Evangelical Theology

I try to always be slowly reading some sort of systematic theology book, as I think it helps remind and reinforce the great truths of the faith. About six months ago I finally got to the end of this one by Michael Bird. Previously, I had read his What Christians Ought to Believe, based on the Apostles' Creed, which I really liked, and I think it came from this larger work.

I'm starting to learn that most Systematics from a similar theological stream pretty much have the same main points. What makes a systematic useful or good comes down to its methods and style of writing (while also emphasising certain areas of the author's interest). Grudem's is simple, didactic, and not really tethered to much history. John M. Frame's is perhaps more philosophical and uses a tri-perspectival approach to almost everything (and has lots of triangles). Michael Horton's is denser again, presuppositional, and engages a bit with theologians from the last century. 

What I really appreciated about this book was that it was written by an Australian Anglican and in an engaging style. Its method was to look at everything through the Gospel. Every chapter ties the theological issue at hand to what Jesus has accomplished on the Cross. As John Owen (cited in the book) said:

"All true theology is, in a sense, gospel theology, for, in whatever stage it existed, its object and prime mover was God the Son.”

Or Graeme Goldsworthy said (cited in the book):

“The hermeneutic center of the Bible is therefore Jesus in his being and in his saving acts—the Jesus of the gospel.”

This Gospel-focused method alone was great, and so really gets my recommendation. But also this work gives a bit of a historical overview of some of the issues and engages with differing positions in the past. Previously, I have given out Grudem's systematic to people interested in ministry or keen Bible study leaders, but this Evangelical Theology might now be the one I would hand out. However, I should be clear: I don't agree with everything in either Grudem's book, nor with this one. However, the way this was written, the style and method, I appreciated a lot.

Here are Bird's own words about the goal of the book:

I intend in this volume to construct an evangelical theology, one soaked in Scripture, in deliberate dialogue with theologians of the past and present, with an ear to the door of current debates, in order to equip evangelical churches with a gospel-faith that seeks spiritual formation and missional direction.

As everything in this volume is trying to be tied to the Gospel, it would be good to know what Bird means by it. After surveying a range of overlapping explanations of what the Gospel is from N.T. Wright, Kevin Vanhoozer, and Martin Luther, Bird gives his own:

The gospel is the announcement that God’s kingdom has come in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, the Lord and Messiah, in fulfillment of Israel’s Scriptures. The gospel evokes faith, repentance, and discipleship; its accompanying effects include salvation and the gift of the Holy Spirit.

With the goal not to just know more about God, but to see and savour the beauty and value of God.

There are 8 main sections of various lengths, which sort of break away from the traditional order of systematics. It goes:

1. Prolegomena: Beginning to Talk about God
2. The God of the Gospel: The Triune God in Being and Action
3. The Gospel of the Kingdom: The Now and the Not Yet
4. The Gospel of God’s Son: The Lord Jesus Christ
5. The Gospel of Salvation
6. The Promise and Power of the Gospel: The Holy Spirit
7. The Gospel and Humanity
8. The Community of the Gospelized

There is lots in here, and below are just a few notes of things I found interesting, new or perhaps even disagree with (there was more, but I lost some highlighting and this got long anyway)

This was the first time (I think) that I had heard something about the Garden of Eden being a testing period for Adam, that after a period of time in the Garden with the Tree, if they passed the test they would have been saved forever:

"The Adamic administration was a probationary period rather than a meritorious exercise. Adam could have retained his relationship with God and even extended it to immortality had he remained obedient to God in the garden during that probationary period in Eden."

"If Adam and Eve had obeyed God during their probationary period, then they would have perpetuated the Edenic condition for eternity."

I thought it was interesting, in contrast to some other influential evangelicals, that Penal Substitution Atonement wasn't the main major theory which should be hammered on.

"I tentatively propose that the Christus Victor theory is the crucial integrative hub for the atonement because it provides an intersection in which the other modes of the atonement come together."

"Evangelicals in my view need to do more justice to the Christus Victor theme and in so doing find that penal substitution is integral or central to it."

