Peter Lombard, trans. Giulio Silano, The Sentences: Book Two—On Creation

Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2010, 236 pgs.

Summary: Peter Lombard presents a confused understanding of Augustine’s view of creation and anthropology modified to a semi-Pelagian to almost Pelagian theology either purposely or through ignorance of Augustine’s authentic works.

According to Peter, “For there is in the rational soul a natural will, by which it naturally wills what is good, although weakly and feebly, unless grace assists. . .” (2.24.1.3, pg. 109). This free will is described as such “because, without compulsion or necessity, it is able to desire or elect what it has decreed by reason” (2.25.4.2, pg. 118). “And yet we do not deny that there are many good things which are done by man through free choice before this grace and apart from grace” (2.26.7.2, pg. 130).

And then this lovely quote which he attributes to Jerome, but since the Renaissance is now recognized as Pelagius:

Jerome teaches in his Explanation of the Catholic Faith to Pope Damascus, where he strikes at the errors of Jovinian, Manichaeus, and Pelagius, saying: “We acknowledge that choice is free so as to say that we are always in need of God’s aid; and that both those are in error who say with Manichaeus that man cannot avoid sin, and those who assert with Jovinian that man cannot sin. Each of them takes away freedom of choice. But we say that man is always able to sin and not to sin, so that we confess ourselves to be ever free in our choice. This is the faith which we learned in the Catholic Church and which we have always held.”

It’s not clear to me that Peter Lombard is unaware that he is quoting Pelagius to support conclusions that are both non-Augustinian and unbiblical. (This will be discussed more in the review on book 3 and 4.) At the same time “among the works attributed to Augustine” were sermons, letters, and writings that were not authentically Augustinian in authorship or doctrine, and so it is possible that he’s struggling to harmonize self-contradictory teachings within what he understands is Augustine’s canon. This is occurs while he attempts to harmonize the contradictory teaching of Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, Bede, and so forth. There is even an effort to harmonize these diverse teachings with the Bible.

He teaches along with others before him that the “pollution which the flesh contracts in its conception from the burning of the parents’ joining and their lustful concupiscence” (2.32.6.2, pg. 156). In other words, we are born with a sin nature or original sin, because our parents or one of our parents enjoyed conceiving us. While Augustine in his authentic works lays out the framework for this sort of doctrine, the most blatant support comes from Augustine-like quotes from Fulgentius (c. 462-527).

Peter Lombard also rejects the possibility that at conception both physical and spiritual elements of parents are passed to the child. The technical term for this is traducianism: Peter rather firmly states, “But the Catholic faith utterly rejects this and condemns it as opposed to truth since, as we said above, that faith admits that flesh alone, and not souls, is transmitted. And so it is not according to the flesh, that original sin is derived from parents” (2.31.3.1, pg. 154). Augustine was certainly more open to the possibility than this quote allows and traducianism was held by other church fathers including Tertullian.

Oddly enough he provides an explanation of the pop-culture reference to an angel on one shoulder and a demon on the other: apparently this was first taught by Origen, then by Gregory of Nyssa, and popularized for posterity by Lombard (2.11.1.2, pg. 46).

He may have originated the now hoary-headed sermon illustration:

Why woman was formed from the man’s side and not from some other part of his body. But although woman was made from man for these reasons, nevertheless she was formed not from must any part of his body, but from his side, so that it should be shown that she was created for the partnership of love, lest, if perhaps she had been made from his head, she should be perceived as set over man in domination; or if from his feet, as if subject to him in servitude. Therefore since she was made neither to dominate, nor to serve man, but as his partner, she had to be produced neither from his head, nor from his feet, but from his side, so that he would know that she was to be placed beside himself whom he had learned had been taken from his side (2.28.2; pg. 77).

Benefits/Detriments: Book 2 exposes what happens when a possibly earnest attempt is made to harmonize the Bible, current church practice, and the diverse teaching of the church fathers. It’s rather a mishmash and at points incoherent.

Peter Lombard, trans. Giulio Silano, The Sentences: Book One—The Mystery of the Trinity

Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2010, 278 pgs.

Summary: Peter Lombard (1100-1160) or the Master of the Sentences wrote the basic theological compendium of the Middle Ages. He was a student of Abelard (1079-1142/3)—the founder of “understanding seeking faith.” Peter’s essential task was to harmonize the church authorities—the fathers and the Bible—with each other over and against heterodoxy.

