Resident Theologian
About the Blog
I’m in First Things + on a podcast
Links to a new essay in the latest issue of First Things and an interview on a new podcast called The Great Tradition.
An essay of mine called “Theology in Division” is in the new issue of First Things. Here’s a link. I’ve had something like it half-written in the back of my mind for the last five years. I’m glad for it to be in print finally. I’m also glad for it to honor both Robert Jenson and Joseph Ratzinger, two theologians whose legacy I treasure who have now gone on to their reward.
I’m also on the latest episode of a new podcast called The Great Tradition. We recorded the interview back in December. It’s about the Bible. This time I’ve got a good mic, so I don’t sound like I’ve yelling through feedback the whole time.
After declining invitations to appear on podcasts for years, I’ve now been on 5-10 of them over the last 12+ months. My line used to be “Friends don’t let friends go on podcasts before tenure.” I have tenure now, so I guess I’m covered. In any case, I’ve come to enjoy the interviews. This one was fun, and I think we found a way to cover all the main theological issues raised by my two books on Scripture.
Reunion
Reading theology from the previous century has the power to trick you into thinking that reunion between the divided communions was, and remains, a live possibility. As late as 1999, when Robert Jenson published the second volume of his systematic theology, the bulk of which is a fulsome ecclesiology in close conversation with both Vatican II and the most recent ecumenical dialogues, you would be forgiven for getting the impression that reunion—between Rome and Wittenburg, between Rome and Canterbury, even between Rome and Constantinople—was conceivable within our lifetime, even right over the horizon.
Reading theology from the previous century has the power to trick you into thinking that reunion between the divided communions was, and remains, a live possibility. As late as 1999, when Robert Jenson published the second volume of his systematic theology, the bulk of which is a fulsome ecclesiology in close conversation with both Vatican II and the most recent ecumenical dialogues, you would be forgiven for getting the impression that reunion—between Rome and Wittenburg, between Rome and Canterbury, even between Rome and Constantinople—was conceivable within our lifetime, even right over the horizon.
More generally, reading about church division and the need for church unity on the page can make the matter seem rather simple, certainly from a low-church or Protestant perspective. It inevitably reduces the problem to disagreements over theology; accordingly, once those disagreements are resolved, unity becomes achievable.
To my readerly mind, it made the most sense that, if any communions were to reunite in our lifetime, it would be Rome and the East. After all, on the page, very little in terms of substantive theological disagreements obtain between them. (I can defend that claim another time!) On the page, Rome is willing to meet the East halfway—and then some. On the page, these things can be worked out. The unity of God’s people is at stake, after all! The very truth of Jesus’s prayer for his church in John 17!
On the page, all of this seems eminently plausible. Until, that is, you meet an actual, flesh-and-blood Orthodox Christian. Until you read an actual Orthodox writer who is neither American nor trained in American institutions. Until you visit an actual Orthodox country. Until you attend the Divine Liturgy or visit an Orthodox monastery.
And then it hits you. This is a pipe dream. Reunion between Rome and the East will never happen. Not ever. Not until the Lord’s return. Rome could meet the East 99% of the way, and the East would look at that 1% and say: Thanks, but no thanks. We’re good.
Perhaps that sounds hyperbolic. Or perhaps it sounds like I’m indicting the East or endorsing the West. That’s not at all what I mean, though. As David Bentley Hart wrote a few years back, Eastern Orthodoxy has always been skeptical of the ecumenical movement, for at least two reasons intrinsic to and coherent with its own teachings and history. The first is that ecumenism waters down the faith to a few core beliefs beyond which all else, especially liturgical form and sacred tradition, is adiaphora. In other words, ecumenism Protestantizes the faith. But if you think that Protestantism is wrong about the faith, why would you do that? The second reason is that the East does not believe the church is divided, or that it lacks the fullness of Christ’s promise to his one church. It does not believe, as Rome does, that it suffers a “wound.” Rather, the East believes wholeheartedly and without apology that it is and forever shall be the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church that Christ founded by his Spirit on Pentecost some two thousand years ago. It has kept the faith whole and entire; it has preserved the faith once for all delivered to the saints; it has not wavered; it has not broken; it has not failed. It cheerfully welcomes all, including schismatics and heretics (i.e., Romans and Protestants), to join its ranks. But it is unbroken, undivided, and complete. Ecumenism, on this view, is at once an affront, a contradiction, a threat, and a solvent to this crucial truth. To admit it, to engage it, to accept it, would be to deny the fact of Orthodoxy itself.
