Book Review: Agenda For Theology

It just occurred to me that some people might find the title “book review” a trifle dull. As far as I’m concerned, Newspapers the world over would double their readership if they ran book-reviews as front-page articles. Perhaps I need a snappier name for my book reviews? Perhaps “Strolling through Prose: (insert book title here)" or “Epic Awesomeness!” I mean “Book Review” and “Epic Awesomeness” are essentially synonyms, right?

At any rate, I must say I heartily recommend this slim volume. I was introduced to the work of Thomas C. Oden through his 3-volume systematic theology, which I refer to regularly in my studies. This book is an earlier work, where he spells out his beef with contemporary theological method, and proposes an alternative. The meat and potatoes of Oden’s method is summarized by Vincent of Lérins: “What was at all times and everywhere believed by everybody”. (my paraphrase) In other words, there is a stress put on ecumenical consensus in doctrine, primarily as expressed in the first seven ecumenical councils of church history.

Oden lays down a lot of smack on Modernity. He makes the observation that if you put a bracket on the last 200 years or so of Christian theology, (i.e. theology written in the Modern period) you see an astounding amount of unanimity as to what the bible teaches. Now why is this significant? I think it’s highly significant for anyone who has driven down the street and noticed the Reformed church on one side of the road, and the Nazarene church on the other side, or the Lutherans and the Baptists a block away from the Catholics. I think the common (and superficial) reaction to this experience is to assume that there is no such thing as “Christianity”: no one really represents “Christianity”, because there’s so many different versions of it! I must admit that the most infuriating position I’ve ever argued against is the notion that the bible isn’t clear enough, or the Christian tradition clear enough to be able to identify a core orthodox theology. If I may wax graceless for a moment, may I say that this idea is complete unadulterated crap rooted in a positively inexcusable commitment to religious ignorance.

What is this “vital center” of Christian orthodoxy? Oden boils it down to 3 things. 1. An Interpersonal Encounter with the Living Christ. 2. The Will of God is Revealed in the Resurrection of Jesus. 3. A life growing into Christ and out of Sin. Now I personally find this list pretty minamalistic, and if that’s the vital center, it almost leaves the impression that everything else Christians say and teach is up for grabs as “unclear”. If I hadn’t read Oden’s systematic theology I would think that he would be in the business of holding closely to the above core 3, and then slipping in whatever ideas he wants to and excusing his flagrant rejection of Christian tradition by squeaking heresy in under the rubric of “not part of the vital core”.

The relentless slam on Modernity keeps Oden a straight-shooter though, and his work displays a remarkable amount of self-restraint. Particularly edifying is Oden’s rousing exposé of the Modernist obsession with anything new, as if it was a self-evident fact that we know more than our predecessors, or that we are smarter and more ethical people than all that have preceded us. One would think our culture teaches something like that, given how much little importance is given to soaking up classic literature.

Even if one has no interest in theology, Oden’s book is well worth the read as a social commentary. Oden himself spent much of his life as a political activist, and later as an academic trying to square up the discipline of psychology with Christian theology, only to find that dialogue with other disciplines is almost entirely one-sided: theologians desperately trying to buddy up the insights of psychology, sociology, etc, whereas these disciplines pay little or no attention to theological studies departments.

Most of the books I read are for personal interest and curiosity: this one I thoughtfully recommend to almost anyone interested in contemporary ideological and political issues.

Remembering the Circuit Rider

A few nights ago I had one of the most exhilarating bike rides. The weather network had forecast less than 1 mm of rain for the evening, and so I thought little of taking my bike to work when my shift started in the sunny afternoon. “So it might drizzle abit on the way home, no biggy.” Well, when 9 o’clock rolled around, the pavement had been replaced by puddles, and heaven was busy sending reinforcements to thwart the stalwart efforts of the city’s storm drains.

Forty minutes it took me: by the time I got home, I needed to change my clothes, much in the manner one peels a banana. Any garment that wasn’t covered completely by my raincoat was drenched through. My boots, my socks, my pants, and yes, even my undies.

Yet despite having much to complain about, the whole ride was encapsulated by an odd sense of gratitude and joy. My vision obstructed by fogged and rain-spotted glasses, slugging forward through yet another puddle up to my spokes; it all reminded me of something from a church history research paper I had done in college: the Methodist circuit riders.

The circuit riders (most of them Methodists, after the model John Wesley set in England) were the travelling preachers that made up an influential portion of the clergy of North America in the 18th and 19th centuries. We sing about these hardy ministers every Christmas in the song “Walking in a Winter Wonderland”: In the meadow we can build a snowman/Then pretend that he is Parson Brown/He’ll say are you married?/We’ll say No man/But you can do the job when you’re in town. With no local clergy to perform weddings, marriages would need to wait until the lone circuit rider next swung by on his circuit of the region. When he came, he would give sermons, perform marriages, funerals, baptisms, counselling, often all in the same day!

Among my in-laws, a tale is told (I’m not sure which generation) of a circuit rider who had come by the ranch late at night and showed himself in for some shelter. (This wasn’t a rude practice back in the day btw.) In the morning, he thanked the housekeeper for the pot of soup she had left out for him. “I didn’t leave any soup out” She replied. Dear old great-grandma had left out the pot of water she had used to boil some socks on the stove, and the circuit rider had consumed it!

The circuit riders braved rain and snow, and lived on what they could carry on a horse. The average life expectancy of these men was somewhere around 28-30 years old. Most of them died of exposure.

My rainy bikeride was a 40 minute exercise in imagination: my tires sloughing through the puddle was in fact the laborious efforts of my horse getting through the river. My tires didn’t skip over unexpected stones: it was my steed stumbling while trying to find a footing in the dark. The driving passion wasn’t a desire to get home out of the rain: it was the souls that needed Christ that drove me on and kept my spirit warm while my digits went numb.

In all my life, I have never suffered from real deprivation: I’ve always had a roof over my head and enough to eat. I don’t use my bike for any particularly noble purpose like reducing my carbon emissions or some such fad. I make myself bike to work because I’m lazy and cheap: I have a heck of a time putting regular exercise into my schedule, and I’ll do almost anything to lower my fuel bills.

Nevertheless, despite my existential reality, the experience brought to mind a different reality altogether: the reality of a life of sacrificial faith. A verse comes to mind, penned to the churches in Colossae by the apostle Paul while suffering in prison: “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church, of which I became a minister”. (Col 1:24-25) I have always found this verse puzzling. Being a good Protestant, I wholeheartedly embrace the complete sufficiency of Jesus’ vicarious death. Redemption was completed at the cross, to teach anything less is to spit at God’s gift of grace. Apparently, here Paul thinks Jesus’ sacrifice is lacking something,
and he’s wrapping up those loose ends of vicarious suffering by doing time.

I think I come a little closer to grasping what Paul meant when I ponder the ongoing suffering love of so many missionaries and ministers. Theologically speaking, I understand that Jesus’ mission as the messiah didn’t end at Calvary. The Holy Spirit continues the work begun by Jesus, and so his ministry carries on even to this day in the life of the church. The heart of God that moves the Christian life of service is none other than the suffering love of Jesus that endures imprisonment, exposure, even death, for the sake of the ones He loves. In this sense, there is a lack in Jesus’ afflictions: while the atonement was once for all, each generation is in need of experiencing this longsuffering love in the flesh, and that task falls on the shoulders of Jesus’ disciples, who “fill up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church.”