The Summer of Research has given way to the Summer of Writing, issuing in the first halting words of Medieval Wisdom for Modern Protestants (Baker Books, forthcoming). Here are some initial, gut-level thoughts–rough and unrevised:
I write this book not as an expert but as a pilgrim. The subject is medieval faith, but academically I am an Americanist. I write for the American evangelical Protestant church(es) in a time of intense pain and confusion. Battered by modernity, we have tried in turn rational apologetic, pragmatic ecclesiology, charismatic experience, and postmodern experimentation. None of these has proved lasting.
The rationalism of modern apologetics has collapsed as the questions of the unchurched have turned away from doctrine and the agonies of the churched have centered on spirituality and practice rather than belief.
The pragmatism of the church growth specialists has dissolved, as it always has, as its shallow spirituality has become evident.[1]
The experientialism of the charismatic movement seems often to have failed to build lasting, faithful, discipled churches as worshippers have bounced from one high to the next.
The postmodernisms of some emerging Christians seem already to be veering into heresy.[2]
Could it be that God is driving us out of these failed experiments and into the wilderness, traveling as pilgrims toward a faith more solid and a church more faithful?
Or turning to a direr metaphor: because the Spirit and the Word never abandon their own, could it be that the evangelical patient now lingers in a twilight between vitality and morbidity, on a kind of spiritual life-support? And if so, then what is our prognosis?
I believe there is hope, for we are on the list for a life-giving transplant. It had better come soon, to be sure. But when it does, it promises to revive and strengthen us in ways unimaginable to us. This transplant, like all others, will involve the surgical implantation into the patient of living organs taken from dead donors.
What living organs? The life-giving beliefs and practices of our own spiritual heritage. Which donor? Our mother: the Church in her first two thousand years. This is not “traditionalism,” which as Jaroslav Pelikan famously quipped is “the dead faith of the living.” To transplant a dead organ will only kill the patient. Rather, it is tradition: “the living faith of the dead.” Weak on our sickbeds, we await a transfusion of that life.
So far, surgeons such as D. H. Williams, Robert Louis Wilken, and Thomas Oden have found vital organs in the doctrinal formulations of the church’s first six centuries, and they have rushed them to evangelical hospitals. And individually, though not yet as ecclesia, a few here and there are beginning to receive these, and new life is rushing into them.
Other medics such as Richard Foster, Dallas Willard, and Eugene Peterson, though not equipped like the first group with the surgical tools of academic theology or history, are turning to organs of spiritual practice. They provide from any and every Christian tradition a piecemeal infusion of intentional spirituality that, while still largely unformed and understudied, now sustains some. From the rich medieval tradition of spirituality in particular, these good doctors are leading evangelicals to rediscover ascetic practices, grow under spiritual directors, go on retreats at monasteries, meditate after the manner of the lectio divina.
Yet, many evangelicals still believe that they can be faithful Protestants only by rejecting this medieval heritage. They perceive it as not just catholic, but Roman Catholic—or in its Eastern forms Eastern Orthodox—and thus hyper-sacramental, semi-Pelagian, institutional, nominal. For these wary evangelicals, as for the Hollywood of Pulp Fiction, to “get medieval” is to do violence. It is to do violence both to the Reformation doctrinal heritage of salvation by faith and to the revivalist spiritual heritage of direct, unmediated access to God in Christ.
These alarmists do not know how badly they misconstrue the continental Reformation (and to a lesser degree American revivalism) and, especially, the medieval traditions from which they insist on cutting themselves off. To read deeply in history is not (contra Newman) to cease being Protestant. There is an “evangelical spirit” that has persisted throughout the history of the church. The True Church did not disappear as God lost control after Constantine, to reappear only with Martin Luther, John Wesley, and Billy Graham.
[1] See the recent admission of Willow Creek leadership that they have failed in the area of discipleship.
[2] Or at least I fear this is so, having heard Tony Jones fail to articulate the “strike zone” of orthodoxy in response to a question from the audience at the 200_ Wheaton Theology Conference and, more recently and worryingly, read reviews of Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christianity (2010).
Medieval Wisdom for Modern Christians
Grateful to the dead 
Chris,
I take your point about the difference between “medieval” as an adjective and “the Catholic Church” as a substantive. What I’m saying is that in fact there are at least two bodies of Christians which stand in continuity with the medieval Church, and in whom (even though much has changed) medieval faith continues to be a living, active presence taken for granted and not sought after as an exotic “transfusion.” This is more clearly the case in the Eastern churches than in the Roman Communion–the Roman Communion balances this with the advantage of being in communion with Rome, which in my opinion allows for greater flexibility and openness. But either of these options connects us to the living reality that informed medieval Christianity in a way that Protestantism never can. Even my own doddering Anglicanism does so in specific ways that are impossible in free-church or Reformed Protestantism. (I’ll leave the Lutherans out of this–I don’t want to tangle with those guys!) That’s why I am an Anglican!
