James Callahan

The Protestant pope of evangelical unity, outward facing conversion ethic, and social engagement, John Stott led global evangelicals, most notably through the Lausanne Covenant (1974), during a time of awakening and efforts to mend the divide between gospel and emerging justice.

He is credited with more creativity than deserved as he simply reasserted conservative Anglican (Augustinian) Protestant doctrines as 'themes' and 'messages' in his sermons and published versions of the same. His insistence on an evangelical version of the substitutionary atonement, rejection of global charismatic influences, and populist insistence on preaching as the core of Christian communication were his way of owning the Anglican evangelical tradition thought lost to modernity's liberalism. In this way, he buttressed the conservative reaction among global Anglicans in their own version of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy (just 50 years later).

This theological biography was published in Walter Elwell's 2d edition of the Evangelical Dictionary of Theology and revised subsequently. Instead of a typical hagiographic puff-piece on Stott (read almost every single evangelical assessment since Stott's death in 2011), this piece gives some context and legacy to Stott's undeniable significance.

It is difficult to praise Karl Barth while earning the disfavor of his strongest (and latest) devotees, but this theological biography earned precisely that prize. The ripples of Barth's influence, especially in American circles, were at first a threat to conservative Protestantism's propositional and scholastic assertions of theological methodology, then the salvation of the Christian tradition's diminished influence in intellectual and cultural circles. Add to that Barth's counter-cultural fame as an opponent of traditional European liberalism and open critic of the German Church's acquiescence to the Third Reich, and it seems everyone wants to 'own' Barth, but on their own terms which they have come to confuse with his.

This theological biography first appeared in Walter Elwell's 2d edition of his Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, and as noted, made no one happy - especially at places such as Wheaton College (where the cool-factor of quoting Barth has never lost its appeal and Barth's traditional Reformed confessionalism have made him an example of opposition to postmodernity's antipathy toward the school's warmed-over modernistic response to all challenges.

This theological biography of the lion of evangelicalism's prophecy - culture obsession, John Walvoord, made few people happy. Supporters of Walvoord's influence (Dallas Theological Seminary and its imitators) were upset by my characterization of the cultural populism of his influence, while detractors were unhappy with giving credit to his pseudo-scholarly attempt to treat the Bible as a how-to-interpret-today manual for paranoid conservatives.

Either way, Walvoord is still winning as populist conversionism spreads in the underdeveloped world. Schools and seminaries are in burgeoning evangelical communities still rely heavily on Walvoord's writings or at least his model of literalistic prophecy reading.

Love him, hate him - you still need to reckon with him if you hope to understand the rise of Protestant apocalyptic fundamentalism and populist dispensationalism in global evangelical circles.

Famous for his Nature of Doctrine, George Lindbeck was the most accessible of the new Yale theologians and postliberal theology of the late 20th century. An ecumenist at heart, his defense of confessional and creedal mainline Protestantism and fondness for a communal (cultural-linguistic) figural reading of Scripture made inroads for those uncomfortable with the doctrinal strictness of Protestantism but fearful of jettisoning the centrality of theology for most Protestants.

Appreciation for Lindbeck's pedagogy outshines his influence in wider theological circles, but this short theological biography was part of Walter Elwell's Evangelical Dictionary of Theology.

Hans Frei used to be cool... then he was lumped together with shallow post-wannabes, weak modernists who thought narrative and anthropology made them cool enough to survive the deconstruction of theology in postmodernity. But Frei was always bigger and better than that, a pain-in-the neck to people who actually read his work, and a hero to those of us who saw the popularity of Karl Barth as just another modernist move to secure referentiality against relativism.

This piece is a brief theological biography that appeared in Walter Elwell's 2d edition of The Evangelical Dictionary of Theology (it tested the editorial policy of this evangelical work but survived against the protestations of editors at Baker who didn't understand the reason why Frei was such a threat to modernity's Christian theology).

Nothing Christian theologians try to do can escape the critique of historical theology - for good or ill. But it is no separable discipline, no foundational hubris, and no cover for insecure traditions unwilling and unable to come to terms with their own fallibility. Contrary to the early modern indoctrination with grand, totalizing visions, historical theology is a wonderfully helpful tool to practice iconoclastic faith.

And, like so many other attempts to do what is obvious and needful in evangelical circles, this contribution was roundly ignored.

