Barth Conference 2012

Location: Princeton, NJ

Date: June 17-20, 2012

On Feb 25-26^th ACTS/North West Baptist Seminary was pleased to host Dr. Jim Belcher, of Deep Church fame (IVP, 2010) for an excellent conference on “ReSourcing Church”. The idea was to call the church back to some original sources as well as providing some contemporary resources for navigating church practice in our own time. Jim was the perfect speaker to help us do this in that he offered what he calls a mediating or third way between traditional church models and so-called emerging models of church. The sessions can be viewed on the Northwest website, if you want details and videos of the lectures. The one factor that stood out to me was the need for dialog on issues like preaching, missions, worship, authority and other matters that were open to cultural concerns while rooted, and re-rooted if need be, in the tradition of the church.

We also had six break-out sessions that were excellent and offered responses to Jim’s book based on issues like preaching, the Gospel, deep exegesis, deep mission and the Holy Spirit in the church. Well over 100 pastors and church leaders were in attendance and the feedback has been very affirmative. The event was sponsored, primarily by the Pickford Chair of Theology, in conjunction with Northwest Baptist Seminary, Canadian Baptist Seminary and Canadian Pentecostal Seminary. We are already in the planning stages for our next conference, this time on the general theme: Christian Authority: Scripture and Tradition in Dialogue. It will take place the last weekend of Feb. 2013.  Keep your eyes peeled for this! It should be interesting. We will be making an announcement on the keynote speaker very soon!

Now, in no uncertain terms it is a fact of history that the study of formal systematic and historical theology, as legitimate scholarly and ecclesial disciplines, has been under suspicion and attack from without since the enlightenment. But within the church, generally speaking, there was still considerable support for these disciplines for a longer time and both were core to theological education in some universities and most seminaries through to late modern times. This was especially true of more conservative Protestant and all Catholic institutions. Even liberal Protestant institutions continued to teach such courses at the core of their programs, though greatly revised and redefined along enlightenment lines. The status of the subject of ‘Christian theology’ today, however, is that it continues to suffer as a result of external and internal criticism of its method, content and findings. It was only a matter of time before institutions would begin to marginalize, re-interpret and even eliminate theology from its core programs. It was also only a matter of time before the caustic criticisms of these disciplines would begin to affect the church’s attitude towards systematic and historical theology. When this situation is eventually combined with pluralistic, cultural and philosophical re-definitions of the disciplines and their methods, in our own time, the net result is a loss, for the church, the academy and the public, of the task of doctrinal description and re-description. In the current context, especially among Evangelicals, this loss has resulted in a Biblical, theological and historical ‘amnesia’, such that such Christian groups hardly know, and certainly cannot articulate, the main features of their faith any longer. There was a time when the MDiv degree of most seminaries, for instance, required a solid grasp of the development of doctrine and at least four courses in Systematic Theology, together with a course that introduced the student to the subject. Those days are long gone as seminaries across Canada stumble over each other to reduce the size and academic strength of their MDiv program in order to attract more, and less qualified, students. Of course, students now come into seminary and religious studies programs having received the negative press towards the study of doctrine and dogma, often embedded in their educational and ecclesial experience. Such students are also considerably less prepared to undertake the rigors of theological study and so demand that the content and depth of such courses be considerably curtailed. In some seminaries it is possible to avoid Systematic theology all together. In fact, it would appear that the only place where one can undertake the serious study of “dogmatics”, in terms of its development, status and meaning for our time, is in those universities and institutions that undertake the graduate academic study of the discipline. In short, the discipline of theology in the life of the church in Canada is in steep decline and dying fast.

So what if it is, and it does die? The church appears to be doing fine without it, and anyway, so goes the popular criticism,  ‘theology only leads to discord and internal fighting’. Yet, for all of this, it is becoming increasingly clear that Christianity in Canada has suffered greatly from this theological dissonance.

First and foremost, Christianity has suffered, in its various Western permutations, from a loss of theological self-identity, spiritually speaking. The vague approach to theology has led to an equally vague understanding of the gospel, and finally to a vague sense of our spiritual identity and existence. ‘Spirituality’ can never again receive the specificity that theology traditionally afforded it, because this is not only politically incorrect, it is practically impossible due to a general ignorance of theological tradition. One only needs to compare some of the spiritual classics of Western Catholic and Protestant faiths to what passes for ‘spiritual literature’ in our own time to see how wide is the theological drift in spiritual identity today. Compare, for in stance, John Owen’s Sin and Temptation with contemporary works like Dallas Willard’s theologically lean, yet much celebrated, The Spirit of the Disciplines, which is largely an exercise in non-theologically descript generic “spirituality” concocted on the basis of a general theology of immanence.

