A Fundamentalist raison d'être, part 2c: The Kingdom--Damage Control

Whenever a statement is made (as I did in my last post) that the institutional church has no social mandate, naysayers come out of the woodwork. Specters of socially withdrawn, miserly, and even hateful Christians instantly come to some minds, and perhaps some damage control is in order. Note the following clarifications:

• Individual Christians still have a mandate to be neighborly--not only to "one another" (i.e., to other believers) but also to those outside the church (Galatians 6:10). In fact, this neighborliness should be of a quantity and quality that it stands out in the community (Matt 5:16).
• The injunction to neighborliness can extend incidentally to the institutional church. In a day when most American churches have established a permanent presence in the community (i.e., a church building), it seems that the church inherits with this presence some basic responsibility for neighborliness. A church that gives a gift certificate for a local restaurant to a desperate family or clears the snow from the sidewalk of the 92-year old lady next door has not abandoned the faith; on the contrary, it has exhibited the faith.
• There also seems to be no sustainable objection to the church institutionally organizing some neighborly "event" as a means to establishing goodwill and gathering an audience for the gospel--an open house, a dinner, a musical presentation, etc. After all, no unbeliever wants to hear the gospel, so it would seem that the same Christian conduct that "makes the teaching about God our Savior attractive" on an individual level, creating goodwill unto a willing hearing of the gospel (Titus 2:10), can rightly extend to the institutional level.

What I am saying is that the institutional church must resist adopting a programmatic social agenda as an end. The church has no responsibility to rescue babies from abortion (though its members may do so), no responsibility to build hospitals (though its members may do so), no responsibility to provide medical or dental services (though doctors and dentists within its membership may do so), etc. Further, the church must constantly guard itself lest social measures for gaining a hearing for the gospel (1) distract the church from its more primary social responsibility of benevolence toward its own membership (1 Tim 5:18; Gal 6:10), (2) displace individual responsibility in evangelism (the overwhelming emphasis of evangelism in the NT), (3) become regarded as means not only of gaining a hearing for the gospel but also of creating faith (1 Cor 1-2), (4) become so programmatic that the intention of gaining a hearing for the gospel is diminished or lost entirely, or (5) become so costly that the explicit mission of the church is jeopardized.

Finally, in view of the extraordinary pressure exerted by culture for the church to become a social organization, it behooves us who are in church leadership to regularly remind the church that their responsibility to "those without" is not to transform their culture, but to evangelize them. May God help us to that end.

MAS

A Fundamentalist raison d'être, part 2b: The Kingdom

This morning I awoke to a much-anticipated and appreciated reply to my previous post—one that really furthers this discussion and provides a very helpful segue to today’s post. You can go back to read everything that Tim Scott (a good friend and very gifted Ph.D. student at SBTS) wrote, but I'll try to sum up Tim’s question along three lines:

· Do you think fundamentalists would have separated from new evangelicals if the only issue between the two was the present aspect of the kingdom and its corresponding social implications?

· Is it possible for someone to hold to the "already, not yet" idea and not be a new evangelical?

· If the answer to the first question is "no" and the second "yes," is it really fair to make the kingdom the watershed issue between fundamentalists and new evangelicals?

In answer to these questions, I’m going to offer (1) a bit more historical analysis, (2) a surprising concession, and (3) a clarification to my earlier post that hopefully answers Tim’s questions. It’s going to be pretty long today. Sorry.

(1) It is pretty well established that one of several theological impulses that created the monster of liberal modernism was postmillennialism. The church at large was ushering in the kingdom (Christ transforming culture) and perhaps even had ushered in the kingdom already (Christ of culture). As a result, practically every bit of benevolence, charity, and social betterment was interpreted as “kingdom work,” and there was a gigantic groundswell of such activity.

Then World War I came, and liberal modernism reeled. The carnage was so awful that all thoughts that the millennial kingdom had arrived were cancelled, and the thought that we were ushering in the kingdom were dealt such a severe blow as to be rendered laughable. The star of dispensational fundamentalism, on the other hand, began to rise. Their theology allowed them to take in stride the devastation of WWI. Their kingdom was not yet, and so they expected the devil’s ship to sink—no sense polishing the handrails!