The Sentences are a review of past theological debates, organized as lecture notes, for the purpose of assisting priests, canon lawyers, and theologians in developing current applications and to maintain orthodoxy. Silano, the translator, argues that The Sentences need to be read as a theological “casebook.”

In The Mystery of the Trinity, the first book of four, Peter Lombard presents a clear defense and review of the early church’s position on the Trinity. He generally follows Augustine on the issue of God’s grace, predestination, and foreknowledge in salvation and within the being of God.

Exemplar quotes:

And so the property by which the Father is Father is that he always begot; and this same property is called fatherhood or generation. And the property by which the Son is always the Son is that he is always begotten by the Father; and this same property is called sonship, or geniture, or birth, or origin, or ability to be born. Similarly, the property by which the Holy Spirit is the Holy Spirit or Gift is that he proceeds from both; and this property is called procession (1.27.3, pg. 147).

Augustine, Against Julian: “He has mercy according to freely given grace, but he hardens according to judgment which is rendered for merits. And so it is given to be understood that, as God’s reprobation is to not will mercy, so for God to make obdurate is not to have mercy; not that anything is inflicted by him which man is made worse, but only that is not granted by which he may become better” (1.41.1.1, pg. 224).

Benefits/Detriments: A very dense but clear defense and explanation of the doctrine of the Trinity. Peter Lombard gathers together the best of Augustine’s work and the other church fathers. I am fully convinced by his arguments on the Trinity about the importance of maintaining the language and distinctions of begotten, and procession (contra Grudem).

Peter Lombard seems to be making room for declining from Augustine’s view of salvation, but he does not take this step in his material about God.

John W. Cooper, Panentheism—the Other God of the Philosophers: from Plato to the Present

Baker Academic, 2006, 358 pgs.

Summary: An exceedingly helpful book for Christians attempting to understand modernity written by Dr. John W. Cooper of Calvin College and recommended by Paul Helm. It draws together the historical strings of modernity and Christian liberalism with alacrity.

Traditional Christian and Jewish theology have argued that while God is immanent creation remains wholly separate from God. God categorically transcends creation even as he remains present everywhere. God’s Being is separate from the universe. At the same time there has been a minority view among Christian theologians called panentheism. Panentheism is the view that while God is greater than the universe, God’s Being is in every part of the universe. In pantheism God’s being is the universe.

The philosophical roots of panentheism can be found in Plato’s most careful theological dialogue called the Timaeus as well as in other scattered references. In this openly speculative dialogue, Plato locates “the world in the World-Soul” (35). Thus a stream of interpretation concluded that “the Soul of eternal divine Reason can be identified with the World-Soul of Timaeus, then the World-Soul is an aspect of God, and Plato is a panenetheist” (Ibid.).

Dr. Cooper does not believe this is a necessary reading of Plato (I agree), but this reading captured the imagination of Plotinus (204-270) who developed what came to be known as Neo-Platonism. Plotinus’ position is panentheism:

Plotinus worked out the unresolved issues in Plato’s philosophy and developed a unified account of reality in which the divine Mind/Demiurge, the World-Soul, and the universe emanates hierarchically from the Good, that is, the divine One. The One is both infinite and utterly transcendent, yet it includes or contains everything that emanates from it (39).

As scholastic Christian theology developed, it often borrowed theological concepts and vocabulary from Greek philosophical thought. A 5th century Christian writer now known as Pseudo-Dionysius—originally the author was thought to be Paul’s first convert at Athens (Acts 17:34)—blended panentheism with orthodox Christianity. Pseudo-Dionysius’ mystical theology heavily influenced the likes of Thomas of Aquinas and others, but also created a stream of panentheistic practice, mysticism, and theology as a minority position within Western theology.

Cooper then argues that these mystics and theologians—John Scotus Erugena (810-877), Meister Eckhart (ca. 1260-1327), Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464), Jakob Bohme (1575-1624)—lay the groundwork for Hegel, Heidegger, Tillich, and Moltmann. And he argues this conclusively through citation of these men’s own writings. Essentially, academic Christian liberalism is panentheism. There are also more conservative forms found in Jonathan Edwards’ philosophical works and Samuel Coleridge (1772-1834).