So, as I say, I’m not writing in critique of the East. I’m writing with a bird’s-eye view on the total matter of church unity, in global perspective. And after a century of optimism, things don’t look good. Despair is a sin, so we aren’t allowed that route. But it is hard to see, for me it is impossible to see, what it might mean to hope and work for the unity of the church across both the world and millennia-long divisions. For those divisions have become cultural, deeply ingrained in the folkways and forms of life that define distinct peoples, such as Greece or Russia. What would, what could, reunion mean for such people on the ground (and not on the page)? I have no answer.
Jenson, following Ratzinger, notes at the beginning of volume one of his systematics that theologians under conditions of ecclesial division can only write for the one church that God will, by his grace, someday bring about. He says further that such unity must be a work of the Spirit—and the Spirit may act tomorrow. I believe these words. I follow that vision. But I worry, sometimes, that they are merely marks on a page. For the letter kills; the Spirit gives life.
In a word, in the matter of our impossible division, we are reduced to prayer. So I pray:
How long, O Lord? How long will your people be separated one from another? Come, Spirit, come! Restore your people. Make them one as you are one. Hear our prayer, and hear your Son’s, on our behalf, and for his sake: Amen.
“The slow death of the Protestant churches”
Fifteen years ago, in a journal article on Karl Barth’s christology and Chalcedonian doctrine (among other things), Bruce McCormack concluded his article with the following paragraph (my emphasis): It remains only to say a word about the situation—and the motives which have led me to elaborate precisely this form of Christology in the present moment. The situation in which Christian theology is done in the United States today is shaped most dramatically by the slow death of the Protestant churches.
Fifteen years ago, in a journal article on Karl Barth’s christology and Chalcedonian doctrine (among other things), Bruce McCormack concluded his article with the following paragraph (my emphasis):
It remains only to say a word about the situation—and the motives which have led me to elaborate precisely this form of Christology in the present moment. The situation in which Christian theology is done in the United States today is shaped most dramatically by the slow death of the Protestant churches. I have heard it said—and I have no reason to question it—that if current rates of decline in membership continue, all that will be left by mid-century will be Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and non-denominational evangelical churches (the last named of which will include those denominations, like the Southern Baptists, which are non-confessional in doctrinal matters and congregationalist in their polity). The churches of the Reformation will have passed from the scene—and with their demise, there will be no obvious institutional bearers of the message of the Reformation. What all of this means in practice is that it will become more and more necessary, for the sake of the future of Christianity, to establish stronger ecumenical relations with the Catholics and the Orthodox. And that means, too, coming to agreements with churches supportive of the classical two-natures scheme in Christology. The question is not, it seems to me, whether the two-natures doctrine has a future. That much seems to have already been decided. The only real question is what form(s) it can take. So it is for the sake of an improved understanding of the potential contained in the two-natures doctrine that I offer my ‘Reformed’ version of kenoticism.
To magisterial Protestant ears, that prediction must sound dire indeed. Dire or no, it seems on the nose to me. In my next book I lay out a threefold typology of the church for heuristic purposes: catholic (=Eastern, Roman, Anglican), reformed (=magisterial Protestant), and baptist (=low-church, congregationalist, non-confessional, believers baptism, etc.). What’s astonishing is simultaneously how much “the reformed” dominate Anglophone theology across the last 200 years and yet how institutionally and demographically invisible actual reformed churches are today, certainly on the North American scene. To the extent that that already-invisible presence is continuing to shrink, it is not unreasonable to suppose that it will continue to dwindle to statistical insignificance. That doesn’t mean there won’t be Lutherans or Calvinists in America four decades from now. But it may mean that they have little to no institutional form or heft—at least one that anybody is aware of who doesn’t already live inside one of their few remaining micro-bubbles.
To be clear, I don’t mean these words as a happy prophecy, dancing on the grave before the body’s interred. Some of my best friends are magisterial Protestants. (Hey oh.) And I wish those friends every success in their ongoing efforts to revivify the American Protestant community. History isn’t written until after the fact; perhaps McCormack and the rest of us naysayers will be proven wrong.
