Spiritual Warfare in the Library: The Grave Danger of Theological Suspicion in the UK Church - Part 1

How long can the Christian Faith survive in recognizable form in a Church context where the work of theology is held in suspicion and the priority of divine authorship of Holy Scripture plays little to no role in biblical interpretation? Is there not a true sense in which the frontlines of the Church's spiritual warfare today is in the library? 

The heart of the challenge facing the church in the UK may be approached by one or the other side of the current state of affairs. On one side is a challenge to Christian theology. There is among self-professed evangelicals in the UK (and of course in many other countries in the West) a palpable suspicion of serious theological study and thinking. The roots of this suspicion are predictably complex, but the fact that serious theological study was for a long time linked with university contexts where higher critical and atheistic rejections of orthodoxy prevailed and matters of Christian piety were ignored, does certainly account for a lot of the rather curious absence of theology in British churches and in the work of ministers--even in how ministry is understood. Theology is assumed by many to be at odds with warm piety, evangelism and mission, and biblical Christianity, and so it is held in suspicion. 

On the other side is the challenge to orthodox biblical hermeneutics posed by a thoroughgoing biblicism which is quite unbiblical. Again the critical work of the universities is a factor here as critical rejection of the Bible as inspired Holy Scripture provoked evangelical reactions that prioritized, ironically, the very human authorship and intention which lead those higher critics to reject orthodox theology. Alongside this phenomena, and related to it, is a transformation of the rules of Christian reading of Scripture including a very narrow and modernist set of criteria by which we are supposed to evaluate the legitimacy of typological, figural, or allegorical and spiritual senses of biblical texts. Lost in that transformation, and that new way of understanding what qualifies as biblical, is the very reading of Scripture that yielded the key tenets of orthodox Christianity including the Trinity, the person and work of Jesus Christ, the nature of the Gospel, and more. 

For this reason--among many others--the trajectory of anti-intellectualism and naive modernism in British evangelical circles warrants the greatest possible concern about the prospects for a recognizable Christian faith in this former bulwark of orthodoxy. Socinianism, Marcionism, and other classic heresies seem to be crouching at the door--if not halfway through it already. How might we think about the nature of, and background to, this urgent state of affairs where Christian faith and gospel seem empty of any theological concern or content and we have a Bible that is treated much as a book but not as Holy Scripture? 

To discuss this and more Greystone President and Fellow in Scripture and Theology, Dr. Mark A. Garcia, is joined with Greystone Fellows, Dr. Garry Williams and Dr. Robert Letham. Dr. Robert Letham is Greystone Fellow in Theology and History and professor of Systematic and Historical Theology at Union School of Theology. Dr. Garry Williams is Greystone Fellow in Theology and History and director of the Pastor's Academy in London. Drs. Garcia, Letham, and Williams have extensive experience teaching and writing theology in the UK, and are therefore keenly aware of the challenges facing the church in that context.