Now, I want to say just this.

I enjoyed the review and the comments

I know you don’t deny authority. I don’t think that’s what I said in the review. My disagreement was not with your denial of authority, but with the way that you see an emphasis on authority as fostering a relationship with a book. You downplay the notion of authority to the point that you write as if it were opposed to love and trust. If authority is swallowed up in love, then obedience and submission to God’s loving authority still represent our right responses to the God who relates to us through His Word. My quibble with the book was that this nuanced approach to authority didn’t come through for me… It seemed that the notion of authority was always portrayed negatively.

I’m glad to see your clarifying comments on Systematics. I do hope I haven’t misrepresented you in any way, and I have long appreciated your work and your blog. Even when I disagreed with the Parakeet, I found it a very engaging and challenging book – one that made me think long and hard about some things.

I don’t deny authority Trevin and that’s an unfair representation. I swallow authority in love. A relational view doesn’t deny the authority view; it puts it at a higher level.

That leads me to my other point. I think there is a big difference between being against doctrine and theological formulations, and being against a certain way of coming to that doctrine. The second is what I think Scot was critiquing when he talked about systematics using the Bible like a puzzle, not the first. He clearly holds doctrine and theological formulations in high regard (just look at his blog or especially the book ‘A Community Called Atonement’).
I would have to agree with him though that often systematics, especially certain authors, becomes an exercise in lining up a bunch of references and assuming that proves something, without seeing that these texts are culturally and contextually influenced and a lot more wrestling is required than that approach is willing to do.
Wright makes a pretty good critique of that way of reading the Bible in his ‘How can the Bible be Authoritative’ article, and it seems that neither author is advising an abandoning of real doctrines and statements which ‘systematize’ the Biblical narrative, just more awareness that we should not treat the Bible like God ought to have given us a list of propositional statements and called it good.

Thanks again and I’ll need to look up that artical by McKinion

Thanks for the comment, and thanks always for reading!

Let me respond to a couple of your comments. You wrote:

“I did not receive the impression that Scot saw [that was then but this is now] as the ‘secret’ to reading the Bible.”

I should have put quotes around that statement. Scot writes (pg 57) – “I believe those seven words are the secret to reading the Bible: ‘that was then and this is now.’”

Of course there are “then and now” differences, but by claiming this is the secret to reading the Bible leaves too much on the table. Just think about what all can be explained away with these words. (Scot doesn’t go too far in this direction; but he is adopting the same hermeneutical principle that advocates of normalizing homosexuality seem to make. And that is a concern for me.)

You mentioned that you do not think Scot sets up a dichotomy between Systematic Theology and Story. I think it’s clear that he does, because he puts systematization in the category of treating the Bible like a puzzle (49-52), which, according to Scot, is a wrong way to read the Bible. Nowhere does he give any value to studying theology systematically. Like I said in the review, it’s not that I disagree that the Bible is a Story… but I am weary of the constant battle to separate a systematic approach of studying Scripture from the Story-approach, whether the call is coming from Reformed or Emerging circles. These two approaches can complement one another.

You are right to point out that church history is never the final call when speaking of issues of theology. But I would argue that the basic Reformational understanding of salvation as by grace alone is, for the most part, present throughout church history. And the fact that it is often articulated so individualistically in Reformational circles today may be a sign that we need to go back once again to the biblical texts and the earlier church fathers in order to tweak our understanding.

Adult believers baptism? I point you to an essay by Steven McKinion called “Baptism in the Patristic Writings.” McKinion shows, quite persuasively in my opinion, that many of the church fathers practiced believer’s baptism. Archeology also backs up the point. Many of the churches of the first centuries had deep baptistries.

Regarding eschatology: I totally agree with you. That is one of the main strikes against the Dispensational view, if you ask me. It didn’t appear until the 1850′s.

Ultimately, the issue of church tradition does matter to me in the women in ministry argument that Scot makes. But that is not the final authority. I disagree with Scot’s conclusions because I clearly see hierarchy in the creation order before the fall.

Many thanks!

“The Story motif leads Scot to see the secret to reading the Bible as this: ‘That was then and this is now.’”

I did not receive the impression that Scot saw this as the ‘secret’ to reading the Bible, but rather that he thinks we all do this already and we need to figure out why we do it the way we do, and make sure we do it in a responsible way.
Seems to me that we really do all see the ‘then and now’ differences, so this is a valid point on his part. After all, though women in ministry might be controversial, wearing a shirt made of two cloths or eating improperly killed meat is not (despite Acts 15).

“The major problem I see in Scot’s emphasis on the Bible as Story and his dismissal of systematic theology is that he himself is not able to live up to his own dichotomy.”

Are these actually set up as dichotomous in the book? If so that is unfortunate, but it was not how I took his focus on Story, or his opinion of systematic theology, the categories of which he comfortably engages in other works.
I think the direction he was going was more like VanHoozer’s Drama of Doctrine which argues that seeing the overarching Story allows us to do theology in a more authentically Biblical and grounded way.

“I have a hard time believing that the Holy Spirit did not inspire and illuminate 2000 years of church fathers on this issue, and chose instead to wait until the 20th century when the culture began moving in a feminist direction.”

I understand where you are coming from on women in ministry, but I don’t think deep down you actually see theology as never working like that when you really think about it. I’ll give a few examples.

-The Reformed understanding of Justification took 1500 years to arrive at. Whatever glimpses one might see of a more Protestant understanding of Justification in Augustine or early Fathers, it was never articulated or understood in quite the way it is now, and was never as individualist and separate from ecclesiology as the Reformation made it.
-Adult believers baptism (which I would favor) is pretty hard to find in the early church, the Fathers, or anyone else before the Reformation.
-Eschatology has a number of outlooks (like pre-trib or consistent preterism) which were never arrived at until the last couple hundred years. I’m not saying they are right (I don’t think they are) but for the many who do hold these positions they see no difficulty in the fact that these positions are relatively new, and even their opponents do not usually see their newness as a fair criticism.
With these in mind, and the very convincing argument by Scot that many women in the NT were actually involved in leadership to a level many today would not agree with, could it not be that the church is taking a long time to come to a more Biblical position on women in ministry and sadly needed culture to shake it awake a little?

I look forward to your thoughts and thanks for listening (or reading to be technical)