"Historical Theology" is a piece published as part of Walter Elwell's 2001 revised edition of The Evangelical Dictionary of Theology (Baker)

On again, off again, contention of how the Christian gospel influences difference spheres of life - from personal and social behavior to political and economic policies - hasn't been given thoughtful consideration beyond ecclesial traditions and boundaries. Identity politics is the obvious default trope in disagreements over the social nature of the gospel, and virtue politics correspondingly influences ad hominem attacks.

"The Social Implications of the Gospel" is a piece published as part of Walter Elwell's 2001 revised edition of The Evangelical Dictionary of Theology (Baker).

Not long ago, narrative was all the rage... today, not as much. The fashionable preoccupation with (yet another) category to deliver religious imagination from the grips of organizing principles - artificial and reductionistic tropes - enjoyed its brief day in the sun. As with most fads, narrative theology still influences many but not in the label - more in the details and low-powered vocabulary. Why? Because we're frightened by those grand, reductionistic themes... embarrassed by our hubris and too cool to be tricked once again. Good luck with that....

"Narrative Theology" is a piece published as part of Walter Elwell's 2001 revised edition of The Evangelical Dictionary of Theology (Baker).

Christianly Clear?

Where does the belief that Scripture is clear come from? It comes from the union of Scripture read by Christians after a certain (that is, Christian) fashion; this seems to be the most common explanation within earliest Christianity. The focus moves from Scripture to Christian reading because the text is said to be clear, and not the other way from something separable or beyond Scripture back toward the text in order to clarify. In large part this movement is defended inasmuch as Christians wish to say that Scripture’s clarity is not forced upon or used as an excuse to disguise obscurity. And this type of response certainly seems to fit the subject matter. That is, if Scripture is clear it would be appropriate to demonstrate as much from Scripture (and as such it is characteristically argumentative in nature). This approach also tends to be pragmatic and deliberate: Scripture gives every indication that it is to be taken as clear.

This material serves as a commonplace demonstration of how defenders of perspicuity go about their business. It is NOT properly a study in patristics, not a healthy historical conversation, and not a reason to embrace clarity as a watchword to defend the Bible from any and all critics. It is a healthy introduction to the sometimes strange and often pious effort among early Christian theologians to make a way for their own credibility.

"To read the Bible modestly would yield the confident assurance that the word read was God's for us." It is hard to imagine a more benign and troubling assertion in the recent history of theological hermeneutics. The inability of scholars to grasp the significance of the phrase, "The Bible Says" is at the root of their dismissiveness of popular evangelical theology.

The serious effort to tackle such simplistic assertions might offer a way to engage in helpful conversations that salvage notions such as Bible reading and biblicism - hallmarks of evangelical affection for the Bible.

This essay proposes to re-commend the practice of Bible reading, coupled with a rejuvenated biblicism, as an essential means for the evangelical community to remain faithful to its own identity as biblicists.

Wheaton College needs another revival-an academic revival. Like spiritual revivals, it would begin with repentance and lead to renewal-with the attending opportunities for confession, prayer, and openness to new (and uncertain) possibilities of engagement with the Spirit of God. And it would probably, like spiritual revival, engender some resentment and defensiveness. Let the Word of God be freed from every trick used to mute its power as the always strange words to our world. If it is permitted to be free from us, again, to stand over against so much of what we do in its name, it will undo all rational practices and assertions of knowledge hidden in the shadows of Plato, in the shadows of discovering what is hidden in the refusal of what is written. Let God’s Word be free and we will not necessarily find the replacement of rational practices in rational practices.

The Protestant confession sola scriptura, with its attending convictions regarding Scripture’s sufficiency, inspiration, authority, and clarity, provides a specific grammar about how Christians regard the meaning and understanding of Scripture. Sola Scriptura is not simply an affirmation about Scripture as an object of interest and inquiry, but it is itself a commitment to understand Scripture as principally significant; which means we cannot have what the text is about without the text itself.

The phenomenal popularity of the WWJD? movement raises, once again, important questions about who is the Jesus Christians seek to follow. This subject of imitation spirituality has always concerned Christian people, even through the tumultuous questions raised by the several quests for the actual (that is, historical) Jesus. Instead of invalidating imitation spirituality, more recent evaluations (including the Jesus Seminar and post-critical theological perspectives) offer us a healthy way forward, stressing solidarity with Jesus in terms of characterization and narration.

