dangerous mission.

There’s no question that the world as a system of unbelief finds offense in Christ, so it seems bizarre that any Christian would willingly seek out persecution. We call this the “martyr complex.” I grew up in a conservative evangelical context in which we saw enemies on every side. It wasn’t necessarily the gospel that poked out like a sore thumb. It was we who tended to be annoying. That others took offense was provoked less by any hostility to our announcement of salvation—by grace alone in Christ alone through his life, death, and resurrection—than by our own fear of culture itself.

Although “the world” is a system of human rebellion in bondage to sin and death, there is also common grace. Having passed from death to life, Christians are not of this present age, but we are still in it. In Matthew 5:43–45, Jesus says that this is not the era of driving out unbelievers. The martyr complex happens when we overemphasize this opposition from the world and lose our focus on what really makes us different from it. (I often wonder what unbelievers think when they see Not of This World bumper

“I

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stickers—or what those Christians think who stick that on their cars!)

In the fifth chapter of the “Letter to Diognetus,” an unknown Christian apologist beautifully explains our situation today, though this letter dates to the middle of the second century: Christians are not distinguished from other men by country, language, nor by the customs which they observe. They do not inhabit cities of their own, use a particular way of speaking, nor lead a life marked out by any curiosity. . . . As citizens they participate in everything with others, yet they endure everything as if they were foreigners. . . . They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven. . . . They love all men and are persecuted by

all.

Christians are strange, but not because we opt out of culture to create our own separate culture.

We’re strange because we preach Christ as the only Savior and Lord. Because we share that common curse with unbelievers, there can’t be a “Christian utopia.” Yet because unbelievers also share common grace with us, we don’t need to see them as “the enemy.” They are still blessings to us as friends, family, coworkers, and—for all we know—future citizens of a kingdom that can never be shaken.

MICHAEL HORTON is editor-in-chief of Modern Reformation and

the J. Gresham Machen Professor of Systematic Theology and

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WHITE HORSE INN CLASSICS. SUPPORT OUR CLASSICS. Each Wednesday, we release a White Horse Inn classic episode to our podcast feed. Help us with the extra costs associated with this effort with a donation of any amount! As a thank you, we will send you a link to download a collection of classic episodes from 2013 called “Understanding Scripture.”

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