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A review of
The Story of Christian Theology: Twenty Centuries of
Tradition and Reform, by Roger E. Olson.
Intervarsity
Press, 1999. 652 pp. $34.99.
By R. Scott
Clark
This review appeared originally in Modern Reformation,
July/August 2001
Historical theology is an
important part of the process of deciding who we are, what we
believe and consequently how we will behave. For confessional
Protestants, the past is not absolutely definitive, since all
theologies besides God’s revealed word err, but its influence on
our lives is inescapable. Much of what we teach and do in our
churches and schools is determined by what our forefathers said
and did centuries ago and what we believe about that past.
Therefore, we must tell the truth about the past. This is
historical theology’s primary vocation.
Unfortunately, far too many
historical theologians tell us far more about themselves than
about the past because they refuse to separate their own
convictions from those about whom they write. This is
unnecessary. Heiko Oberman, Richard Muller, David Steinmetz,
Jill Raitt, Peter Stephens, David Bagchi and Carl Trueman, to
name but a few, have shown that it is possible to write fairly
and even sympathetically about those with whom they disagree.
Historical theology is
descriptive, not prescriptive. The historical theologian’s task
is not to judge whether a theologian is correct; that is the
work of dogmatics or church courts. His task is to discover and
explain what a theologian taught and why.
Summary of Olson’s Thesis
In his new history of Christian theology, Roger Olson, Professor
of Theology at Truett Theological Seminary, Baylor University,
sets out to tell us what “God has been doing for two thousand
years to lead his people into an understanding of the truth”
(11). One of historical theology’s great questions is “How do
the various epochs of Christian history relate?” Does some
theme unite the theology of the third century with those of the
14th and 20th centuries? Olson sees soteriology as the dominant
theme, although he recognizes that even this theme has waxed and
waned in Christian history.
Aimed at the interested layman
and the pastor who wants a refresher course in the history of
theology, Olson’s book is grounded in the conviction that no
doctrine ever arose “out of thin air” but always within a
context and in response to some challenge. His reminder that
doctrines develop for reasons and were not meant to confuse
simple Christians corrects the televised anti‑intellectualism of
our age. His conviction that doctrine matters even for piety is
commendable.
He contends that there is a
canon of great books and thinkers in the Christian tradition,
the study of which is essential for good history even if it is
politically incorrect. Yet, as he notes, many of the great
theologians were not dead white European males, but rather
Africans or Semites.
His working assumptions include
his making a distinction between dogma, doctrine and opinion.
Opinion involves matters indifferent (e.g., the nature of
angels or the details of the parousia). Doctrine is a
non‑essential deduction from Scripture that is essential to some
particular theological tradition. Dogma is what
confessional Protestants would call catholic truth, e.g., the
doctrines of the Trinity and the two natures of Christ. Olson
argues that doctrines can matter too much, such as when Reformed
and Lutheran Christians separated over the nature of the Lord’s
Supper (see 16-20).
He maintains that “God works in
mysterious ways to establish his people in truth and to reform
theology when needed” (21), thus rejecting both the kind of
historicism that assumes that everything has a natural cause and
divine sovereignty as distinguished from providence. He
acknowledges that he is not writing a “neutral
scientific‑historical description” of the history of theology
(22).
Methodological Criticisms
Having enjoyed Olson’s 20th Century Theology
(co‑authored with Stanley Grenz), I came to this work with high
expectations. As a teacher of historical theology, I have been
looking for a text to assign to new students to orient them to
the methods and topics of historical theology. Unfortunately,
this is not that book.
Olson’s honesty about his
assumptions is helpful, but it reveals the book’s basic flaw,
which is Olson’s refusal to distinguish consistently between
historical and dogmatic theology. His distinctions about dogma,
doctrine and opinion are virtually meaningless for historical
theology. What he thinks constitutes a dogma, a doctrine or an
opinion is interesting, but in the history of theology it is
what, e.g., Anselm or Aquinas considered to be dogma, doctrine
or opinion that matters.
Although apparently pious, his
attempt to discern the hand of providence in the history of
theology is highly problematic, since determining when God was
or was not working is necessarily a dogmatic and not a
historical judgment. Judgments about what God has been doing
providentially for the last two millennia require bringing the
interpretation of Scripture to bear on historical theology.
This is a hotbed for special
pleading. Reformed and Lutheran Christians could find it
satisfying to explain and defend the Reformation by appealing to
providence, but why should a Roman Catholic find such a claim
compelling? Appeals to providence cut both ways. We appeal to
Luther and Calvin but the Jesuit appeals to Peter Canisius as
evidence of divine blessing. In their own ways, both Calvin and
Canisius had great success. So what do we learn about history
from such claims? Nothing. We just learn Olson’s
interpretations of providence. As interesting as this is, it is
not history.
The book’s sub‑title illustrates
the problem. “Twenty Centuries of Tradition and Reform” is a
bad way to frame the history of theology because in our culture
“tradition” is suspect and “reform” stands for “progress.”
Those laying claim to being reformers thus have a rhetorical
advantage, while those described as “traditionalists” are
marginalized. Olson’s approach to history is like the Mafia’s
approach to sports. They watch the game, but the outcome is not
in doubt.