Modern popular thought among academics and in less rigorous venues tilts heavily towards materialism and human freedom as a value. So the acceptable and confirming public and academic stance must take a high view of man and his sovereignty. Prior to the Enlightenment popular thought was enframed by Augustinian theism and tilted heavily towards God as separate from creation and a lower view of man. With the sweeping away of the Augustinian consensus on theology proper and anthropology, the theological and philosophical imagination is now enframed by human freedom and a limited God. The popular imagination demands human freedom and posits the problem of evil as the basic proof against traditional theism.

Conceptually panentheism offers some unique rhetorical advantages to traditional theism for a materialistic age. (I am not suggesting that it offers a more accurate view of God or reality.) The theologian can affirm the popular consensus of evolutionary theory while maintaining a mostly transcendent God who is not responsible for evil. The philosopher is given a god of the gaps that allows him to explain how an unintelligent-purposeless-lifeless cosmos produced an intelligent-purposeful-living philosopher—the cosmos is within a philosophically necessary deity.

Panentheism also opens the door for “deep ecumenicalism,” because forms of Buddhism, Islamic thought, New Age mysticism, and Christianity, along with basic paganism can find common ground in affirming “the value and freedom of the world while emphasizing the world’s dynamic integration within a real transcendent divinity” (236).

Religiously the “main difference among world panentheisms is whether the Divine is thought of as ultimately personal or impersonal. In the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions, personal theism predominates. . . In primal and Asian religions, the prepersonal Force predominates (236). Thus mystic physicists, secular philosophers, Buddhists, progressive Catholics, liberal Protestants, feminists, and so forth can all agree about some fundamental aspects of reality and deity.

Dr. Cooper completes the books with a brief academic defense of classical theism and carefully demarks the possible orthodox modifications of classical theism.

Benefits/Detriments: I can add nothing to Paul Helm’s recommendation from the dust jacket: “This is a groundbreaking attempt to demonstrate the philosophical background of much modern Christian theology, to identify its ‘natural religion.’ Written with the utmost clarity and quiet passion, it greatly helps to sharpen the differences between classical theism and other views. Though dissenting from panentheism and from the theologies it fosters, John Cooper nevertheless writes with courtesy and good sense, letting the record speak for itself. The book is a model of lucidity and fair-mindedness.”

Henry Louis Mencken, The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche

Content from 1908, E-Book

Summary: An intelligent review and summary of Nietzsche’s canon, by the autodidact, debunker, and newspaperman H. L. Mencken (1880-1956). Fredrick Nietzsche (1844-1900) is the father of the most popular form of nihilism. His adherents include the likes of Adolf Hitler and David Brookes, and he has influenced everyone from Heidegger to Leo Strauss. The book includes a dated but accessible biography and history of Nietzsche’s work. Mencken’s purpose in writing the book was not as an academic review but to offer nihilism as a way of life for his readers.

According to Mencken and Nietzsche (1844-1900), human beings are driven by the “ever-dominant and only inherent impulse in all living beings, including man, . . the will to remain alive—the will, that is to attain power over those forces which make life difficult or impossible” (Loc. 42-44).

There are essentially two strategies for remaining alive; the first is as a collective parasite on the powerful and the second is as the powerful. The parasites function as those who limit the powerful from enjoying all that their intrinsic powers will allow. The parasites must have social order, morality, and peace to live; but they maintain this peace by subjecting the great and the great’s impulse to obtain power.

Mencken and Nietzsche offer, “the the gospel of prudent and intelligent selfishness, of absolute and utter individualism” (Loc. 1449-1450). The individual must stand up to the parasites because, “every time he lifts up some one else, he must, at the same time, decrease his own store, because his own store is the only stock from which he can draw” (Loc. 1874-1875).

The parasites subjugate the individual through social structures like religion, morality, and collective violence (i.e. policemen, army). Since the pressure to conform to society is mental, the key to mental health and a wholesome life comes through skepticism alone: “Therefore, argues Nietzsche, it is evident that skepticism, while it makes no actual change in man, always makes him feel better. It makes him lose his fear of hell and his consciousness of sin. It rids him of that most horrible instrument of senseless and costly torture—his conscience. ‘Atheism,’ says Nietzsche, ‘will make a man innocent” (Loc. 3078-3079).

