Book Review
Written by Douglas Wilson
Thursday, 02 May 2013
This was truly a refreshing book. Every liberal pastor needs to get and read it as part of the process of becoming evangelical. Moreover, and this is the crucial thing, every evangelical pastor needs to get and read it as part of the process of becoming evangelical. We have gotten to the point where we think we know what certain words mean because they are much in use, but it is high time we clicked the refresh button.
One of the things I have noticed over the years is how theological fads and fashions blow. It is astonishing to me -- particularly among theologians and pastors, where the authority of the text and the life of the mind are held in such prominence -- how certain doctrines "go out" the same way and for the same reasons that wide ties did.
The formal battle for inerrancy was won a generation ago, for example, and yet in the years since, a certain drift has set in so that we are now in the merry position of owning inerrant Bibles that have mistakes in them. The faddists will do what the faddists will do, and the advantage of their method is you never have to formulate or advance any arguments. You just hop in the inner tube and float downstream.
Gregory Thornbury has done a marvellous job here. The book begins by describing the lost world of classic evangelicalism (as distinguished from pop evangelicalism), and he then moves on to discuss a series of important philosophical and doctrinal issues -- epistemology, theology, inerrancy, culture, and evangelicalism.
Thornbury states it as his (admirable) goal that he wants to "I want to make Carl Henry cool again" (p. 22). But he does it, not by mocking the skinny ties, but by advancing arguments. I particularly appreciated how he began with epistemology -- neglect of this crucial issue is why evangelical thinkers are currently getting mauled by the postmodernists. It is not a capitulation to modernism to insist on the reality of objective truth. Thornbury pleads with us -- let Henry help.
As we look around at the unbelieving world, it doesn't take much imagination to see a circus maximus. We also see many problems in the broader evangelical population. But few see the intellectual and theological disarray within the leadership of the evangelical camp. We are in a bad way, and this book offers solid help. I particularly recommend it to any pastors in the "young, restless, and Reformed" category. These are things we used to take for granted, and we have lost them as a result. If the next generation wants to provide a true alternative (instead of an echo) to the chaos outside, a good place to begin is with this book.
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