Letters from Readers

Evangelical Futures: Letters

Thanks to B&C for the generous notice given to our book Evangelical Futures in the May/June number [“How Should Evangelicals Do Theology?“]. I would have been more grateful, however, had the first respondent, Harriet Harris [“Stop Fretting About Sure–Footedness“], herself exercised a little hermeneutical generosity. Instead, I find my own small contributions to this volume—an editor’s preface and an essay—misrepresented every time she refers to them. Determined as she seems to be to sort the essays into just two categories—those she likes and those she doesn’t—she has relegated mine to the latter category. She is entirely entitled to dislike my work, of course. But readers of B&C are entitled to reviewers who play fair with the objects of their criticism. At the risk of testing readers’ patience, I select just two examples out of half a dozen.

First, Harris chides me for dismissing feminist theologians for too narrow a field of theological inquiry, as if I am indifferent both to feminism and to social implications of the gospel. Yet my essay explicitly asks, “Where is the theology … that starts with evangelical premises and pays attention to gender, to power, to women, and to other subjects overlooked by male–dominated theology?” Second, she sidesteps my opening section on the crucial place of Christ and Christology in theology, as if I am determined to champion biblicism as “the kernel” of theology over against Christ himself. Really! To maintain her charge of biblicism, she ignores several mentions of the work of the Holy Spirit and of the importance of spiritual experience in the Church for theology, such as the following: “Recent Christian work in epistemology … has been reclaiming spiritual experience as cognitively important, not merely personally moving. … The worthiness of spiritual experience as a theological resource is not in question here.” I did not say everything I could say about theological method in one essay. That will have to wait for the book on epistemology I hope to complete in a few years. But what I did say is, I trust, worth at least getting straight before one begins to criticize it.

One more thing. Harris finds several of the essays, not just mine, to manifest an evangelicalism she doesn’t like. In turn, however, one might wonder about her own theological location—or perhaps just her acuity—as she concludes her essay with dichotomies—Bible versus God, “wisdom” versus confidence in the tradition—that I expect will discomfit more than a few evangelical theologians: “Scripture is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, but it is not what our theology depends on. God in Christ is what our theology depends on. … In this presence we should hopefully grow in wisdom and relax over surefootedness.” The particularly sad thing about all this is that most of Harris’s concerns seem to be mine as well. So I hope Harris’s remarks, however well–intentioned, will not deter too many B&C readers from taking up Evangelical Futures and deciding for themselves about its merits.

John G. Stackhouse, Jr.Vancouver, British Columbia

In her review of Evangelical Futures in the May/June issue, Harriet Harris expresses both her disagreement and disappointment with aspects of our Conversations About Theological Method. She thinks that we should be “Christocentric rather than bibliocentric” and that a besetting problem remains for evangelicals, namely that “the possibility of doing theology has been thought to hinge on establishing Scripture as the reliable foundation of our faith.” Certainly she distinguishes amongst contributors and is partial to much of what Grenz, Hart, and Vanhoozer have to say. The extent of divergence amongst the essayists is indeed a debatable point and the “bibliocentric/christocentric” difference an old chestnut. I hope it is profitable, however, to respond to three points of criticism.

Packer, McGrath, and Stackhouse “treat theology and piety as separate activities which we somehow need to unite” so that “the discernment of meaning is held separate from spiritual attunement and our development as disciples of Christ.” This is a misreading of the text. The point commonly made is that such separations should not and yet do exist. Packer, for example, is urging those he accuses of “intellectualism” to move on from knowing about God to knowing God; he is not recommending that knowledge be divided in the first place. If a marriage counselor were to urge an estranged husband and wife to get together, it would be strange if she were criticized for treating them separately.
Harris says that academic theology is described and discredited without a proper documentation of the surrounding claims. It is true that examples might and perhaps should have been given. But she proceeds in exactly the same way herself, claiming that evangelicals lack empathy towards liberation and feminist theologians, without giving examples. These, too, could be easily found, but her criticism boils down to the fact that she simply disagrees with the theological foundations of those essayists whom she is treating at this point.
The “unacknowledged partiality” of our collection is glaringly reflected in the fact that the contributors are all white Western males. Stackhouse’s editorial expressions of regret at this point do not satisfy Harris. Here she is jumping to conclusions about the contributors without understanding all the circumstances or the remits pertaining to this particular collection. The same leap is made in her criticisms of my own inability to enter into Bonhoeffer’s struggles. “It is for him [Williams] a matter of cool assessment whether Bonhoeffer should have been politically complicit in a plot to assassinate Hitler.” Granted, we all need to grow in empathy. However, Harris has obviously not experienced life amongst strong socially activist pacifists who have suffered in the cause of national resistance and independence but yet judge Bonhoeffer to have been mistaken on this point. Those who have experienced it do not assess Bonhoeffer coolly.

This letter is written out of concern for the integrity of both evangelical convictions and evangelical self–criticism. Serious self–criticism involves heeding the criticisms of others and willingness for self–correction. Too many evangelicals, one suspects, stereotype liberal, liberation, or feminist theologies and theologians, so that we do not read, learn, nor engage effectively. It does not help if critics of the evangelicalism represented in this volume themselves jump to conclusions and succumb to stereotyping.

Stephen N. WilliamsUnion Theological College, Belfast, Northern Ireland