Theology and the Mirror of Scripture

A Mere Evangelical Account

Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Daniel J. Treier, Vanhoozer, Kevin J., Treier, Daniel J.

• Publisher: IVP Academic
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780830840762
• eBook ISBN: 9780830896783
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Evangelicalism has long been a hotly disputed label, and what counts as evangelical theology is often anyone's guess. Is evangelicalism a static bounded set defined by clear doctrinal limits, or is it a dynamic centered set without a discernible circumference?

In this Studies in Christian Doctrine and Scripture volume, Kevin Vanhoozer and Daniel Treier present evangelical theology as an "anchored" set, rooted in the Trinity. In response to increasing evangelical fragmentation, Theology and the Mirror of Scripture offers a clarion call to reconceive evangelical theology theologically by reflecting on the God of the gospel as mirrored in Scripture. Such "mere" evangelical theology will be an exercise in Christian wisdom for the purpose of building up the fellowship of saints.

Studies in Christian Doctrine and Scripture, edited by Daniel J. Treier and Kevin J. Vanhoozer, promotes evangelical contributions to systematic theology, seeking fresh understanding of Christian doctrine through creatively faithful engagement with Scripture in dialogue with church.

Part One

The Agenda

The Material and Formal Principles of Evangelical Theology

Chapter One

The Gospel of God and the God of the Gospel

The Reality Behind the Mirror

Evangelical theology designates an aspiration and ambition, not a fait (or even a faith) accompli. The chief task of evangelical theology is to say, on the basis of Scriptures, what God is doing in Christ, and then to indicate how to live it out. Stated differently: the purpose of evangelical theology is to help make communities of disciples, people who come to understand and correspond to the reality of the gospel—people who become “little Christs” and thus fulfill their vocation to live as images of God. The hope of the gospel impels us to look forward (always renewing); the knowledge that present-day Christians are not the first to receive the gospel urges us to look back and learn from the past (always retrieving). Evangelical theology is both hope and heritage. It is this dynamic position, poised between past and future, that makes the evangelical present a moment charged with eschatological significance (always responding): “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts” (Heb 3:7-8, 15; 4:7; cf. Ps 95:7-8). The ambition of evangelical theology is to retrieve what God’s people have heard in the past, to renew tired traditions and to respond with alacrity and obedience to God’s forward call in the present. But we are getting ahead of ourselves . . .

A First Presenting Problem: Evangelical Theology Has No Agreed-Upon Doctrinal Core

In the field of medicine, a “presenting problem” refers to the initial symptom, either physical or psychological discomfort that leads a patient to seek out a doctor. It is the most prominent sign that all is not well. The presenting problem of evangelical theology is all too conspicuous: it has no doctrinal backbone. This too is a public health issue insofar as it complicates the project of preserving the unity of the body, that is, of the transdenominational, Bible-centered renewal movement that is modern, global evangelicalism.

The problem stated. This presenting problem is also a direct challenge to our project of articulating a “mere” evangelical theology. To be sure, there are family resemblances between evangelicals, and these can be described in sociological terms. According to Timothy George, “Evangelicals are a worldwide family of Bible-believing Christians committed to sharing with everyone everywhere the transforming good news of new life in Jesus Christ, an utterly free gift that comes through faith alone in the crucified and risen Savior.”1 David Bebbington’s description of modern British evangelicals has become a useful point of reference for defining evangelicalism in general: conversionism (emphasis on being “born again”), biblicism (emphasis on biblical authority), crucicentrism (emphasis on the saving significance of Jesus’ death) and activism (emphasis on sharing the gospel by witnessing in word and works of love).2 Important as these emphases are, we already saw in the introduction that they are too broad to give rise to a single unified theology.3 This should not be surprising when one realizes that evangelicals can be found in nearly all Protestant and Pentecostal denominations, and beyond. Evangelicals have an ecumenical bent toward unity. The question is whether they can reach unity as concerns the essentials of theological truth. A mere evangelical theology requires no less.

The story of twentieth- and twenty-first-century American evangelicalism is largely that of a struggle for the evangelical soul. Speaking broadly: some (call them “pietists” for short) contend that the soul of evangelicalism, the unifying principle, is spiritual and experiential, rooted in love, while others (call them “propositionalists”) contend that the unifying principle is doctrinal, rooted in truth. Still others (call them “peacemakers”) contend that the unifying principle is political, rooted in justice.4 For Stanley Grenz, a pietist, evangelicalism is at root a shared experience of conversion to Christ, an ethos rather than a system of belief.5 Many hasten to agree on the ground that, as concerns the evangelical movement, spiritual experience unites, whereas doctrine divides.

