The Rob Bell dust up has caused me to think quite a bit about theological method. There was a comment I notice on one blog that suggested Bell should be “excommunicated.” In stark contrast, another blogger wondered why anyone but the elders in Bell’s own church should have anything to say about the matter. Much of the commentary has focused on whether Bell’s book is “orthodox.” Who’s to say? I suspect that this question, more than anything else, is what is causing such hand-wringing in evangelical circles.
I have many books on my shelves specifically about the sources of doctrine, none of which completely agree with each other. Every systematic theology begins with a prolegomena on method and sources. I have many of these on my shelves as well — some of which are heavy enough to kill a horse — and none of these fully agree with each other either.
For example, I have been reading Cardinal Newman’s Essay on the Development of Doctrine, which is a splendid argument for the historic consistency of Catholic doctrine rooted in scripture and the Western Christian tradition. But then I have an alternate version of the nature and scope of the early tradition in some Eastern Orthodox texts. On the side of the Reformation, I have Barth’s Church Dogmatics, which roots authority in contemporaneously received revelation; Bloesch’s Essentials of Evangelical Theology, which takes a more stable view of scripture than Barth while retaining Barth’s (and the Reformers’) emphasis on subjective certainty; Trevor Hart’s Faith Thinking, which includes the Christian tradition, broadly construed, as a touchstone, but not an irreformable source; Braaten and Jenson’s Christian Dogmatics, which views both scripture and tradition through the eyes of Luther and Barth; Stanley Grenz’s Theology for the Community of God, which pushes scripture and tradition a little further than Bloesch or Hart but places lots of weight on community; sources touting “paleo-orthodoxy” and the “Vincentian Canon” from the likes of Thomes Oden and Gerald Bray; and Millard Erickson’s Christian Theology, which locates final authority solely in a totally inerrant Biblical text (without really explaining, incidentally, the tradition that bequeathed to us the scriptural canon). And these are just a sample. I have many more, and there are yet many others I don’t own or haven’t read.
If you were to ask the authors of these volumes whether Bell’s book is “orthodox,” they would not agree with each other. Some of them (Bloesch and Hart) have written things about eschatology that sound very much like what Bell has written. Some (Catholic and Orthodox) represent traditions in which there are a variety of contemporary opinions on eschatology, often with equally vituperative accusations flying back and forth. Some would cite “church tradition” to condemn Bell’s views while at the same time rejecting things that others think are equally “traditional” and equally represented in early Church teaching (such as the primacy of the Roman Bishop, for example, or Mary’s perpetual virginity, or the real presence in the Eucharist). Some would condemn Bell supposedly solely based on what the Bible teaches, while others might uphold his orthodoxy on exactly the same grounds.
All of this is existentially unsettling for those of us in the evangelical tradition because the truth is that we do not have a tradition capable of sustained reflection on the sorts of questions Bell raises. We might argue solely from scripture, but scripture can be read in various ways — all of which reflect some tradition of reading. We might appeal to a presumed consensus tradition, but we can’t explain why we choose some portions of tradition as authoritative and consensual and reject others. We can appeal to a broad sense of “orthodoxy” rooted in scripture, the early Church, the Reformation, and pietism — this is Richard Mouw’s approach — but that tends to make the term a wax nose.
I’m not sure where this leaves me personally. I’m realizing that theological method really is one of the main things I’ve been interested in all along. As far as I can tell, at some point you resonate with and stake a claim to a certain sort of method and go with it as best you can. It seems to me that this is a place at which each person must rely on the Holy Spirit, trust in God’s mercy, and remain generous with others. But it seeming that way to me, of course, already presupposes a certain sort of method! And that, I think, is our real dilemma.