Because the conscience and any sense of limits on human behavior is detrimental to human mental well being, it must be wiped away along with things like punishment for crimes since this only “augment fear, intensify prudence and subjugate the passions” (Loc. 2991-2994).

The only thing that should limit a human being is their ability to maximize pleasure and limit personal suffering. And so “the best possible system of government was that which least interfered with the desires and enterprises of the intelligent individual” (Loc. 2756-2759).

In contrast to the “intelligent individual,” the ignorant and inefficient exist essentially to maximize their small pleasures and serve the intelligent elite. Once they have exhausted their purpose, they are to be eliminated: “The earth has no room for cumberers and pensioners. For them the highest of duties is the payment of natural debt, that there may be more room for those still able to wield the sword and bear a burden in the heat of the day” (3152-3154). “The enlightened regulation and control of death belongs to the morality of the future. At the present religion makes it seem immoral, for religion presupposes that when the time for death comes, God gives the command” (3160-3164). The elite can be trusted to make such decisions because it “is now possible, not only to approach facts with an unbiased mind, but also to make critical examination of ideas” (3519-3520).

Mencken correctly points out that Nietzsche’s ideas dominated the background of public thought in his day and especially in ideas of the popular figure of Teddy Roosevelt: [Roosevelt] “has a quite uncanny factually of impressing [his followers], driving them and convincing them against their will. And among other things, he has made embryo Nietzscheans of them, for in all things fundamental the Rooseveltian philosophy and the Nietzschean philosophy are identical” (3703-3705).

Benefits/Detriments: Mencken’s reading of Nietzsche is a bit idealistic and his faith in “science” and an unbiased elite is staggering, yet he understands and teaches Nietzsche basic philosophy as a way of life in a popular format.

The book still serves as a helpful overview of Nietzsche’s work, and it helps us to understand Mencken’s conspiracy against Byran at the Scopes’ trial. Further it proves that America’s decline into moral relativism is long standing. Mencken was but one of the supporting cast that introduced nihilism to the public.

Recommended for college students and pastors, but please realize that Mencken and Nietzsche are teachers of evil. They call evil good; and God says this of them in Isaiah 5:20-21, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and shrewd in their own sight!”

Albert Schweitzer, Out of My Life and Thought

Mentor Books, 1953, 213 pgs.

Summary: Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) is billed by the cover as “one of the twentieth century’s greatest men.” He was brilliant. His accomplishments in interpreting Bach, the construction and preservations of pipe organs, theological publications, and as a medical philanthropist in Africa are extraordinary. Much of this is traced in Out of My Life and Thought.

Schweitzer had realized that modern liberalism or the emerging Post-Enlightenment thought destroyed the possibility for positive culture. The driving impetus of his philosophy was first to be nice and second to give other people a reason to be nice. Corporate niceness allowed for the possibility of an environment where Bach, Mozart, philosophy, architecture, and human health could be appreciated and preserved. Positive culture was the social space necessary for Schweitzer and his friends to enjoy the finer things. Schweitzer was also rather fond of Jesus, not so fond as to suggest that Jesus was God, but at least a likeable and important teacher (48).

Yet having accepted that the Bible can’t be true in the details, Schweitzer could find no universal platform to build culture. The other great teachers—Confucius, the Brahmans, the Stoics couldn’t be really true either because their teaching was culturally bound and therefore not universal: but then he had an epiphany:

Lost in thought I sat on the deck of the barge, struggling to find the elementary and universal conception of the ethical which I had not discovered in any philosophy. Sheet after sheet I covered with disconnected sentences. . .Late on the third day. . .there flashed upon my mind, unforeseen and unsought, the phrase, “Reverence for Life.” The iron door had yielded; the path in the thicket had become visible. Now I had found my way to the idea in which affirmation of the world and ethics are contained side by side! Now I knew that the ethical acceptance of the world and of life, together with the ideals of civilization contained in this concept, has a foundation in thought (124).

...The ethic of Reverence for Life, therefore, comprehends within itself everything that can be described as love, devotion, and sympathy whether in suffering, joy, or effort. The world, however, offers us the horrible drama of Will-to-Live divided against itself. . . [The thinking man] cannot bring about [life without death] because man is subject to the puzzling and horrible law of being obliged to live at the cost of other life, and to incur again and again the guilt of injuring and destroying life (126).

