The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind

[GratiaCorpusChristi]

Has anybody read this book? I'm blowing through it now and really enjoying it.

[KimLCMS]

No. Who wrote it? I'm always looking for a good read!

[GratiaCorpusChristi]

No. Who wrote it? I'm always looking for a good read!
Mark Noll.

Similar to The Rebirth of Orthodoxy, by Thomas Oden, if anyone's read that.

[LilLamb219]

I don't know the author...is he Lutheran?

[GratiaCorpusChristi]

I don't know the author...is he Lutheran?
Nope. Calvinist/Reformed.

[C.F.W. Walther]

Nope. Calvinist/Reformed.
hmmm...........

[filosofer]

Has anybody read this book? I'm blowing through it now and really enjoying it.

Noll is scholarly, thorough, and not afraid to call a spade a spade. While not Lutheran, he does have great insight into the contemporary Christian debacle that exists in the western church today.

Noll, David Wells, D. A. Carson, etc. are all out of the Reformed camp, but we can learn from them and appreciate their observations and insights.

Note: This does not mean that we accept their Reformed premises or assumptions. Part of our growth as Christians comes when we are able to sift through writings to know what is, and is not, doctrinally correct. We don't have to trash the book but we don't swallow the whole thing, feathers and all (to paraphrase, out of context Luther ;) ). BTW, we have to do that even with those who are Lutheran, whether Luther, Walther, Krauth, Pieper, etc.

Acts 17:11 is good for all of us. :)


In Christ's love,
filo

[GratiaCorpusChristi]

hmmm...........
Oh c'mon, Rad. I have serious issues with the Reformed, but when they're conducting serious scholarship on issues on which we agree you can't just say "they're of a different sect, so even our common confessions are worthless." Unless, of course, being Lutheran is more important to you than defending Christian truth.

[GratiaCorpusChristi]

Noll is scholarly, thorough, and not afraid to call a spade a spade. While not Lutheran, he does have great insight into the contemporary Christian debacle that exists in the western church today.

Noll, David Wells, D. A. Carson, etc. are all out of the Reformed camp, but we can learn from them and appreciate their observations and insights.

Note: This does not mean that we accept their Reformed premises or assumptions. Part of our growth as Christians comes when we are able to sift through writings to know what is, and is not, doctrinally correct. We don't have to trash the book but we don't swallow the whole thing, feathers and all (to paraphrase, out of context Luther ;) ). BTW, we have to do that even with those who are Lutheran, whether Luther, Walther, Krauth, Pieper, etc.

Acts 17:11 is good for all of us. :)


In Christ's love,
filo

Seconded.

[C.F.W. Walther]

Oh c'mon, Rad. I have serious issues with the Reformed, but when they're conducting serious scholarship on issues on which we agree you can't just say "they're of a different sect, so even our common confessions are worthless." Unless, of course, being Lutheran is more important to you than defending Christian truth.Wow---did I say that? I didn't realize you assertained all that. You are so astute.

I'll have to go back and reassess my "hmmmmm..............." I didn't realize it expressed so much.

[GratiaCorpusChristi]

First paragraph: "The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there isn't much of an evangelical mind. An extrodinary range of virtues is found among the sprawling throngs of evangelical Protestants in North America, including great sacrifice in spreading the message of salvation in Jesus Christ, open-hearted generosity to the needy, heroic personal exertion on behalf of troubled individuals, and the unheralded sustenance of countless church and parachurch organizations. Notwithstanding all their virtues, however, American evangelicals are not exemplary for their thinking, and they have not been so for many generations." (pg. 3)

"For those who doubt the continuing domination of this way of thinking (prophecy prediction) among evangelicals, it is worth remembering the Gulf War of 1991. Within weeks of the outbreak of this conflict, evangelical publications provided a spate of books featuring efforts to read this latest Middle East crisis as a direct fullfillment of biblical prophecy heralding the end of the world. The books came to various conclusions, but they all shared the disconcerting conviction that the best way of providing moral judgment about what was happening in the Middle East was not to study carefully what was going on in the Middle East." (pg. 13)

