Derek Hatch on Mullins, Truett, and de Lubac

Continuing a series of occasional posts calling attention to recent doctoral dissertations by Baptists and others in the broader free church tradition working at the intersection of ecclesiology and ecumenical theology:

Derek C. Hatch is an alumnus of East Texas Baptist University who earned the Master of Divinity degree from Baylor University's Truett Theological Seminary and now the Ph.D. in Theology from the University of Dayton. His dissertation "E.Y. Mullins, George W. Truett, and a Baptist Theology of Nature and Grace" (University of Dayton, 2011) was supervised by William L. Portier.

Abstract

This dissertation examines the prevalent ideas of Baptist theological discourse, finding that they have limited utility for offering a coherent account of particular Baptist practices. It argues that Baptists would greatly benefit from deeper engagement with Catholic thought, especially the theology of nature and grace as articulated by Henri de Lubac, S.J. After detailing the obstacles to and potential for such a theological endeavor, de Lubac’s work serves as a lens for viewing and evaluating particular moments in Baptist history. This project contends that the work of E.Y. Mullins and George W. Truett, Baptist luminaries who have exerted considerable influence on the ways that Baptists view the world around them, significantly contributes to the notable incoherence of Baptist discourse. Through de Lubac’s understanding of the relationship of nature and grace, though, Baptists can critically evaluate Mullins and Truett in order to locate and overcome specific problematic aspects of their thought (both in their own contexts and in the contemporary setting). Moreover, Baptists can also recover marginalized or forgotten voices within their tradition (e.g., certain seventeenth-century English Baptists and African-American Baptists) as invaluable resources for renewal of Baptist theological discourse. Finally, such work underscores the importance of situating Baptist life and thought within the conversations of the broader Christian tradition.

Posts in this series:

Jeffrey Cary on Jenson, Williams, McClendon, and free church ecclesiology

Aaron James on language, Eucharistic identity, and the Baptist vision

Scott Bullard on Eucharist, Unity, and Baptists

Derek Hatch on Mullins, Truett, and de Lubac

Jonathan Malone on Baptists, Ordination, and Catholic "Sacramental Consciousness"

Cameron Jorgenson on "Bapto-Catholicism"

"All Shall Be Well" joins Ecumenism Means You, Too on Kindle

"All Shall Be Well": Explorations in Universal Salvation and Christian Theology, from Origen to Moltmann, ed. Gregory MacDonald (Cascade Books, 2011), a book to which I contributed the chapter on Gregory of Nyssa, is now available from Amazon on Kindle. Earlier this month my book Ecumenism Means You, Too: Ordinary Christians and the Quest for Christian Unity (Cascade Books, 2010) was released in a Kindle e-book edition as well (click on hyperlinked titles to go to the pages for the books in the Amazon Kindle store).

While I personally will probably continue to prefer to own and read hard-copy books, I'm delighted that the digital format is making these and other books more conveniently (and comparatively inexpensively) available to a wider readership.

The Dialogical Construction of Baptist Theology

Yesterday I presented a paper titled "The Dialogical Construction of Baptist Theology" on the program of the annual meeting of the National Association of Baptist Professors of Religion held at Gardner-Webb University in Boiling Springs, North Carolina. The material presented in this paper will be incorporated into a chapter of a book project on which I'm currently working, so I will post here only the introductory section:

In an article in the journal Ecumenical Trends published in 2009, I contended that ecumenical theology should be understood as a specific form of systematic theology. The sort of theology that is hammered out in bilateral and multilateral ecumenical dialogue is systematic in its own right by virtue of its comprehensive, coherent, and constructive character. It is comprehensive in that while ecclesiological issues receive much of the attention in the dialogues, the dialogical contestation of the church’s confession enables larger portions of the divided church to confess with one voice what they discover they are able to confess together across all the major loci of systematic theology. It possesses a methodological coherence that derives from being rooted in concrete ecclesial communities of reference, each of which has a living tradition that is an “historically extended, socially embodied argument...about the goods which constitute [the] tradition” (quoting Alasdair MacIntyre’s definition of a “living tradition”). Furthermore, the dialogues also manifest a methodological consistency in their approach to their theological work: discernment of matters of fundamental consensus and differentiated consensus, identification of issues of disagreement that merit ongoing dialogue, and recommendation of ways in which the two communions might embody in their current relations the steps toward visible unity that have already been achieved in the dialogue. And since the interconfessional dialogues make possible a MacIntyrean contestation of the Christian tradition across its divisions, any convergences that emerge from this dialectical process will be inherently constructive theological proposals. These constructions have not heretofore existed, and they could not have come into existence apart from the constructive theological work of the joint commissions.