The ethic of Reverence for Life is the ethic of Love widened into universality. It is the ethic of Jesus, now recognized as a logical consequence of thought (180).

It goes on, but the brilliant Schweitzer now felt justified for being nice to big complex things and feeling guilty about killing small simple things. Or as he puts it, “every time I have under the microscope the germs which cause the disease, I cannot but reflect that I have to sacrifice this life in order to save other life” (181).

Schweitzer said these things with a great deal of charisma, wrote with capital letters and hyphenated words, spoke with a gentle German accent, and had a dramatic persona, but I am at a loss on how this can be taken seriously. We must kill to live, but must reverence life. Our reverence is directed toward life as life. Who or what decides what sort of beings may be deprived of life for our survival and pleasure? Hitler wanted to preserve German life and extinguish Jewish life. Schweitzer wants to extinguish the life of the flavivirus (the virus that causes Yellow Fever) but maintain human life. If one reverences life as life, who decides?

Nietzsche, Hitler, Genghis Kahn, gangbangers, and the local psychopath, have decided “will to power” decides what life is reverenced. There is no essential difference between the wicked tyrants’ philosophy and Schweitzer except his hoped for outcome of positive culture.

Benefits/Detriments: The book is helpful illustration of Romans 1:22, “Claiming to be wise, they became fools. . .” Perhaps of historic interest. (Might every evangelical mission board read of his promise to not preach in Africa which he quickly reneged on.) I am not sure if the best response to the waste of such a mind is to weep, laugh, or turn away in horror.

Schweitzer’s system offers nothing but a guilty conscience and an excuse to warm your hands over the dying embers of Western civilization as you’re nice to your neighbor.

Pierre Duhem, To Save the Phenomena: An Essay on the Idea of Physical Theory from Plato to Galileo

The University of Chicago Press, 1969, 117 pgs.

Summary: Pierre Duhem (1861-1916) was a French physicist and developer of the history of the philosophy of science. He was also a strong Roman Catholic and a humbling thorn in the flesh for his contemporaries in the French academy. Apparently, he delighted in piquing them.

The common historical narrative is that Galileo was an enlightened scientist who was censored and cowed by the bigoted and reactionary Catholic Church. There is of course some truth to the myth or it wouldn’t have stuck. Galileo was a brilliant scientist and the Catholic Church was often bigoted and reactionary, but. . . and it’s a significant conjunction, Galileo (1564-1642) and his cohorts were making some claims about natural philosophy or science that were irrational, and Bellarmine (1542-1621), other Catholics, and Osiander (a mostly Protestant—c.1496-1552) attempted to correct their unreasonableness.

The basic issue is that the Greek philosophers had “proved” there were two forms of physics—earthly and celestial. The celestial sphere was unchanging and the earthly sphere allowed for change and flux. While the rules that governed these two physics were analogues, they operated differently. Plato’s system was the most rigid, but Aristotle’s was similar. This philosophical doctrine cohered to Christian theology, because the Bible clearly teaches a difference between heaven and earth. Greek physics was then modified and incorporated into Christian hermeneutics and theology with little or no ado for about a thousand years (cf. review of the Lewis’ Discarded Image).  Aristotle would not have claimed and likely barely recognized the system that developed.

Prior to the Renaissance astronomy as a science was merely a hypothesis that described and helped predict observable phenomena.  As long as one merely attempted a tentative hypothesis as an explanation of all known phenomena, no one was concerned about which theory one held to if there was no direct contradiction with a known truth.  Generally within the church, Aristotelian metaphysics (ontology, epistemology, cosmology, etc.) was understood as truth and God’s Word was interpreted through the divided Greek physics. As physics, mathematics, and optics matured, more and more evidence or observation of phenomena accumulated that the physics of the celestial was identical to the physics of the earth.

Galileo rejected the Aristotelian divided physics and the metaphysics because of his observation of changing phenomena in the celestial realm. While this is bold and important, he also assumed that his hypothesis for explaining the phenomena was true. In his mind if his hypothesis had more explanatory power of his experience than the Aristotelian model, his hypothesis must be true.

“Galileo’s notions of the validity of the experimental method and the art of using it . . . conceive[d] of the proof of a hypothesis in imitation of the reduction ad absurdum proofs that are used in geometry. Experience, by convicting one system of error, confers certainty on its opposite” (109).