"Evangelicals throughout the nineteenth century had not worked very self-conciously at thinking about the best ways, consistent with the Bible itself, to push thinking from Scripture to modern situations and back again. That is, habits of patient study were far less well exercised than habits of quick quotation." (pg. 107)

"As a result of following a theology that did not provide Christian guidence for the wider intellectual life, there has been, properly speaking, no fundamentalist philosophy, no fundamentalist history of science, no fundamenatlist aesthetics, no fundamentalist history, no fundamentalist novels or poetry, no fundamentalist jurisprudence, no fundamentalist literary criticism, and no fundamentalist sociology... And because evangelicals, though often dissenting from specific features of fundamentalism, have largely retained the mentality of fundamentalism when it comes to looking at the world, there has been a similarly meager harvest of evangelical intellectual life. What J.S. Bach gained from his Lutheranism to inform his music, what Jonathan Edwards took from the Reformed tradition to orient his philosophy, what A.H. Francke learned from German Pietism to inspire the University of Halle's research into Sanskrit and Asian literatures, what Jacob von Ruisdael gained from his seventeenth-century Dutch Calvinism to shape his painting, what Thomas Chalmers took from Scotish Presbyterianism to inspire his books on astronomy and political economy, what Abraham Kuyper gained from pietistic Dutch Calvinism to back his education, political, and communications labors of the late nineteenth century, what T.S. Eliot took from high-church Anglicanism as a basis for his cultural criticism, was Evelyn Waugh found for his novels in twentieth-century Catholicism, what Luci Shaw, Shirley Nelson, Harold Fickett, and Evangeline Paterson found to encourage creative writing after they left dispensationalism behind- few precious fundamentalists or their evangelical successors have ever found in the theological insights of twentieth-century dispensationalism, Holiness, or Pentecostalism." (pp. 138-139)

[GratiaCorpusChristi]

Wow---did I say that? I didn't realize you assertained all that. You are so astute.

I'll have to go back and reassess my "hmmmmm..............." I didn't realize it expressed so much.
Lets see your own words on the matter of Reformed books...

It would seem to me easier to read what the BIBLE says than what man says.

Everyone has an "opinion" but only one of them is the truth. That's why so many mislead people will read the thousands of book written by "people" and not the one written by "God"

Sure I do and they are books of our Lutheran/confessional faith and upheld by our synod not some "opinion" written by someone that has a "spiritual awakening".

So really, am I so far off?

[Orion567]

Oh c'mon, Rad. I have serious issues with the Reformed, but when they're conducting serious scholarship on issues on which we agree you can't just say "they're of a different sect, so even our common confessions are worthless." Unless, of course, being Lutheran is more important to you than defending Christian truth.


I agree, I have read some of Michael Horton's books and agree with him on some points and have been blessed by them. Anyone who supports the Essentials of the Christian Faith I am all for. Edification over exclusivity.

[GratiaCorpusChristi]

I agree, I have read some of Michael Horton's books and agree with him on some points and have been blessed by them. Anyone who supports the Essentials of the Christian Faith I am all for. Edification over exclusivity.
And we need it, too, what with the lack of decent Lutheran publishing in the United States.

It's difficult, sometimes, reading a whole lot of Reformed and a whole lot of Catholic material and then smashing them together, distilling them, and trying to come out Lutheran. But in the end its actually helped my theological method and allows me to meet opponents on their level.

[LilLamb219]

Anyone who supports the Essentials of the Christian Faith I am all for. Edification over exclusivity.

From what I've ever read about the "Essentials" of Christian faith, those evangelicals consider baptism and the Lord's supper to be merely symbols. :doh:

[GratiaCorpusChristi]

From what I've ever read about the "Essentials" of Christian faith, those evangelicals consider baptism and the Lord's supper to be merely symbols. :doh:
He was refering to the Reformed/Calvinists, not evangelicals.