POSTCONSERVATISM, BIBLICAL AUTHORITY, AND RECENT PROPOSALS FOR RE-DOING EVANGELICAL THEOLOGY: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS
INTRODUCTION: BEING “BIBLICAL” IN OUR THEOLOGY
At the heart of evangelical theology is the attempt to be biblical, to “take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5). But what does it mean to be “biblical” in our theology? How does one know that one’s theological proposals are faithful to Scripture, and thus biblically warranted? That question might seem strange to ask, especially for evangelicals, since many of us, at least in the past, have seemingly believed that the task of doing theology is fairly obvious and straightforward. However, in recent days, let alone in the past, many have begun to acknowledge that the task of doing theology in a “biblical” way is not at all obvious. Many acknowledge today that it is a bit more complicated than we have thought, and thus self-conscious reflection on these matters is crucial for the doing of evangelical theology today, especially for those of us who believe that constructing a center for evangelical theology is both a possibility and a necessity. In fact, in my view, there are at least three reasons why critical reflection on how we do theology as evangelicals is so important today.
First, probably the most basic and important reason is this: the glory of God and the cause of the gospel demand it. Surely, at the core of Christian discipleship is the attempt to live under the Lordship of Christ and to have his Word rule and reign over us, both individually and corporately, to the praise of his glory. Being clear about theological method helps us in this task. Indeed, it is precisely because of our commitment to the Lordship of Christ and the full authority of Scripture that we must reflect seriously on both how to read Scripture properly and how to apply it to our lives in a faithful, godly manner.
A second reason concerns the disconcerting yet true observation that diverse and even contradictory theological proposals all claim to be “biblical.” But how can this be? Is the Bible like a wax nose that can be twisted to fit with a variety of viewpoints, even conflicting readings of Scripture? But if all theologies are not equally biblical, which most of us would want to affirm, then on what basis may we argue that our way of doing theology, our theological beliefs are more biblical than someone else’s?1 On what basis may we argue that it is possible to construct a center for evangelical theology that is true to Scripture and thus true to “the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3)?
This last set of questions coupled with our present cultural and intellectual context, namely the rise of postmodernism, leads to a final reason why thinking about theological method is so crucial for evangelicals today. In fact, it is primarily this third reason that I want to address in this chapter. In light of the rise of postmodernism, the question Whose theology is more “biblical” or more “true”? is viewed with disdain and suspicion. Why? For the simple reason that postmodernism, at its heart and for all of its diversity, is a mind-set that is tightly linked to a denial that humans can know truth in any objective, universal sense. At this point, postmodernism is often contrasted with modernism, which reflects much of the spirit of the Enlightenment—a spirit, interestingly enough, that borrowed much from Christianity in regard to its commitment to truth, but then sought rationally to ground truth in “the turn to the human subject.” Thus, for example, like historic Christianity, modernism believed that truth was objective and universal and that reason could discover truth by research and investigation. However, unlike Christianity, it sought to discover truth apart from dependence upon God and his spoken Word. Instead of following the Christian motto of “faith seeking understand-ing” and underscoring the priority of divine revelation, modernism sought to follow the agenda of “I understand in order to believe.” In this sense, then, modernism sought to subsume all truth claims, whether philosophical or religious, under the “authority” of human reason independent of God’s Word.
Postmodernism, on the other hand, is best viewed as modernism that has traveled its road to its logical end and is thus much more epistemologically self-conscious of its starting points and conclusions.2 In this sense, postmodernism takes seriously the Enlightenment project centered in the autonomous self but then, ironically, concludes that if the Enlightenment view is correct, truth could never be objective and universal, at least for the human subject. Why? The simple reason is that finite human beings and communities are too historically situated and sociologically conditioned to ever yield a “God’s eye point of view,” that is, an objective and universal viewpoint. Truth, in the end, cannot be what modernism hoped it was; rather it must be perspectival, provisional, local, and ultimately, what the community most values—pragmatic. Of course, if postmodernism is “true,” in contrast to the beliefs of modernism, then any claims of individuals or communities to know “the truth” is necessarily wrong—an interesting irony indeed. Postmodernism, at its heart, is a distrust of anyone who says, “That’s the way it is” or “This is the truth,” and as such, it tends to lead to a full-blown pluralism and mitigated skepticism. Thus, to think that one can answer the question Whose theological proposal or way of doing theology is more “biblical” or more “true”? is viewed as both naïve and oppressive. Indeed, for many today, even to ask such questions begs the question since it already assumes a “modernist” understanding of reality and truth, namely a foundationalism in epistemology and a corresponding realism in metaphysics.3
Obviously the implications of this mindset for evangelical theology and, in particular, theological method are vast. For, ultimately, what is at stake is whether Christian theology, in any kind of historic, normative, and objective sense, is even possible. In the end, debates today over theological method are really entire worldview debates, and as such, evangelicals have no option but to think afresh about how we are to do theology in light of our present con-text. In fact, it is precisely for this reason, given the rise of postmodernism, that many postconservatives, among others, are calling for a rethinking and re-visioning of how evangelicals should do theology. Repeatedly, postconservatives are warning us that we cannot do theology as we have done it before since the former way of doing theology, especially among conserva-tive evangelicals, has too uncritically embraced the now rejected and outdated “foundationalist” epistemological project. Correspondingly, postconservatives are challenging us to rethink and recast how we ought to do theology in the wake of the postmodern critique, not only so that we will gain a hear-ing by our cultured despisers, but also so that we may speak clearly to our post-theological generation with understanding, clarity, and precision.4
Certainly, most evangelicals, including “traditionalists,”5 agree that we must constantly rethink how better to do theology in any era, let alone this postmodern one. And obviously the questions raised by our postmodern situation are of utmost importance for the elucidation and defense of the gospel today. However, as with any proposal, we must first listen to it by giving it a sympathetic hearing: we must first listen before we can speak. But with that said, we must also adopt the spirit of caveat emptor—“Buyer beware.” As heirs of the Reformation, we must always embrace the attitude of semper reformandum—“always reforming”—but not uncritically. After all, our doing of theology is not merely an academic exercise; it is first and foremost done as an act of worship to our triune God and in obedience to his Word.
In that light, the remainder of the chapter will be broken into two parts. First, similar to other chapters, I will describe and then critically evaluate, at least in a preliminary fashion, the new, revised theological method envisioned by current voices within the postconservative movement as they challenge us to take seriously our postmodern situation. Second, I will provide some brief personal reflections on what evangelicals must both reject and affirm in regard to the doing of evangelical theology in light of postconservative proposals. Obviously, postconservatism is not a monolithic movement, and as a result it is impossible to capture all the nuances of its proponents in regard to theological method. That is why I have chosen to focus on a particular pro-posal, namely the Grenz/Franke proposal, as representative of postconservatism in general. It is to this specific proposal that I now turn.
EVANGELICAL THEOLOGICAL METHOD FOR A
POSTMODERN WORLD: THE GRENZ/FRANKE PROPOSAL
Without doubt Stanley Grenz (and now John Franke) is one of postconservativism’s most prolific and important thinkers, who, for more than a decade, has been at the forefront of warning and challenging evangelicals to rethink their understanding of the nature of theology, especially in light of the post-modern critique of the Enlightenment project associated with modernism.6 Grenz has written numerous books and articles on these matters, but prob-ably the best summation of his proposal is found in his work, coauthored with Franke, Beyond Foundationalism: Shaping Theology in a Postmodern Context.7 In what follows I will attempt to summarize Grenz and Franke’s creative and complex proposal by asking three diagnostic questions before I turn to a number of critical reflections.
How Do Grenz/Franke Understand Postmodernism and Its
Importance for Doing Theology?
Even though Grenz and Franke admit that “postmodernism” is notoriously difficult to define, they understand the heart of it as “the rejection of certain central features of the modern project, such as its quest for certain, objective, and universal knowledge, along with its dualism and its assumptions of the inherent goodness of knowledge.”8 Ultimately, they summarize their under-standing of postmodernism by adopting the now famous description of Jean-François Lyotard, “incredulity toward metanarrative”9—that is, postmodernism rejects any claim to universality.10 For Grenz and Franke, even though there are negative elements of postmodernism (e.g., deconstruc-tionism), overall they view it as basically a positive movement. In fact, they argue that postmodernism is not only the cultural context theologians must interact with, it is also a more hospitable environment for the doing of Christian theology in contrast to modernism’s restrictions. Thus, freed from the constraints of the Enlightenment project, postmodernism, they argue, “has actually been responsible for the renewal of theology as an intellectual discipline,”11 and as such, it has spawned numerous helpful theological research programs.
Specifically, there is one aspect of postmodernism that Grenz and Franke find very helpful for the doing of theology, namely the epistemological shift from “foundationalism” to a “chastened rationality.” For them, this entails two significant points: first, the rejection of the Enlightenment project to ground knowledge in basic beliefs that are universal, objective, indubitable, and discernable to any rational person; and second, the acceptance of “the transition from a realist to a constructionist view of truth and the world.”12 In this they agree with many postmodern thinkers that “humans do not view the world from an objective vantage point but structure their world through the concepts they bring to it, such as language.”13 And in line with other post-Kantian thinkers, they affirm that there seems to be no way that humans can get “behind” or “above” our language to “check and see” if it corresponds to the way things really are. That is why they accept the assertion of many postmoderns that “human languages function as social conventions that describe the world in a variety of ways depending on the context of the speaker. No simple one-for-one correspondence exists between language and the world, and thus no single linguistic description can serve to provide an objective conception of the ‘real’ world,”14 including theological descriptions.
How, then, has the advent of these two affirmations of postmodernism impacted our understanding of theological method? It would seem that a chastened rationality and a constructionist view of truth would be detrimen-tal to evangelical theology as historically conceived. But Grenz and Franke disagree, and below we will discover their proposal in light of their acceptance of these two points. However, before we turn to their proposal, it is important to point out two observations they make regarding theological method that they believe the arrival of postmodernism has unveiled. The first observation, an ironic one indeed, is that the postmodern situation has shown that “although for a hundred years conservative and liberal theologians have seemingly been going their separate ways, both have actually been responding, albeit in different ways, to the same agenda, the agenda of modernity.”15 How so? In this way: both classical liberalism and conservative theology were “modernist” and “rationalistic” in their approach to theological method, although in different ways. Thus, for example, liberalism was “modernist” in that it sought for an unassailable foundation, not in Scripture, but in human religious experience.16 In this regard, liberalism in its approach to Scripture and theology was “extratextual” in that universal religious experience served as the foundation and grid by which Scripture was read and doctrines were formulated.17 However, on the other hand, conservative theology was also “modernist” in its approach. It too sought an unassailable foundation, not in universal religious experience but in an inerrant Bible “as the source book of information for systematic theology.”18 Grenz and Franke state their claim as follows:
Like their liberal antagonists, conservative theologians also searched for a foundation for theology that could stand firm when subjected to the canons of a supposedly universal human reason. Conservatives came to conclude that this invulnerable foundation lay in an error-free Bible, which they viewed as the storehouse for divine revelation. Hence, the great Princetonian theologian, Charles Hodge, asserted that the Bible is “free from all error, whether in doctrine, fact, or precept.” This inerrant foundation, in turn, could endow with epistemological certitude, at least in the-ory, the edifice the skilled theological craftsman constructed on it. For indeed, rather than offering merely a personal opinion on any matter under consideration, the adept theologian claimed that he was only restating in a more systematic form what scripture itself says.19
But there is a second point that postmodernism has revealed, namely that the task of doing theology is much more complicated than we once thought; the process of moving from biblical text to theological formulation is something that evangelicals have not taken seriously enough. This is not to say that Grenz and Franke think that evangelicals have been completely unreflective on theological method or that they do not have one. Rather, their point is that evangelical theology has too closely aligned itself with a “modernist” epistemology as evidenced in our commitment to “objectivism” and “rational propositionalism.” That is why, according to our authors, most conservative evangelicals, even to this day, have viewed the theological task in the Princetonian tradition, namely as purely an objective “science” whose task is merely to collect and organize, in an inductive manner, the “propositions”of Scripture, in any order, thus giving “the appearance of being elaborate collections of loosely related facts derived from the Bible”20 which are then put into an eternal, timeless system. But with postmodernism’s refutation of foundationalism, evangelicals’ indebtedness to this “objectivist” and “rationalis-tic” approach must be rejected. What, then, are we to replace it with? It is to our authors’ alternative proposal that we now turn.