In the present paper I extend this understanding of the systematic nature of ecumenical theology to the theological convergences articulated by the reports issued by the joint international commissions of the bilateral ecumenical dialogues in which the Baptist World Alliance has been involved. To date the BWA has held conversations with the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (1973-1977), the Lutheran World Federation (1986-1989), the World Mennonite Conference (1989-1992), the Anglican Consultative Council (2000-2005), and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity (1984-1988 and 2006-2010). Baptist participation in these instruments for dialogue yields a Baptist constructive theology that draws deeply from the Baptist theological tradition while creatively identifying openings for theological convergence with other traditions that previously have been unnoticed or undeveloped. This paper represents the substance of a portion of a chapter I’m currently writing for a book in progress on the Baptist vision and the ecumenical future. The larger book chapter will substantiate this thesis regarding the constructive nature of Baptist ecumenical theology under the systematic loci of prolegomena, theology proper, creation and theological anthropology, Christology, the Christian life, ecclesiology and its sub-loci, and eschatology, but the present paper will focus more narrowly on matters of prolegomena that, I will argue, account for dialogical theological constructions that situate the Baptist vision ecumenically as one that is radically biblical, radically catholic (lower-case “c”), and relentlessly pilgrim.

Baptists, catholicity, and the restorationist impulse

New publication update: my article "Qualitative Catholicity in the Ignatian Correspondence—and the New Testament: The Fallacies of a Restorationist Hermeneutic" appears in the current issue of Perspectives in Religious Studies, a journal sponsored by the National Association of Baptist Professors of Religion (vol. 38, no. 1 [Spring 2011], pp. 33-45). I presented earlier versions of this article in the form of a visiting scholar lecture for the New Testament Studies Ph.D. Colloquium in the Department of Religion at Baylor University in Waco, Texas and as the presidential address to the National Association of Baptist Professors of Religion—Southeast Region. The article is currently available only in the print edition of the journal; at a later date the full text will also be available electronically via the ATLA Religion Database with ATLA Serials maintained by the American Theological Library Association and accessible through many institutional libraries. In the meantime, the abstract of the article appears below:

Although “catholic” as a mark of the church has often been understood quantitatively with reference to the universality of the church, in early Christian usage it also qualitatively described the pattern of faith and practice that distinguished early catholic Christianity from heresies and schisms. This understanding of catholicity is almost as old as the later New Testament documents, as the letters of Ignatius of Antioch demonstrate, and indeed may be found in the New Testament itself. This article addresses some historical and hermeneutical fallacies of the restorationist impulse at the heart of Baptist biblicism, contending that to restore New Testament Christianity is to restore at least some dimensions of the patristic coming of age of Christian faith and practice.

By the way, here's another way to keep up with new posts at Ecclesial Theology: since March The Christian Century has been linking new Ecclesial Theology posts from the periodical's web site. From the Christian Century Theology page, scroll down and check out the "What We're Reading (Theology)" sidebar for links to new posts at Ecclesial Theology along with posts of interest from elsewhere in the theological blogosphere.

Scott Bullard on Eucharist, Unity, and Baptists

Continuing a series of occasional posts calling attention to recent doctoral dissertations by Baptists and others in the broader free church tradition working at the intersection of ecclesiology and ecumenical theology:

Scott W. Bullard is Chair of the Humanities Division and Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Judson College in Marion, Alabama. His dissertation "A Re-membering Sign: The Eucharist and Ecclesial Unity in Baptist Ecclesiologies" (Baylor University, 2009) was supervised by Barry A. Harvey.