But culture at large did not understand these theological nuances. All they knew was that some Christians had begun to lose their zeal to fulfill the (perceived) primary role of dispensing benevolence. And just as the crowds dispersed when Jesus stopped doing miracles, so also cultural goodwill toward the church began to wane.

A divergence arose as various fundamentalists began to examine this chain of events disparately (which is why I call this a watershed—a place where the water began streaming two separate directions). Some fundamentalists accepted the new circumstances as normal and expected; others, on the other hand, lamented the loss of both cultural influence and opportunities for evangelism, and thought something needed to be done. Carl Henry and George Ladd, for instance, lamented the decline of social disengagement, and found a primary cause of this disengagement to be (in their minds) a defective view of the kingdom. If the kingdom problem could be solved, they reasoned, the church’s influence in society could be restored. C. H. Dodd’s realized eschatology provided an alternative understanding of the kingdom that most “new” evangelicals embraced.

Now, the fundamentalist/new evangelical breach was more complex than just this one issue. There were multiple informing issues, and the breach was not a clean one that be reduced to a single issue (and I think that such reductionism has proved deleterious to the fundamentalist cause). But I think the issue of the role of the kingdom in church life was significant enough to call a watershed issue. I'd even go so far as to hazard, in answer to Tim’s first question, that this issue alone would have led to a separation of fundamentalist from new evangelical thought—perhaps not so sharp a separation as occurred, but a separation nonetheless.

(2) I promised a concession and here it is. As I mentioned on my previous post there are pockets of conservative evangelicalism and Reformed confessionalism have taken some serious steps away from Henry's new evangelical agenda, and I find this a promising development. One such development in Reformed confessionalism is “Two Kingdom” theology (read a recent opinion piece on the movement here and keep an eye peeled for this soon-to-be-released book length treatise on the topic. Briefly, two-kingdom theology is an idea borrowed from Lutheranism that sees the Christian as living in two kingdoms—God’s universal kingdom and the kingdom of the elect. The Christian has dual citizenship and must hold these roles in paradox—he must live as a citizen of his culture and as a citizen of the church (Mennonites and other counter-cultural groups have taken this idea and use it to withdraw from the former in lieu of the latter, but this is a miscarriage of Luther’s idea).

What is critical to note here is that two kingdom theology adopts a very narrow mission for the church. While Christians as citizens of society can and should be kind and should engage in deeds of charity and benevolence, the church qua church has little or no socio-political mandate. Further, the Christian’s neighborliness is not to be regarded as “kingdom work,” but rather Christians living properly as citizens of society.

Very few proponents of this model in Reformed confessionalism are fundamentalist or dispensational—most are not even premillennial. But in many ways I feel a greater solidarity as a fundamentalist with their views on kingdom and culture than I do with most historic premillennialists (hence again the kingdom implications rather than millennial systems as my raison d’être). Now, please don’t take this as a blanket endorsement—I still have differences with my two-kingdom theology brothers. But narrowly speaking, on this issue alone, I think that the Reformed two-kingdom theology position raises fewer red flags to me than does the position of some of my conservative evangelicals brothers, many of whom are premillennial and even dispensational.

(3) So on to one of Tim’s specific questions: “Is it possible for someone to hold to the ‘already, not yet’ idea and not be a new evangelical?” Yes. In light of the preceding I’d go so far as to say that someone can be a full-bore amillennialist and not be a new evangelical. But to the degree that someone uses the “already, not yet” idea as a basis for radically expanding the church's mission beyond her Great Commission, he has to that degree embraced a central tenet of historic new evangelicalism.

I say all this with full acceptance that the new evangelicalism is no longer as it was—even that it has died. But before it died it had children. And those children still bear some genetic distinctions from their fundamentalist cousins. There has been a lot of intermarriage of late and the lines are being blurred and a new family, conservative evangelicalism, is emerging. Some of the historic differences are cosmetic and well worth setting aside. But I contend that that there are still a few fundamentalist themes worth maintaining as the rising tide of conservative evangelicalism threatens to fully integrate us. And one distinction worth maintaining (a fundamentalist raison d’être or reason to keep existing) is fundamentalism’s historical resistance to appeals to Christ's kingdom as a basis for radically expanding the church's mission beyond her Great Commission.

