Knowledge as performance: the Evangelical Response to Postmodernity (original) (raw)
Recent historical scholarship of evangelicalism
In die skriflig, 1996
Recent historical scholarship o f evangelicalism Evangelical historiography is an aitempi within evangelicalism to assess its awn history. Books like Mark N o ll' s The Scandal o f the Evangelical M ind (1994), Stuart Piggin's Evangelical Christianity in Australia; Spirit, Word and World (1996) and David Bcbhington's Evangelicalism in Modern Britain (1989) are evidence o f a sustained attempt by ewngelical historians to re-appraise the history o f their religion. In this review Mark Noll's argument about the "mind" (or lack o f it), o f American evangelicalism is assessed His historiographical method is scrutinised The conclusion is that the scandal is wider than the "life o f the mind". Evangelicalism, av presented by Noll. Bebbington and Piggin, also involves an unelaborated philosophy o f history, which finds great difficulty in distancing itself from the popular sentiment, i f not the doctrines, o f modem society. The recent historiography o f evangelicalism needs a Christian method fo r criticising itself lest it become another form o f post-modern romantic popularism.
2020
This dissertation tracks the epistemological precursors, what I call the "pragmatic attitudes," of William James's pragmatism as they appear in liberal evangelical culture from the time of Jonathan Edwards to the postbellum Social Gospel movement. I examine what I take to be three major epistemological underpinnings of this tradition of evangelical theologythe privileging of direct experience, the practical identification of essence and praxis, and the emergent belief in God's pervasive affection toward Creationand their role in the shaping of a distinctively pragmatic ethos in American evangelical culture. By juxtaposing two different traditionsone putatively "secular" and one "sacred"-I offer an interdisciplinary bridge between American religion and philosophy while challenging assumptions that American history can be divided along secular or sacred lines. I begin with Jonathan Edwards's "latent pragmatisms," certain epistemological attitudes toward religious conversion and the nature of God that lead Edwards to justify these ideas on logics fundamental to modern pragmatism, namely the integration of the "separate" faculties feeling and volition and the justification of religious experiences by their practical effects. The second chapter explores the antebellum revivalist Charles G. Finney and his interpretation of these Edwardsean pragmatic attitudes, making the case that Finney and the evangelical culture he represents merit a place in our understanding of the history of American pragmatism. Chapter three looks directly at the theology of William James's father, Henry James Sr, and the extent to which its decidedly Swedenborgian influence reflected the pragmatic attitudes I outline in the first two chapters. The fourth and final chapter deals with the transatlantic Social Gospel movement, a self-consciously pragmatic evangelical reform movement whose theology and literature most visibly brought the realms of the sacred and the secular together for the common goal of bettering the condition of people here and now. The epilogue broadly addresses the implications of the sacred/secular binary in American culture. 3 This understanding of "pragmatic" as fixated on what "works" for us to the exclusion of more "noble" concerns haunted, as it continues to haunt, what we mean when we say pragmatism. Peirce, Dewey, and James had their own reservations about the name. Pragmatism was frequently mischaracterized by such intellectual leaders as Bertrand Russell, Alfred E. Taylor, and F.H. Bradley as coopting the hallowed name of philosophy to justify caprice and avarice. Russell repeats a common misconception of Jamesian pragmatism by labelling "the pragmatist definition of truth as that which has fruitful consequences" (279), which is only partly true. Confusing pragmatism with positivism, Martin Heidegger reportedly felt that pragmatism was "nothing but a 'Weltanschauung for engineers and not for human beings in the full sense of the word'" (Oehler 33). About the selection of the word "pragmatism," James wrote to Dickinson S. Miller that "a most unlucky word it may prove to have been" (LWJ, 2 295). In a way, he was right. In a curious turn, the philosophy that was designed to rescue faith from outright dismissal became subject to the same line of criticism. To walk by capricious faith and not by empirical sight is virtually the same as acting "pragmatically"-in other words, in whatever way you like regardless of the moral consequences. An assumption still with us today, when the word pragmatist is more likely to call up, not James or Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr or Eugene William Lyman, but Machievelli's prince or Shakespeare's Iago. I'm very much of the opinion of Hunter Brown when he says that "[s]uch readings are as deeply erroneous as they are widespread. On the contrary, James was deeply committed to the importance in principle of restraining belief, or to the importance of evidence in the responsible conduct of the life of reason" (4). 