What Is Grenz and Franke’s Alternative Proposal for
Doing Evangelical Theology?
I will briefly summarize their overall proposal in three steps.
1. Theology Must Employ a Nonfoundationalist Epistemology. In light of the postmodern demise of “foundationalism,” Grenz and Franke believe that the best epistemological alternatives for theology are a linking of coherentism, pragmatism, and the later-Wittgenstein’s notion of language-games—all of which are nonfoundationalist in orientation. First, coherentism rejects the foundationalist assumption that a “justified set of beliefs necessarily comes in the form of an edifice resting on a base. . . . [n]o beliefs are intrinsically basic and none are instrinsically superstructure.”21 Instead, coherentism asserts that beliefs are more like a mosaic or web, each belief interdependent and sup-ported by its relationship to other beliefs within the mosaic, and justified, not by a belief’s correspondence to reality, but in its overall fit with other held beliefs.22 Second, pragmatism affirms, like coherentism, that the truth of any belief is not correspondence to reality, but whether a belief advances “factual inquiry.” Truth, in other words, emerges over time as we engage in prediction followed by testing, observation, and experimental confirmation.23 And, third, the linguistic turn in philosophy entails that language is no longer viewed in a realist way, that is, as “mirroring” or “picturing” reality, but is viewed as a social affair governed by various “language-games.”24 Thus, meaning and truth are viewed as one’s ability to use the language-game correctly in a par-ticular context, and thus, what counts as justification for beliefs is internally determined by the language-game itself, not by its correspondence to reality.
Given these three commitments, how, then, do Grenz and Franke apply these nonfoundationalist philosophical resources to the doing of theology? Interestingly, they do so by developing the insights of German theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg and Yale theologian George Lindbeck. From Pannenberg, they accept and employ his coherentist model as well as his view that truth is historical and eschatological. All truth, they affirm along with Pannenberg, “ultimately comes together in God, who is the ground of the unity of truth,” and theology’s task, then, is “to bring all human knowledge together in our affirmation of God” even though “our human knowledge is never complete or absolutely certain.”25 Thus, truth, in its absolute fullness, is known only in the future. Presently, truth, including all theological statements, is provisional, and thus theological statements should be treated as hypotheses to be tested according to coherentist and pragmatic procedures.
From Lindbeck, Grenz and Franke adopt and utilize his view that theological statements and doctrines are not “true” in the sense that they say any-thing about a reality external to the language; rather they function in a Kantian “regulative way,” that is, as rules of grammar establishing the “language-game”of Christian thinking, speaking, and living. Thus, theological statements or doctrines are not making any “first-order” truth claims (i.e., asserting something objective about reality as if we had access to the “world-in-itself”). Instead, they are merely “second-order” assertions (i.e., rules for speech about God).26 Both Lindbeck and our authors call this approach “intratextual” in contrast to “extratextual.” By this they mean that theology has the task of using its language to “redescribe reality within the scriptural framework,”27 rather than either translating Scripture into extra-scriptural categories or erroneously assuming, as the conservatives thought, “that theological statements (doctrines) make first-order truth claims (that is, they assert that something is objectively true or false).”28 In the end, to be “intratextual,” our authors contend, entails that the text “absorbs the world, rather than the other way around.”29
But if so, it must still be asked: Do our authors believe that there is any-thing “foundational” for Christian theology, given their nonfoundational approach? The answer to this question leads us to the second step of their revisionist proposal for doing evangelical theology.
2. Theology Must Affirm the “Basic” Nature of the Christian Interpretative Framework. The language of “basic” or “properly basic” is adopted from the work of Alvin Plantinga, Nicholas Wolterstorff, et al., who belong to the view known as “Reformed Epistemology.”30 Reformed epistemologists have argued two main points against “classic foundationalism.”First, they have argued that the whole agenda of classic foundationalism is internally incoherent, and second, that belief in God is not merely a derived or non-basic belief, but a “properly basic” belief, and thus, a person who believes in God is within his rational rights to do so, even though he might not be able to furnish specific arguments for his belief.31 However, in a parallel but different way, Grenz and Franke employ the language of “basic” to answer the question, Is there anything in Christian theology that may be con-sidered basic or foundational? Their answer is affirmative: “the Christian-experience- facilitating interpretative framework, arising as it does out of the biblical narrative.”32
But what exactly is the “Christian-experience-facilitating interpretative framework”? And by labeling it “basic,” do they mean “first-order” in the sense that Scripture gives us true, objective knowledge of God and this world (reality), yet is never exhaustive? Historically, evangelicals have argued that Scripture is both “basic” and “first-order” so that Scripture serves as the theologian’s interpretative framework from which second-order theological reflection is grounded. But is this what Grenz and Franke are affirming? Are they merely saying what evangelicals have always affirmed, and if so, then what is exactly new about their proposal? Unfortunately, this does not seem to be what they are affirming, for at least two reasons.33
First, our authors seem to view the “Christian interpretative framework” not as Scripture alone. Instead they view it as a combination of our experience of being encountered redemptively in Jesus Christ by God and of being placed in a community of believers who have experienced similar event(s) in their lives and who together interpret their experiences “cast in the categories drawn from the biblical narrative as well as from its explication in the didac-tic sections of scripture.”34 It is, then, this combination of things that serves as the Christian interpretative framework. In this sense Christians are identified as Christians because we share in common a particular experience of being encountered by God in Christ and we interpret that experience, not as nineteenth-century liberalism did in terms of a “single, universal, founda-tional religious experience that supposedly lay beneath the plethora of reli-gious experiences found in various religious traditions,”35 but in terms of an interpretative framework that arises out of the biblical narrative, but which is not reduced to it and which serves as an “identity-constituting narrative.”36
Second, in contrast to traditional evangelical theology, Grenz and Franke are emphatic that they do not view the “basic” nature of the Christian interpretative framework as either a return to a renewed foundationalism or an affirmation that this interpretative framework is first-order. They state:
The cognitive framework that is “basic” for theology is not a given that precedes the theological enterprise; it does not provide the sure foundation on which the theological edifice can in turn be constructed. Rather, in a sense the interpretative framework and theology are inseparably intertwined. Just as every interpretative framework is essentially theological, so also every articulation of the Christian cognitive framework comes already clothed in a specific theological understanding. In fact, every such articulation is the embodiment of a specific understanding of the Christian theological vision;each embodies a specific understanding of the world as it is connected to the God of the Bible.37
In other words, the “interpretative framework” which includes Scripture is already theological in nature, and thus second-order. That is why they insist that “the theologian’s task is not to work from an interpretative framework to a theological construct,”38 as if theology were working from Scripture to theology. Instead, as our authors insist, “the theological enterprise consists in setting forth in a systematic manner a properly Christian framework as informed by the Bible for the sake of the church’s mission in the contemporary context.”39
Now if I understand our authors correctly, their proposal is denying that theology moves from first-order language (Scripture alone) to second-order description (theological formulation). As noted, it is at this point that they seriously depart from traditional evangelical theological method. Furthermore, they seem to imply erroneously that evangelicals tend to equate their theology (i.e., doctrinal formulations and confessional statements) with Scripture to such an extent that their theology becomes a de facto substitute for Scripture.40 Instead, Grenz and Franke assert that all the-ological formulations are only particular, contextual expressions of the Christian faith, not the Christian faith itself. But is this understanding of evangelical theology correct?
On the one hand, evangelicals have rightly acknowledged that even though Scripture is first-order, even though it is fully authoritative, we must still interpret the text, which inevitably means that we are involved in a kind of “hermeneutical spiral.”41 We approach the text with assumptions and biases, but as we read and study the text, it, by the work of the Spirit, in relation to a believing community, is able to correct our readings. Thus, by hard work, listening to others (i.e., the role of tradition), prayer, and in obedience to God’s Word, we are able to understand Scripture more correctly and accurately. On the other hand, evangelicals have rarely claimed that our theological constructions (including our confessions) are as authoritative as the text itself. But we have affirmed what Grenz and Franke seem unwilling to affirm, namely, that if our exegesis, exposition, and theological reflections accurately reflect what Scripture teaches, then we can say that our interpretation is true and biblical. Of course, this never entails that our theological formulations can ever act as a substitute for Scripture. We are always driven back to the text, again and again, to reformulate and rethink our doctrinal positions precisely because theology is second-order language. But given the fact that Scripture is first-order language due to its divine inspiration, our theology is always rooted and grounded in a “revelational foundation”—a Word-revelation that allows us to understand God, ourselves, and this world truly (i.e., objectively), but never exhaustively.42 But this, sadly, seems to be what Grenz and Franke are denying.
Why do they opt for this way of revisioning theology? It is due to their double conviction that all “foundationalisms” have been rejected, including a “revelational foundationalism,” and that conservative evangelicals, in the past and present, have mistakenly viewed Scripture and theology through an outdated “modernist” grid. In particular they have in their sights Charles Hodge (and those who follow in his wake) as a classic paradigm example of a “modernist” who described Scripture as “a storehouse of facts” and who viewed the theological task as merely putting Scripture in its “proper order and relations.”43 In my view, Hodge’s understanding of theological method is unfortunate and should be rejected, even though it is debatable whether he actually followed this method in practice. In this regard, then, Grenz and Franke are right in pointing out that theology is more than merely collecting, arranging, and organizing the facts or propositions of Scripture. In addition, they are correct to observe that knowledge, including theology, is not merely a collection of isolated factual statements arising directly from first principles since, as they correctly state, “our beliefs form a system in which each belief is supported by its neighbors and, ultimately, by its presence within the whole . . . we ought to view Christian doctrine as comprising a ‘belief-mosaic’ and see theology, in turn, as the exploration of Christian doctrine viewed as an interrelated, unified whole.”44 But to fail to distinguish a “biblical foundationalism” from a classical, Enlightenment one is simply a mistake of gigan-tic proportions. In the end, it leads them to think differently about the theological task and to view theology along the lines of a coherentist, pragmatic, and nonrealist vision, instead of as a more realist vision grounded in a first-order, true, and objective revelational foundation.45
But a crucial question still remains: Given this revisionist model of theology, what happens to the question and status of truth, especially in a reli-giously pluralistic world? In order to answer that question, let us turn to the third and last step of their proposal.
3. Theology Must Answer the Question of Truth Along Communitarian and Pragmatist Lines. Given what our authors have proposed, it is now legitimate to ask, as they themselves ask, “Does theology speak about anything objective, or does it content itself with merely articulating the interpretative framework of a specific religious tradition?”46 An important question indeed!