MAS

A Fundamentalist raison d'être, part 2a: The Kingdom

A few weeks ago Mark Dever raised a few eyebrows when he announced here that "you are in sin if you lead your congregation to have a statement of faith that requires a particular millennial view." The claim was pretty incendiary and perhaps involved a bit of hyperbole--I don't know. Had he said that requiring a particular millennial position as a criterion of church membership was unwise, I'd have ignored the comment and even agreed to some of its rationale. But he didn't say this. He said it was a sin for a church to include it in its statement of faith. This divisive statement on church unity is emblematic of the push to heal the breach between conservative evangelicalism and fundamentalism--and one that ignores the roots of the breach.

One of the early hints of the withdrawal of the new evangelicalism from fundamentalism was, of course, Carl F. H. Henry's Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism. I bought a copy of this little tome a few years back and read it through in about an hour (it's not very long). Henry's argument is that the fundamentalism of his day had lost its social conscience, in large part due to neglect of the "already" aspect of the kingdom.

The modernism of the early 20th century was dominated by a postmillennial vision of church life that saw the great physical/material kingdom promises of the OT finding fulfillment through the church's supervision and benevolent dispensation. Gone was the church's evangelistic mandate, swept away by humanitarian "kingdom" interests. Fundamentalism reacted against this and thereby incurred the disapproval of a world that had come to demand open-handed liberality from the church as her primary function. Henry sought to temper this backlash and regain world approval by restoring at least some of this social mission to the church.

Henry explicitly disclaimed that this was a problem of one's millennial view (he allowed for broad accord between postmillennialists, amillennialists, "historic" premillennialists, and even dispensational premillennialists, and mentions over and again that his personal position--historic premillennialism--was minimally relevant to his argument). All four positions, he argued, could find room for the already/not-yet view of the kingdom that was annexing the theological world of Henry's day. As the last six decades have unfolded, Henry has proved correct on this point at least (dispensational premillennialism has proved the most resistant of the four to already/not-yet models, but certainly not impervious to them). That's why I decided to finger the kingdom as the watershed issue rather than one's millennial position.

One of the hallmarks of fundamentalism is a view of the church's external mission as evangelistic, and that the expansion of this mission has historically been one of its most devastating vices. And while pockets of conservative evangelicalism and Reformed confessionalism have taken some serious steps away from Henry's "new" evangelical agenda (more about this on Friday), I do not think that this is a signal for fundamentalism to reciprocate with compromise in the interests of mutual rapprochement.

Is it a sin to put a particular millennial position in a church's doctrinal statement? I don't think so, but it's a question worthy of debate. It is a sin, though, to appeal to Christ's kingdom as a basis for radically expanding the church's mission beyond her Great Commission.

MAS

A Fundamentalist raison d'être, part 1

In the description of this blog my readers will find that they are reading a blog from a Baptist, Calvinist, dispensational, and separatist perspective. I used the word separatist because I know the term fundamentalist is something of a misunderstood and incendiary term, and one that has become so polymorphous as to be virtually meaningless. I have no problem with the latter term as long as I can define it, but have opted for a term that captures the central theme of historical fundamentalism--fundamentalism separates from apostasy and forms of Christianity falsely so called.

It is no secret, however, that fundamentalism became more than this. Most significantly, when the "new" evangelicalism (as they preferred their movement be called) retreated from the fundamentalist hard line in the 1940s and 1950s, fundamentalism became defined by its differences with this more tolerant form of orthodoxy. The lightning rod for the growing division eventually emerged in the person of Billy Graham, whose 1957 shunning of fundamentalist churches for the more attractive lure of mainline denominational ecumenical evangelism rendered a chasm between the two movements that proved too deep to heal.

The "new" evangelicalism has so evolved since that time that it is scarcely identifiable today. It has aged and died with its founders. The new evangelicalism had many children, though, and in the features of these offspring--the evangelical left, the evangelical right, the evangelical center, etc.--one can still see the ghost of the parents. The children are not the parents, of course, and should not suffer for their sins (Deut 24:16); nonetheless, palpable genetic disorders sometimes linger in children.

