 Book Reviews Renewing the Center: Evangelical Stanley J. Grenz Reviewed by Robert P. Mills July 2001 |
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That is a refreshing perspective. While many in our churches pay lip service to the notion that theology matters, in recent decades the task of saying a word (logos) about God (theos) has been abandoned to the academy, often with disastrous results for the life of the Church. Rather than cursing the darkness, Grenz has written Renewing the Center. He begins by looking back to the Reformation, “reviewing the past for the sake of charting the way forward for evangelical theology.” He shows how the theology of Luther and Calvin, as adapted by the Puritans and the Pietists, helped shape evangelical theology. Next he briefly highlights the work of four of evangelicalism’s most influential theologians. The book’s middle chapters outline Grenz’s insights into the future of evangelical theology, an approach that “maintains the evangelical commitment to the primacy of Scripture as theology’s norm, while finding a role in the theological conversation for both the theological heritage of the church and contemporary cultural sensitivities.” Here Grenz considers the concurrent rise of postmodernism and demise of foundationalism, the relationship of theology and science, and the questions of truth and interreligious dialogue in a pluralistic culture. Holding together this discussion is Grenz’s insistence that “theology remains properly ‘Christian’ to the extent that it is thoroughly trinitarian, finds its central motif in the Biblical concept of community, and takes as its orientation point God’s eschatological goal for all creation.” Of special interest to Presbyterian evangelicals is Grenz’s penultimate chapter, in which he addresses the widely acknowledged observation that “evangelicalism has never developed or worked from a thoroughgoing ecclesiology.” He traces this lack of a comprehensive doctrine of the Church to the fact that “as those who had experienced the new birth … evangelicals often sensed a deeper bond with kindred spirits in other confessional bodies than they did with those within their own ecclesiastical fold” and to evangelicalism’s emphasizing the invisible Church over the visible. Shattering the stereotype that evangelicalism is essentially anti-ecumenical, Grenz shows how “the modern ecumenical movement was to a large degree the product of the rise of evangelicalism itself.” And addressing the criticism that evangelicals often exhibit a “parachurch” mentality, he quotes Edmund Clowney, who writes “Parachurch groups have often accomplished what the Lord designed the church to do, providing nurture and encouraging evangelism.” In his final chapter, Grenz reissues Hans Frei’s call for a “generous orthodoxy,” noting that “in taking up this challenge, today’s evangelicals are simply returning to their roots.” Renewing the Center is not Theology 101, but neither is it excessively technical. Informed and irenic, it is accessible to those who want to trace evangelicalism’s ancestry. And it is a stimulating exploration of where evangelical theologians may be heading in this “glorious time to engage in the crucial task of theology.” |
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