So the story starts with a fall. As Wil Rogers said humans were made a little lower than the angels and have been getting lower ever since. And this fall is the storied move that Christian thought relies upon to assert a totalizing and proprietary claim to exclusivity. The question is whether un-doing this story can solve sin's dilemma or not.

The irrelevancy of "the church" is more than a trivialization of this or that kind of religious group or gathering - it's a widely held supposition both inside and outside circles. Of the several recent efforts to revive relevancy, few account for the utilitarian call for value and simply default to the crowded space of claims and counter-claims to fealty.

Using the notions of chaplaincy, ministry, and missional assertions to justify "the church" this conversation offers a glimpse of our alternatives as we observe the obvious - "the church" must add value or suffer irrelevancy.

While Catholic and magisterial Protestant theology captured the self-hermeneutic of the mortified soul, fostering renunciation of the objectified self, a hyperbolic idealized martyrdom of baptismal death to the old self and turning to new-found self-associated with an eschatological salvation, practiced in public penance as a form of martyrdom actually immune from execution proclaiming the death to the old self (Luther's theology of the cross); so symbolic death is an everyday event; oddly, epistemic humility is captured in the snare of epistemically totalizing hermeneutic of self-mortification; martyrdom was the only trustworthy epistemic parrhesia.

By means of two tales, both infamous, one because it is so thick (Michael Sattler) and the other because it is so thin (Dirk Willems), it may be possible to see why martyrdom was and is such an intractable predicament, and how it has been manipulated to maintain the justification of martyrdom as well as the perpetuation of martyrism as a pastoral ethic.

"Michael Sattler shall be committed to the executioner. The latter shall take him to the square and there first cut out his tongue, and then forge him fast to a wagon and there with glowing iron tongs twice tear pieces from his body, then on the way to the site of execution five times more as above and then burn his body to powder as an arch-heretic."

Why Christians of a sort would execute Sattler for being another kind of Christian (specifically, a radical, baptizer - anabaptist, or simply, a heretic) is not a matter worth adjudicating. The story of Christianity is replete with such self-righteous transgressions and they have yet to undo its justification – that some deserve to die at the hands or to protect or purify Christendom. Simple enough.

This is the draft of a developing project on the topic of an ethic of martyrdom - something for which I've coined the term martyrism. And, yes, it is something sought after, celebrated and narrated.

Once upon a time, just about everyone who called themselves Christian asserted they read and understood their sacred texts with some sort of pneumatic description to account for assertions of fidelity and confidence. More recently they appeal to objectivity (but no one believes them). Reading with faith is the claim - not in some epistemologically universal claim to divine spirit, but in a unique, social sense of “people like us read texts like this in this way and that’s how we believe like we do.” They learned to be ‘insiders’ to their texts by reading and experiencing those texts in this inexplicable pneumatic appeal (inexplicable yet narrated, asserted and defended).

The following summaries move from the most idiosyncratic to more historic accounts, but all share the conviction that reading rightly (believingly) is just not possible without practicing pneumatic self-awareness and means.

Once upon a time (when theology was a 'thing' and doctrine mattered, but before anyone thought it should actually help us exist as those who pretend to believe and live differently because of Christian faith), I taught courses in Christian Theology.

At schools like Wheaton College, Northern Seminary and several guest lectureships at institutions I promised I'd never advertise I was invited to contribute my thoughts, I taught coursework and graduate seminars on the subject of theology. This introduction to the task of theology was just another hand-out serious students would pretend to read and colleagues would use to raise suspicions about 'fit' and statements of faith to Provosts and Deans. So I share this with you in hopes of steering you away from criticism and you, like so many others, will learn to 'just blame Callahan' for this or that.

I find one of the best ways to grasp what's at stake in the personality-driven obsession with theological influences is to rehearse what may be said as if one were a spurned lover... an intimate no longer so... with vitriol and appreciation blended beyond separation or remedy.

Impolite thoughts on Augustine's God... is this in practice - an exercise of theological education too impolite for most. But it's certainly NOT just a catalog of criticisms... it's a plea of anger and passion.

Try it of those you most appreciate and believe - pray - to be beyond detraction. Most of you won't be able to muster the honesty or empathy necessary to do the exercise justice. You'll just sound ignorant and mean.

