Domesticating the Gospel: A Review of Stanley J. Grenz’s Renewing the Center1 D. A. Carson D. A. Carson is Research Professor Responsible theological reflection must gelicalism, Grenz devotes the first two of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical embrace the best from the past while chapters to the material and formal prin- Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. He addressing the present. If theologians ciples of evangelical thought. With respect is the author of numerous commentar- merely look to the past, then they risk to the material principle, he holds that ies and monographs, and is one of this becoming mere purveyors of antiquarian Luther’s commitment to justification by country’s foremost New Testament artifacts, however valuable those artifacts faith, modified by Calvin’s quest for sanc- scholars. Among his books are Divine may be. But if they are concerned only with tification, augmented by Puritan and Sovereignty and Human Responsibility the present, then it is not long before they Pietist concern for personal conversion, (John Knox Press, 1981; reprint, Baker, squander their heritage and become, as far sanctified living, and assurance of one’s 1994) and The Gagging of God: Chris- as the gospel is concerned, largely irrel- elect status, declined into comfortable tianity Confronts Pluralism (Zondervan, evant to the world they seek to reform conformity to outward forms until the 1996). because they domesticate the gospel to the awakenings in Britain and the American contemporary worldview, thereby robbing colonies charged them with new life. The it of its power. Stan Grenz, I fear, is drifting effect was a focus on “convertive piety” toward the latter error. (passim) and a concern for transformed living, rather than on adherence to creeds. Content Evangelical theology focused on personal As usual with Grenz’s writings, this salvation. book is free of malice and—provided one He discusses the formal principle in his is familiar with the jargon of postmodern second chapter. Contemporary conserva- discussion—reasonably lucid. Its ten chap- tive views of the Bible have not been ters can be divided into two parts. Grenz shaped exclusively by Luther or Calvin, he begins by citing a representative sample of writes, but also by Protestant scholastics voices that find contemporary evangelical who “transformed the doctrine of Scripture theology in disarray. In the first four chap- from an article of faith into the foundation ters and part of the fifth, Grenz treats for systematic theology” (17). At the end evangelicalism historically “as a theologi- of the nineteenth century the Princeton cal phenomenon,” trying to “draw from the theologians turned the doctrine of the particularly theological character of the inspiration of Scripture into “the primary movement’s historical trajectory” (15). fundamental” (17). This then was passed Accepting William J. Abraham’s analysis on to neo-evangelical theologians—those that the term “evangelical” embraces at thinkers who from the middle of the twen- least three constellations of thought, tieth century tried to lead evangelicalism namely the magisterial Reformation, the out of its introspection and exclusion into evangelical awakenings of the eighteenth engagement with the broader culture. century, and modern conservative evan- The next three chapters contain Grenz’s 82 analysis of contemporary evangelicalism Foundationalism,” summarizes the book by studying three pairs of men. The first Grenz jointly wrote with John R. Franke generation of neo-evangelical theologians entitled Beyond Foundationalism.2 Grenz can be represented by Carl F. H. Henry and gives us his take on “the rise and demise Bernard Ramm. Grenz believes that Henry of foundationalism in philosophy” (185) set a rationalistic and culturally critical cast before offering his own alternative. Here, to neo-evangelical theology and Ramm he says, he has been influenced especially tried to lead evangelical theology out of by Wolfhart Pannenberg and George “the self-assured rationalism he found in Lindbeck. Pannenberg’s appeal to the fundamentalism. Consequently, he became eschatological nature of truth, i.e. to the the standard-bearer for a more irenic and eschaton as the “time” when truth is culturally engaging evangelicalism” (18). established, responds to the reality that In the next generation, Millard Erickson “God remains an open question in the and Clark Pinnock supply the contrasts, contemporary world, and human knowl- Erickson as an establishment theologian edge is never complete or absolutely who systematized neo-evangelical theol- certain” (197). Lindbeck’s rejection of ogy and Pinnock as reflecting a theologi- “cognitive-propositionalist” and “experi- cal odyssey that wanted to fulfill the ential-expressive” approaches in favor of evangelical apologetic ideal by engaging a “cultural-linguistic” approach supports in dialogues with alternative views. Pannenberg’s emphasis on coherence. In Pinnock thereby carries on the irenic tra- Wittgenstein’s shadow, Lindbeck insists