In fact, I dare say that this is the crucial question facing Christian theology today, given the rise of postmodernism and our interaction with a religiously pluralistic world. What is their response? Sadly, they think that this way of asking the question is “both improper and ultimately unhelpful,”47 so instead they want to ask, “How can a nonfoundationalist theological method lead us to statements about a world beyond our formulations?”48
Their response is that they admit that there is “a certain undeniable givenness to the universe apart from the human linguistic-constructive task.”49 However, they view this “givenness” as not the objectivity of what some think of as “the world-in-itself,” since, in their view, humans do not have access to this noumenal reality. But is there any sense in which we may speak of “objectivity”? Yes, they argue, in the sense of a future world, “the world as God wills it to be”50—an eschatological world that is still to come, which, they contend, “is far more real—objectively real—than the present world, which is even now passing away (1 Cor. 7:31).”51 So, it seems, in the present, our authors think that we must content ourselves with an epistemological and metaphysical nonrealism, but we can anticipate, in the future, an eschatological realism. Whether one can make sense of this I will address below, but for Grenz and Franke this entails that the task of the Christian community—through its theological language, by the work of the Holy Spirit in, among, and through them, speaking through Scripture—is to construct a world that begins to reflect God’s own will for creation, as centered in Jesus Christ.52 However, they quickly add, the constructivist role of theology is always provisional, local, and second-order as we attempt to listen to God’s Spirit speaking to us through the three sources for theology: the biblical narrative, the tradition of the church, and contemporary culture.
But a fundamental question still remains: “Why give primacy to the world-constructing language of the Christian community?”53 Is it because it is true? Obviously, our authors cannot state it this way since that would assume an implicit “foundationalism.” So how do we address the pressing question of the “truth” of the language of theology? In a consistent fashion, Grenz and Franke believe that we must wed communitarian and pragmatist insights. We must attempt to show that the Christian theological vision of a “true” community, rooted in the triune nature of God, is “the kind of community that all religious belief systems in their own way and according to their own understanding seek to foster” and that the Christian vision provides “the best transcendent basis for the human ideal of life-in-relationship.”54 In other words, in our apologetic debate with other competing linguistic con-structions of the world, we must ask, “Which religious vision carries within itself the ground for community in the truest sense?”55 And it is the conviction of our authors that “no other religious vision encapsulates the final purpose of God. . . . Other religious visions cannot provide community in its ultimate sense, because they are theologically insufficient. They do not embody the fullest possible understanding of who God actually is.”56
However, as in other areas of their proposal, one begins to wonder whether these statements are consistent with their overall nonfoundationalist approach. After all, how does one determine what the “true” community is? On what grounds will other competing linguistic constructions of various religious communities (Islam, for example) accept our Christian linguistic construction as a “truer” view of community than theirs? Does Grenz’s question not implicitly assume a kind of foundationalism and realism? I will have more to say on this below, but before I do, I want to turn to our third and last diagnostic question in describing the Grenz/Franke proposal.
What Role Does Scripture Play in Grenz/Franke’s
Proposal for Theological Method?
In our last diagnostic question, I want to probe deeper in regard to the role Scripture plays in Grenz and Franke’s revisionist proposal for doing evangelical theology. I have already argued that for Grenz and Franke, Scripture is not first-order language, as traditionally conceived; rather it is the “Christian interpretative framework” which is “basic” for Christian theology—a combination and interweaving of Scripture, experience, tradition, and so on—the “language game” of the Christian community. In fact, they are forthright in confessing that they believe there are three sources for theology—Scripture, tradition, and culture—and ultimately, it is the Spirit who speaks through all three of them, although the Spirit’s speaking through Scripture is the “norm-ing norm” of the church. Let us unpack exactly what they mean by this in five steps.
First, we may begin with what they do not mean. Clearly, they reject what evangelicals have historically meant by sola Scriptura—that Scripture serves as first-order language, the final authority for all Christian theology and praxis. They state their opposition this way: “Scripture does not stand alone as the sole source in the task of theological construction or as the sole basis on which the Christian faith has developed historically. Rather scripture functions in an ongoing and dynamic relationship with the Christian tradition, as well as with the cultural milieu from which particular readings of the text emerge.”57 Additionally, Scripture, as the “norming norm” must not be viewed as a “storehouse of facts” or “propositions”—i.e., propositional rev-elation—by which theology merely gathers, arranges, and orders the propo-sitions of Scripture in a proper way.58 Furthermore, they do not view Scripture as a book that is authoritative in itself as God’s breathed-out Word59 in the sense that Scripture is objective, basic, and self-authenticating apart from the faith of the church and the instrumentality of the Spirit.60
So, second, what then do they mean? What authority does Scripture have as the “norming norm” of the church? For them, the Scripture is authoritative due to the fact that “it is the vehicle through which the Spirit speaks.”61 They state, reminiscent of Karl Barth, that, “. . . the authority of the Bible is in the end the authority of the Spirit whose instrumentality it is. As Christians, we acknowledge the Bible as scripture in that the sovereign Spirit has bound authoritative, divine speaking to this text. We believe that the Spirit has chosen, now chooses, and will continue to choose to speak with authority through the biblical texts.”62 But why do Christians believe this? It is certainly not because the Bible in itself, as an inspired text, is God’s Word in a self-attesting way, say Grenz and Franke, but rather it is due to the fact that the church has experienced the power and truth of the Spirit of God through these writings. Thus, as our authors argue, “they [the church] knew these documents were ‘animated with the Spirit of Christ.’”63 Thus, on the one hand, they agree with Protestant theology that the text produced the community. But, on the other hand, they also defer to the Catholic tradition by asserting that “the community preceded the production of the scriptural texts and is responsible for their content and for the identification of particular texts for inclusion in an authoritative canon to which it has chosen to make itself accountable.”64 In this sense, then, Scripture is a product of the community of faith that produced it. But what unifies the relationship between Scripture and community is the work of the Spirit, who “appropriates” the biblical text and speaks to us through it. That is why, our authors confidently affirm, “fol-lowing the lead of the church of ages, we too look to the biblical texts to hear the Spirit’s voice.”65
Third, given that the authority of Scripture is the Spirit speaking through the Scriptures, it still must be asked: In what sense is the Bible the forming source for our theological construction? Their answer is this: The “biblical message” is the norming norm in theology. They state, “As noted earlier, it is not the Bible as a book that is authoritative, but the Bible as the instrumentality of the Spirit; the biblical message spoken by the Spirit through the text is theology’s norming norm.”66 But what is the relationship between the “bib-lical message” and the text itself? Thankfully they reject the classic liberal view that the biblical message lies somehow “behind” the text. Unfortunately, however, they are reluctant to posit a “one-to-one correspondence between the revelation of God and the Bible, that is, between the Word of God and the words of scripture,”67 in the sense that evangelicals have traditionally affirmed that the Bible is the Word of God. For Grenz and Franke, ultimately to say “the Word of God” is to have both a Christological and pneumatological focus.68 But with that said, how are we to think of this crucial rela-tionship? They ultimately conclude that the relationship is somewhat fluid. Yes, the “biblical message” is the norming norm for theology, but “in saying this we must be careful not to posit a nebulous, ethereal ‘something’ stand-ing behind the text to which we have at best only limited access. Rather, the biblical message is in some important sense bound to the canonical text itself.”69 But how? Grenz and Franke’s explanation involves the employment of three crucial proposals.
(1) They adopt Nicholas Wolterstorff’s “appropriated discourse” model.70 In this model, Wolterstorff proposes that a crucial way for conceiving of the relationship between God’s speech and Scripture is not only in terms of “deputized discourse,” that is, God enlisted the prophets, for example, to bring a message to the community, but also in terms of “appropriated dis-course,” that is, God “appropriates” the discourse of the biblical authors as his own, without necessarily agreeing with them at every point. Obviously, for Wolterstorff the problem arises in trying to lay out the criteria for deter-mining what God agrees with in his appropriation and what he does not agree with.71 Grenz and Franke never address this issue, though one assumes that they would appeal to the Spirit speaking through the text to the community.
(2) However, in contrast to Wolterstorff, they adopt a “textual-sense interpretation” over against an “authorial-discourse interpretation.” In an authorial-discourse view, God’s speaking is tied to the text by the intention of the biblical authors which is discovered, in the language of speech-act theory, by attending to the illocutionary acts of the biblical authors. However, Grenz and Franke, contrary to much of traditional hermeneutics, reject this approach for a textual-sense interpretation. In this view, the meaning of the biblical text is found in the text but not necessarily directly tied to the author’s intent, since once the author creates the text it takes on a life of its own. Appealing to philosopher Paul Ricoeur, they state it this way: “although an author creates a literary text, once it has been written, it takes on a life of its own. The author’s intention has been ‘distanced’ from the meanings of the work, although the ways in which the text is structured shape the meanings the reader discerns in the text. In a sense, the text has its own intentions, which has its genesis in the author’s intention but is not exhausted by it.”72
(3) In light of the above two points, Grenz and Franke now answer the question, “What does it mean to declare that the Spirit speaks through scripture?” 73 Their answer is this: the Spirit speaks through Scripture by “appropriating the biblical text.”74 But they are very clear that in “appropriating the text,” the Spirit’s intention is not simply and totally tied to the author’s inten-tion in the text. In an amazing admission, they write:
. . . the Spirit’s illocutionary act of appropriation does not come independently of what classical interpretation called “the original meaning of the text.” . . . At the same time, the Spirit’s address is not bound up simply and totally with the text’s supposed internal meaning. Indeed, as certain con-temporary proponents of “textual intentionality” (e.g., Paul Ricoeur) remind us, although an author creates a literary text, once it has been writ-ten, it takes on a life of its own. The author’s intention has been “distanced”from the meanings of the work, although the ways in which the text is structured shape the meanings the reader discerns in the text. In a sense, the text has its own intention, which has its genesis in the author’s intention but is not exhausted by it.
Consequently, we must never conclude that exegesis alone can exhaust the Spirit’s speaking to us through the text. Although the Spirit’s illocutionary act is to appropriate the text in its internal meaning (i.e., to appro-priate what the author said), the Spirit appropriates the text with the goal of communicating to us in our situation, which, while perhaps paralleling in certain respects that of the ancient community, is nevertheless unique.