Fare thee well...

On the night he was betrayed...

So what really happens when those called Christian repeat the event called communion, the Lord's supper, Last Supper, the breaking of the bread, the remembrance (and so many other obscure ways to say the same thing)?

This outline of options (historical and contemporary) is a sort of taxonomy... a 'Where's Waldo' for you to find yourself or your tradition. So, can you?

The story we tell ourselves about navigating the push and pull about God's ways with us and our ways with God is called sanctification. Like the almost unlimited variety of expressions of our self-awareness, views of sanctification are truly ad nauseum. This is a simple taxonomy of these stories.

Spinoza argued that the confusion of command for knowledge was the long error of theology. Spinoza was right - but it has taken us this long to acknowledge that the battle of history and historicity was not the savior of Christian reflection but the undoing of theology itself.

This short reflection was offered for a discussion on the ends of modernity in religious reflection, and entertained generously by colleagues searching together for the end of theology (and Christendom) and the beginning of faith.

Everyone thinks Jesus shows-up when promised - but how that happens is wildly different in church and theological traditions. Here's a tool - a taxonomy - of variations on real presence that helps learners articulate their views and the commitments of others. (When that happens, everybody seems to get along better.)

Fallacies abound in the struggle to control the ‘good book’ – and in every variety they share the goal of hiding from contrarian and truly critical reading. In a word, fallacies are weapons to defend the indefectibility of Christianity.

Intentional fallacies - especially authorial intent - is the most damaging, deluding and heretical fallacy for any who claim to honor the text as text and not just some portal or code to something beyond, beneath or behind the text. That is, for all the bluster from Christians, they treat the text of Scripture as a reference to something else and practically lose the text so respected.

The general complaint against recent Christianity is its lack of identity (specifically, its reliance on prevailing power-and thought-forms and therefore acquiescence to find approval). Christianity lacks Christian faith-this is the most direct charge. And any effort to critically realize alternatives engenders halfway measures at best in response to legitimate questions raised against the enfranchisement of Christianity and its sacred texts.

The very premise allows for the defectability of Christianity. But this is something Christianity insists is impossible.

This paper was shared among graduate students in religious studies for a recent discussion of alternative forms of criticism directed against inherited forms of Christian faith. This alternative employs the early anabaptistic experiences and the Schleitheim statement, but shouldn't be read as an anabaptistic document (they wouldn't like it).

The first mistake is the assumption that theology is normative-in that we've always seemed to have something called theology. We haven't, and its necessity is artificial and therefore a replacement for something else. In a word, this is what's wrong with theology, with Christianity's cultural ascendency, with any justification for Christendom, and with every apologetic for the necessity of Christian faith's indefectibility (be it Catholicism or Protestant's infallibilists).

Is there faith without this kind of theology? Is there anything Christian in education or culture or public discourse without this kind of theology?

This paper was presented to a small gathering of professional religionists and educators. The invitation to share these thoughts was prompted by my reputation as an iconoclast without roots in Christendom, an educator without standing in the academy (or deriving a living from pleasing an institution of higher education), and a victim of both.

Is eschatology with ethics even possible?

We seem to be stuck straddling a void separating passive-aggressiveness, hyperactivity, and nostalgia.  Passive-aggressiveness and hand wringing over the loss of old, sure and certain ways of thought and knowing and certainty and faith (so we dig in and celebrate non-negotiables and other nonsensical abstractions). Hyperactivity and ego driving recklessly into novelty, technology, globalism and religionless faith (so we are hyper-sensitive to offense and willfully ignorant of identity).

Yes, eschatology with ethics is possible...

But the effect of our in-between conditions-the real threat we are warned-is that our incredulity toward grand, encompassing, totalizing schemes and corresponding anthropology, leads inevitably to pluralism… which is just another way of saying we must create room for forms of relativism… which is just another way of saying post-colonial impulses are entertained… which is just another way to say there is no such thing as Truth or a carapace under which we can hide… which is just another way of saying Christian theology is not only impossible to sustain but also unnecessary.

Instead of glibly insisting that there is nothing after theology, this paper attempts to plot a way that doesn't need to be anything more than a trail of breadcrumbs.

Delivered to a group of professional religion colleagues, we each risked saying something new with old things... and this was my contribution.