Such a view led to accurate critiques by contemporaries like this: “no matter how numerous and exact the confirmations by experience, they can never transform a hypothesis into certain truth, for this would require, in addition, demonstration of the proposition that these same experiential facts would flagrantly contradict any other hypothesis that might be conceived” (111).

Two misadventures were occurring at the same moment: for the first time true science, a observable united physics, and the official position of the church were at loggerheads. Second, the scientists in rightly critiquing the false physics of the church stepped beyond the limits of science into the realm of absolute truth instead of hypotheses and probability. Both parties were denying the truth, and both were destroying the possibility of reconciliation as long as they clung to a provable falsehood. The fissure between religion and natural philosophy/science occurred over both parties’ misunderstanding the truth of things.

Duhem stops here, but I want to add the following:

Prior to the Enlightenment a modified Aristotelian/Platonic metaphysics (ontology, epistemology, cosmology, etc) provided the shared background for theological and philosophical discussion. This included natural philosophy and science. The Greek metaphysics was simply assumed by the church because it cohered reasonably well with the earthly and heavenly division described in the Bible and no one was really holding to any other position. It is important to note that several passages of Scripture do not support a divided physics (Matt. 2:9; 2 Peter 3:7, 12;  Ps. 102:26-27) within observable creation.

When the natural philosophers discovered that the physics of the earthly and celestial realms were identical, the discovery discredited the epistemological or metaphysical framework of both the church and Aristotle. Historically the epistemological vacancy was filled up with developing forms of materialism in Epicureanism and Stoicism among the emerging natural philosophers and academy.

The general tenor of Enlightenment thought, materialism, excluded the possibility of God and God speaking; thus the scientific and religious fissure became axiomatic. Most theologians, both Catholic and Protestant, understood their options as holding to a metaphysics that denied known physical phenomena or attempting to create some sort of working theological system within the framework of Enlightenment thought. Compromise with Enlightenment thought was progressively corrosive leading to the different forms of liberalism. Many Christians faced with an untenable “orthodoxy” and a soul-killing liberalism chose fideism or pietism, thus undermining the role of right reason as a means to understand reality.

Benefits and Detriments: The book lacks sympathy or much information about the Protestant response, but I lack the historical background to critique Duhem on his brief consideration of the Protestants.

Oliver D. Crisp, An American Augustinian: Sin and Salvation in the Dogmatic Theology of William G. T. Shedd

Paternoster, 2007, 183 pgs.

Summary: Oliver D. Crisp, a former student of Paul Helm and now professor at Fuller Seminary, has written a philosophical/theological consideration and critique of Shedd’s views on salvation and sin. The book is especially focused on his Augustinian realism as it relates to ensoulment, the atonement, and salvation.

Shedd was a convinced realist of the Augustinian school rather than a federalist like many other Reformed theologians. Thus, he understood 1 Corinthians 15:22 “in Adam all die” to mean that all of humanity was in some real way in Adam at the fall. He defends this view on the ground that to be human is to be related to Adam in both body and soul. Shedd’s convictions led him to all sorts of interesting outcomes within the general framework of Reformed orthodoxy.

Crisp’s main concern is to bridge Shedd’s work to the contemporary philosophical/theological conversation by teasing out the possible logical contradictions, creating modern defenses of Shedd’s thought, and suggesting avenues of use in a modern context. Crisp is sympathetic to many of Shedd’s theological outcomes and has done yeoman’s work in turning up the weakness in his arguments and bolstering some of the best of Shedd’s insights.

Benefits/Detriments: If one has read Shedd’s main works and stands firmly within the posture of faith seeking understanding, this book is a helpful and thoughtful critique and provides a good example of a modern contextualizing of historic theology. Recommended highly, but read Shedd first.

Stuart Murray, Biblical Interpretation in the Anabaptist Tradition

Pandora Press, 2000, 277 pgs.

Summary: Stuart Murray (1956-  ) is an Anabaptist theologian who has been a church planter and a director of  Spurgeon’s College church-planting program in London. He has a PhD in Anabaptist hermeneutics.

Biblical Interpretation is my favorite sort of book. It’s historically grounded but presents the argument that the past may serve to assist if not correct the present. The author is at his strongest when he is describing and analyzing the historical Anabaptist interpretation methods with one exception to be noted below. His use of Anabaptist sources is a fascinating consideration of the general attributes of Anabaptist hermeneutics in response to Roman Catholic and Reformed polemics from about 1515 to the mid-1600s.