In line with our introductory sketch, then, there are several reasons why any project that sets out to formulate the doctrinal core of the evangelical movement may be doomed in advance to failure: (1) there is no institutional mechanism or magisterium to declare what is essential; (2) evangelicals inhabit differing confessional traditions that reflect real theological disagreements; (3) identifying a stable doctrinal core might actually work against evangelicalism’s ability to serve as a transdenominational renewal movement in the church; (4) no amount of sociological description of what evangelicals do believe is able to generate a theological prescription of what evangelicals ought to believe.

As Stephen Holmes observes with classic British understatement, “The standard definitions of evangelicalism are not doctrinal.”6 While one can identify Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Presbyterians and so on by consulting official documents (e.g., catechisms, confessions), one can find evangelicals all over the theological map: hence, “Distinguishing ‘insiders’ from ‘outsiders’ can prove to be tricky business.”7 In the words of William Abraham: “There is no single essence or one particular condition that . . . will be agreed upon by all evangelicals.”8 In response to this inherent diversity, Donald Dayton has proposed a moratorium on the label “evangelical,” on the grounds that it is “theologically incoherent, sociologically confusing, and ecumenically harmful.”9 D. G. Hart concurs: “Evangelicalism needs to be relinquished as a religious identity because it does not exist.”10

The problem expanded: Floating centers and fuzzy boundaries. The evangelical empire has been quick to strike back. Albert Mohler agrees that a merely descriptive (i.e., historical or sociological) definition of evangelical identity is not enough to ensure the theological integrity of the movement. For that, we need a normative definition.11 Whereas fundamentalists promote a static “bounded set” with clearly defined doctrinal borders, and revisionists a dynamic “centered set” with members who are closer or farther from the center (but neither “in” or “out”), Mohler’s confessional evangelicalism represents what he calls a “center-bounded set.” At the center is “devotion to Christ and joyful confidence in the gospel.”12 Yet the center, rightly understood, “defines the boundaries” and, without boundaries—without a discernible circumference—it is impossible to say what affirming the evangelical center rules out: what evangelicals are not (e.g., not theologically liberal; not heretics), and what positions are not evangelical. The center focuses on what the gospel is; the boundaries on what the gospel is not: “Attention to the boundaries is as requisite as devotion to the center.”13

Mohler worries that if evangelicalism is defined merely by the center, it will be at best a “fuzzy set.” Yet his critics worry that Mohler’s boundaries are themselves fuzzy. Who gets to decide to draw the line that determines who is “in” or “out,” and how can such a line be other than subjective, even arbitrary? John Stackhouse comments, “The notion of boundaries has to do with whether there must be sharp definition at the edges, not whether there is clear definition at the core.”14 Mohler understands the importance of having more than arbitrary criteria for deciding which doctrines are essential and proposes a “theological triage” model that distinguishes first-, second- and third-level doctrines. Only first-level doctrines make up the boundaries that distinguish evangelicals from nonevangelicals, for without these doctrines “we are left with a denial of the gospel itself.”15

David Bebbington’s review of Four Views on the Spectrum of Evangelicalism rightly identifies the underlying conflict:

The conservatives specify what evangelicalism ought to be; the progressives explain what the phenomena is. For the first pair, a theological conviction of their own trumps whatever anyone else may say; for the second twosome, the existence of other persuasions among self-described evangelicals dictates that nobody can make a firm prescription. There lies the nub of the question at issue.16

Again we are faced with the difficulty, serious and perhaps insurmountable, of deriving an evangelical ought from an evangelical is.17