Happily, the enormously popular movement called conservative evangelicalism has abandoned some of the new evangelical agenda. Specifically, many of these are beginning to concede the failure of the new evangelical experiment, recovering the soiled doctrine of inerrancy and denouncing the Graham strategy as too gravely compromising. This is not to say that the Graham problem is gone (see here and here), but it has at least been muted. And since fundamentalists have so long fixated on the problem of ecumenical evangelism, this welcome development has, for many, paved the way for complete rapprochement.

While I concede that fundamentalism has itself devolved into a menagerie of silly separations (over, e.g., Bible versions, blue jeans, and Santa Claus), I'm not prepared to reduce the essence of fundamentalism to separation over the single issue of ecumenism. This may be its central theme, but it is not its only theme. And while the breach centers on gospel issues, the breach is more complex than Billy Grahamism. Billy Graham happened because the new evangelicalism wanted him to happen, and his absence cannot nullify the factors that produced him.

It is in view of these factors that I am starting a series on the raison d'être of fundamentalism--a reason for her continued existence--in view of her growing familiarity and familiality with conservative evangelicalism. Specifically, I'd like to touch on serious differences that remain: differences that cannot and should not be plowed under in a headlong rush to reconciliation.

MAS

But They Disagree! Norming Systems of Theology

Over the course of the last two weeks I have gotten several private email responses to my blog entries from people (1) who don't have the time or desire to dissent publically, (2) who don't think they have anything worthy to say, or (3) who simply don't want to "go on record." All three concerns are ones over which I agonize every time I write an entry. And perhaps if I and my fellow bloggers thought more about these concerns, we'd have a happier blogosphere. So I appreciate these silent participants and the questions with which they challenge me.

One question that several private e-mailers have raised has divulged a gap in my arguments heretofore that I want to address today--If theology is all about harmonizing the whole biblical record, then why do systematicians disagree? And the follow up, If two coherent harmonizations of the same biblical material emerge, what is the "trump card" or (for those offended by card-playing allusions) the deciding norm?


The answer at its simplest level is that Scripture is the norma normans non normata--the norming norm that cannot be normed. This is the answer of the Reformers and mine as well. But as we've noted, sometimes we have two models, each deeply and earnestly committed to the authority of Scripture, that are at odds. It's not enough in these situations to simply shout, "I'm more biblical than you are." As a dispensationalist I think that dispensationalism is the most "biblical" model. Many people earnestly committed to biblical authority disagree. As a Calvinist I think that the Calvinistic model of soteriology is the most biblical. Again, many people earnestly committed to biblical authority disagree. The arguments cannot be settled by the the smug trump card, "I'm a biblicist" (and the corresponding insinutation that no one else is). The fact is that all parties involved in both of these issues are committed to biblical authority--to Scripture as the norma normans non normata. They are all "biblicists" by this definition. Thus the "biblicist" label becomes meaningless. The term must be laid aside and a new question asked--which biblicist model is the right one? Who decides and on what grounds?


I have found Cornelius Van Til's theory of truth introduced in the first few pages of his Survey of Christian Epistemology to be perhaps the best response to this dilemma. Truth for Van Til is ultimately that which corresponds to what God would say about a given set of data, thus giving credence to a rigidly foundational, correspondence view of truth. Nonetheless, when disagreement arises over what God has said about a given set of data, the answer becomes more complex. Some take a simplistic view of correspondence and insist that the answer is always to take the very most plain reading of Scripture and then put on noise-cancelling headsets to drown out all dissent. But it seems prudent in such situations to entertain the second aspect of Van Til's definition of truth--coherence. Red flags will go up instantly in some minds because the ghost of Kant's free-floating, non-foundationalist, truth-is-in-the-observer theory seems to lurk here. And Van Til is not unmindful of this. That's why he insists that both features are simultaneously necessary to render a theory true.

Thus, for instance, when the most straightforward reading of, say, Hebrews 6:4-6 or James 2:24 is at odds with the whole witness of Scripture, the answer is not to throw up one's hands and cry antinomy, but to re-examine the texts to see whether a more obscure reading might yet pass hermeneutical muster while harmonizing with the whole of Scripture.