Second, in the wake of this theological, biblical and historical amnesia, the word ‘theology’ has become increasingly meaningless as religionists, cultural historians, and philosophers have rushed to filled the void left by the loss of Christian theology. In the process it has stripped ‘theology’ of its Christian moorings in the West. Now everyone does ‘theology’ as an auxiliary discipline to whatever else they happen to be doing in the church, the academy or in public life. Theology does not define our existence, rather the reverse is more likely the case. Furthermore every ‘theology’ is legitimate because every experience is legitimate, regardless of its right or wrong headedness visa vie the historic Christian faith. To limit the definition of the word ‘theology’ to its primary Christian referent is, as we said above, politically incorrect and to broaden it is inevitable due to ignorance of the Christian tradition of theology, by and large. It is more helpful in maintaining our non-descript faith if we define the word theology as broadly as possible. It makes commitment to and communication of ‘faith’ in general, easier. In fact our ‘missional’ efforts must now be informed by a largely cultural, rather than specifically Christian, definition of theology.

Third, this situation has been perpetuated by pastors and church leaders who themselves lack a thorough knowledge of Christian theology and it tradition of development. They perpetuate all of the circumstances thus far enumerated. They continue, in their ignorance, to parrot the idea that theology is not core to the church’s task and indeed can be a hindrance. In fact, though it is controversial to say so, it is fair to say that there has been a catastrophic failure for theology in the church, on this level. I have personally been party to meetings where, despite my objections and contrary intuitions, leaders of denominations and institutions, without any real justification based on facts, make decisions for their constituencies that actually, and I think demonstrably, runs counter to the actual concerns of people in the pew. I have preached many sermons across Canada and have never had to apologize for making sure my sermons are grounded in a theological reality. Lay people, despite their relative ignorance of theology, still get its importance. Pastors and leaders do not. Or at least they willingly down play its significance.

Fourth, Preaching and liturgy used to be about rehearsing the great dogma of redemption in all its parts, but it too has suffered from being ill informed theologically. Here the pressure on pastors to work in areas anterior to their actual calling has had the effect of reducing their sermons and liturgical planning to pop psychology designed to get the average parishioner through week, as if eternity no longer mattered. They no longer feel it is needed to spend more time in the study or mapping out the theological contours of worship. Rather than trying to bring up the level of theological awareness of their congregations through creative preaching teaching and liturgy they deem it sufficient to stay just slightly ahead of their people on this level. Simplify, pragmatize and whatever else you do sooth their restless spirit. Do not stimulate the mind to think there might be more to the faith than you want them to think or hear. Mark Knoll’s book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind should be required reading for all such pastors and church leaders, evangelical and otherwise.

Finally, the near loss of the formal study of Christian theology in the church and academy has had a detrimental effect on the ability of the church to clearly articulate its faith on the public scene in today’s world. Granted, the mainstream media has become increasingly hostile to our efforts to clarify the nature of our faith, especially in the wake of current scandals within the churches, Catholic, Protestant and/or otherwise. But when the opportunity has arisen for us to articulate our faith, usually in response to some ethical or moral issue facing society, we often speak out of the narrow social-psychological concerns we share with human society rather than speak from the perspective of an informed theological perspective on creation. This is certainly the case with issues like abortion, euthanasia, global warming or other pet themes of the modern and postmodern west. Very often we merely reflect the larger cultural vagueness on these issues because we are not sufficiently connected with the larger theological vision that formerly gave us a clear voice on them.

So there you have it. The failure of theology in the church, academy and society leads to an ineffective and declining voice for Christianity in society as a whole. Gone are the days when it could be said that the church stood solidly for a theological reality that transcended all other concerns. Now we are merely engaged in the anthropologization of all religious reality in ever-increasing degrees. To paraphrase the famous critique of Christianity offered by Ludwig Feuebach, ‘the secret of theology in the postmodern context is that it is, after all, only anthropology”. Such a result should be expected when we trade a Christian theology of transcendence for a vague ‘theology’ of radical immanence.