dition of Ramm. The fifth chapter proposes that doctrines are “the rules of discourse that the third-generation polarities can be of the believing community. Doctrines act aligned with Wayne Grudem and John as norms that instruct adherents how to Sanders. think about and live in the world” (198). Is this polarity so great that David Wells Like grammatical rules, they exercise a is correct in thinking that we are on the certain regulative function in the believing verge of evangelicalism’s demise? Or does community but they “are not intended to Dave Tomlinson’s announcement of a post- say anything true about a reality external evangelical era point the way ahead? Grenz to the language they regulate. Hence, each opts for neither stance. He suggests, in the rule [or doctrine] is only ‘true’ in the second half of chapter five, that the emerg- context of the body of rules that govern the ing task of evangelical theology is to come language to which the rules belong” (198). to grips with postmodernity. Recognizing Lindbeck calls for an “intratextual theol- this term’s ambiguities, he places the heart ogy” that aims at “imaginatively incorpo- of postmodernism in epistemology. Post- rating all being into a Christ-centered modernism adopts a chastened rationality world” (199).3 and marks a move away from realism to Within evangelicalism, Grenz finds the social construction of reality, from most hope in the work of Alvin Plantinga metanarrative to local stories. The rest of and Nicholas Wolterstorff, especially in the book teases out this proposal. their claim that Christian theology “is an The next three chapters constitute the activity of the community that gathers book’s heart. Chapter six, “Evangelical around Jesus the Christ” (201). This con- Theological Method after the Demise of stitutes a “communitarian turn” in evan- 83 gelical theology: “we have come to see the the modern era’s misunderstanding of story of God’s action in Christ as the para- Luther’s sola scriptura. Theologians in digm for our stories. We share an identity- the modern era, Grenz says, traded the constituting narrative” (202). This is not the “ongoing reading of the text” for their own same as old-fashioned liberalism, Grenz grasp of the doctrinal deposit that they asserts, because (1) liberalism was itself found in its pages that was “supposedly dependent on foundationalism, which encoded in its pages centuries ago” (206). Grenz rejects; and (2) older liberalism It is far wiser to incorporate speech-act tended to give primacy to experience such theory, and be sensitive to what the text that theological statements were mere does, how it functions, what it performs. “The expressions of religious experience, while Bible is the instrumentality of the Spirit in in the model that Lindbeck and Grenz are that the Spirit appropriates the biblical text propounding “experiences are always so as to speak to us today” (207). In this filtered by an interpretive framework that light, the reading of the text is “a commu- facilitates their occurrence. [R]eligions nity event.” Grenz agrees with Walter produce religious experience rather than Klaassen: “The text can be properly under- merely being the expressions of it” (202- stood only when disciples are gathered 203). together to discover what the Word has to Yet Grenz wants to go a step farther, a say to their needs and concerns” (208). step beyond Lindbeck: the task of theol- Thus even if the Bible is the “primary ogy, he argues, “is not purely descriptive… voice,” that voice must never be thought but prescriptive” (203). That is, it “ought to of as independent of the culturally-bound be the interpretive framework of the Chris- situation of the community of readers. tian community” (203). Taking a leaf out of Plantinga’s insistence that belief in God The ultimate authority in the church is the Spirit speaking through Scrip- may be properly “basic,” Grenz writes, ture. The Spirit’s speaking through “In this sense, the specifically Christian Scripture, however, is always a con- experience-facilitating interpretative textual speaking: it always comes to its hearers within a specific histori- framework, arising as it does out of the cal-cultural context. This has been biblical gospel narrative, is ‘basic’ for the case throughout church history, Christian theology” (203). This is not a for the Spirit’s ongoing provision of guidance has always come, and now return to foundationalism by another continues to come, to the commu- name, Grenz insists, because the “cogni- nity of Christ as a specific people in a specific setting hears the Spirit’s tive framework” that is “basic” for theol- voice speaking in the particularity of ogy does not precede theology; it is its historical-cultural context (209). “inseparably intertwined” with it (203- 204). The appropriate test becomes Here tradition may play a secondary role, coherence, not the disparate and often a kind of reference point, as the members unintegrated data of foundationalism—as of a community of faith recognize that exemplified, Grenz asserts, in a Grudem.