In other words, I understand the distinction you’re making, and I knew you were making it when I first read the article. But I disagree with your approach for the reasons I gave.
You say that evangelicalism has proven its “nounworthiness,” but all the specific examples you gave reinforce my point. Evangelicalism indeed includes many specific churchly traditions–but it is not one itself. Evangelicalism indeed originated as a “transfusion” within Protestant bodies (chiefly Lutheranism and Anglicanism, but the relationship between evangelicalism and Reformed churches is complicated), and on a number of occasions those bodies were unable to serve as adequate hosts for the evangelical impulse, resulting in new traditions (Methodism is the textbook case, but as you note there are many different ways in which this kind of thing happened). Again, this supports my point in two ways. First, evangelicalism is a kind of “positive virus” (and yes, I really do think it’s a good thing!) which influences churchly traditions and may even give rise to them (though the traditions that originate out of evangelicalism have a distinctive character–in particular, they tend to be looser and more pragmatic, as you note). And in the second place, evangelicalism has generally been a solvent that more traditional Protestant churches have had trouble withstanding. Of course I can’t deny that it’s functioned that way on Catholicism and Orthodoxy as well, mostly by attracting hordes of individual converts (particularly from Catholicism) and sometimes (particularly in Orthodoxy) by giving rise to new forms of Protestantism. In one particularly interesting case–the “Lord’s Army” in Romania–an evangelical movement within Orthodoxy deliberately adopted the “ecclesiola in ecclesia” model, and when I was last in contact with it (late 90s) the bulk of it was accepted as an authorized part of the Orthodox Church (after decades of persecution). I would like to know how that’s playing out today. Anyway, my point is that I know my claim about evangelicalism’s “proper host” is a highly idealistic one. But hey–we all have to have ideals! You have one–I have another. I don’t particularly expect to convince you. But since I’m supportive of much of your project, I’m laying out how I think I differ from it.
Edwin,
I’m storing up the thumping for when you least expect it. So be afraid.
As for your comments on what was not really an article but a few rough thoughts toward a book introduction, I’ll do my best to respond:
You say (1) that there is no coherent thing called “evangelicalism,” by which I take you to mean that evangelicalism is not ecclesially coherent and therefore cannot be the “noun” but must be the “adjective.”
I would respond that when, as happens in various surveys, thousands if not millions of people self-identify as “evangelical,” and when seminaries, colleges, magazine and book publishing houses (including Baker, the one with whom I am penning this book), and other institutions still dedicate themselves to serving a group called “evangelicals,” then whatever we may think of its coherence as “church,” evangelicalism has nonetheless demonstrated its nounworthiness. It is not merely some amorphous add-on to historic traditions. It contains traditions within itself (e.g. Baptist, Methodist, Pentecostal, Restorationist, Black Church) which deserve to be called, in their origins and some of their continuing manifestations, “evangelical,” and which have as much right to be included in the portmanteau “the historic church” as do any older churches.
Yes, many of these churches have played fast and loose with liturgy, sacrament, church discipline, apostolic succession, the episcopacy, and much else. But I don’t think any of that allows us to draw a circle around “the historic church” and to place evangelicalism on the outside—as a sort of movement or impulse that can only be an adjective to something that is more really and truly “the church.” Like its forms or not, evangelicalism is itself not just an impulse or an add-on. It is a form of church. It lies to itself when it says otherwise (as it often does). It is a congeries of traditions within a tradition—albeit a new one that breaks a lot of old categories.
You say (2) that because evangelicalism “has no unity, no consistency, no heritage,” therefore if you “infuse medievalism . . . all you get is one more evangelical fad.” You must instead “transfuse evangelicalism into the body of the historic, orthodox Catholic Church,” so that “it can start to function as it’s supposed to.”
I insist on my original framing. I say that evangelicalism started the transfusion you’re talking about long ago, in the 18th century (or perhaps the 17th, if you want to go with the broader definition that treats Pietism and Puritanism as early manifestations of some “evangelical impulse”). The results were a series of new church-forms—Baptist, Methodist, etc. Now those church-forms face what all church traditions eventually face: the need to correct in themselves the over-corrections that they fell into when they insisted on their own genius (in the old sense of that word) over against the abuses in the churches they reformed at the times and places of their own origination.
Now, as for your statement “Catholicism is the noun,” which sets up your insistence that I have my adjective and noun backwards. Here you elide two things that I do not elide: medieval faith and the orthodox Catholic Church today. That won’t do. Because the medieval church self-evidently no longer exists, I take any modern attempt to draw from medieval faith to be adjectival. “Medieval faith” can no longer be for us a noun.