Further, in appropriating the biblical text, the Spirit speaks, but the Spirit’s speaking does not come through the text in isolation. Rather, we read the text cognizant that we are the contemporary embodiment of a centuries-long interpretive tradition within the Christian community (and hence we must take seriously the theological tradition of the church). And we read realizing that we are embedded in a specific historical-cultural con-text (and hence we must pay attention to our culture). In this process of listening to the Spirit speaking through the appropriated text, theology assists the community of faith in discerning what the Spirit is saying and in fos-tering an appropriate obedient response to the Spirit’s voice.75
Fourth, what, then, is the goal of the Spirit’s speaking through the appropriated biblical text? Our authors respond by arguing that the goal of the Spirit’s speaking, what they describe as the perlocutionary effect, is to create a “world,” that is, to project a way of being in the world, a mode of existence, and a pattern of life—ultimately, God’s eschatological world, that which he intends for creation.76 But, once again, it is crucial to remember that for our authors, this projected “world” “does not lie in the text itself, even though it is closely bound to the text”77; rather, it is the Spirit who creates this “world,” specifically a “communal world,” through the text.78 The Bible narrates the primary paradigmatic events that shape the identity of the Christian community, and the Spirit appropriates the biblical narrative, con-necting us with our narrative past and linking us to our glorious future, so that in speaking through the text, the Spirit forms in us a communal inter-pretive framework that creates a new world. In this way, the Spirit leads us to view ourselves and all reality in light of a specifically biblical interpretive framework so that we might thereby understand and respond to the challenges of life in the present as the contemporary embodiment of a faith com-munity that spans the ages.79
Fifth, and last, how, then, should we read Scripture? What should our hermeneutics be? Their answer is that we must read Scripture as a “theological text.” At its heart, this kind of reading is not to use the Bible as that which provides “raw materials for erecting a systematic theological edifice.”80 Instead, our reading of the Bible is “to discern the Spirit’s voice through the appropriated text”81 as centered in “the biblical message as a whole, that is, in the overarching goal and purposes of God to create an eschatological world as indicated by scripture in its entirety.”82 Obviously, in this theological read-ing, we must respect the integrity of the text within its own world, while at the same time acknowledging that a distance stands between our world and the world of the text. Thus, to read theologically is to listen for the Spirit’s voice in Scripture not merely through exegesis, but also to us in our present context, as the Spirit creates a new world in the reader’s present.83 And furthermore, we are to read Scripture in such a way that we look for “converging patterns present throughout the documents . . . above all, we read the texts in light of their convergence in the pattern that centers on God’s work in Jesus Christ and the subsequent sending of the Spirit, that pattern that Christians believe lies at the heart of the Bible as a whole.”84 In this sense, we are to read the diverse texts of Scripture as a single voice. However, our authors are emphatic that the singularity of voice is not inherent in the texts themselves, nor is it ultimately dependent on the church’s decision to shape the canon; rather it rests upon the “singularity of the Spirit who speaks through the texts.”85
This approach, they assert, has the benefit of opening up an ongoing conversation involving the interplay of the three sources of theology: Scripture, tradition, and culture. Since the Spirit speaks through all three, we carefully listen for the voice of the Spirit who speaks through Scripture, in light of his speaking through the tradition of the church, and within the particularity of culture. To be sure, Grenz and Franke add the cautionary note that the Spirit’s speaking that occurs in tradition and culture will not be a speaking against the text, but they do not concede that the text is more “foundational” than tradition or culture, even though it is the “norming norm” of the church. In fact, for them, tradition, culture, and Scripture are not different moments of communication; rather they are but one speaking. And thus, Grenz and Franke assert, we do not engage in different listenings, but only one.86 In the end, they affirm, in the famous slogan, “all truth is God’s truth.”87
But, it must be asked, what keeps this theological reading of Scripture from subjectivism? Interestingly, they ask themselves this question: “Does this link between Spirit and Word make the authority of the Bible dependent on our hearing the voice of the Spirit in its pages?”88 Their answer: a theology of Word and Spirit need not lapse into subjectivism, as long as it does not place the individual ahead of the community. They state, “The Bible remains objectively scripture because it is the book of the church. From its inception, the community of Christ—following the lead of the ancient Jewish community (e.g., Neh. 8:1-8)—has been a people who gather around the text to hear the Spirit’s voice speaking through it. And throughout the ages this community has testified that the sovereign Spirit has spoken—and continues to speak—through the pages of the Bible.”89 In this sense, then, a theological reading of Scripture must always take place within a communal setting—not only in light of the faith community that precedes us, but also in light of our own local congregational setting. In the end, they assert, “our goal is to hear what the Spirit is saying to this particular congregation and to these particular believers who share together the mandate of being a fellowship of believ-ers in this specific setting.”90
CRITICAL REFLECTIONS ON THE GRENZ/FRANKE PROPOSAL
What should we think of this very creative and challenging proposal which, in general, is an excellent representative of postconservative think-ing on the subject of theological method? Does it help us do theology bet-ter in light of our current cultural context? Or is it held captive to it? Does it help us answer better what it means to be “biblical”? Or is it ultimately adverse in this regard? Certainly within the limitations of this chapter, I cannot do justice to it. As one might have noticed, Grenz and Franke’s discussion, indeed any discussion of theological method, interfaces with so many difficult and crucial areas—postmodernism, epistemology, Scripture, hermeneutics, historical theology—that my reflections will of necessity be simply that, reflections.
Positive Reflections
First, Grenz and Franke are to be commended for challenging evangelicals to take seriously the doing of theology in a post-theological age. They are certainly not the first to do so, but they represent a strong reminder that our doing theology today must address the issues of the day. Theology and theological method does not have the luxury of merely repeating slogans from the past; it must be done afresh by the people of God to address current issues, otherwise we will fail in our high calling before the Lord. As Martin Luther reminded us many years ago, we must fight the battles of our day—where the world and the devil are that moment attacking—for unless we do, we are not being faithful soldiers of our Lord Jesus Christ.91
Second, this proposal challenges evangelicals to rethink our theological method afresh. Our authors are to be applauded for challenging us to be more self-conscious about this important subject. Even though I find much of their presentation of conservatives quite misleading—especially their characterization of “traditionalists” as “modernists” without any careful distinctions made between various kinds of foundationalisms, or of other conservative traditions that do not fit their sweeping generalizations,92 or even their treat- ment of contemporary evangelical theologians93—they do remind us of some crucial areas that many evangelicals need to rethink, such as: (1) we must not view the theological task merely as an inductive collecting, organizing, and arranging of texts, a kind of proof-texting approach apart from reading and applying Scripture in light of its own internal categories and structure;94 (2) we need to be careful that we do not conceive of propositional revelation in such a way that we do not do justice to all the language and literature of Scripture;95 (3) we must read Scripture canonically, not merely atomistically;96 (4) we need to be reminded of our own historical located-ness and the impor-tance of listening to the past in our theological construction and the hermeneutical-spiral nature of interpretation; (5) the demise of classical foundationalism entails that we rethink traditional theological method, especially the agenda of natural theology, which has sought to move from the axioms of either universal reason or experience to Scripture and then to theology.97
Third, I applaud their desire to be “intratextual” in their approach to theology. Generally speaking, as noted earlier, we may conceive of two different approaches to the doing of theology—extratextual and intratextual. To be extratextual means that Scripture must be read through an extratextual ideological or philosophical grid that we bring to the text. In the worst-case scenario, complete priority is given to some modern or postmodern secular worldview, and Christianity is valid only insofar as it fits in with that world-view. Christian faith and practice is found true or acceptable only when it conforms to the criteria that is external to it and claims superiority over it. An excellent example of this is that of classical liberalism or contemporary pluralism.98 That certainly is not how evangelicals should do theology or be “biblical,” and our authors rightly reject this approach, as should all evangelicals. Intratextual, on the other hand, means that priority is given to the language, self-description, categories, form, and structure of Scripture and thus our doing of theology and whole understanding of the world is, as Calvin stated, viewed through the “spectacles” of Scripture.99 To be intratextual does not imply that in the doing of theology the task is simply one of repeating Scripture, for Scripture must be applied to every aspect of our lives, both individually and corporately. But it does entail that to do Christian theology requires that God’s Word is our final authority, the grid or interpretative matrix or metanarrative by which we view everything—our beliefs, doctrine, life, and practices. In the end, it is doing theology intratextually—that is, start-ing with the language, literature, form, and structure of Scripture itself as redemptive-historical revelation, progressively disclosed—that is required in order to attach the predicate “biblical” to our theology.100
Now even though I agree with the overall “intratextual” approach of Grenz and Franke, it is necessary to distinguish their approach, which is more indebted to the influence of postliberalism at this point, from the intratextual approach I would take, which conceives of Scripture as divinely authorized discourse, the sole authority for Christian faith and practice. Thus, in my view, they are correct to emphasize the need for the canonical Scriptures to be the “norming norm” for our theological reflection. They are also right in affirming that the task of theology is to redescribe reality within the scrip-tural framework so that all of life is viewed from an “unabashedly Christian and specifically biblical interpretive framework so that we might thereby understand and respond to the challenges of life in the present as the con-temporary embodiment of a faith community that spans the ages.”101 However, given their proposal, I question whether they can fulfill these aspirations in such a way that the full authority of Scripture is maintained, at least as historically conceived, and a transcendental condition for the possibility of doing a normative theology is given.102 It is to those concerns that I now briefly turn.
Negative Reflections
First, I am not convinced that Grenz and Franke’s overly positive interpretation of postmodernism in regard to Christian theology and evangelical theo-logical method is correct. Certainly, I agree with them that postmodernism has been helpful in pointing out the inherent problems of modernism, namely its hubris in thinking that finite human beings are self-sufficient, autonomous subjects who can discover, on their own apart from God and his revelation, truth in the metanarrative sense of universality and objectivity. Christian theology, at its best, has always criticized modernism for this very point.103 However, I am a bit amazed that our authors do not seem to recognize that postmodernism starts from exactly the same starting point that modernism does, namely human autonomy, instead of God and his revelation. In the end, Christian theology must be neither modern nor postmodern. To be sure, modernism was no friend of the gospel, but neither is postmodernism.104 Both have legitimate points to make, when viewed from a Christian worldview per-spective; but both, taken as a whole, also stand opposed to the gospel and biblical Christianity. Michael Horton states it well when he comments:
Too often in contemporary theology, despite the now almost universal repudiation of modernity, method assumes a remarkably modern critical stance. Although antifoundationalist “foundations” are presupposed in the place of modern ones, in the thriving (if scorned) industry of methodological theology, the distinct voice of scripture and that “great conversation”which is tradition is still postponed. In other words, theology is increasingly absent from the discipline of theology.105
Second, I find it difficult to fathom how our authors link evangelical theology’s acceptance of an “error-free Bible as the incontrovertible foundation of their theology”106 with an Enlightenment foundationalism.107 A scriptural foundationalism is not grounded in the finite human subject as both mod-ernism and postmodernism attempt to do, but instead it is rooted and grounded in the Bible’s own presentation of the triune God—to use the famous words of Francis Schaeffer, the God who is there. Knowledge, grounded in the one who is the Creator and sovereign Lord, the one who exhaustively knows all things, and additionally, the one who has created human beings in his image and who has disclosed himself to us, is certainly not the same kind of “foundationalism” as found in modernism. This is simply a mistake.
Third, I am puzzled by Grenz and Franke’s adoption of coherentism, pragmatism, and epistemological and metaphysical nonrealism as resources for evangelical theological method. No doubt human beings are finite, linguistic creatures. And I agree that we, as human beings, cannot get outside of our own heads to check out “reality” from an omniscient perspective. I also agree that not all language is referential (even though some of it is), for language has many uses, including an identity-forming and world-constructing function, as well as an idolatrous world-constructing use! But to admit all of this does not entail a commitment to accept the entire nonrealist viewpoint, especially from a Christian worldview commitment. No doubt, given the post-Kantian, finite, autonomous starting point of much of postmodern thought, it is not hard to understand why certain postmodern perspectives adopt nonrealism and, correspondingly, perspectivalism.108 But that an evangelical theology would adopt such commitments is not only unnecessary but also disturbing.
