Much so-called postmodern theology – whether it moves in a traditional or in an avant-garde direction – assumes that we no longer need to attend to the shift in worldview brought about by the Enlightenment. But questions still remain, as evidenced in recent secular literature on God. Brian Gerrish seeks to address these questions from a Reformed understanding of the Christian faith. Following Ignatius Loyola, he argues for a historical theology defined as ‘thinking with the church’. But for Gerrish, ‘thinking with the church’ does not entail going against our own best insights. Rather, it means taking responsibility for our own thinking, even as we draw from the wealth the Christian tradition offers.
This book is a collection of essays, some new and others revised from earlier publications. Two essays address modern questions about traditional ideas of reason and revelation. One traces developments from the Deist controversy in England – following critics like Baron d'Holbach and David Hume, who thought that religion (both natural and supposedly revealed) had been superseded in human development – to the flowering of new ideas in Germany, starting with Immanuel Kant and culminating with Friedrich Schleiermacher's depiction of Christian faith as a modification of the feeling or intuition common to every religion and human self-consciousness. The other essay follows Calvin in defending a ‘special revelation’ – beyond simply a general sense that God is our Maker – which deals with our estrangement in sin and reconciliation through Christ, the Redeemer. The next three essays concentrate on shifts in our thinking about faith and morals (after Kant), tracing the shift (e.g. in Fichte and Herder) from a dualist to a monistic understanding of God and the world, and its implications for a changed understanding of religion's fundamental problem: from ‘How can I get a gracious God?’ to ‘Where do I fit in the grand scheme of things?’
The rest of the book deals explicitly with the Calvinist tradition itself. A brilliant synthetic essay locates Calvin not only in relation to his predecessors – Augustine, Bernard and Luther – but also in relation to his descendants: Schleiermacher and Barth. Two other essays compare two of Calvin's most influential interpreters – Charles Hodge and Schleiermacher – arguing for the latter's emphasis on a ‘developing’ rather than a ‘static’ tradition. The next two discuss atonement, comparing Hodge on vicarious satisfaction with John Williamson Nevin on the reconciliation brought about by the incarnation (a view which resonates, Gerrish observes, with a ‘participatory’ strand in Calvin's understanding of the work of Christ).
A related essay argues that Calvin's eucharistic theology needs to be located not in relation to Zwingli but in relation to Luther (and later to Bucer, Vermigli and Cranmer) because Calvin stresses that it is the living Christ who offers himself anew in the sacramental signs. The final essay on Christ's grace not only complicates our usual understanding of Protestant and Catholic differences – arguing that both, albeit in different ways, inherit an Augustinian stress on the absolute priority of grace and the importance of sanctification and good works – but also calls for renewed post-Reformation Protestant thinking about predestination.
These essays trace phases in theological development since the Reformation which still affect how we think today (whether or not we are aware of them). One need not agree with all of Gerrish's conclusions to appreciate his wealth of historical insight and the distinct contours of his own ‘thinking with the church’. In an age that often substitutes rhetoric and ignorance about the past for fresh insight, Gerrish exemplifies for us how to think theologically in a way which invites conversation (rather than simply caricaturing those we oppose) even as we take responsibility for our own deepest instincts.