“In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.”18 Evangelicals are not the first Christians who have struggled to define the essentials. The challenge, again, is to do so in principled fashion. Stephen Holmes advances the discussion by answering the implied question: essential for what? Holmes argues that what makes evangelical doctrine distinctive is not the content (all Christians agree about orthodoxy) but rather its “conscious and serious decision about the relative importance of doctrines.”19 Specifically, the first-order or essential evangelical doctrines are “just those necessary to maintain a particular soteriological scheme.”20 The soteriological scheme Holmes has in mind is associated with being “born again,” namely, “punctilliar [sic] conversion and immediate assurance.”21 Doctrines that do not have a direct bearing on this soteriological scheme will ipso facto be secondary or tertiary. Holmes thinks that this consequence was only fitting, “because the mission of taking the gospel to the world mattered far more than the task of upholding inherited doctoral distinctives.”22 He therefore concludes, “That which does not serve the cause of mission is, necessarily, not important in a truly evangelical theology.”23

Holmes is on to something. A mere evangelical theology must be able to say what the essentials are by answering the question, “Essential for what?” However, rather than limit our answer to what evangelicals may think is necessary for salvation, we find it more to the evangelical point to define essential doctrines in terms of what is necessary for the integrity of the gospel itself as set forth in the Scriptures and, by implication, what is necessary for speaking well of the God of the gospel. In this regard, Karl Barth’s definition is worth pondering: “‘Evangelical’ means informed by the gospel of Jesus Christ, as heard afresh in the 16th-century Reformation by a direct return to Holy Scripture.”24 Here is, we believe, the key to both retrieving and renewing: to return to Scripture as it has been heard by the Protestant and, by extension, the catholic heritage the Reformers affirmed—all for the sake of preserving and promoting the logic of the gospel and the integrity of our God-talk.25

We are under no delusions: our account of mere evangelical theology is not a panacea but a proposal. We do not pretend to have a doctrinal slide-rule that would render first theology an exact science. Such a claim would, indeed, go against the need for prayerful wisdom and communal discernment that we advocate in these pages. Mere evangelical theology is an aim, not a possession; it is a promissory note, not money in the bank. Never­theless, there is a “good deposit” to be guarded (2 Tim 1:14). The good deposit is “the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). The church has been “entrusted with the gospel” (1 Thess 2:4); hence the good deposit is nothing less than the good news. Mere evangelical theology takes this trust with the utmost seriousness—and passion. We are zealous of this trust: we trust this trust more than anything else. This trust is the apostolic testimony to the wondrous acts of God in the history of Jesus Christ.

An anchored set. Is the good deposit a bounded, centered or center-bounded set? The problem with a bounded set is that everything in it appears to be of equal importance: one’s identity is a function of everything the set contains. The problem with the centered set, as Mohler points out, is that, in lacking a circumference, it also lacks definition. The problem with Mohler’s center-bounded set, though, is that it ultimately lacks a clear principle for distinguishing essential from nonessential doctrine, inadvertently giving license for each evangelical theologian to do what seems right in his or her own eyes . . .

If we must define evangelical in terms of set theory, it will be in terms not of a mathematical but a nautical model: mere evangelical theology, we contend, is an anchored set. An anchor is like a center in that it is a fixed point whose purpose is to restrict a vessel from drifting. The church is not the anchor but the vessel—an ark that the anchor holds fast. It is only thanks to the anchor that this ark is not tossed to and fro by the waves of secularization and carried about by every wind of cultural doctrine (Eph 4:14). As we know, it is possible to make shipwreck of one’s faith (1 Tim 1:19). While an anchor is grounded (not bounded), there are indeed limits on the surface as to how far a vessel can drift. An anchored set is thus defined not only by its anchor but also by the limited range of motion that it allows on the surface—and by the length of its rope, on which we shall say more below.

Scripture speaks of a certain hope as “a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul” (Heb 6:19). What is this anchor of hope? In context, it is God’s promise to Abraham, a promise made even more certain by God’s oath: “So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us” (Heb 6:17-18). This is a deep passage, but for our purposes the salient point is this: the unchanging purpose of God is guaranteed by the unchanging Word of God, which in turn is guaranteed by the unchanging nature of God. The “anchor” in question is therefore God’s ver...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Unscientific Preface to Mere Evangelical Theology
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction: In My Father’s House, Many Evangelical Rooms
• Part One: The Agenda: The Material and Formal Principles of Evangelical Theology
• Part Two: The Analysis: The Practice of Evangelical Theology
• Bibliography
• Name Index
• Subject Index
• Scripture Index
• Notes
• Praise for Theology and the Mirror of Scripture
• About the Authors
• The Studies in Christian Doctrine and Scripture Series
• More Titles from InterVarsity Press
• Copyright