For after all, a Christian view of God, creation, and the world, including the creation of human beings and language, must acknowledge that language is a God-given gift, designed in such a way that we are able to know God truly, as well as ourselves and this world, though never exhaustively. Why should we think that because our knowledge of God comes through revela-tion and then through our senses, reason, and linguistic means, it cannot be knowledge of God as he really is or of reality as it really is, but only a mat-ter of linguistic construction? That is simply an unscriptural concept. As John Frame rightly reminds us, “In Scripture, reality (God in particular) is known, and our senses, reason and imagination are not barriers to this knowledge; they do not necessarily distort it. Rather, our senses, reason, and imagination are themselves revelations of God—means that God uses to drive His truth home to us. God is Lord; He will not be shut out of His world.”109 Thus, all things being equal, the human subject, though never omniscient, can objectively know this world at a finite level. God is not only the creator of the human subject and the object (world), but he has also revealed himself truth-fully in nature and Scripture. To be sure, Christian theology, in defending a “design plan” to language, does not ignore the fact that the Fall has affected both our cognitive faculties and the environment so they are not always in perfect working order. But even though language may be problematic in some regards, it is still designed, even in this fallen order, to lead us to know God and his world, a knowledge that is true and objective even though finite and now fallen.110
Moreover, it seems to me that there are some internal problems in our authors’ defense of a present nonrealism and a future eschatological realism. On the one hand, if God knows all things past, present, and future infallibly (I assume they would affirm this), then why can we not say that what we know, as a subset of his knowledge based upon his revelation, truly reflects both the knowledge of him and of this world in the present, not merely in the future? For after all, Grenz and Franke seem to assume that there are truths that we may know now that are not merely constructed, such as the fact that God is bringing about the eschatological reality of the new creation. If we may know that truth now, then why not other truths? On the other hand, given their view, why should we think that the future will yield an epistemological and metaphysical realism if in the future we will still remain finite crea-tures? After all, there is no evidence that we will gain a “God’s eye viewpoint”in the new creation; so if there is no realism now, then why would there be realism in the future?
Fourth, and probably one of the most serious implications of Grenz and Franke’s adoption of nonfoundationalism, is the problem they have in stat-ing the truth question. After all, how does one attempt to demonstrate the truthfulness of the gospel in a postmodern and pluralistic world? An important question indeed! In their answer, they struggle to argue how we may show that Christianity is “true” in the face of world religions and competing worldviews. They assume that other worldviews will accept our under-standing of what a “true” community is (which seems to imply a kind of real-ism and criteria outside of the system). But given their nonfoundationalism, I do not see how they will be able to make their case. In the end, their project leaves Christian theology apologetically defenseless, a self-contained lin-guistic system that is not able to demonstrate before a watching world why it is indeed true. Christian theology can and must do much better than this.
Fifth, I am convinced, for a number of reasons, that their view of Scripture does not do justice to what the Bible claims for itself and, therefore, it greatly weakens the grounding for doing theology in any kind of normative fashion. In regard to the Bible’s claim for itself, evangelical theology has affirmed that Scripture is nothing less than God’s Word written, the product of God’s action through the Word and by the Holy Spirit whereby human authors freely wrote exactly what God intended and without error.111 One of the entailments of this view of Scripture for theology is that in order to be “biblical,” we must allow our theology to attend to the language, shape, and form of Scripture as the “spectacles” by which we look at the world. Scripture, then, given its divine inspiration, is first-order language, fully authoritative, infallible, and inerrant, and that being the case, it serves as our foundation by which all second-order reflection is grounded, evaluated, and corrected. Ultimately, evangelical theology has argued, Scripture serves this role, not merely because it is the community’s book, nor merely due to its being utilized by the Spirit in some dynamic sense, but precisely because it is what it claims to be, God’s Word written, that is, divinely authorized dis-course that gives us God’s own interpretations of his own mighty actions.112 Now, at least historically, this is what evangelicals have meant by biblical authority.113 But does the view of Scripture proposed by Grenz and Franke live up to this expectation? I do not think so, for at least five reasons.
(1) Their understanding of first- and second-order language as applied to Scripture and theology does not treat Scripture itself as “first-order” and thus fully and finally authoritative. Rather it is the “Christian interpretive frame-work,” which is a combination of Scripture, experience, and interpretation that is basic and foundational for them, but it is in the category of second-order.
(2) They deny that Scripture has an “inherent” authority due to its divine authorship or inspired character and thus it is not a self-authenticating or self-attesting text. Instead, they view the authority of Scripture in a dynamic man ner—the Spirit “appropriating” the text and speaking “through” it.114 They seem to believe that if inspiration is viewed as a past event, then this implies that God has ceased to act and has become directly identical with the medium of revelation. They seem to echo Barth’s concerns that God always remain only indirectly identical with the creaturely mediums of revelation, including Scripture, otherwise God’s freedom will be compromised and human beings would be able to move from a position of epistemic dependency to one of epistemic mastery.115 But surely there is something strange about saying that an inspired, objective text, the product of God’s mighty action, would change the epistemic relationship between God and ourselves from that of dependency to mastery.116 In the end, their view does not do justice to what the Bible claims regarding itself.
(3) Franke (and I am assuming Grenz) falsely identifies Barth’s dialectic of veiling and unveiling with a Reformed distinction between archetypal and ectypal, or God’s knowing all things exhaustively and infallibly (divine knowledge) and our knowing things finitely, yet truly.117 In Reformed theology, this distinction has been used to acknowledge that even though Scripture is very much human and, as such, will never transcend its finitude, it is pre-cisely because Scripture is God’s own speech in human language that the lan-guage that God selects is appropriate for us so that we may know him, ourselves, and the world truly. Thus, all of biblical language in all of its diversity—because it is God who authorizes it—must be accurate and true, even though it does not give us access to the kind of knowledge that God has. Scripture, then, is sufficient for the purposes God intended.118 However Franke does not view Scripture in this way, even though he appeals to this Reformed distinction. Instead he views the relationship between God’s brevelation and the creaturely medium, such as Scripture, in an indirect fashion.That is one of the main reasons why inspiration must now be construed in dynamic terms and revelation must not be understood apart from speaking of someone receiving revelation—hence, their view that Scripture is revela-tion and authoritative precisely because it is where the Spirit continually speaks through the text to us. In this account, our authors are attempting to affirm a nonfoundational understanding of Scripture and theology by means of a thoroughly pneumatological approach. But, as my next point will emphasize, this proposal leads to a Word-Spirit relation that is highly problematic: it views the Spirit as speaking and creating a world independently of Scripture’s speaking, instead of maintaining a correct view that the Spirit’s speaking is always the speaking of Scripture. But that leads me to my next point of criticism.
(4) Given their conception of the Word-Spirit relation, Grenz and Franke leave us with a hermeneutical subjectivism in regard to our knowing what the Spirit is seeking to communicate through Scripture to the church. Why? For this reason: they assert that “the Spirit speaking through the Scripture” refers to the Spirit’s illocutions, but these are not identical with those of the biblical authors. That is why they say exegesis alone, while important and not completely divorced from the original meaning of the text, cannot discover what the Spirit is speaking.119 This is further complicated due to their acceptance of a “textual-sense” interpretation model. Following Paul Ricoeur, since the text now takes on a life of its own, apart from the author’s illocutions, a serious problem emerges: how does one know what the illocutionary acts of the Spirit are, especially when it is possible for the Spirit to speak independently of the human authors’ illocutionary acts?120 But if this is so, then how is Scripture really serving as our final authority for theological construction? Instead of arguing that Scripture itself, due to its divine inspiration, gives us a first-order interpretative framework that is found in Scripture, and in light of which we view the world and do our theology, so that “the Spirit’s creating a world, then, is not a new illocutionary act but rather the perlocution-ary act of enabling readers to appropriate the illocutionary acts inscribed in the biblical text,”121 our authors have the Spirit speaking in relation to but apart from the actual illocutions of Scripture. But how, then, does one deter-mine what the Spirit is actually speaking, except in the light of the subjectivity of the local community’s hearing the Spirit’s voice? And, furthermore, which community do we listen to?122 Their proposal is even further complicated by arguing that the sources for theology are the Spirit’s speaking through Scripture, tradition, and culture (not simply the Christian culture but the larger socially constructed world) in a nonfoundationalist way. No doubt our authors do not want to pit any of these three ways of speaking against one another, especially against Scripture. But is this merely a moot point?123 Given their rejection of sola Scriptura and their acceptance of a nonfoundationalist epistemology, how can we actually “check and see” to know whether the world the Spirit is creating in and through our theological language belongs to the eschatological world? Or, conversely, how can we falsify a world of our own idolatrous making that contradicts the Bible’s world? Appeal to tradition at this point simply pushes the problem back one step:Which tradition? Which community? For it is a sad fact of church history that there are a variety of church traditions on many central points of doctrine. So to whom do we listen since, I dare say, each community views itself as seek-ing to hear faithfully the same Spirit speak through Scripture, tradition, and culture?124 In the end, I am convinced that their proposal leaves us with a hermeneutical subjectivism that will not sufficiently ground a normative evangelical theology in a pluralistic and postmodern world.
(5) For all of their stress on the importance of reading Scripture as a text and the necessity of a theological hermeneutic, which I basically agree with, unless their proposal is spelled out in greater depth and clarity, I do not see how they have helped us go about the actual practice of doing theology, namely, reading and applying Scripture to our lives. They warn us repeatedly that we must avoid “proof-texting” and read Scripture in all of its diversity according to the converging patterns that center in Jesus Christ. That is fine, as far as it goes, and most evangelicals would agree with that approach. But, given their view of Scripture, when they argue that the unity of the canon (i.e.,singularity of voice) does not rest in the texts themselves, but in the Spirit who speaks through the texts,125 we have the same serious problem mentioned above: how does one determine the Spirit’s speaking if it is not directly related to the text itself? Do we hear the Spirit speaking through the text or where we want him to be heard? In contrast to our authors, what evangelical theology has argued and should argue is that when the Spirit speaks, it is always the speaking of Scripture. To maintain otherwise is to lead to the troubling conclusion that the church cannot know what God is saying through Scripture, and to shift the locus of authority from the text to the community and therefore from Scripture itself to the pragmatic preferences of the people. Horton states it well when he warns of the dangers of this kind of pro-posal: “. . . much of modern theology (especially Protestant theology) has turned repeatedly to ‘what the Spirit is saying to us today’ while neglecting or in many cases rejecting rather significant sections of scripture. This done, one can either turn to his or her own inner light or to an authoritative magisterium” 126—or to a community of believers.
Overall Assessment
What is my overall assessment of the Grenz/Franke proposal? No doubt there is much that is helpful, challenging, and admirable about their view. They have stirred us from our dogmatic slumbers to think carefully and thought-fully about evangelical theological method, especially in light of our current cultural context—and we must give them our thanks. However, as creative as their proposal is, at the end of the day, what I find surrendered is biblical authority—i.e., a text that is first-order and God-given through human authors which is our basis for how we interpret the world, ground our beliefs, and live our lives. Without that solid grounding, not in human reason and autonomy, nor in the community of God’s people, but in Scripture itself, we have, in terms of theological method, surrendered the very transcendental condition for the possibility of doing theology in any kind of normative fashion. The burden of what it means to be “biblical” in our theology will be placed upon various community interpretations, throughout history, as we listen to the voice of the Spirit through Scripture; but that kind of subjectivity will greatly undercut the very doing of a normative evangelical theology. Ultimately, without the living God who discloses himself in an authoritative and reliable Word-revelation, theology loses both its identity and its integrity as a discipline and is set adrift, forever to be confused with sociology, philosophy, anthropology, and the like.127
CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS: EVANGELICAL THEOLOGICAL
METHOD TODAY
Where do we go from here? Obviously the answer to that question would require a book in and of itself, but thankfully there are a number of evangelical theologians who are providing excellent answers.128 However, in a summary fashion, I offer three personal reflections, in light of the previous discussion, as to what I think is crucial for the doing of evangelical theology today.
