Bruce McCormack, the Frederick and Margaret L. Weyerhaeuser Professor of Theology at Princeton, is the most interesting and helpful Barthian working today. He has made his mark working to correct a certain North American distortion of Karl Barth’s thought. His contributions now include a number of edited works, including this one, which gathers the essays presented at the 2005 Edinburgh Dogmatics Conference.

As always with an edited work, the articles collected here are of uneven quality. They are also of varying atmosphere. Most of the essays breathe the air of British evangelicalism (which theologically has a lot of variation within it), while others are academic versions of something one might find in Christianity Today. Now and again, the staler air of the World Council of Churches wafts through the volume. The contributors vary from biblical scholars, to historical theologians, to systematic theologians. McCormack classifies some of the contributors as holding to a form of “classical theism”, and others as being more “‘progressive’ … in their willingness to pose questions to concepts of divine timelessness, impassibility, and so forth” (pp. 9-10). The decision to include biblical scholars was perhaps a move toward a broader outlook, but as everyone’s topic appears to have been assigned, the gain of including biblical scholars in the program has been minimized. The program as a whole has a systematic-theological stamp through and through. Topics like “divine simplicity” and “divine aseity” are not on the radar screen of biblical scholars, and for a good reason: they’re not on the radar screen of the Bible.

McCormack’s own contribution consists of a suit against Open Theism. Although McCormack’s admirers have already applauded this essay (on the internet), it ultimately fails to convince. He tries to show that Barth’s dissolution of metaphysics (as if that were conceptually possible!) presents a better solution to the problems that Open Theism has adduced. (McCormack prefers to think that God’s election “stands at the root of God’s being” [p. 210], but I think that is as nonsensical as it sounds. I much preferred Paul Helm’s case against the McCormack-Barth dissolution of metaphysics, found earlier in the same volume.) Much depends on one’s starting point. McCormack really only shows that Open Theism is incompatible with Reformed presuppositions, but he in no way shows that it is a poor fit for Christian theology in general. (Throughout many of these essays, this reader was constantly reminded that, for the Reformed tradition, the word “Protestant” basically means “Reformed”.)

This volume packs a lot of food for thought, and should be rewarding reading for those interested in a somewhat safe entry into the speculative side of modern theology. Those interested in biblical theology, however, will find considerably less of a reward.

Reviewed by John C. Poirier

Read an excerpt from Westminster Theological Seminary: www.wtsbooks.com/common/pdf_links/Excerpt_McCormack_Engaging.pdf [available as of June 6, 2014]

Originally published on the Pneuma Foundation (parent organization of PneumaReview.com) website. Later included in the Summer 2024 issue.

Neil B. MacDonald (PhD, University of Edinburgh) is currently a lecturer in theology at the University of Surrey Roehampton in London. Academic specialization can lead to a lack of communication among closely related disciplines, with theology and biblical studies being a case in point. MacDonald attempts to bridge these two disciplines with help from analytic philosophy. So then, this volume is an attempt by a non-evangelical to overcome the barriers between biblical studies, philosophy and systematic theology.

Within this volume, MacDonald covers a broad range of theologians and philosophers, including Aristotle, Anselm, Augustine, and N. T. Wright, though he approaches theology from a broadly Barthian perspective. MacDonald seeks to bridge systematic theology of the Old Testament with systematic theology of the New Testament, and he does so by illustrating the God of Israel as essentially a judging, yet desisting, and forbearing entity. This judging, yet desisting, and forbearing God reveals himself in creation, in the Exodus, in primeval history, in Deuteronomistic history, and ultimately within the Gospel narrative.

MacDonald insists that thinking about God in terms of divine identity is more profitable for a comprehensive systematic theology than is thinking about God in terms of the patristic concept of ousia (i.e., substance). MacDonald believes that it is only by understanding the Old and New Testaments in terms of the identity of the God of Israel – and the historical man Jesus of Nazareth – that systematic theology can be done. Thus, MacDonald argues that the heart of systematic theology is a God who is self-determining. In so arguing, MacDonald asserts that God creates whatever is necessary for the existence of events other than himself. In this way of thinking, God created time and space by determining himself to be the creator time and space. Therefore, MacDonald argues that God creates out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo). In so arguing, MacDonald suggests that God’s self-determining self is a sufficient cause (read that very slowly…). This idea will likely find many supporters within the readership of The Pneuma Review.