Much of Murray’s arguments about the contours of Anabaptist hermeneutics can be collapsed into the fact that the Anabaptists he embraces (i.e. the non-violent ones) took a first thought reading of the Sermon on the Mount and made it their fundamental method for understanding the life of Jesus and the rest of the Bible (74). Some Anabaptist even lacked the Old Testament to assist them in understanding Jesus’ historical context (109).

Murray puts it this way, “The Sermon on the Mount seems to have acted as a further canon within an already Christocentric canon” (79). So in the early Anabaptist tradition the significance or use of a passage in developing doctrine and practice was dependent on its perceived agreement with the “radical” reading of the Sermon on the Mount.

The hope of the Anabaptist was “to avoid the dilution of Jesus’ authority by reducing his commands to generalizations hedged about with exceptions and qualifications” (79). The canon within the canon worked itself so that Paul was understood through the first thought reading of the Sermon on the Mount, the Old Testament was marginalized if not ignored along with church history. And all of this is duly noted by Murray.

At the same time the overriding task of the book is to encourage present Christians to consider the positive attributes of this system as a response to modernism. Murray believes that modernism or the historical critical-method is derived from “Reformed hermeneutics” (10), and so he has come to the conclusion that a modified form of the Anabaptist method would be edifying for the church as a rejection of modernity and Reformed theology.

The author summarizes on page 90: “Furthermore, operating with the Gospels (a narrative genre) as the primary canon within the canon, rather than with the propositional and doctrinal focus of the Reformers, has positive implications for hermeneutics. In particular, it encourages practical application and personal discipleship rather than intellectual discussion. It fosters an encounter with the Lord of Scriptures rather than with the text alone. It also goes some way towards bridging the gap between the biblical and contemporary horizons by involving the reader in a story, a genre which contains many transcultural elements.”

It is Murray’s attempt to bridge from the Anabaptist past to the present that things start to break down. In the section on the uniqueness of “congregational hermeneutics,” the weaving about and caveats suggests if not requires that he is overreaching the historical data: “We find no extended discussion of this role within Anabaptist writings and relatively few explicit references to it” (157). “It is not easy to discover how widespread communal hermeneutics was, how firmly it was established, or how long it survived” (165). “[T]hese principles sometimes lead to the development of hermeneutic communities” (177). “Designating the congregation as the locus of interpretation may not have been uniformly practiced by the sixteenth-century Anabaptist” (249).

Back formation would also explain how sixteenth-century leaders like Meno, Munzter, and Hubmaier can be described thus: “Congregational hermeneutics required an understanding of the leader’s task as guiding rather than dominating, acting as facilitator rather than sole participant” (163). It’s difficult to reconcile the words “guiding” and “facilitator” with Meno’s The Blasphemy of John of Leiden or Munzter’s Sermon to the Princes or The Prague Protest.

Since part of Murray’s hope is to foster an Anabaptist hermeneutic as a positive response to modernity, it would appear that he has read back community consensus as a hermeneutical and epistemological principle. But I am at a loss as to how judging “any interpretation by its usefulness to the congregation” (176), departs from either Machiavelli and Hobbes’ utilitarian hermeneutic or Nietzsche’s will-to-power for congregations, or for that matter Lenin’s principle that it is useful to break eggs to make an omelet.

The author’s goal of encountering “the Lord of Scriptures” is laudable. The difficulty is that as the congregation discusses “practical application and personal discipleship” through the Gospel narrative they develop propositions:  “Jesus loved social outcasts.”  And then they apply this insight by creating an ought statement: “We ought to love social outcasts.” Also, a proposition. Perhaps, some in the congregation might ask: “Why should Jesus’ non-violent example be given priority over Che or Muntzer’s example?” The traditional Christian response is the proposition: “Jesus is Lord.” But then we’ve slipped right back to the “propositional and doctrinal focus of the Reformers.”

It should also be noted that much of Murray’s critique of Reformation interpretation lacks footnotes to primary source documents. The footnotes are almost exclusively to modern secondary sources such as Rogers and McKim or McGrath. Unless, I am badly misreading the Reformers, for instance Whitaker’s Disputations on Holy Scripture, Murray’s reliance on secondary sources has led him into some misunderstanding of Reformed hermeneutics and the development of the historical-critical method.