Context… that's all this is… context for all of us trying to discover the methodological pressures we feel when we do that strange thing we call theology.

This paper was delivered in a series of presentations concerned with borrowing from contemporary philosophical influences in the practice of doing theology. The two influences under consideration were Bernstein and Rorty for this exercise.

This paper was delivered at a public lecture for a regional gathering of would-be theology scholars and students (the students loved it, the scholars hated me).

At the risk of provoking professional theologians, I offer their task is undertaken without it's self-proclaimed object, God. Following Descartes and the Augustinian tradition, theology needs certainty, not God, to be theology.

In a piecemeal effort to return to faith (and return God to theology), this paper is a postcritical contribution to undoing what has been undertaken in the name of justifying itself (theology, that is).

Putting it plainly, original sin is the grand, encompassing, and therefore essential theme of Christian theology's defense of its necessity, impeccability and mission.

No traditional notion of original sin, and there's no necessity of Christendom's traditional rationale. This story is the story of modern theology - fighting to justify its existence and necessity as late modernity simply allows theology to die under the weight of it's own making.

But there is an alternative.

There is a way of reading and regarding religious texts that is inherently a rules-based tactic – befuddling hermeneuticians and emboldening ant-intellectual religious movements. It is patently heuristic but also a carapace into which ignorance retreats. In a phrase, it drives academics mad.

It is best known as biblicism. As in, book-ism or adherence only, or just primarily, to the world of the book – their book, their sacred text, their anthology of shared and traditional texts.

This paper was delivered to a college colloquium in early 2019 at the request of the religious studies faculty to address the persistent struggle to interact with religious conservatives in the college and wider communities.

Asked to envision a new role for Christian theologians in faith-based higher education institutions, this paper was delivered to a gathering of Presidents, Provosts, Deans, Board Members and several nervous stakeholders at a recent colloquium. My offering was well received and is being tested in several circles.

The take-away is this - the role of a Christian theologian can only be justified by undoing so much of what has defined faith-based institutions. You'll love it and hate it - at least, that's my experience.

Wheaton College General Education Curriculum went round and round about how to instill "lifelong appreciation for Christian faith" in students who refused or had never been asked to interact critically with Christian faith (remember, we don't give tests or grades in Sunday school, apparently).

I was tasked with offering a curriculum revision to bring a Bible school curriculum out of its fundamentalist cocoon and bring it into the new millennium. This paper was shared, discussed, and eventually voted-down after the Provost, President, and the entire department of Bible, Theology, Archaeology and World Religions added their negative responses. Alas, the Bible school curriculum still prevails at most Christian liberal arts colleges and universities.

Way back when, people respected Bible translators and their work. Thankfully, that time of uncritical fear and awe has passed and we can get down to the hard work of reading with a sense of self - some humility mixed with boldness.

When the debate over inclusive language first hit the news among American Protestants, and tore through the most conservative circles of Evangelicalism (including it's colleges and nonprofits), the opportunity for learning was sacrificed on the altar of fear.

This paper is from a public forum held at Wheaton College and, if I recall correctly, the auditorium was filled to capacity with over 800 scared souls desperate for help or out for blood.

I did not disappoint.

It's a few years ago now, and agreements about disclosures have ended. So, here's one interesting chapter to illustrate what it was like to teach at Wheaton College during the crusades of Jones and Litfin - when anonymous accusations were given unquestioning credibility while sincere responses were dismissed as self-serving.

I was accused of not teaching in accordance with a departmental tract, "How We Approach the Bible" and was asked by the department chair to respond to an anonymous accusation in writing. (I'm not a fan of anonymity, especially when it's used to hide serious things in the name of "Christ and His Kingdom.")

Needless to say, I soon no longer taught at Wheaton College.

What if one could use Jesus to undo all (or at least much) of what's been done to secure Christianity's fate? Let's see what that might look like.

This is the third chapter in a project begun way back when Wheaton College was encouraging thoughtful dissent from mainstream Christianity. Those days are over, so this relic of a piece was once entertained (even celebrated) but now is consigned to the dustbin of professors with contract buyouts and non-disclosure agreements. Yes, that's a very common part of the discretionary administration of Wheaton College... and it's an interesting story in itself.

A few years ago, WWJD was all the rage in Christian circles. What would Jesus do? was the question, so I asked the follow-up - About what? What would be so important for Jesus to do today?