So what, then, is the "trump card" for evaluating systems? Very simply, Scripture. On this we all must agree. But it is not just correspondence with what its texts say, but also coherence with what the text says. This is how the norma normans non normata works.

Will this magically decide every issue? No. Systematic theologians will still disagree with one another, just like exegetes and commentators will continue to disagree with one another. What neither can do, though, is decide that the other can't contribute to the decision-making process.

MAS

Systematic Theology as Peculiar Harmonizations

One of my favorite nuggets from the syllabus of theology prepared by my esteemed mentor of theology, Rolland McCune, is that "linguistic exegesis fails if it does not explicate the correct and harmonious theology of a passage or book." By this provocative statement he communicates that the exegete is a failure if his interpretations cannot be "fit" into the big picture of his theological system.

McCune expands this assessment in the first volume of his recent Systematic Theology of Biblical Christianity with a lengthy and even more provocative paragraph from Moises Silva (Trinity Journal 15 [1994]: 26):

The old advice that biblical students should try as much as possible to approach a text without a prior idea as to what it means (and that therefore commentaries should be read after, not before, the exegesis) does have the advantage of encouraging independent thinking; besides, it reminds us that our primary aim is indeed to discover the historical meaning and that we are always in danger of imposing our meaning on the text. Nevertheless, the advice is fundamentally flawed, because it is untrue to the very process of learning. I would suggest rather that a student who comes to a biblical passage with, say, a dispensationalist background, should attempt to make sense of the text assuming that dispensationalism is correct. I would go so far as to say that, upon encountering a detail that does not seem to fit the dispensationalist scheme, the student should try to "make it fit." The purpose, of course, is not to mishandle the text, but to become self-conscious about what we all do anyway. The result should be increased sensitivity to those features of the text that disturb our interpretive framework and thus a greater readiness to modify that framework.

I think the assessments above are fundamentally correct. Along with Kaiser and Silva, we cannot afford to believe that the contributions of the various biblical authors are incompatible and that "the attempt to treat them as a unity can result only in distorting the text" (Introduction to Biblical Hermeneutics, p. 259). Certainly I must have the humility to consider the possibility that my system is incorrect and adjust it accordingly. But I must also have the humility to consider the possibility that it is my exegesis instead that needs to be adjusted.

MAS

A Timely Illustration

Today boasts no new post, but a link to an enormously interesting discussion over on Euangelion that illustrates some of the material on biblical and systematic theology posted here last week. Proponents of three positions on the extent of the atonement (Calvinist, Amyraldian, and Arminian) each make a case for their position in 250-300 words.

Two points of specific interest:

(1) Both Helm and Witherington (Calvinist and Arminian, respectively) admit that the heart of their arguments cannot rest entirely (or even primarily) on proof texts, as though lists of Bible verses could be amassed by both sides and a winner declared based on list length. Instead, the determination rests on the coherence of one's position with the whole of Scriptural witness.

(2) Meanwhile, Jensen (Amyraldian) begins tellingly with the statement, "I refuse to be more consistent than the Bible," allowing, apparently, for exegetical inconsistencies in his harmonization of biblical texts.

One could say more, but I found the illustration a very apt one.

MAS

Biblical Theology's Role in System-Building, Part 2

In the last post we walked through a very truncated history of "biblical theology" and found that, in Warfield's words, "the discipline of 'Biblical Theology' came to us indeed wrapped in the swaddling-clothes of rationalism, and it was rocked in the cradle of the Hegelian recasting of Christianity; it did not present at first, therefore, a very engaging countenance, and seemed to find for a time its chief pleasure in setting the prophets and apostles by the ears." Despite this accurate assessment, Warfield was eventually dissuaded from his antipathy toward biblical theology by Geerhardus Vos, who went on to greatly popularize an anti-modernist version of the discipline.

Vos's vision for the discipline was to plot the biblical-historical plotline of Scripture, to emphasize the progress of revelation, and to display the unity of the record even in the presence of diversity. One can object but little to his goals and even its implementation (as a dispensationalist I find the covenantal thread a bit annoying, but even so, the vast bulk of his work was unobjectionable). But a lingering question that emerges is this: Do we really need biblical theology as a distinct discipline?