First, evangelical theology must uphold the full authority of Scripture as God-given, first-order language that is “foundational” for all Christian think-ing and living. It is at this point where I have to part company with the Grenz/Franke proposal and much of postconservative theology. In the cur-rent cultural climate, I am convinced that the crucial issue facing evangelical theology is the authority of Scripture and of the God who gave it. At the heart of postmodernism’s problem, and the main reason for much of the fragmentation in contemporary theology, is an implicit denial of the God of Scripture, and thus a diminishing of the full authority of Scripture in theology and the church. But given the God of Scripture and the Scripture that he gives (2 Tim.3:16), we must affirm that we do have a divine interpretation of reality including his own redemptive acts in history—which though not exhaustive is nonetheless true and objective. No doubt human beings never attain an omniscient view of things, even in the future. But because our finite knowing is a subset of God’s comprehensive and infallible knowledge, human beings, as complicated as the hermeneutical task may be, still may have a true knowledge of this world and of God and his ways. That is why Christian theology has always affirmed, and I am convinced must continue to affirm, a “revelational foundation.”
No doubt a “revelational epistemology” involves a commitment to both general and special revelation, but priority must always be given to special rev-elation, and in particular Scripture.129 Why? For the simple reason that Scripture is God’s own divine interpretation, through human authors, of his own redemptive acts that carries with it a true, objective, and authoritative interpretation of his redemptive plan. We do not have this kind of interpretation of the world in general revelation, but we do have it in Scripture. That is why Scripture must be viewed as first-order language—as the “spectacles” by which we view the world. In this sense, the Scripture is “foundational” for our theology. It is, in the words of postmodern jargon, our “metanarrative.” Scripture, then, not only describes accurately a certain segment of history, namely redemptive history, but it also serves as our “interpretive framework” for viewing the world. Thus, theology must move from Scripture’s own interpretative framework (first-order), which is found in Scripture, to theological vision (second-order). Of course, as stated, this view only makes sense if Scripture is nothing less than God’s Word written, which is precisely the claim Scripture makes for itself. I do not see how evangelical Christianity can exist and flourish without unreservedly embracing this claim and the entailments of it.
Second, to be “biblical,” evangelical theology must take seriously the role of “biblical theology” in our theological proposals and formulations. In order to be “biblical” in our theology, our reading of Scripture must reflect what it is and claims to be. I have already stated that Scripture claims to be nothing less than God’s self-revelation through human authors, and thus we are convinced that there is a unity to it, among all the diversity, so that we may view Scripture as a unified divine communicative act, declaring God’s unfailing purposes and plan.130 In addition, it is important to stress that when we approach the Bible in its own categories and structure, we observe that God’s self-revelation, in word and act, also involves historical progression, along a redemptive-historical storyline, ultimately centered in Jesus Christ (cf. Heb. 1:1-2), and thus we must read Scripture accordingly.131 This is precisely what Horton has recently proposed when he asserts that a proper theological method must be “redemptive-historical-eschatological,” so that we are read-ing Scripture according to its own intrasystematic categories. In this sense, then, the content of Scripture must define our methodology so that our read-ing of Scripture will reflect what Scripture actually is.132
In contemporary idiom, the theological discipline that attempts to trace out the historical unfolding of redemptive history is that of “biblical theology.” 133 “Biblical theology” is keenly aware that God did not disclose him-self in one exhaustive act but in an organic, progressive manner, tied to God’s performative action in word and deed. Biblical theology, in the final analysis, is trying to do justice to Scripture’s own intrasystematic categories, so that it learns to “think God’s thoughts after him.” No doubt Scripture is not simply a storyline. It consists of many literary forms; and in a variety of ways—through narrative, law, apocalyptic, psalms, wisdom literature, gospel, and letter—the Scriptures unfold a plot, which culminates in Jesus Christ. But, as Carson reminds us, “the fact remains that the Bible as a whole document tells a story, and, properly used, that story can serve as a metanarrative that shapes our grasp of the entire Christian faith.”134
In light of this, it is important to reference the important work of Richard Lints. Lints has not only argued that the methodology of “biblical” systematic theology must read and apply Scripture along its redemptive-historical plot line, but he has also helpfully proposed that we read Scripture according to three horizons: textual, epochal, and canonical.135 Thus, in read-ing any text we not only exegete it in terms of its syntax, context, historical set-ting, and genre (i.e., textual horizon), we also place that text in light of where it is in redemptive history (i.e., epochal horizon), and even, in the final analysis, in light of where it is in the canon (i.e., canonical horizon). It is only then that we read Scripture truly in a “biblical” manner—according to its truest, fullest, divine intention. In fact, to read the Bible as unified Scripture is not just one interpretive interest among others, but the interpretive strategy that best corresponds to the nature of the text itself, given its divine inspiration.136
Third, to be “biblical,” evangelical theology must then seek to read and apply all that Scripture says, according to its own presentation, to all of life.137 In other words, theology must do more than merely repeat Scripture; it must also move from biblical interpretation and exposition (i.e., biblical theology) to theological vision (i.e., systematic theology). No doubt it must do so in light of the wisdom of the past (i.e., tradition) but it must also seek to address the issues of our day (i.e., context). But it must always do so by being grounded in Scripture, which serves as our “spectacles” or “interpretive framework,” our worldview, by which we seek to live and act, and by which we attempt to “think God’s thoughts after him”—for the praise of his glory.138
The challenges of postmodernism to evangelical theology are great. How we respond will affect generations to come. In our rethinking how to do theology in this contemporary context, may our heart’s desire be to take every thought captive to obey Christ (2 Cor. 10:5) so that we may be found faith-ful servants of our great God and Savior.
1 I was first confronted with the question of what it means to be “biblical” as a student of Kevin J. Vanhoozer during the 1980s at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. For his response to this question see his article, “The Voice and the Actor: A Dramatic Proposal About the Ministry and Minstrelsy of Theology,” in Evangelical Futures, ed. John G. Stackhouse, Jr. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2000), 61-106.
2 D. A. Carson, The Gagging of God (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1996), 19-22, makes this exact point.
3 The literature on postmodernism is legion. For evangelical treatments of the subject, both popular and more academic, see David K. Clark, To Know and Love God: Method for Theology, Foundations of Evangelical Theology, ed. John S. Feinberg (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 2003); William Lane Craig and J. P. Moreland, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 71-170; David S. Dockery, ed., The Challenge of Postmodernism, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2001); Millard J. Erickson, Truth or Consequences: The Promise and Perils of Postmodernism (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2001); Douglas Groothuis, Truth Decay: Defending Christianity Against the Challenges of Postmodernism (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2000); Kevin J. Vanhoozer and J. Andrew Kirk, eds., To Stake a Claim (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1999); Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text? (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1998); Nancey Murphy, Anglo-American Postmodernity (Oxford: Westview Press, 1997); Roger Lundin, Clarence Walhout, and Anthony C. Thiselton, The Promise of Hermeneutics (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1999); Anthony C. Thiselton, Interpreting God and the Postmodern Self (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1996); Stanley J. Grenz, A Primer on Postmodernism (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1996); D. A. Carson, The Gagging of God; Brian Ingraffia, Postmodern Theory and Biblical Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Gene E. Veith, Jr., Postmodern Times (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 1994).
4 This has certainly been the cry of many postconservatives. For example, see Roger E. Olson, “Postconservative Evangelicals Greet the Postmodern Age,” Christian Century 112 (May 3, 1995): 480483; idem, “Postconservative Evangelical Theology and the Theological Pilgrimage of Clark Pinnock,” in Semper Reformandum: Essays in Honour of Clark H. Pinnock, eds. Stanley E. Porter and Anthony R.Cross (Carlisle, England: Paternoster, 2003), 16-37; Stanley J. Grenz, “From Liberalism to Postliberalism:Theology in the Twentieth Century,” Review and Expositor 96 (1999): 385-410; idem, Revisioning Evangelical Theology: A Fresh Agenda for the Twenty-first Century (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1993); Henry H. Knight III, A Future for Truth: Evangelical Theology in a Postmodern World (Nashville: Abingdon, 1997); Timothy R. Phillips and Dennis L. Okholm, eds. The Nature of Confession: Evangelicals and Postliberals in Conversation (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1996); Gary Dorrien, The Remaking of Evangelical Theology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1998). But it is not only postconservatives who have argued for the need to rethink theological method in light of postmodernism. See Michael S. Horton, Covenant and Eschatology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002); Kevin J. Vanhoozer, “Voice and the Actor;” idem, First Theology (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2002); Richard Lints, The Fabric of Theology (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1993).
5 This is Roger Olson’s term to refer to “conservatives” in contrast to “reformists” (i.e.,postconservatives). See his article, “The Future of Evangelical Theology,” Christianity Today 42 (February 9, 1998): 40-48.
6 See Robert E. Webber, The Younger Evangelicals: Facing the Challenges of the New World (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2002), 83-106, who views Grenz and Franke as key theologians who epitomize the postconservative movement.
7 Stanley J. Grenz and John R. Franke, Beyond Foundationalism: Shaping Theology in a Postmodern Context (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001). See also the following books and articles for an elaboration of his view, along with some of John Franke’s materials: Stanley J. Grenz, “Nurturing the Soul, Informing the Mind: The Genesis of the Evangelical Scripture Principle” in Evangelicals and Scripture, eds. Dennis L. Okholm, et al. (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 21-41; idem, Renewing the Center: Evangelical Theology in a Post-Theological Era (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2000); idem, “Articulating the Christian Belief-Mosaic” in Evangelical Futures, 107-136; idem, Revisioning Evangelical Theology; idem, Primer on Postmodernism; John R. Franke, “Reforming Theology: Toward a Postmodern Reformed Dogmatics,” Westminster Theological Journal 65 (Spring 2003), 1-26; idem, “Postmodern Evangelical Theology: A Nonfoundationalist Approach to the Christian Faith,” in Alister E. McGrath and Evangelical Theology, ed. Sung Wook Chung (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2003), 280-309; idem, “Scripture, Tradition and Authority: Reconstructing the Evangelical Conception of Sola Scriptura,” in Evangelicals and Scripture, 192-210.
8 Grenz and Franke, Beyond Foundationalism, 21-22; cf. Grenz, Renewing the Center, 184-199.
9 Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), xxiii-xxiv.
10 For further development of this understanding of postmodernism, see Stanley Grenz, “The Universality of the ‘Jesus-Story’ and the ‘Incredulity Toward Metanarratives,’” in No Other Gods Before Me? Evangelicals and the Challenge of World Religions, ed. John G. Stackhouse, Jr. (Grand Rapids, Mich.:Baker, 2001), 85-111.
11 See Grenz and Franke, Beyond Foundationalism, 22. In their assessment of postmodernism, Grenz and Franke disagree with many evangelicals who fear that postmodernism is antagonistic toward Christianity.
12 Ibid., 23. For more on the terms foundationalism, chastened rationality, realism, and nonrealism see David Clark, To Know and Love God, 133-164, 259-294, 353-383; Craig and Moreland, Philosophical Foundations, 71-170; W. Jay Wood, Epistemology (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1998), 77-174.
13 Grenz and Franke, Beyond Foundationalism, 23.
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid., 10.
16 For Grenz and Franke, a paradigmatic example of classical liberalism is Friedrich Schleiermacher.
17 For more on viewing theological positions on a spectrum of extra- versus intratextual see David F. Ford, ed., The Modern Theologians, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), 1-15.