Detriments/Benefits: A helpful overview of Anabaptist’s hermeneutics, but it requires some “deconstruction” of Murray’s historical narrative and his reading back of post-modern community hermeneutics into the Anabaptist community.

Recommended as an interesting first discussion of historic Anabaptist hermeneutics. Helpful for understanding post-modern takes on Christianity by neo-monasticism and the like.

K. B. McFarlane, John Wycliffe and the Beginnings of English Nonconformity

1952, The English Universities Press, Ltd., 188 pgs.

Summary: A brief, unflattering and unsympathetic overview of Wycliffe’s history and doctrine and the Lollards. As an example of his analysis:

The feverish but ill-directed activity of the last half-decade of [Wycliffe’s] life, the confident assumption of infallibility in the face of diminishing support, the bad tactical judgment that robbed him of even minor success may all be accounted for as symptoms of that high blood-pressure from which he died (72-73).

Benefits/Detriments: My mind is divided as to whether the book should be considered Catholic or Epicurean propaganda.

Interesting only in its brevity, general historical accuracy of the dates and persons, and information on the Oldcastle rising or Lollard Rebellion of 1414. (Oldcastle was likely Shakespeare’s model for Falstaff, but McFarlane doesn’t mention this.)

Utterly devoid of humor, human interest, or sympathy for anyone not burning heretics.

Karl Barth, Evangelical Theology: An Introduction

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1963, pgs. 206.

Summary: Karl Barth (1886-1968) made a stringent effort to pull Christianity out of the liberal malaise caused by theological compromise with the Enlightenment tradition. The book contains a series of lectures given by Barth at the close of his academic life in Basel and then in the United States.

The book is divided up into four sections: the place of theology, theological existence, the threat to theology, and theological work. Each section is then subdivided into four chapters. It’s tightly organized and intentionally vague in some places while narrowly focused and defined at others.

Barth has recognized the dangers of Christians compromising with Enlightenment and Post-Enlightenment (a.k.a. post-modernism) thought. The way he escapes the conclusions and corrosive effect of modernity is by grounding his theology in the existential experience of the theologian through the Spirit and the Word.

The Word is usefully vague for his purposes. It seems to be Jesus Christ himself who has participated in the giving of the Bible. The word of God or the Scriptures is the place where the theologian meets the Word of God through the Spirit. But the Bible is neither all of the Word of God or God’s perfect revelation to man.

The existential vagaries continue: “Faith is the special event that is constitutive for both Christians and theological existence. Faith is the event by which the wonderment, concern, and commitment that make the theologians a theologian are distinguished  from all other occurrences which, in their own way, might be noteworthy and memorable or might be given the same designation” (100).

At the same time, when Barth’s goal of bridging between aspects of Enlightenment thought and that of the Bible requires a decisive break, we get Latin distinctions from scholastic theology:  “the theologian will stick to the fact that the theologia archetypa and the theologia ektypa, as well as the theologia paradisiacal, or comprehensorum, and the theologia viatorum, are two different things, and that his problem and task can only be the latter, not the former of these concepts” (114).

Benefits/Detriments: The general tenor seems to be, Don’t like the church? Call it a “community?” Having trouble explaining why scientific humanists that control the academic institutions disagree with the historical accounts in the Bible? Trust the Word of God and the not all the word of God. Need to guard against the corrosive nature of modernity? Here’s a Latin distinction.

Mendelssohn is recorded as having complained to Kant about Jacobi’s critique of materialism that it was a “strange monster that sported Goethe for a head, Spinoza for a torso, and Lavater for feet” (Jacobi, Main Philosophical Writings, McGill-Queens’s University Press, 1994, pg 66). In Barth’s case we have a strange monster that sports Kierkegaard for a head, Erasmus for a torso, and anachronistically Billy Graham for feet.

As portrayed here the system is insufficient—especially its epistemology. Barth has insights about the Scriptures and the world that should be weighed, but the system is both too flabby and too distinct to be of any lasting value. I suppose one could maintain a relationship with Christ through this framework, but I am not sure of the point. It’s too strong to satisfy the academy and too weak to not be in jeopardy of disobeying Revelation 22:19.

Perhaps helpful for a mature Christian considering the vocation of professional theologian or for a student of historical theology.