Elsewhere, Olson positions
himself as a champion of progressive neo‑evangelicalism. He
aligns himself with—if he has not actually adopted—the new
doctrine of God promulgated by theologians such as Clark Pinnock
and Gregory Boyd. Known as “open theism,” this doctrine casts
itself rhetorically as a new Reformation reacting against
allegedly stodgy, confessionalist, traditionalist theology.
Hence, Olson has a stake in who is accounted traditional and who
is accounted a reformer. This surfaces throughout his book, as
when his sympathies for open theism lead him to dismiss
cavalierly Tertullian’s doctrine of God as being unduly
influenced by Greek philosophical categories (see 97-98).
Similarly, his negative assessment of Cyprian’s ecclesiology
(“no salvation outside the church”) as hierarchical and hurtful
to personal piety seems to owe more to his own ecclesiology than
to the actual historical life and consequences of Cyprian’s
theology (see 122-23).
Historical Criticisms
The book’s greatest weakness may
be its lack of a strong historical foundation. Good historical
theology must be written with historical sensitivity, i.e. it
must take careful account of the circumstances in which a
particular theology developed. It must evaluate a theologian
against the time in which he formed his theology and it must
avoid anachronism.
Olson consistently misses these
marks. For example, he treats Luther as a “born again”
Christian, which is anachronistic and distorts Luther’s actual
experience (see 377). Paul Tillich is a twentieth‑century
Clement and Karl Barth a modern Tertullian (see 85). This is
highly tendentious, because it ignores the great gulf that
exists between Christian antiquity and post‑Christian
modernity. Post-Christian modernity deliberately rejects
historic Christianity yet uses historic Christian language to
express distinctively modern convictions. As radically opposed
as Tillich and Barth were in many ways, they were both very
modern thinkers who only superficially resemble Clement and
Tertullian. Clement and Tertullian both believed in the
history of redemption and in the actual truth of the
Scriptures and the Christian faith, while Tillich did not and it
is debatable whether Barth believed historic Christianity beyond
the resurrection of Christ.
Olson publicly positions himself
as a spokesman for beleaguered Arminians. So how does he treat
his theological opponents? Unfortunately, not well. He has
Servetus issuing a “prophetic challenge” to Calvin’s
“overbearing dominance” in Geneva (see 21). This is historical
nonsense. Even Calvin’s harshest critics should acknowledge
that he only had limited political influence in Geneva, as his
inability to gain permission from the civil authorities to
celebrate the Supper weekly shows.
Olson’s description of the
Arminian controversy would have been more helpful if he had
simply followed the historical order of things (see 549-60).
His Arminius was reacting to the five points of Calvinism! This
would have surprised the international delegation to the Synod,
who thought that they were responding to the five points of the
Remonstrants. Olson’s bias is particularly evident when he
categorizes Augustinian‑Calvinism as an “extreme” pole opposite
process theology. He has a right to consider Calvinism to be in
error and even dangerous. Yet, as an historical judgment, his
characterization of the Augustinian view of the fall and divine
sovereignty as extreme is historically untenable, since it was
shared by many of the Fathers, by most major medieval
theologians including Thomas, and by Luther and Calvin.
Covenant theology is discussed
only in the context of New England controversies (see 501-02),
while its roots lie much deeper in the history of Western
theology than that. His account of federal theology could have
been written fifty years ago.
Modern Reformation
readers will be interested to learn than the Protestant
scholastics were guilty of “metaphysical speculation” (456).
Olson cites Richard Muller’s work but shows no real grasp of his
argument or research, ignoring complete Muller’s published
research on Theodore Beza. In the past twenty‑five years, a
significant body of secondary literature has radically revised
several of the accounts upon which Olson apparently relied.
His account of the nature of
contemporary theology also is flawed. He describes the German
theologians Jürgen Moltmann and Wolfhart Pannenberg as
“critically orthodox,” contrasting them to classical theism’s
“all‑controlling and static God” (607). The only conservative
alternative to the futurist eschatology he seems to imagine is
of the Tim LaHaye/Hal Lindsey variety. Classical Protestant
(Lutheran or Reformed) amillennialism or even historic chiliasm
does not seem to cross his radar screen. Thus, this book is
curiously parochial. On one hand, Olson is dismissive of key
aspects of classical theology and, on the other, he shows little
genuine familiarity with its primary texts or its force.
Conclusion
I have been involved in
discussions with Roger Olson on the doctrine of God. In
conversation and in print, he makes it plain that he believes he
is being persecuted for his views. I do not want to persecute
him for his theology but to prosecute his book as a prime
example of what is wrong with much contemporary historical
theology.
This book is well designed,
containing reasonably useful indices of names and topics,
although some page references seem to be incorrect. It is a
little surprising, however, that it does not include a
bibliography of primary and secondary resources for further
study.
It is well written and
accessible. Olson seems to have tried harder in some sections
to be fair (e.g., regarding contemporary evangelicalism; see
592-596) than in others (e.g., on Anabaptism; see 415-428).
Readers will want to consult Geoffrey Bromiley, Historical
Theology: An Introduction, Bengt Hägglund, History of
Theology and even Paul Tillich, A History of Christian
Thought, for more successful attempts to tell the story of
Christian theology that don’t involve their writers working to
vindicate themselves in the process. |