18 Grenz and Franke, Beyond Foundationalism, 13. Grenz and Franke have in their sights the Princeton theologians—Charles Hodge, B. B. Warfield, J. Gresham Machen—as well as evangelical theologians such as Carl F. H. Henry, Gordon Lewis, Bruce Demarest, and Wayne Grudem (see 13-15, 35-37). On their treatment—indeed in my view, misunderstanding—of the post-Reformation Scholastics and Princetonians see Paul Kjoss Helseth’s “Are Postconservative Evangelicals Fundamentalists?” chapter 9 in this volume; cf. Carl R. Trueman, “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” Westminster Theological Journal 65 (Fall 2003): 311-315; and Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, 4 vols. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2003).
19 Grenz and Franke, Beyond Foundationalism, 34.
20 Ibid., 50.
21 Ibid., 39. For more on coherentism see Wood, Epistemology, 113-125; Craig and Moreland, Philosophical Foundations, 121-127; Clark, To Know and Love God, 156-161.
22 See Grenz and Franke, Beyond Foundationalism, 38-39.
23 See ibid., 40-41. For more on pragmatism see Craig and Moreland, Philosophical Foundations, 144.
24 For more on the later-Wittgenstein and his understanding of “language games,” see Clark, To Know and Love God, 376-380; John S. Feinberg, “Noncognitivism: Wittgenstein,” in Biblical Errancy, Norman Geisler, ed. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1981), 163-201; cf. Grenz and Franke, Beyond Foundationalism, 42.
25 Grenz and Franke, Beyond Foundationalism, 44; cf. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley, 3 vols. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1991–1998), 1:21-60.
26 Grenz and Franke, Beyond Foundationalism, 45-46; cf. George A. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984). For a critique of Lindbeck’s theory, see Alister E. McGrath, The Genesis of Doctrine (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990).
27 Grenz and Franke, Beyond Foundationalism, 46.
28 Ibid., 45; cf. Lindbeck, Nature of Doctrine, 30-45, who labels the approach of liberalism as “experiential-expressivist,” that of conservative theology as “cognitive-propositionalist,” while he dubs his own view “cultural-linguistic.”
29 Grenz and Franke, Beyond Foundationalism, 6.
30 For more on Reformed Epistemology, see Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff, eds., Faith and Rationality (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983); Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); cf. also Craig and Moreland, Philosophical Foundations, 160-169.
31 See a summary of these arguments in Nicholas Wolterstorff, Reason Within the Bounds of Religion, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1984); cf. Plantinga and Wolterstorff, Faith and Rationality.
32 Grenz and Franke, Beyond Foundationalism, 49.
33 In a recent exchange between John Franke, Carl Trueman, and Richard Gaffin, Franke is unclear in his use of the language of “first-order.” See Franke, “Response to Trueman and Gaffin,” Westminster Theological Journal 65 (Fall 2003): 331-343. Franke acknowledges that theology is a “second-order” discipline based upon the “first-order” commitments of the Christian faith, namely “the primary stories, teachings, symbols, and practices of the Christian community” (338). He even says that “the language of the Christian story narrated and expounded in Scripture” is first-order (338). But unless he contradicts himself, nowhere does he seem to mean that Scripture is first-order in the sense that it serves as our foundation for theology and that it gives us, under inspiration of the Spirit, a true and objective, yet finite knowledge of God, ourselves, and this world (a realism) from which theological reflection is grounded. Rather, he argues for an indirect identity between God’s revelation and Scripture, following Karl Barth’s dialectic of veiling and unveiling, so that the Spirit’s inspiration of Scripture is not viewed as a past event that produced an infallible and inerrant text that serves as the objective foundation for our theology, but an ongoing dynamic activity (see 340-343). Given this, I can only conclude that Franke is using the language of “first-order,” not in its historic sense, but in a pragmatic, primacy sense.
34 Grenz and Franke, Beyond Foundationalism, 48.
35 Ibid.
36 Ibid. Grenz and Franke labor hard to distinguish their view from classical liberalism. They acknowledge that they are similar in their emphasis on the role of “religious experience.” However, they claim that their view differs in two areas. First, “religious experience” is not a new foundation, i.e., a single, universal experience that lies beneath the plethora of religious experiences found in various religious traditions.Second, “religious experience” never precedes interpretation; rather, “experiences are always filtered by an interpretative framework—a grid—that facilitates their occurrence” (49), thus emphasizing the nonfoundational nature of their view.
37 Ibid., 49-50.
38 Ibid., 50. See Richard Lints, Fabric of Theology, who takes an opposite approach. Lints, in my view, rightly argues that theology, at its heart, is about moving from interpretative framework (Scripture, first-order) to theological vision (theology, second-order). See also Kevin J. Vanhoozer, “From Canon to Concept: ‘Same’ and ‘Other’ in the Relation of Biblical and Systematic Theology,” Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology 12 (1994): 96-124; and Horton, Covenant and Eschatology, who argue for a view of theology similar to Lints.
39 Grenz and Franke, Beyond Foundationalism, 50.
40 See Franke’s incredible assertion in this regard in “Response to Trueman and Gaffin,” 338-339.
41 See Grant R. Osborne, The Hermeneutical Spiral (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1991). See also the helpful reflections by D. A. Carson in this regard in Gagging of God, 93-137.
42 This is not to say that all biblical language is merely referential, but nor is it merely intrasystemic in a nonrealist sense. Rather, language is a divine gift, created by God, to allow us to know him and his world, even though our language will never yield an omniscient perspective. It yields a true, yet finite and never exhaustive knowledge.
43 Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, 3 vols. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1952), 1:19.
44 Grenz and Franke, Beyond Foundationalism, 51.
45 Interestingly, Grenz and Franke choose Charles Hodge as their paradigm example of a “conservative modernist,” but they never interact with the Dutch tradition of Reformed theology, namely Abraham Kuyper, Herman Bavinck, Geerhardus Vos, and Cornelius Van Til, and now John Frame, Kevin Vanhoozer, and Michael Horton. Herman Bavinck, for example, strongly rejected the methodology of Charles Hodge long before postmodernism entered the radar screen, but he maintained simultaneously the view that Scripture is the sole “foundation” for the doing of theology along with a realist epistemology and metaphysic, grounded not in natural theology but in a solidly theological worldview argument. See Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Prolegomena, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2003), 1:59-112.
46 Grenz and Franke, Beyond Foundationalism, 51.
47 Ibid.
48 Ibid., 52.
49 Ibid., 53.
50 Ibid.
51 Ibid.
52 See ibid.
53 Ibid., 54.
54 Ibid. See the development of this argument in Grenz, “The Universality of the ‘Jesus-Story’ and the ‘Incredulity Toward Metanarratives,’” 102-111.
55 Grenz, “The Universality of the ‘Jesus-Story’ and the ‘Incredulity Toward Metanarratives,’” 108.
56 Ibid., 109.
57 Ibid., 112.
58 See Grenz and Franke, Beyond Foundationalism, 60-63.
59 See ibid., 65-66 on their treatment of 2 Timothy 3:16. They argue that theopneustos, “God-breathed,” emphasizes the surpassing value of the Spirit-energized Scriptures, not some purported pristine character of the autographs. But is that really the point of the text? No. The point is that the resultant product of the Spirit’s supernatural work is nothing less than God’s Word, not merely in a dynamic sense in that the people of God “knew these documents were ‘animated with the Spirit of Christ’” (66), but in an objective sense. See B. B. Warfield, The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible (Philadelphia: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1948), 131-166, 245-296; cf. Paul D. Feinberg, “The Meaning of Inerrancy,” in Inerrancy, ed. Norman L. Geisler (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1980), 276-283.
60 See Grenz and Franke, Beyond Foundationalism, 64-68, 102-105, 114-115.
61 Ibid., 65; cf. Stanley J. Grenz, “The Spirit and the Word: The World-Creating Function of the Text,” Theology Today 57 (October 2000): 357-374.
62 Grenz and Franke, Beyond Foundationalism, 65; cf. Franke, “Response to Trueman and Gaffin,” 340 343.
63 Grenz and Franke, Beyond Foundationalism, 65.
64 Ibid., 115; cf. Franke, “Scripture, Tradition, and Authority,” in Evangelicals and Scripture, 192-210.
65 Grenz and Franke, Beyond Foundationalism, 66.
66 Ibid., 69.
67 Ibid., 70-71.
68 See ibid., 71.
69 Ibid., 72.
70 See Nicholas Wolterstorff, Divine Discourse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
71 See a helpful critique of Wolterstorff’s proposal in Horton, Covenant and Eschatology, 156-164.
72 Grenz and Franke, Beyond Foundationalism, 74.
73 Ibid., 73.
74 Ibid., 74.
75 Ibid., 74-75.
76 See ibid., 76-77.
77 Ibid., 77.
78 See ibid., 75-83.
79 See ibid., 81, where the authors summarize the perlocutionary effects of the Spirit’s speaking. They state, “The Bible not only recounts paradigmatic stories of ‘long ago’ but also declares God’s intention for the world. In scripture we find a vision of a future, new creation in which humans live in harmony with each other, with God, and with all creation (e.g., Rev. 21:1–22:5). In addition to connecting us with our narrative past, therefore, the Spirit constructs our communal identity by linking us to this glorious future. The Spirit speaks to us through the text—appropriates the biblical vision of the divinely intended new creation—so that we might view our situation in light of God’s future and as a result open ourselves and our present to the power of that future, which in fact is already at work in us and among us (e.g., Rom. 8:9-30). By narrating our foundational past and disclosing our glorious future, the Bible provides a paradigm of life as the believing community and as participants in that fellowship. That is, scripture mediates a specifically Christian ‘interpretative framework.’ . . . Through the appropriated biblical text, the Spirit forms in us a communal interpretive framework that creates a new world. The Spirit leads us to view ourselves and all reality in light of an unabashedly Christian and specifically biblical interpretive framework so that we might thereby understand and respond to the challenges of life in the present as the contemporary embodiment of a faith community that spans the ages.”
80 Ibid., 84.
81 Ibid.
82 Ibid., 86-87.
83 See ibid., 87-89.
84 Ibid., 90.
85 Ibid.
86 See ibid., 163.
87 See ibid., 161.
88 Ibid., 67.
89 Ibid., 68.
90 Ibid., 92.
91 Cited in Francis A. Schaeffer, The God Who Is There, in The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer, 2nd ed., 5 vols. (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 1985), 1:11. The same point is made in John M. Frame, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God (Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1987), 76-88; Horton, Covenant and Eschatology, 220-276; David F. Wells, “The Nature and Function of Theology,” in The Use of the Bible in Theology: Evangelical Options, ed. Robert K. Johnston (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1985), 175-199.
92 Here I am thinking of the Dutch Reformed tradition and its heirs who attempt to do theology in a different way than Charles Hodge, but who operate with the same view of Scripture, a commitment to epistemological realism, and appreciation for both tradition and culture without treating them as sources of theology. See, for example, the works of Herman Bavinck, Abraham Kuyper, Geerhardus Vos, John Frame, Richard Gaffin, Richard Lints, and Michael Horton.