Therefore the chapters of my forthcoming book will present, chapter by chapter, some aspects of that “adjectivity” (most of which turn out to be quite “verbal”—quite as obnoxious in their liveliness as anything evangelicalism has given us!) I will talk about the passionate quest for theological knowledge, the willingness to detach from the world in order to attach to God, the perpetual recourse to tradition as resource and authority in theological thinking and doing, the immersion in Creation and the Incarnation, and so forth.
This business of eliding medieval faith and today’s manifestations of “the historic church” is the same sort of mistake Peter Gillquist and his starry-eyed Campus Crusade folks made when they encountered Eastern Orthodoxy and thought they had finally found The Early Church in its original purity. They thought they had found an ancient noun. What they found instead was a modern noun that communicated to them some early adjectival material.
Now, you may insist that by talking the way I do, I am in fact pretending that there is some noun accessible to us called “medieval faith.” I will admit that any “medieval faith” I portray in this book will be in some sense a noun. But I understand that it will be a modern noun that is a “medievalism,” akin to the medievalisms of Chesterton, Lewis, Sayers, Williams, and others who will be the modern guides in my book. When I do treat that medievalism as a noun that really existed a thousand and more years ago—which I will certainly do—I will be playing the same game that all historians play: conjuring (we hope, on the best available evidence and with the most sustainable arguments) an image of the past that we treat as solid and factual even though we know it is shot through with material from the concerns of our own period and our own experiences.
I am willing to admit that “medieval faith” is a construct. It is a way of framing the adjectival and verbal infusions, transfusions, transplantations that I believe will deliver health to the real, tattered, mosaic-like noun of evangelicalism to whom I address this book.
Now, I have no illusions that this attempt at a response will satisfy you. Carry on please, if you have the time and the stomach for it!
And, dear friend, thank you for posing the difficult questions that force me to think more carefully about what I am doing. That is just what I hoped for when I posted this piece.
Amber,
When did you graduate from Milligan? I graduated in 1993. I was in the second class to take Christ and Culture with Phil Kenneson. Am I right in thinking that he and Craig Farmer (with whose adviser at Duke I did my Ph.D.) have had a lot to do with this trend among Milligan students?
Magdalena,
I am afraid that I was one of those thumpers to whom you refer. (So Chris, keep your word and thump me!) I apologize for my pugnacious tone in the earlier exchange, but I would really like to hear just where you find this “mere Anglicanism” and how you define it. The two theologians whom I see as having articulated a particularly winsome and somewhat persuasive Anglican theology are Richard Hooker and F. D. Maurice. I don’t know if they are anywhere near what you have in mind.
Chris,
My basic objection to your article is that I think you have your metaphor backwards. You assume that there is this coherent thing called “evangelicalism” which is rather sickly and needs an infusion of medievalism. I think that the “patient” is the historic Church (Catholicism, Orthodoxy, both, or perhaps both plus the two smaller Eastern Communions), and evangelicalism is the infusion.
In other words, my problem with evangelicalism isn’t that it is sick–it actually seems quite obnoxiously healthy to me, though the flush of fever and the bloom of health are sometimes hard to tell apart. My problem with evangelicalism is that I don’t think it exists. It isn’t a solid, unified thing. It has no unity, no consistency, no heritage. This isn’t a “sickness” that needs curing. There’s nothing there to cure. Infuse medievalism and all you get is one more evangelical fad.
But transfuse evangelicalism into the body of the historic, orthodox Catholic Church (again, not taking sides on which of the claimants is the Catholic Church or whether only one is–but Protestantism clearly is separated from the Catholic Church to some degree), and it can start to function as it’s supposed to.
Catholicism is the noun, evangelical is the adjective. It’s important to get this the right way round.
Thanks for the affirmations, guys.
Canadian: I recognize all of those struggles. There is no miracle cure for the wounds of this wounded world church. But there is the God who promises to work in the midst of, and through, suffering of all kinds. I’ll wager the sufferings caused by schism are covered in that promise. His body survived one crucifixion to rise again. I believe it has survived the crucifixions of 1054 and 1204 and 1517, and all the smaller sunderings since then, and “yet liveth . . .”
Amber: and there you go, you’ve said what I just said, only more concisely and powerfully. Thanks for hanging out and saying your piece.
Magdalena: point me toward those who are thumping you, and I’ll thump them back. Though I stand by “direr.” It does show up in the dictionaries, and (deep breath as he admits to being a descriptive rather than prescriptive grammarian) it gets about a thousand gross of hits from Google . . . And thank you, too, for hanging out and saying good stuff, and for the encouragement of your second-last line.