With the issues around Limited Atonement, Bird introduced a new view to me called Amyraldian (or at least a new word to me). I want to look into this a bit more, and found that he has written another book (Unlimited Atonement) on this.

"The Amyraldian view attempts to combine a Calvinist view of election with a universal view of the atonement."

"Amyraldianism thus implies a twofold will of God, whereby he wills both the salvation of all people on condition of faith (i.e., predestination to salvation) and the salvation of the elect by imparting faith (i.e., predestination to faith)."

"Some object that Amyraldians and Anglicans make divine election subordinate to salvation. To which I would respond, “Well, why not?” We can only reason our way to divine election through the economy of salvation."

On God's logical order of decrees, Bird's position was:

"I do not think anyone can reasonably claim to know the logical order of the decrees in the mind of God with any certainty. What might be a logical order within a system of theology is one thing, but to claim that such a logical order carries over into divine planning is quite another."

And then a little later said:

"I propose, that, in logical order, God decrees the incarnation of the Son, God decrees to create, God decrees to permit the fall, God decrees to offer salvation in the Son to human beings, and God decrees to save the elect."

On the filioque clause in the Nicene Creed, Bird said:

...many have called for the repeal of the filioque clause. Personally, I’m in favor of dropping it...

I support the theology of the filioque clause. But on the other hand, I think it was an act of ecumenical arrogance and disunity to unilaterally alter the Nicene Creed. So the clause should be omitted until such time as the church achieves consensus on the addition.

When it came to the origins of Adam, I was a little stumped in what to think. It seems Bird might have swallowed more evolutionary theory than I have. I am happy to say that animal kinds adapt to their environment and produce different results, but I am hesitant to say that about humans. In my little mind, there is a set point at which humans came into being, separate from the animals, from a clean slate. Bird would also say that at some set point in time, humans were set apart, but perhaps from a previous line of creatures. I also think for Romans 5 to work, humans need to go back to Adam, and if this wasn't the case, then I also don't know how Adam and Eve being on a probation period (see above) would have worked for all mankind. Bird says:

The diversity of the human gene pool cannot be traced back to merely two progenitors.

Adam is no more the first human being than Jesus has to be the last human being. This literary rather than literal approach to Genesis 1–11 certainly opens up the possibility of a symbolic reading of Adam and Eve.

we should consider the possibility that God used evolution to bring about biodiversity on earth and that God created genetic sequences to bring about sentient life through the inherent potential of DNA.

a scenario where Adam and Eve were the first kind of Homo divinus, perhaps a couple of Neolithic farmers, to whom God revealed himself. God then infused each of them with a soul, endowed each of them with the image of God,

On those who avoid infant baptism, but instead do dedications Bird says:

credobaptists sense this covenantal and familial pressure, which is precisely why they invented the ritual of infant dedications. They want to show that children brought into the believing home are holy and cherished by God, but the problem is that they lack the theological framework to do so in a way that is consistent with their beliefs about baptism, covenant, and church.... if you have a public initiation of the child into God’s family and if you have a public declaration of the child’s own faith later, then where you put the water isn’t the most important part!

Some other good lines:

Barth has nothing good to say about St. Patrick’s three-leaf clover and goes absolutely psycho when you describe the Trinity as water, ice, and steam.

Remember, friends don’t let friends do social Trinitarianism or eternal functional subordination. 

Liberation theologians opted for the poor, but it seems that the poor of the global south opted instead to become Pentecostal.

The law was given to a redeemed people, not to redeem the people

The politics of the church is quite simple: God is our only king, and Jesus is our only Lord.

If gender is a social construct, does that make transgenderism in some sense a social fiction?

And one super minor point, I was pleased to see in the foreword that I knew one of the research assistants.

Overall, I thought this was good work that covered enough of the Christian faith in an accessible way. Throughout, there are dad jokes, Star Wars references, rap battles between church fathers and other jokes, which may make this book date quicker, but it did make it more enjoyable to read. There are things I disagree with in this (as noted above), but I would still consider giving this out to someone. I would even consider running an 8-week course following the same flow as this book and leaning on Bird's method of connecting all theology to the good news of Jesus.