Of course, everyone has an idea - that's the whole point of doing a christology (making Jesus our contemporary to justify our behaviors as if Jesus were offering commentary on our world today). It almost sound silly to put it that way, but that's what theology is - silly sometimes.

And everyone serious has/had an opinion about what Jesus would do today and about what - including H. Richard Niebuhr and Karl Barth to Albert Schweitzer and Friedrich Schleiermacher (to name a few classic heavyweights). And I had to name them because this paper is a lecture I gave at Elmhurst College (the home of Niebuhr papers and once-upon-a-time college president Reinhold Niebuhr himself.

It's among several pieces I put together while exploring the possibility of doing (another) christology - this time with some contemporary seriousness (see the questions about Jesus' gender, for example, suggested toward the close of the lecture).

People (students, that is... and students are people too)  loved it - but publishers wouldn't give me a second look. Their loss...

What if theology isn't what we think it is? What if playing the game means ending the game of theology? Following the distinction (with a difference) of strategy and tactic outlined by Michel de Certeau, I explore how ideological exercises (like theology and history for instance), are just that - ideological exercises or games to be enjoyed in the playing. Why? Because it's in the playing that the game is found, not in it's conclusion. And the only way to win this game is to keep playing it without end - that's what undoing something done looks like.

What if the knot doesn't need to be untied because it was never knotted? Yeah, that's the vice of tactics... and most won't like it because they still need ideology to sleep at night.

Sleep well then... some of us are going to be playing a game.

Let's play a game - how does one undo what can't be undone? Following de Certeau's struggle to distinguish strategy and tactics in ideological writing (like theology and history), here's a start to doing theology as theology rather than as just another discourse. You won't like it - in part because it means so much of what's been done doesn't need to be undone because it was never done in the first place. How does one untie a knot that has never been knotted? As I said, let's play a game.

The much-maligned plight of adjuncts is a story of lies and exploitation... and a story adjuncts insist they must believe. This first installment of my experience as an adjunct for almost 20 years introduces OUR problem - the adjuncts' problem. It may be 'their' fault, but the lie is one we want to be true.

Once upon a time I was a young professor at Wheaton College in Illinois, teaching theology while the world burned. All tenure-track hopefuls were asked to develop a research paper on a topic in their discipline and address the integration of faith and that discipline. Since my field was theology, I thought this would be impossible (everyone else in my department thought this would be easy - a no-brainer... and that explains so much about doing theology at said institution). This is the start of that research effort dating from the year 2000 (just after the world didn't end on Y2K). There's a lot more, but this will suffice for now...

Ever heard of "the history of ideas" discipline? (They even had a club... seriously....) It was once a way of slicing through hundreds of years to say something more concrete (Lovejoy). Then it was morphed into archaeology (Foucault) undoing History in favor of discontinuity and discourse.

This paper was once upon a time part of my dissertation on religious primitivism in early nineteenth-century Europe. Like several other chapters, it never made the final dissertation, but I always liked it.

Being ‘Plymouth Brethren’ is a quirky, contentious existence - a fine example of Protestant fundamentalism birthed in the early 19th century and strangely contagious among disaffected Christians in almost every place touched by English influence. Of the several contested notions which orient anyone silly enough to fight the fight of B/brethren identity, one will find primitivism, biblicism, and apocalypticism (or, if you don’t prefer -isms - the romantic longing for lost and pure ways, self-imposed neglect of critical tasks, and paranoid, self-righteous fixation on the inevitable end).

This quirky piece of pseudo-scholarship was my attempt long, long ago, to justify the habit of remaking autonomous church authorities known as elders in the collapsed in-between called the present age. If nothing else, it has come to irritate my old teachers because it betrays the boundaries of (their) so-called scholarship, and therefore I share it as a way of saying their irritation makes me happy.

This completely understandable - albeit defensive - justification of what is or can be Christian about a liberal arts education has become a punchline. The apologetic genesis is obvious to me, but it's rarely admitted from within these circles, as the relationship of faith and learning is the problem to be overcome or solved. These institutions seek accreditation, grant advanced degrees, seek professional credentials to track majors/graduates-it all is necessary to justify the expense of higher education as well as differentiate the institution from competition. But, properly, there is no such thing as Christian dentistry, law, diesel mechanics or mathematics - so why do we entertain silly assertions of Christian psychology, education, business or even biology?

