Abstract
Brad East is an associate professor of theology at Abilene Christian University. He earned a PhD in Religious Studies at Yale University and has become a prolific author in popular magazines and websites, as well as academic journals. His major works have lain at the intersection of ecclesiology and bibliology, including Robert Jenson, The Triune Story: Collected Essays on Scripture (Oxford University Press, 2019) and The Doctrine of Scripture (Cascade, 2021). The present work, The Church’s Book, takes up the precise question of the relation of these two doctrines by comparing three ecclesial approaches to the nature and function of the Bible.
East argues, “The theological connections between the nature, purpose, and identity of the church—topics traditionally addressed in ecclesiology proper—and the nature, authority, and interpretation of Holy Scripture are typically ignored or only given superficial treatment” (p. 30). If the twentieth century saw a rise in concern for a theological interpretation of Scripture, it did not provide a unified theological method for approaching the Bible, including accounts of Scripture’s authority, attributes, or ends. For this, theologians largely returned to existing convictions based on their own doctrine of the church. The Church’s Book thus explores three broad ecclesiologies downstream of Karl Barth in order to map bibliologies for a way forward.
Although East identifies at least nine Christian traditions (p. 32), he focuses the work on representatives of Reformed, Catholic, and baptist (following East’s lowercase style decision) traditions in John Webster, Robert Jenson, and John Howard Yoder. In addition to a chapter on Barth’s influence and an excursus on the impact of Yoder’s sexual misconduct, the majority of the book consolidates a mass of theological production into a synthetic comparison of the three authors. For Webster, theology begins with theology proper, inspiration is understood as the Spirit’s mediated grace of revelation, and Scripture serves the church by supporting believers’ knowledge of God. For Jenson, a Lutheran, but the Catholic figure in East’s taxonomy, theology begins with an ecumenical ecclesiology, inspiration is understood as the whole process of transmission, canonization, and interpretation, and Scripture serves the church by providing material for prophetic living in the world. For Yoder, theology begins with Christ in history as a political subject, inspiration is the Spirit’s use of the Bible to inform the community, and Scripture serves the church by commanding social action.
After allowing each theologian to speak for himself, East compares the characteristic weaknesses of each and demonstrates the balance the others provide. Webster is missing the ethical import of God/Jesus. The others show that a high Christology naturally provides this information as well as doctrinal conclusions (p. 259). Jenson gives the church too much authority to interpret and bind the Scripture. The other two show that the Spirit is powerful not only to equip but also to chasten human interpretation (p. 262). Yoder deflates too much air from the church’s doctrinal content. Jenson especially offers a more robust hermeneutic, and Webster adds a fuller doctrinal starting point to inform historical exegesis (p. 269). After analyzing these three, East identifies five points of balance which the representatives can help readers to navigate when pursuing a theological interpretation of Scripture: “(1) divine and human action; (2) the theological and the historical; (3) the metaphysical and the moral; (4) scriptural and ecclesial authority; and (5) determinate and open-ended meaning” (p. 272).
The result of East’s comparison is a new typology for understanding the church’s relation to Scripture. The Reformed tradition represented by Webster sees the church as a beneficiary receiving the gracious last will and testament of God in the Bible, bearing no authority but being cared for by God’s Word (pp. 308–309). The Catholic tradition represented by Jenson sees the church as a deputy relaying a ruler’s directive and delegating authority and power on members to enact God’s Word (p. 304). Finally, the baptist tradition represented by Yoder sees the church as a vanguard leading the offensive on the basis of God’s orders, confronting the world with God’s subversive Word (pp. 311–312).
The Church’s Book displays East’s deft handle on four major theologians, and his description of these recent thinkers set a model for clear, charitable interaction. The major contribution of this work is the realization that ecclesiology and bibliology impact one another. In fact, the book implicitly points to the need for biblical interpreters to engage intentionally in systematic theology because of the controlling influence of doctrinal and methodological presuppositions on one’s Bible reading. East’s interlocutors are all systematic theologians and their second-order discourse about the Scriptures does more to support the exegesis, application, and proclamation of the Bible than conflicts over more isolated historical-grammatical concerns.
Two recommendations could bolster East’s taxonomy of three traditions and typology of three bibliologies. Although East notes the presence of the Eastern Orthodox Church, he folds its characteristic ecclesiology under Catholic approaches (pp. 32–33). Thus, The Church’s Book intentionally focuses on the Western church. A short excursus contrasting an Orthodox representative or developments among global voices may have complicated East’s taxonomy, but it also could have exposed some variety in terms of authority and the function of Scripture. Likewise, John Howard Yoder presents a weakness of East’s taxonomy since Yoder’s radical “baptist” approach re-elevates the interpretive authority of local church more similarly to the Catholic position (p. 223). East displays an assumption that baptist approaches to Scripture remain at the level of nuda Scriptura by interacting with Yoder’s more vacuous, praxis-oriented theological interpretation. A broad swath of evangelicals, and even Baptist scholars, however, have relied on creeds and church tradition, not rejecting them as historical manipulations like Yoder but employing them as ministerial authorities. Perhaps another Baptist or Pentecostal theologian could have provided a foil as a fourth approach, presenting a low-church, high-Scripture typology contrary to East’s exposition of Yoder (and Webster).
Nonetheless, readers will benefit from the scope of The Church’s Book as a descriptive and praxis-informing typology relating the doctrines of church and Scripture. Church leaders and Bible and theology students should carefully consider their own guiding theologies as they approach and preach the Word of God in his world.