Beyond the Impasse? Scripture, Interpretation and Theology in Baptist Life. - book reviews

Christian Century, April 14, 1993 by S. Mark Heim

Marshall objects to Dockery's approach to scripture and his designation of it as a "divine-human book." This tends to confuse Christ and the Bible. Marshall argues that the authority of scripture is most adequately expressed when, like Luther, we evaluate it always as the cradle in which we may find Christ and we remember always that the Christ we find is the crucified one. This means in her view that biblical interpretation shifts away from the attempt to isolate truthful propositions and toward a narrative mode. Scripture is read in light of the apostolic narrative of the life, death and resurrection of Christ which antedated it - not because we have access to that narrative apart from scripture, but because it is this word which is the true heart of the Bible's content. In such an approach, she sees the way to a wider pluralism among Baptists.

Sadly, though these writers often seem close, Patterson is right to say the book would have been better titled The Nature of the Impasse. There is no "beyond" in sight. The essays by Patterson and Marshall come the closest to indicating why this is so: each confirms what the other side must suspect. Marshall's irenic statement makes clear through its footnotes that the pluralism she has in mind includes voices that are precisely the ones Patterson wants excluded. Patterson's anecdotes of vibrant pastors lost to mission and faith through the critical-historical method makes clear that even the circumscribed inquiry the moderates advocate must still be a threat. Though barely touched upon in these discussions, substantive questions over the ordination of women, the status of homosexuality, racial justice and religious pluralism hover insistently in the background. The nuances in Baptist tradition, the contrasting theological approaches, point to distinctly different perspectives on these questions. It is not that all moderates disagree with conservative answers, but that moderate themes hold the door open.

Seminaries are in the midst of this Baptist storm. That is understandable, since Baptists have no other institutional reservoir for theology, no fixed liturgy, no book of discipline, no corporate ruling body in matters of faith. The few huge Southern Baptist schools play a crucial role in the denomination's life. Again and again these writers turn to the question of what should be taught to preachers. Patterson draws portions of the historical and critical study of scripture inside a carefully drawn circle of acceptance. But he sees the free play of its methods as a withering wind that shrivels the church wherever it blows - whether through the mainline churches of the U.S. or the established churches of Europe. Marshall speaks for the moderates when she argues that conservative theological education has its casualties too, and testifies movingly of the strengths of a faith that lives in touch with the world's uncertainty.

Patterson's conservative politics and those of the Southern Baptist movement he advances are well known. For many with no theological stake at all, they provide adequate grounds to be for or against that movement. My sympathies are with the moderates. But as Nancy Ammerman's sociological study of the conflict has shown, they may well be the minority, and the "takeover" group may have much the broad support it claims. Patterson condemns an untethered academic study of scripture that leaves the preacher without a gospel. Marshall ruefully comments that many seminary graduates fail to make good use of their learning in the pulpit. Both are indicating that the critical inquiry into scripture which can grace an individual's belief with new breadth and integrity has yet to find a fully dynamic mode within the churches' witness and worship. Its leaven is most effective when it works, as with the moderates, within an extremely hearty faith. Where the authority and inspiration of scripture are firm assumptions, and much Christian doctrine a matter of second nature, a central emphasis on critical inquiry broadens, sharpens and chastens. But it is hard to gainsay Patterson's point that ministries and churches devoted to that emphasis have had disappointing success at reproducing - qualitatively or quantitatively - the host environment in which it can be most effective.