Abstract

This dissertation argues for the Lord’s Supper, or Eucharist, as a vital basis of the church’s unity as the body of Christ. It focuses especially on the theology of James Wm. McClendon, Jr., who, though a member of a largely non-sacramental (“free church”) tradition, nonetheless insists upon Christ’s presence in the Eucharist and that through the Eucharist God “re-members” the church as the body of Christ. While the study lauds McClendon’s foresight and direction, it also argues that he ultimately shies away from a sacramental understanding of the Supper and that he skims over the unitive function of the Eucharist. Added to the discussion, then, are two voices from outside the free church tradition: Henri de Lubac, a Catholic, and Robert Jenson, a Lutheran. Together with McClendon, these twentieth century figures and their theologies have had an enormous impact on contemporary discussions about ecclesial unity. In a final chapter, therefore, the study illustrates how they have influenced a number of contemporary Baptists dubbed “new Baptist sacramentalists,” a younger group of Baptist theologians who offer a fresh approach to the ongoing puzzle of the church’s disunity through the Eucharist.

Posts in this series:

Jeffrey Cary on Jenson, Williams, McClendon, and free church ecclesiology

Aaron James on language, Eucharistic identity, and the Baptist vision

Scott Bullard on Eucharist, Unity, and Baptists

Derek Hatch on Mullins, Truett, and de Lubac

Jonathan Malone on Baptists, Ordination, and Catholic "Sacramental Consciousness"

Cameron Jorgenson on "Bapto-Catholicism"

Ecumenism Means You, Too update

My book Ecumenism Means You, Too: Ordinary Christians and the Quest for Christian Unity (Cascade Books, 2010) is now available in e-book format. The new Kindle edition is listed for $10.00 on the U.S. Amazon site; it is also available in the U.K. for £7.03 and in Germany for EUR 8,03 (click on hyperlinks to order and download).

Ecclesial theology in the Baptist academy

Among the academic/professional organizations of which I am a member, the National Association of Baptist Professors of Religion is the one most directly associated with my concrete ecclesial community of reference. The NABPR describes itself in this way on the home page of its web site:

The National Association of Baptist Professors of Religion is a community of teaching scholars. Most members teach at Baptist-affiliated schools, colleges, and seminaries, but members also hail from a wide range of institutions in the United States, Canada, and abroad, including church-related and state-supported schools.

The NABPR will hold its annual meeting May 22-25 on the campus of Gardner-Webb University in Boiling Springs, North Carolina. If the program for the meeting now available online is any indication, ecclesial theology--theology done in, with, and for the church--is alive and well in the Baptist academy.

The official opening of the meeting is preceded by a Doctoral Student Network Workshop intended to introduce Baptist doctoral students in religious and theological studies to the resources and mentors that can help them become Baptist scholars whose Baptist ecclesial formation shapes their scholarship rather than scholars who merely happen to be Baptists (The NABPR Doctoral Student Network also maintains a Facebook group). The titles of plenary addresses and papers presented in program units are evidence that the Baptist teaching scholars and graduate students on the program are deeply interested in the connections between their specialized disciplines in religious/theological studies, their Baptist ecclesial identity, the larger Christian tradition, and the embodied life of various forms of Baptist church and denominational community, even while they make notable contributions to scholarship in their disciplines beyond the Baptist academy.

I'm encouraged by these details of what promises to be a richly rewarding meeting. Those interested in attending may find registration information here.

Ecumenical dialogue texts--Growth in Agreement (3 vols., WCC)

Continuing a series of posts calling attention to selected resources featured in Appendix 1, "Resources for Ecumenical Engagement," in my book Ecumenism Means You, Too: Ordinary Christians and the Quest for Christian Unity (Cascade Books, 2010):

The three-volume Growth in Agreement series published by the World Council of Churches is the definitive print collection of reports and agreed statements from bilateral and multilateral dialogues adopted from 1971 through the present. These volumes provide an excellent set of resources for individual, group, and congregational study. Bibliographical information for each of the three volumes follows:

Vol. 1, Growth in Agreement: Reports and Agreed Statements of Ecumenical Conversations on a World Level, ed. Harding Meyer and Lukas Vischer (Faith and Order Paper, no. 108; New York: Paulist Press; Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1984).

Vol. 2, Growth in Agreement II: Reports and Agreed Statements of Ecumenical Conversations on a World Level, 1982-1998, ed. Jeffrey Gros, Harding Meyer, and William G. Rusch (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans; Geneva: WCC Publications, 2000).

Vol. 3, Growth in Agreement III: International Dialogue Texts and Agreed Statements, 1998-2005, ed. Jeffrey Gros, Thomas F. Best, and Lorelei F. Fuchs (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans; Geneva: WCC Publications, 2007).

Interested in Ecumenism Means You, Too? Order the book directly from Cascade Books or via Amazon.