This paper is the work product from a recent review of such things at a prominent Christian higher education institution. (The response was mixed - from faculty outside the Christian labeled departments it was lauded, from those within and from the administration's representatives it was not.)

An important conversation is grasping how Christian readers of Scripture employ the concept of perspicuity is how they choose to read the anthology called the Bible as a book - self-referring, interlaced explicitly and not simply implicitly. There is no value to clarity if it takes a de-coder ring and membership card to say something about the ability to read with understanding - what theologically is co-inhesion.

The expression “the clarity of Scripture” is both helpful and misleading. Scripture’s clarity is, simply put, how Christians account for the union of text, reader and reading. It is not simply that the text is clear by itself, but that the (Christian) reader makes use of the text in a way that both presumes and argues that Scripture is clear itself. When used in this manner the clarity of Scripture describes a Christian attitude toward how one reads and regards the sacred text. As such it summarizes the intrinsic union of theological commitments concerning the illumination of reader by the Spirit, divine rather than simply conventional authority of the text, and characterization of Scripture as realistically self-evidenced or perspicuous.

You're a snob (c'mon, you know you are - just the way you react to useful, digestible, workable ideas in stories and storytelling proves how much of a snob you are... me too...).

The Truer Truth is an experiment that started in a 'callings' and nonprofit course I've led at Elmhurst University's (formerly Elmhurst College's) Niebuhr Center. We wanted to see how to create and self-publish a readable book on lifestyle with religious and philosophical undertones.

And we did it - here it is just for you - The Truer Truth: A How-To Book for Life (also available on Kindle - https://amzn.to/321jXyf)

The short version is this - reader response theories are essential to explaining what Christians have called 'the clarity of Scripture' although the idea is threatening to most.

When we speak of Scripture’s clarity we refer to the relationship of the text and the readers; we confess that the text’s relationship with Christian readers and Christian readers’ relationship with the text is described in terms of the light of the text and the enlightenment of the readers. We seek to occupy the landscape of the text’s vision—to live as those whose way in the world is created by the text itself. In this respect Christians have been interested in the ethics of the interpreter, not just the ethics of interpretation.

The much-acclaimed collapse of the cultural Christian influence in the West is accompanied by a vigorous discussion about the so-called canon of Western literature, and the very notion of a classic. To put the matter much too simply, the literary canon is comprised of classics which not only should be read but are read, for whatever reasons; it exemplifies a discrimination between texts, and in turn raises serious questions of historical justification for privileging one text above another (what makes a classic a classic seems to many an arbitrary privileging of one text over another to reinforce ideological prejudices). In particular, how are we to address the analytical recognition that the Bible has been treated as a classic (something many Christians are interested in defending)? Or is a classic, in particular the Bible, simply acknowledged by readers for what it is, namely, valuable, worthy of being read and able to be read with clarity?

No, the clarity of Scripture is not a uniquely Protestant assertion (it's found in most religious traditions regarding insiders perceiving, with generosity, the best assertions of sacred texts... typically in a way benefiting the community).

But using clarity as a weapon to break with traditions and their appeals to inherent authority is more typically Protestant - and that's what the larger figures of the early Reformation attempted.

This is a chapter from my 2001 publication from InterVarsity Press (they didn't offer much support to this book - publishing a how-to version of the topic soon after), but The Clarity of Scripture became required reading in a surprising number of professional schools/seminaries and finds its way into the footnotes of many volumes. Irony of ironies...

Evangelicalism can't be defined to anyone's satisfaction, and e/Evangelical theology makes this even worse...

This short-hand taxonomy is a start to map the comparable elements of theological interest from a variety of acknowledged e/Evangelical self-proclaimed theologians (no, Joel Osteen is not included).

The notion that ‘sound doctrine’ is defensible as ‘sound doctrine’ undermines the metaphorical/allegorical religious reading of the New Testament. ‘Sound doctrine’ is taken as second-order practice (theological reflection and ecclesial action) of first-order language (the ‘word’ or ‘scripture’), but not read as simply the same thing as that first-order language. In this scenario ‘sound doctrine’ can be understood as literally alive (live-it-out well [as second-order discourse] and fulfilling what is read [scripture as first-order discourse]). Got that?