Certainly we need the emphases that Vos's brand of biblical theology brought to the exegesis and systematization of Scripture: the authority of Scripture, the progress of revelation, the analogy of antecedent Scripture, recognition of the subtleties of vocabulary, syntax, and emphasis of various biblical writers, etc. But these emphases had been part and parcel of exegesis and theology for centuries before the discipline of biblical theology was invented. Further, the fact that biblical theology comes to us as a refurbished product of modernism at least raises the possibility that the discipline has not been fully purged of it historical tensions.

Some will hear me say that theology need not be biblical. This is not the case. My point is to suggest that the idea of biblical theology as a distinct discipline is in need of criticism. Note the following concerns I have:

1. Biblical theology often purports to be a pure discipline free from the encumbrances of theological bias. But this utopian illusion cannot be sustained. Vos built his biblical theology around the threadline of the covenant. Ladd used the threadline of the kingdom. McClain used the kingdom, too, but in a totally different way. In short, biblical theology is never presuppositionless, but is always guided, however subtly, by theological agenda.
2. Biblical theology, for all its dependence on biblical authority, tends to deal with texts in isolation before integrating them with the whole. For the modernist this meant the Bible was filled with contradictions and errors. For the evangelical, a softer word--antinomy--is supplied for contradiction. But a swift glance at the definition of this term in Webster's leads one to the uncomfortable conclusion that the terms are virtual synonyms. In brief, biblical theology can still create doubts concerning the unity and inerrancy of Scripture, just as it did for many generations prior to Vos's evangelicalization of the discipline.
3. Biblical theology, with its emphasis on Pauline, Petrine, Johannine, Lukan, and other theologies, tends to fragment the NT record. While the various NT contributors each have distinct vocabularies, styles, and emphases, biblical theology does little to remind us that Paul, Peter, John, and Luke are in perfect theological agreement. They harmonize! And attempts to isolate them from each other, I think, tends often to be more harmful than helpful.
4. Biblical theology, in its attempt to do theology irrespective of historical labels/categories and philosophical concerns, proves particularly vulnerable to "old" heresies and also to theological novelties--problems easily avoided when we stand on the shoulders of our theological forbears.

Conclusion: While I am deeply convinced of the importance of many of the emphases that biblical theology raises, I am less convinced of the importance of biblical theology as a distinct step in the theological process. In fact, I find at times that it is more detrimental than it is helpful.

MAS

Biblical Theology's Role in System-Building, Part 1

The comments from previous discussions have delved a bit into the realm of “biblical theology,” a topic to which I’d like to turn. There is a great deal of resurgent interest in biblical theology in evangelical publication right now (see, e.g., here and here and here). This comes as unqualified good news to many. But is biblical theology a monolithic endeavor? Are contributions by, say, Geerhardus Vos, Brevard Childs, George Ladd, and Roy Zuck all trying to accomplish the same thing? And are their materials equally profitable in informing systematic theology? Anyone familiar with the broadly divergent conclusions drawn by these respective contributors is obliged to answer “No.”

Why the diversity? Do they have different Bibles? Different purposes? Different methods? While any of these differences might be fingered, probably the greatest difference is in the realm or presuppositions and preunderstandings. Far from being the pure, presuppositionless tabula rasa of unadulterated exegesis, biblical theology is always informed by the theologian’s agenda. The following is a brief history of the concept of biblical theology prior to the rise of modern evangelicalism. Its purpose is to inform but also to pave the way for criticism. For some, of course, criticizing biblical theology is akin to kicking babies—how could a Christian ever do this?! But hopefully it will be demonstrated that eschewing systematic theology and retreating to a purer “biblical theology” has not always been advantageous in the life of the church:

1. The idea of biblical theology can be traced to the Protestant reaction against Romanist dogma during the period of the Reformation. In brief, the Reformation was a call to restore Scripture to its place of singular authority above all unbiblical systems, such as that represented by Romanism. Biblical theology in this sense was nothing other than the principle of sola scriptura.
2. The term “biblical theology” first appears in the seventeenth-century anti-credal writings of pietists such as W. J. Christmann and J. P. Spener. For these, biblical theology was a reaction against Protestant creeds and ecclesiastical confessions and a reversion to an individualist reading of the Bible unencumbered by ecclesiastical concerns. While pietism supplied some correctives to scholastic theology, the lack of checks by the majority also opened the door for many strange and even heretical readings that are well documented.
3. The formal development of biblical theology began in 1787 with J. P. Gabler’s inaugural at the University of Altdorf. Gabler, a modernist, held to an evolutionary view of the development of the Jewish religion, and maintained that, especially in the OT, the Bible was an errant anthology of conflicting accounts that together reflected the mythical roots of the Jewish faith. While Gabler himself thought that a single, synthetic theology might yet be discovered, his followers demurred, and biblical theology disintegrated into a fragmentation of the biblical record and total abandonment of biblical authority. Biblical theology had successfully proved that the Bible was unequivocally untrue. So thorough was the collapse of biblical theology that when approached about the possibility of a department of biblical theology at Princeton, Warfield responded,

The discipline of “Biblical Theology” came to us indeed wrapped in the swaddling-clothes of rationalism, and it was rocked in the cradle of the Hegelian recasting of Christianity; it did not present at first, therefore, a very engaging countenance, and seemed to find for a time its chief pleasure in setting the prophets and apostles by the ears (Selected Shorter Works, 2.12).

Warfield went on to say that he had relented of this absolute assessment, paving the way for the appointment of Geerhardus Vos to chair the department at Princeton; however, his response is telling. Before this time, evangelical versions of biblical theology were all but non-existent. Biblical theology was liberalism.

1. A crisis in biblical theology arose in the middle of the 20th century at the troubled intersection of modernism and neo-orthodoxy. Neo-orthodox theology was mindful of the problems discovered by modernist biblical theology, but restored the valuue of the Bible by affirming that errors were acceptable within the scope of the Bible's purpose. The Bible was not to be viewed as an precise historical accounting, but as a human accounting of Israel’s encounter with God—the myth that stands at the foundation of the Judeo-Christian religion. Discrepancies may well exist in the biblical record, but this "crisis" is diffused when the Bible is recognized for what it is—a canonical foundation for faith. Barth and Childs rescued biblical theology from the modernists, but at the high price of inerrancy.

Conclusion: The reader can readily see that "biblical theology" is not the pure discipline that some regard it to be. And, unfortunately, the evangelical versions of biblical theology to which we will turn for our next post remain vulnerable to the same deficiencies that mark historical versions of biblical theology. For the next post (Lord willing) we will look at this problem and, having done so, give a suitably cautious assessment of the proper role of biblical theology in crafting out systems of theology.

The Bible Plus Logic? Part 2

Comment 2 of the previous post is a perfect example of how a misunderstanding of systematic theology leads to ambivalence toward the discipline, and offers a segue into my next post:

It's not that there is no value to Systematic Theology, it is that so much authority is invested in the logic side of it. Logic is the human construct of Systematic and is therefore subject to human frailties. It doesn't carry the same weight as the Bible (and it shouldn't).While systems can inform our understanding they shouldn't be vested with 'thus saith the Lord' by their proponents.

Systematic theology in this reply is the addition of frail human logic to the Bible, and is thus subject to failure. By comparison the Bible is inerrant. While systematic theology might have some value, it's much like vegetable gardening--it adds a little bit of garnish at dinner time, but really isn't worth the time and effort unless you really enjoy the hobby (no offense intended toward my vegetable gardening readers).

I'm convinced this assessment is misguided. Note the following restatement of the post above, with some key substitutions:

It's not that there is no value to exegetical/biblical theology, it is that so much authority is invested in the hermeneutics side of it. Hermeneutics is the human construct of exegetical/biblical theology and is therefore subject to human frailties. It doesn't carry the same weight as the Bible (and it shouldn't).While exegesis and biblical theology can inform our understanding they shouldn't be vested with 'thus saith the Lord' by their proponents.