However, MacDonald does posit some ideas that may conflict with the readers of The Pneuma Review. For example, he strongly asserts that every sub-discipline within the biological sciences – genetics, molecular biology, immunology, general medicine, and so on – cannot function either theoretically or experimentally without the theory of genetical evolution via natural selection (better known as Neo-Darwinism). Moreover, MacDonald intimates that humanity is imago dei (i.e., in the image of God) only by happenstance, as any relational creature could have been such – if decreed by God – no matter what their natural properties may have turned out to be. In so defining the image of God, MacDonald disregards centuries of scholars and laypeople alike who have thought of the imago dei as consisting of some type of rationality or righteousness.

All in all, MacDonald does a good job of drawing the salvation work of God together in both testaments and firmly integrates Christian salvation history with Jewish scriptural traditions, though he fails to overcome the classic problems of natural theology by inadequately defining the somewhat vague and ambiguous term “determines.” However, MacDonald is not convincing in arguing that God possesses both time and space, nor that the classical view of God as outside of space and time represents a limit upon his freedom.

Reviewed by Bradford McCall

Originally published on the Pneuma Foundation (parent organization of PneumaReview.com) website on May 23, 2008.

Historian Paul King introduces us to the origins of the controversial Word of Faith movement.

Paul King speaking at the 2014 Society for Pentecostal Studies convention.

A spate of articles and books have appeared over the past two decades debating the controversial teachings of the “Word of Faith” movement. Several blistering critiques such as those of D.R. McConnell (A Different Gospel) and Hank Hanegraaff (Christianity in Crisis) have claimed the movement as heretical or cultic, originating in New Thought metaphysics.¹ Others such as William DeArteaga, Joe McIntyre, Derek Vreeland have mounted defenses or reconstructions of modern faith theology, while still others such as Geir Lie, Dale Simmons, and Robert Bowman have presented more moderate critiques and scholarly studies.²

E. W. Kenyon (1867-1948) is generally recognized as the chief originator of the modern faith movement.³ The core of the controversy is found in the purported origins of Kenyon’s teachings. McConnell’s pivotal and influential book entitled A Different Gospel made a case for extensive influence from New Thought metaphysics upon the thinking of Kenyon, detailing noticeable parallels between Kenyon’s writings and New Thought writers. He thus concluded that Kenyon’s thought, and therefore modern faith teaching, is derived from non-Christian cultic sources and thus suspect. Hanegraaff built on McConnell’s research and conclusions to avow further that the modern faith teaching is heretical and cultic. Both books have made a significant impact on the evangelical Christian community in labeling the word of faith movement as heterodox and even sacrilegious.

Church historian Eddie Hyatt comments, “These critics … display a lack of knowledge concerning the historical development of the twentieth century Pentecostal movement from its nineteenth century antecedents and its influence of the modern movement. It is in the religious mileau [sic] out of the Holiness and Healing movements of the nineteenth century that the modern “Faith Movement” finds its primary emphasis.”⁴ Similarly, Simmons’ doctoral dissertation concludes:

As for Kenyon himself, it would appear that he is best placed within the Keswickean/Higher Christian Life tradition. … This is not to say that there are not aspects of Kenyon’s teaching—specifically those centering on one’s confession—that he stresses to a point that is only comparable to that of New Thought. … It would be going too far to conclude that New Thought was the major contributing factor in the initial development of Kenyon’s thought.⁵

Taking a more scientific approach than McConnell and Hanegraaff, Bowman compared 23 standard New Thought concepts with Christian Science and Kenyon. From this statistical analysis, he concluded that while there is much in common between Christian Science and New Thought, there is “little resemblance” between Kenyon and New Thought. Further, he concluded that Kenyon is “far closer to orthodoxy than is Christian Science.” Kenyon may share some similarity with metaphysical thought, but his views are “fundamentally different.”⁶ He demonstrates that McConnell’s methodology is faulty, and thus his conclusions regarding Kenyon’s connections with metaphysical New Thought are deeply flawed. While there may have been some metaphysical influence, Kenyon’s views are more unlike such concepts than like.