 
Book Reviews Nature of Confessions: Evangelicals & Postliberals in Conversation by Timothy R. Phillips and Dennis L. Okholm, eds. Reviewed by Robert P. Mills |
||
Confessions are a hot topic for many Presbyterians today. Some find their hearts warmed by the suggestion that our Book of Confessions contains little more than relics, which may (even must) be discarded as the Church scans modern culture for more light. Others heatedly advocate drafting a new confessional statement, one that would articulate the historic truths of Scripture and the Church to the present age. All parties to such discussions would benefit from a thoughtful reading of The Nature of Confession. The 15 essays in this volume do not critique any specific confession. (In the New Testament, “confession” translates the Greek homologia, a compound word combining homo, meaning “same” and logia, meaning “word.” Thus to confess is “to say the same word.”) They do, however, shed light on the many of the issues raised when Presbyterians talk about our historic confessions and contemporary confessional inclinations. In their introduction the editors note that “evangelicals can no longer ignore the question of confession. What is our answer to Jesus’ question ‘Who do you say that I am?’ ” And they describe postliberalism as “a theological movement [that] seeks to reverse the trend in modern Christianity of accommodation to culture [and] includes a theory that explains the loss of Scripture’s formative authority.” Seeking “to say the same word” about Christ and the church are such prominent evangelical theologians as Alister McGrath and Gabriel Fackre, and seminal postliberals as George Hunsinger and George Lindbeck. In his opening evaluation of postliberalism, McGrath notes that the movement “has come to terms with the death of the Enlightenment, while liberalism stumbles pathetically and randomly across the intellectual terrain.” Commending postliberalism for “its many virtues,” McGrath organizes his critique around three questions: What is truth?, Why the Bible?, and Why Jesus Christ? While he finds postliberalism’s answers problematic, he concludes that evangelical/postliberal dialogue “is clearly going to be both critical and positive, and may well be of considerable importance to both the academy and the church.” In the volume’s final essay, using the doctrine of the atonement as a case study, Lindbeck calls for a return to “premodern hermeneutics.” Noting the church’s historic “confidence that the Holy Spirit guides the church into the truth” he observes, “If one believes this is so, one will think that the burden of proof rests on those who deny that the Christian mainstream has on the whole and in the long run rightly discerned God’s word in Scripture.” In between, four essays explore philosophical differences between the two movements, while four others discuss the Bible and the Church. Three especially thought-provoking pieces, concerned with Theology and the Christian Life, address the renewal of Trinitarian theology, evangelical spirituality, and a flawed understanding of “worldview philosophy.” Evangelicals, and others, concerned about the future of the PCUSA (and about the Church beyond our narrow confines) will find The Nature of Confession an exceptional resource. (RPM) |
||
|
Home
· The
Presbyterian Layman ·
News |