Book Review
Our Common Story
The Church: A Theological and Historical Account
by Gerald Bray
Baker Academic, 2016
(278 pages, $24.99, paperback)
A notable trend of recent years is conservative Protestantism's increasing attention to the Church, not simply to defend itself or a chosen denomination against the charge of error or to refute the errors of others, but as containing ground that needs to be explored in the light of questions for which it sometimes seems to have a growing discomfort about the adequacy of its own historically ready answers. No doubt encouraged by increasing hostility in the world toward Christianity in any form, there is in the air an increased desire for amity and the recognition of agreement, where possible, especially with Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.
Among Evangelicals, however, much of this has a hollow ring, for the interest is often expressed in terms that indicate Evangelicalism, Catholicism, and Orthodoxy are equal partners in ecumenical conversation—for which one might commend members of the older churches who cooperate in dialogue for hiding their amusement. I also suspect the urge to be seen with them is connected with the characteristic desire of progressive Evangelicals to demonstrate their liberal-mindedness and scandalize their peers by associating with people the movement has traditionally avoided. This mind may be handily detected where Evangelicals think that part of the value they carry into ecumenical conversation is the egalitarianism to which the old churches have not yet attained.
There is, however, a more honest form of interest that is bearing increasing fruit in understanding, by which the ancient churches can gain knowledge of and sympathy for conservative Protestants as Christians, and the latter can receive teaching to guide and relieve them. Gerald Bray, a distinguished Anglican Evangelical who teaches at Beeson Divinity School, has produced a fine vade mecum on the Church that reflects this mind, outstanding for its economy of expression, sobriety of judgment, and the impression that in less than 300 pages he leaves nothing out.
Let us take as an example of the first quality his lapidary description of the modernist impulse and its effect:
Since the eighteenth century all the churches have had to deal with a kind of thinking that maintains that the biblical worldview is outdated, that the early church fathers (and even the sixteenth-century Reformers) were operating with a hermeneutic of Scripture that is no longer valid, and that most of the classical definitions of doctrine were the outcome of (often sordid) church politics, designed to exclude undesirable elements more than to advance the preaching of the gospel. For all these reasons, the claim is made that the classical doctrinal statements cannot be used as criteria for determining what Christians ought to believe now. Even the Bible is only a record of what the church taught in the past and cannot be taken as a guide for its current doctrine or practice, which must be worked out on other principles. This radical critique has been contested many times, but it keeps reappearing in different guises. At the present time, it shows up most often in the common assertion that modern science has disproved a good deal of what the Bible says, so it can no longer be accepted as a reliable authority for living the Christian life today. (243)
For its disruption of the churches and killing of the ecumenical spirit through insistence on the ordination of women, I would probably place egalitarianism rather than scientism first in the list of modernist incursions—one of the radical critique's most effective "different guises." It appears to me that insistent denial of the patriarchy in which the Church is founded, particularly by mitigation of the apostolic authority of St. Paul, is the principal vector by which the modernist frame of mind is imported to the churches these days. Evangelicalism's susceptibility may be gauged by its use of inclusive-language Bibles, the emasculation of its hymns and church literature, and the care with which its pastors, more often than not trained in egalitarian seminaries, scruple not to irritate those sensibilities from the pulpit. Bray does, however, recognize women's ordination, along with same-sex relationships, as one of "two areas where the churches have felt the impact of such modern thinking in recent times" (244).
His book is as fine a manual on its subject as I know, accessible to the lay reader, and recommended for individuals, study groups, and pastors, whose ministries will profit from keeping its factual content ready to mind. •
S. M. Hutchens is a senior editor and longtime writer for Touchstone.
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