Theology Applied
Southwestern Journal of Theology
Volume 63, No. 1 – Fall 2020
Editor: David S. Dockery
Edited By Matthew Y. Emerson, and Christopher W. Morgan and R. Lucas Stamps. Nashville: B&H, 2020, 400pp., $34.99
As a rule, Baptists are not typically known for their catholicity. More often, when other ecclesial traditions think of Baptists, they think of sectarianism. Sometimes this an unfair characterization rooted in centuries of theological debate and even rivalry. Too often, the charge has merit. Whether because of an abundance of kingdom-advancing resources, regrettable denominational pride, or genuinely sectarian theological trajectories, the “default factory setting” of many Baptists—including Southern Baptists—is insularity rather than catholicity.
For the past generation or so, a growing number of theologians with roots in Southern Baptist life have argued for grounding Baptist faith and practice within the context of more catholic sensibilities such as the value of tradition in doctrinal and ethical reflection, an emphasis on a more formal liturgy, and the importance of historical and theological continuity. In the second half of the twentieth century, longtime Southwestern Seminary theologian James Leo Garrett Jr. cultivated an evangelical Baptist catholicity while Southern Baptist Theological Seminary church historian Glenn Hinson advanced a version of Baptist catholicity informed more by mainline Protestant sensibilities. In more recent years, Southern Baptist theologians Timothy George and David Dockery have followed the Garrett trajectory, infusing it with emphases from postwar evangelicalism, while moderate theologians such as Steve Harmon and Curtis Freeman have synthesized elements of the Garrett and Hinson approaches, in dialogue with postliberal theology.
This is the context into which Baptists and the Christian Tradition has been published and the conversation into which the contributors have entered. The volume sets the agenda for how Baptist scholars and ministers can embrace a Garrett-George-Dockery form of evangelical Baptist catholicity, that is in constructive conversation with Hinson-Harmon-Freeman trajectory, for the sake of renewing contemporary Baptist faith and practice. Many of the book’s contributors are identified with the Center for Baptist Renewal, which co-editors Matt Emerson and Luke Stamps lead as co-executive directors. It is best to understand Baptists and the Christian Tradition as a convictionally Baptist and explicitly evangelical form of retrieval theology that is in the spirit of earlier efforts by the late Methodist theologian Thomas Oden and ongoing efforts by the Presbyterian scholars Scott Swain and Michael Allen.
The contributors to Baptists and the Christian Tradition reflect on a number of themes that are important to framing an evangelical Baptist catholicity. The result is a work that might be called “constructively conservative.” It is constructive in that so many of the themes the book addresses are underdeveloped in evangelical Baptist theology. Yet is also conservative in that the project is deeply rooted in the supreme authority of Scripture and sensitive to the “Great Tradition” represented in the ancient church’s creedal consensus and the best theological and moral thinking of the medieval and Reformation eras.
Some of the chapters put Baptist theology in greater dialog with the Great Tradition. Examples include Chris Morgan and Kristen Ferguson’s needed chapter on Christian unity; the fine essays by Luke Stamps and Malcolm Yarnell on Christology and the Trinity, respectively; Rhyne Putman’s excellent treatment of the relationship between Scripture and tradition; and Patrick Schreiner’s call for Baptists to give greater heed to classical approaches to biblical interpretation. Other chapters focus on themes that are of perennial import to Baptists, but that can benefit from a deeper engagement with pre-Reformation thinkers. Examples include Madison Grace’s discussion of Baptist ecclesiology in the context of the classical four “marks” of the church; Matt Emerson’s chapter on the ancient and Baptist practice of credobaptism; Michael Haykin’s retrieval of earlier Baptist expressions of the real spiritual presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper; and Amy Whitfield’s work on how Baptist denominational polity at times precluded Baptist participation in ecumenical efforts.
Dustin Bruce’s chapter on spirituality and Taylor Worley’s chapter on worship offer fruitful discussions on how contemporary Baptist practices might be shaped with greater attention to the insights of other traditions. Projects on catholicity can at times be insensitive to matters of diversity, perhaps because so much of the Christian tradition overlaps with the history of so-called Western civilization, so I was encouraged to read Soojin Chung’s chapter on global Christianity and Walter Strickland’s chapter on racial tensions. The church has always been bigger and more diverse than overly euro-centric accounts of Christian history have made it out to be, and the same should be true of our pursuit of evangelical Baptist catholicity. David Dockery reflects on the intersection of Baptists and evangelicalism, which has been a significant theme throughout his career, while Jason Duesing offers a helpful summary of Baptist contributions to the wider Christian tradition.
There is much herein to both challenge and benefit readers. Some will be challenged by the call to take classical Christology and Trinitarianism seriously, especially as it pushes back against sloppy or even troubling contemporary theologies put forward by some Southern Baptists and other evangelicals. Others will be challenged by the call to engage with non-Baptist and even non-Protestant voices when it comes to spiritual formation and worship, albeit always from a starting point of Baptist and evangelical convictions, or to heed greater attention to the biblical theme of unity with other believers who may not share our convictions on secondary and tertiary matters. The benefits for many readers will include greater exposure to Christian history (especially pre-Reformation history), engagement with lesser-known Baptist voices (especially from the British Isles), and reminders that the Baptist story, like the wider Christian story, has never been (and should never be) a predominantly white story recounted mostly in English. Herein lies much of the cure to Baptist insularity.
In the interest of full disclosure, I need to lay my own cards on the table. I am a fellow of the Center for Baptist Renewal and close friend of the co-editors. I was also involved in the planning stages of this book and dialogued with some of the contributors as they wrote their chapters. I am not a neutral reviewer and do not pretend to be such. I am a vocal proponent of evangelical Baptist catholicity. For that reason, I could hardly be more excited for the publication of Baptists and the Christian Tradition. It deserves a wide and reflective reading by Southern Baptist pastors and scholars. I would recommend reading it conjunction with Theological Retrieval for Evangelicals: Why We Need Our Past to Have a Future (Crossway, 2019), an excellent recent work in the same vein by Baptist pastor-theologian Gavin Ortlund.