17 In his Consolation of Philosophy, Boethius opposes two kinds of philosophy: the speculative and the practical, allegorized by the Greek letters Theta and Pi, respectively (36). For the influence van Mastricht's Theoretica-Practica Theologia had on Jonathan Edwards, see E. Brooks Holifield's Theology in America (103 and 117). In Baxter's enormously popular devotional, The Saints' Everlasting Rest (1650), he touches on the longstanding Protestant dilemma between grace and works: "it hath been the ground of a multitude of late mistakes in divinity to think that 'Do this and live' is only the language of the covenant of works. It is true in some sense it is; but in other, not. The law of works only saith, 'Do this' that is, perfectly fulfil the whole law, 'and live,' that is, for so doing' but the law of grace saith, 'Do this and live' too; that is, believe in Christ, seek him, obey him sincerely, as thy Lord and King" (30). 18 Take for example the Unitarian minister William Ellery Channing's frustration with hell-fire homiletics. Channing grew to reject the Calvinist doctrine of total depravity as productive only of misery and hopelessness, and vilified its promulgators as concerned more with sadistically agitating sinners than
The Emergence of the Protestant Evangelical Tradition
churchsociety.org
It has been increasingly recognized that there are substantial differences between evangelicals. This has become focussed in recent years with the strengthening of the evangelical movement within the Church of England; when a group is in a distinct minority ...
Deconstructing Evangelical Theology
Andrews University Seminary Studies, 2006
Probably most evangelical theologians would be more inclined to defend, expand, and disseminate their theologd convictions than to deconstruct them. The notion that their theology could be "deconstructed" may sound, to them, preposterous, even sacrilegous. As a methodologd step, however, deconstruction is always necessary to understand revealed truths. In our postmodern times, "deconstruction" has become a synonym for "destruction." However, as I will explain later, in h s article I will use the word "deconstruction" to name a critical method of analyzing and evaluating the presuppositions on which theological systems have been built. Though the deconstruction may be applied to all schools of Christian theology, in this article I will specifically apply it to evangelical theology. This article suggests the possibility of analyzing evangelical theology' critically by deconstructing the theological system on which it stands. Though deconstruction can be applied to biblical interpretation and pastoral practices, in this article I am focusing on the deconstruction of Christian teachings that were constructed through the centuries by way of dogmatic or systematic theological thinking. Instead of facing the ever-increasing fragmentation of evangelical theology and its lack of relevance in the life of the church: I suggest we take an honest, introspective look at our own thinking. Thus the aim of methodological deconstruction is not to destroy evangelical theology, but to open the way for new theological understandings and fresh discovery of truth.' This proposal may be especially helpful in a time when evangelical theology is going through a period of crisis and transition.'' My purpose is modest. I aim at presenting a preliminary outline of the 'Though in this article I discuss the program of theological deconstruction in concrete relation to American evangelicalism, deconstruction is required in all forms of evangelical theologies and schools of Christian theologies.
VERBUM CHRISTI: JURNAL TEOLOGI REFORMED INJILI, 2022
In this article, the author argues on the importance of the Reformation. Despite over 500 years has passed since the reformation, the roman catholic church has not moved towards the true understanding of the gospel, in terms of justification as being declared right. Furthermore, in the author's context of American Evangelism, pelagianism seems taking over the mindset of the biblically illiterate. The preaching of the evangel that justifies the ungodly must be the call of the day.