93 In particular I am thinking of Wayne Grudem, but the same could be said for Carl Henry and others. Are we really to think that Grudem does not take seriously tradition and culture or that he thinks the chosen order of theological reflection upon Scripture is merely arbitrary? After all, he is heavily indebted to the Reformed tradition of Bavinck, Vos, Frame, Gaffin, et al. My own view of Grudem’s chapter on methodology is that it is not adequate (even though I do not think that was a main focus of his book), but his statement that we can go to Scripture and “look for answers to any doctrinal questions, considered in any sequence” (Systematic Theology [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1994], 32) is due to the conviction that Christian theology, precisely because it is grounded in God’s Word, is an interrelated “mosaic,” to use the authors’ terminology. Grudem, I am sure, would agree with Grenz and Franke when they view theology not as “a collection of isolated factual statements arising directly from first principles,”but rather as a whole worldview, a package deal, and that as such, to speak of any point already implies and has entailments for other points of theology.
94 For a better way of developing this point see Horton, Covenant and Eschatology; Lints, Fabric of Theology.
95 For a better analysis of this point see Kevin J. Vanhoozer, “The Semantics of Biblical Literature: Truth and Scripture’s Diverse Literary Forms,” in Hermeneutics, Authority, and Canon, ed. D. A. Carson and John D. Woodbridge (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1986), 53-104; cf. idem, Is There a Meaning in This Text?
96 On this point see Lints, Fabric of Theology; and Horton, Covenant and Eschatology.
97 Once again, for a better development of these ideas see Horton, Covenant and Eschatology.
98 See Hans W. Frei, Types of Christian Theology (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 28-55.
99 See John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), 1:69-74.
100 For a development of some of these ideas see Carson, Gagging of God, 141-314; cf. Horton, Covenant and Eschatology; Lints, Fabric of Theology; Vanhoozer, “Voice and the Actor.”
101 Grenz and Franke, Beyond Foundationalism, 81.
102 The term “transcendental” comes from the thought of Immanuel Kant. It refers to the task of discovering the preconditions for something to be possible. In the case of Kant, he was attempting to discover the transcendental conditions for the possibility of knowledge. In the context of this chapter, the term is being used to state my conviction that the necessary precondition for the possibility of a normative, objective, truth-telling theology is the self-disclosure of the triune God in Scripture by which Scripture alone is viewed as our final, first-order authority for our faith and practice.
103 For example, see the works of Francis Schaeffer, Carl F. H. Henry, Cornelius Van Til, Herman Bavinck, et al.
104 On this point see Ingraffia, Postmodern Theory and Biblical Theology; and Horton, Covenant and Eschatology, 20-45. Both authors correctly argue that postmodernism both misunderstands historic Christian theology and simultaneously stands over against biblical thought and the entire Christian worldview.
105 Horton, Covenant and Eschatology, 4.
106 Grenz and Franke, Beyond Foundationalism, 23-24.
107 See, for example, Peter Hicks, Evangelicals and Truth (Leicester, England: InterVarsity Press, 1998), 140-197, who clearly distinguishes the two and argues for a theological base for truth, realism, and objectivity based on revelation.
108 For a helpful discussion of perspectivalism see Clark, To Know and Love God, 133-164.
109 Frame, Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, 33.
110 For a defense of this understanding of a critical realism that includes a theological analysis of the relationship between God, the world, and human language, see Kevin Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text ? See also how this theological view is worked out in the domain of science in Alistair E. McGrath, Reality: A Scientific Theology, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2002); cf. also Frame, Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, 11-88; and Clark, To Know and Love God, 353-383.
111 For a summary statement and defense of what the Bible claims for itself, see my article, “The Inerrancy of Scripture,” in Beyond the Bounds, ed. John Piper, Justin Taylor, and Paul Kjoss Helseth (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 2003), 239-250; cf. also John M. Frame, “Scripture Speaks for Itself,” in God’s Inerrant Word, ed. John W. Montgomery (Minneapolis: Bethany, 1974), 159-177.
112 For a development of this view of Scripture and its implication for understanding the nature of theology, once again see Horton, Covenant and Eschatology, 245-246. Horton argues that Scripture is “text” (first-order) and not “interpretation” (second-order), rather than thinking of it as God’s own interpretation of his actions (Word-Act revelation). Thus, theology and doctrine may be viewed as truth claims (second-order), but contra Grenz and Franke, they may also give us direct statements of reality due to the fact that they accurately reflect Scripture, although their meaning is context-dependent and that context may well be described as the “grammar” (i.e., theological system). But, as Horton rightly observes, “theology involves both extrasystematic and intrasystematic truth claims, and this cannot be neatly organized into first order and second order, respectively” (246).
113 For a description, explication, and preliminary defense of such a view, see Kevin J. Vanhoozer, “God’s Mighty Speech-Acts: The Doctrine of Scripture Today” in First Theology, 127-158.
114 See Darrell L. Bock, Purpose-Directed Theology (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2002), 17-27, who makes a similar criticism. Bock states, “However, the fact that the Spirit inspires the Word and helped to create it suggests that the product and its narrative, propositions and promises possess authority not only in how the Spirit makes use of them but also in what they affirm. There is an authority in the text because it is Spirit-induced, whether or not that product is ‘deputized’ or ‘appropriated’” (18), emphasis his.
115 See Franke, “Response to Trueman and Gaffin,” 340-343.
116 On this issue and a better way to think of the relationship between Word and Spirit and God and biblical language, see John M. Frame, “God and Biblical Language: Transcendence and Immanence,” in God’s Inerrant Word, 159-177; idem, “The Spirit and the Scriptures” in Hermeneutics, Authority, and Canon, 217-235.
117 See Franke, “Response to Trueman and Gaffin,” 341-343.
118 For an explanation and exposition of the Reformed position see Michael S. Horton, “Hellenistic or Hebrew? Open Theism and Reformed Theological Method,” in Beyond the Bounds, 201-234; cf. idem, Covenant and Eschatology, 206-219.
119 See, once again, Grenz and Franke, Beyond Foundationalism, 74-75.
120 Vanhoozer, First Theology, 198, makes this same criticism. He rightly observes, “Grenz’s account fails to explain how we can infer what illocutionary acts have been performed and to whom we should ascribe them. Consequently he leaves unanswered the fundamental question of how Scripture’s actual content is related to the Spirit’s accomplishing his further, perlocutionary, effects.”
121 Ibid.
122 See Trueman, “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” 317-321, who makes the same point.
123 This is Daniel J. Treier’s question in, “Canonical Unity and Commensurable Language: On Divine Action and Doctrine,” in Evangelicals and Scripture, 214-216.
124 See Vanhoozer, “Voice and the Actor,” 85-87, who raises these same kinds of questions.
125 See Grenz, Beyond Foundationalism, 90.
126 Horton, Covenant and Eschatology, 210.
127 On this point see Kevin J. Vanhoozer, “Christ and Concept: Doing Theology and the ‘Ministry’ of Philosophy,” in Doing Theology in Today’s World: Essays in Honor of Kenneth S. Kantzer, ed. John D. Woodbridge and Thomas E. McComiskey (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1991), 99-110.
128 In particular, but not limited to them, I am thinking of the works by Lints, Horton, and Vanhoozer, cited above.
129 See Frame’s reflections on this in Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, 62-75.
130 On this see Vanhoozer, First Theology, 159-203; Horton, Covenant and Eschatology, 123-276.
131 On this point see Lints, Fabric of Theology, 259-336; cf. Carson, Gagging of God, 141-335.
132 See Horton, Covenant and Eschatology, 1-19, 147-276. For Horton the terms “eschatological” and “redemptive-historical” capture the heart of Scripture’s own intrasystemic categories. By the term “eschatological” Horton means more than a mere locus of theology. Rather, it is a lens by which we read Scripture and do our theology. Scripture itself comes to us as a redemptive revelation, rooted in history, unfolding God’s eternal plan worked out in time, and as such the very “form” and “shape” of Scripture is “eschatological.” It is for this reason that Horton is rightly uncomfortable with a “cognitive-propositionalist” approach to theology. Scripture is more than a storehouse of facts or propositions, for Scripture unfolds for us a plot, a storyline, a divine interpretation of the drama of redemption, which is eschatological at heart and Christological in focus, and as such, our doing of theology must reflect this. By “redemptive-historical,” Horton is referring to the Scripture’s own presentation of itself as “the organic unfolding of the divine plan in its execution through word (announcement), act (accomplishment), and word (interpretation)” (5). Given that redemption is progressive and unfolding, so is revelation, as it is God’s own interpretation of his action and of human response in actual historical contexts. For Horton, there are at least three important implications of grasping the nature of Scripture for theological method. First, epistemologically speaking, a redemptive revelation entails that even though God’s knowledge is exhaustive and is progressively revealed to us over time, for us, our knowledge is always finite, incomplete, dependent upon God’s first-order revelation, yet true if it corresponds to that revelation. Second, our reading of Scripture and our doing of theology must attend to the historical unfolding of redemptive history that is organically related to and ultimately centered on Jesus Christ. The very “form” and “shape” of Scripture reminds us that God did not disclose himself in one exhaustive act but in an organic, progressive manner; and in fact, it is this organic quality of revelation that serves to explain the diversity of Scripture. Theology, as a result, must be very careful not to proof-text without considering the redemptive-historical structure and progression in Scripture. Third, theology must avoid speculation. It must attend to what God has actually said and done.
133 For more on the discipline of “Biblical theology,” see Charles H. H. Scobie, The Ways of Our God: An Approach to Biblical Theology (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2003); T. D. Alexander, Brian S.Rosner, et al., New Dictionary of Biblical Theology (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2000); Graeme Goldsworthy, Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture (Grand Rapids, Mich.:Eerdmans, 2000).
134 Carson, Gagging of God, 194.
135 See Lints, Fabric of Theology, 259-311.
136 See the development of this in Vanhoozer, First Theology, 194-203. In addition to stressing the importance of a canonical reading, Lints has also argued that one of the important ways God has glued the diverse epochs of redemptive history together is by the “promise-fulfillment” motif, which then becomes crucial in one’s reading of Scripture and doing theology. By this motif, biblical authors are able to see the unity of God’s plan, among the diversity. What has been promised in the past now has come to fruition in the new. And, furthermore, one of the means by which God’s redemptive-historical plan unfolds is by the use of God-given “typology.” However, typology makes sense only if it is rooted in a strong view of divine providence and knowledge. For while the type does have significance for its own time, its greater significance is directed toward the future; it testifies to something greater than itself that is still to come. But the future antitype will surely come, not only because God knows, according to his plan, the relationship between the type and the antitype, but also because God will providentially bring it to pass so that the prophetic fulfillment of the original type is as certain as the God who providentially ordains that fulfillment (cf. 303-311).
137 See Frame, Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, 81-88, where he discusses the concept of “application.” Horton and Vanhoozer speak of the application work of theology as “performance.” In contrast to postliberal theology that attempts to have the text “absorb” the reader into it, they propose the metaphor of “performance.” As Vanhoozer states, “Evangelical theology is God-centered biblical interpretation that issues in performance knowledge on the world stage to the glory of God. It therefore prepares us for life in the real world, where reality is defined by the gospel of Jesus Christ. Herein is the sum of Christian wisdom: to know how to live ‘in Christ’” (“Voice and Actor,” 106).
138 Viewing theology as “thinking God’s thoughts after him” is a beautiful summary of the entire theological task. Interestingly and sadly, Roger Olson not only caricatures such an approach as “rationalistic” but also rejects it outright. See his article, “Postconservative Evangelical Theology and the Theological Pilgrimage of Clark Pinnock,” in Semper Reformandum, 26. For a defense of viewing theology as “thinking God’s thoughts after him,” see Greg L. Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings and Analysis (Phillipsburg: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1998), 220-260; cf. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Prolegomena.