For me, the questions of scriptural authority, the cultural mandate, foundations, etc. must be answered in the light of the current “ahistorical” attitude towards theological tradition in the theology of the Believers Church Tradition. I chose to call this course the “The Theology of the Believers Church Tradition” with the distinction being in the word “tradition”. My goal in this course is to make a small contribution to the reversal of what Ramm calls “ahistoricism” in evangelism. Ramm is right to see this reading of theology without regard to its historical heritage as a weakness in Evangelicalism that leads to superficial understanding.
I am aided here by a recent work that intends to read the Believers Church Tradition as precisely that, “a tradition”. D. H. Williams’s, Retrieving The Tradition And Renewing Evangelicalism is a tour de force argument that we have, unconsciously or consciously, been engaging in a theology that assumes a tradition that goes back, not just to the Reformation but also through the middle ages and into the patristic and New Testament era. Our downfall has been our failure to retrieve this tradition for theology either because of our suspicion of tradition or because of our neglect of it. In a similar manner to Ramm, Williams charges the Believers Church Tradition with “theological amnesia”. He says, “the real problem with amnesia, of course, is that not only does the patient forget his loved ones and friends, but he no longer remembers who he is.” Much of what passes for ministry and theology in the Believers Church Tradition today fails to receive, preserve and carefully transmit its tradition to the next generation of believers. History, and its theology, has become irrelevant. He levels a stinging indictment against North American Evangelicalism in which he offers an analysis as to why this amnesia has occurred. He writes:
“New trends for church growth or the establishment of “seeker sensitive” settings have replaced the church’s corporate memory for directing ecclesial policies and theological education. Pragmatics in ministry threaten to swallow the necessity for theology and marginalize the craft of “reflective understanding” about God which ought to have its primary place in the Church. While pastors have become more efficient administrators and keepers of the institution, along with being excellent performers, they are losing their ability to act as able interpreters of the historic faith. Likewise, biblical exegesis is too often guided by no other authority than the marketplace of ideas and the social and emotional agenda of the congregation. Interpretation of the text is far more indebted to the latest trends in interpersonal dynamics, effective communication style, or popular pastoral psychology. And all the while, the issue of determining Christian identity has lost its way in the midst of emotionally charged and professionally orchestrated worship. It is not that Christians are purposely ignoring Paul’s final words to Timothy, “Preserve the pattern of sound teaching … guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you.” It is that they are no longer sure what this “deposit” consists of, or where it can be found.”(p. 10)

This widespread “evangelical amnesia” has also come about because of a deep-seated suspicion of history and tradition. This, combined with our penchant for cultural faddism, has impoverished the church and stolen its tradition.
As a result, the evangelical movement and much of the Believers Church Tradition, is moving into the future without a firm connection to the past. Modernity has equipped us so well with a suspicion of tradition that it has robbed us of our ability to keep safe and carefully pass on the “deposit” entrusted to us. If however, our aim here at Acts is to be doctrinally orthodox and exegetically faithful to scripture, “it cannot be accomplished without recourse to and integrations of the foundational tradition of the early church.”(Ibid.) Indeed, I am in total agreement with Williams that “to make any claim for orthodox Christianity means that evangelical faith must go beyond itself to the formative eras of that faith, apostolic and patristic, which are themselves the joint anchor of responsible biblical interpretation, theological imagination and spiritual growth.” The church is both apostolic and patristic in terms of its theological tradition. This must be said about all the core doctrines of Revelation, Canon, Salvation, God, Trinity, Christ and Church. None of these doctrines have come down to us without careful formation and articulation by the Fathers who faithfully interpreted the text of Scripture.
So, when we come to anchor our doctrines of Scripture, Salvation, Church and Ministry in the heritage of the Reformation we must remember that “the guiding inspiration of the Protestant Reformation was fueled by a need to rediscover the Christian past.” Certainly, this must be said of Luther and Calvin, both of whom drew their theological impetus from Augustine and the Fathers of the Western tradition. All of us are “Traditional” to the degree that we claim a historical reference point for our faith other than the Bible. While some may eschew the word, “tradition”, in their desire to avoid, rightly I think, “traditionalism”, nevertheless none of us can escape being part of a tradition because it is a natural part of being human. It is, furthermore, a biblical command that we preserve and hand down the teaching we have received from the Scriptures. Paul tells us to “stand firm and hold on to the traditions we passed on to you.” (II Thess. 2:15) Paul understood this to be an active and living process, not a dead one. Tradition is as much a verb (tradere) as it is a noun. In the final analysis, says Williams, “the tradition denotes the acceptance and handing over of God’s word, Jesus Christ (tradere Christum), and how this took concrete forms in the apostolic teaching (kerygma), in the Christ centered reading of the Old Testament, in the celebration of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and in the doxological, doctrinal, hymnological and creedal forms by which the declaration of the mystery of God incarnate was revealed for our salvation. In both act and substance the tradition represents a living history which, throughout the earliest centuries, was constituted by the church and also constituted what was the true church.”
Such tradition is implicit in most doctrinal systems of the Believers Church Tradition even if the historic expressions of it are openly rejected or marginalized. While the Believers Church Tradition may rarely mention the creeds or the Fathers, the essential doctrines of its individual ‘traditions’ “are still somewhat dependent upon the body of the churches traditions in its best creeds, confessions and theologians.” This is why it is appropriate to refer to the Believers Church Tradition as indeed a theological and ecclesial tradition. What needs to be kept in mind is that the tradition is only useful where it is a faithful interpretation of the text of Scripture out of which it grew and upon which it depends.