Stanley E. Porter and Steven M. Studebaker, ed. Evangelical Theological Method: Five Views. IVP Academic, 2018. See here to purchase the book.
This book is part of a series known as the “Spectrum Multiview
Books,” published by IVP Academic. In this book, five scholars present
their views on a particular issue, one after the other, then they
respond to the other scholars. The editors of the book, Stanley E.
Porter and Steven M. Studebaker, offer an introductory chapter and a
concluding chapter that assesses the different perspectives in the
book. The issue in this volume is “evangelical theological method”: How
do evangelicals do theology? What are their emphases and approaches in
making statements about God, Christ, and God’s activity and will?
The introductory chapter is entitled “Method in Systematic Theology:
An Introduction.” It is a strong chapter, in that it lays out lucid
definitions of methods and terms as well as discusses the sources for
theology. Among the methods and terms that it explains are
Propositional Theology, Liberal Theology, Postliberal Theology,
Postconservative Theology, the Canonical-Linguistic Approach, and
Radical Orthodoxy. Among the sources that are mentioned are Scripture,
religious experience, and the ways that churches have historically
interpreted the biblical text. The chapter offers a summary of the
proceeding perspectives.
The first approach, presented by Sung Wook Chung, is more or less
propositional: the Bible is a divinely-inspired book that makes
propositional statements about God, and interpreters read the Bible to
discern the truth about God. The second approach, that of John R.
Franke, stresses the importance of mission: the church has a mission to
serve the world in love, in the distinct contexts that the world
presents. The third approach is “Interdisciplinary Theology,” and it is
presented by Telford C. Work. It places the Bible in dialogue with
other fields of study, and it discusses homosexuality as a test-case for
this. The fourth approach is “Contextual Theology,” and it affirms
that the truth of the Gospel can be applied to different cultural
contexts, without the Gospel being compromised. Victor Ifeanyi Ezigbo
contributes this chapter. Finally, there is “Trinitarian Dogmatic
Theology,” contributed by Paul Louis Metzger. It primarily draws from
Karl Barth, who stresses the Trinity’s role in divine revelation.
A question lingered in my mind in reading this book, namely, can any
evangelical theological method make a doctrinal statement about God
without acknowledging that Scripture makes authoritative propositions?
The first perspective, as was said, is more or less a propositional
approach: we have the Bible, which is divine revelation, and we read the
Bible to see what it authoritatively declares about God. Other
contributors raised questions or concerns about this approach. Does it
disregard context, particularly the cultural and historical context of
the interpreters that shapes how they approach the text and the
questions they are asking as they seek to apply it to their own
situations? The concluding essay raises the question of whether it
treats the Bible as a univocal text rather than a collection of diverse
writings, thereby assuming an inaccurate model of Scripture. Yet, the
other contributors assume doctrinal propositions about God, and they are
basing those propositions, by and large, on Scripture. Whether they
realize it or not, they cannot discard the propositional approach,
whatever weaknesses they may see in it. They may recognize the
weaknesses, but they do not adequately deal with the weaknesses, and
they act as if the weaknesses are not there. There is also the question
of whether the less-than-propositional contributors really go anywhere
in showing how their method actually draws theological conclusions. The
contributors critique each other over this, and the final chapter
admits that work remains to be done.
That is my overall critique, but the book still has value. It
highlights the tension between needing some foundation or authority for
theology, and the existence of theology within a context, as it is
applied to people’s real-life situations. The revealer and the audience
of the revelation are both significant, in short. The introductory
chapter is an excellent primer on different theological approaches, even
though it left questions in my mind. For instance, the Postliberal
method is anthropocentric in its approach to theology, but does it
believe that theology can draw reliable conclusions about God? Are
Christian doctrines true in what they say, beyond the fact that they
shape communities and attempt to address human questions? In a sense,
the book hammered home predictable points and made predictable responses
to the other perspectives, but it still contained interesting points
and details, as the authors illustrated the issues to which their
approaches are relevant. For example, there is this gem by Work: “God
may disappoint postcolonial missionaries’ multicultural expectations as
much as God frustrated Constantinian missionaries’ civilizing ones”
(page 172). Work’s “response” chapter was more elliptical than the
others, but it was also the most intriguing in that I could not tell
where he was going to go in his critiques.
I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher. My review is honest.