In reply, note the following:

1. Contrary to the claims above (one actual, the other an imaginary parallel), the laws of language and logic are not human constructs, but elements of the imago dei with which all humans are born. Our assessment and use of these tools adds a human element, but the tools themselves are not human constructs.
2. The Bible comes to us in the form of innately consistent and carefully crafted propositions that the which the exegete and theologian discern from the text to produce truth claims that should both (a) correspond to individual texts and (b) cohere with the whole text. The biblical theologian is satisfied to stop with the former; the systematic theologian does not rest until both demands are met. [The discerning reader will recognize my dependency on Cornelius Van Til's epistemology at this point, which can be accessed here and here.]
3. Due to the noetic effects of sin, humans misidentify and misuse the laws of both language and logic, leading to misinterpretations, misintegrations, and misapplications of Scripture. Exegetes inevitably make linguistic errors and theologians inevitably make logical errors--errors that lead to aberrant systems by which Scripture is further analyzed (that's right, whether acknowledged or suppressed, whether rational or irrational, everyone has a system).
4. In order to identify and correct the errors in their systems, the theologian must constantly acknowledge sola scriptura and employ exegesis as a check to his theology, and the exegete must constantly acknowledge the analogia scriptura and employ theology as a check to his exegesis.

The claims of the exegete and the claims of the theologian must always be recognized as human applications of the laws of logic and language. Neither has a claim to absolute authority and both are equally vulnerable to error. And yet they are mutually necessary disciplines. The best exegete is the best theologian and the best theologian is the best exegete. Indeed, the best way to think God's thoughts after him is to so amalgamate these two disciplines that they become one.

The Bible Plus Logic?

Occasionally I encounter a new seminarian who is ambivalent or even opposed to the study of systematic theology. Upon inquiry, the reason often emerges in the form of an adage that the student has picked up somewhere his pre-seminary training, viz., that systematic theology is "the Bible plus logic.” And since human logic can’t be trusted, the tongue-in-cheek title of a recent Michael Horton article seems apropos: Who needs systematic theology when we have the Bible? For my first series of posts, I would like to take the time to challenge this line of thinking. We need the Bible and we need systematic theology.

We need the Bible because of the truth of sola scriptura, that is, because the Bible stands as the only independent, self-validating source of theology. In short, we need the Bible because of the singular and absolute authority of the Bible.

We need systematic theology because of the truth of the analogia scriptura, that is, because the Bible stands as a perfectly self-consistent and infallible source of theology. In short, we need systematic theology because of the unity and inerrancy of the Bible.

What, then, of the claim that systematic theology should be held at arm's length because it is "the Bible plus logic"? Well, two comments for now:

1. Systematic theology does not add logic to the Bible. Rather, it discovers and tenaciously defends the logical unity inherent in God's inscripturated Word. It is not satisfied with appeals to antinomy and supralogical mystery, but seeks to unravel and understand the Bible in all of its perfect self-consistency.


2. The alternative to systematic theology is not a pure, unadulterated biblical theology, but rather the Bible minus logic. By being satisfied with antinomy and mystery, the exegete deceives himself into thinking he adheres to no system when in actuality he is embracing a system that either (a) allows for error in the Bible or (b) denies the sufficiency of Scripture to communicate divine truth effectively and accurately.

I conclude with John Piper, “One can only pity the poor souls who, for fear of finding out too much, never approach the sacred mountains but stand off and chirp ironically about how one should preserve and appreciate mystery.”

Introductory Post

…and so begins my foray into the blogosphere. I feel a bit like Hans Brinker when he began ice skating—the pond is crowded with experienced skaters and I fear that I’ll be bumped around. But perchance the other skaters will graciously grant a bit of room for me to find my balance.

I like theology. I like a lot of things, but especially theology. Back in 1990, when I began my B.A. studies at Northland Baptist Bible College, I took a college entrance survey that asked, “What are your educational goals?” I wrote, “I want to get a Th.D. and teach systematic theology on a college or seminary level.” God graciously allowed me to realize both goals. But while the classroom and the library are marvelous places to hone one’s theology, like my Kershaw knife, theology must be unsheathed and used to realize its potential. So at the risk of causing injury to myself (and even to others), I invite any who will read to join with me in incising the thoughts and intentions of the heart and bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.