The lines aren’t trending in the direction of renewal, though. So it’s worth reflecting on what the future of American Christianity looks like: either catholic or baptist, which is to say, either “high” (liturgical, sacramental, episcopal, conciliar, creedal, etc.) or “low” (non-creedal, non-confessional, non-sacramental, non-denominational, non-doctrinal, in short, biblicist evangelicalism). To my inexpert eyes, that also seems to be the global choice, not least if you include charismatic traditions under the “low” or “free” category.
The question then is: Do the latter communities have what it takes to weather the storm? Do they, that is, have the resources, the roots, the wherewithal to sojourn, unbending and unbent, in the wilderness that awaits? As Stanley Hauerwas once remarked, the evangelicals have two things in spades: Jesus and energy. What more do they have?
Fred Sanders, in a blog post commenting on McCormack’s programmatic prediction at the time of its publication, thinks evangelicals are possessed of that “more,” or at least are possessed of the relevant potential for the right kind of “more.” He runs a thought experiment, thinking “back” from the perch of 2047 when the dire prophecies of the death of American Protestantism have come to fruition. He writes:
It’s 2047: Bruce McCormack is just over 100 years old and is trying to figure out where to go to church. He’s not picky, he just wants a place that teaches justification by faith and sola scriptura. There are no mainline Protestant churches to choose from, no “obvious institutional bearers of the message of the Reformation.” Everywhere he goes, there are non-denominational evangelicals, and Roman Catholics, and the Orthodox. Who’s got the Reformation theology, where can I go to get it?
Jumping back to 2006, and back to my own evangelical (just barely denominational) context, I can see the advantages of doing what McCormack ’06 recommends: “for the sake of the future of Christianity, to establish stronger ecumenical relations with the Catholics and the Orthodox.” But as an evangelical theologian committed to the theology of the Reformation, I think my more pressing task is to work for a clearer theological witness in evangelical congregations and institutions. I think it’s possible for evangelicalism to function as a much more “obvious institutional bearer of the message of the Reformation.” Indeed, with the mainline keeling over and dropping the Protestant baton, the people most likely to pick it up are people like my people, or maybe Pentecostals in the developing world. Everything hinges on greater theological sophistication and stronger commitment to doctrines like sola scriptura and justification. I actually wonder why McCormack pointed instead to Roman Catholic and Orthodox dialogue partners. Probably it’s because his speech was about reinvigorating traditional Chalcedonian christology, and he (rightly) thinks he’s more likely to find conversation partners about that among Catholics than among evangelicals.
To evangelical theologians (Baptists, non-denominationals, etc.) I would take a hint from McCormack and say: The baton is being dropped, the mainline churches are going down. Study harder, learn the great tradition of Christian doctrine (from the Catholics and Orthodox perhaps), and keep your hands ready to take up the baton of Protestant teaching. Plan for mid-century, when there will be a crying need for an “obvious institutional bearer of the theology of the Reformation.”
That is laudable and wise advice. I do wonder: After what has happened in and to American evangelicalism in the last 15 years, what, if anything, would Sanders (or his Protestant comrades in arms) say about the prospects of such a vision? Can evangelicalism as it stands be reformed—that is, converted to the confessions and doctrines of the magisterial Reformation—from within? Is the rot not yet too deep? Is the form of evangelicalism—that is, its bone-deep opposition to extra-biblical doctrinal formulations and practices, to formal institutional organization and authorities, to anything that might mitigate the frontier revivalist spirit—open to the sheer degree of ecclesial, liturgical, and theological change that would be required to conform to actual magisterial teaching and practice?
My questions are leading, and in the extreme. Granted. I’m open to being wrong. Ratzinger’s oft-quoted words from half a century ago, about the church shrinking in size and prestige but becoming purer and more faithful as a result, may well apply to the churches of the Reformation as much as to Rome. Nor do the trend lines mean anything, literally anything, with respect to whether or not Christians who find themselves in true-blue Protestant churches ought to seek to be faithful as best they can in the time and place in which God has placed them. Obviously they should.
But at the macro level, looking at the big picture, I can’t escape the sense that McCormack is right, and hence that in the coming decades the ecclesiological choice we face, and our children face, will be between two options, not three. If true, that makes a big difference—for church conversations, for theological arguments, for political debates. We ought therefore to face it head on, with courage, clarity, and honesty, and most of all without pretense. Collective denial is not going to make the present crisis disappear. Let’s be thinking and talking now about what it is the times, which is to say the Holy Spirit, requires of us. Let’s not wake up in 2047 and realize we missed our only opportunity to avert disaster.