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The Story of Christian Theology - 20 Centuries of Tradition and ReformThe Story of Christian Theology: 20 Centuries of Tradition and Reform 'The major issue (for 21st-century theology) is, of course, the old debate between monergists and synergists over God's relationship with the world. New light from God's Word on that issue is badly needed as the extremes of process theology and resurgent Augustinian-Calvinism polarise Christian thought as never before.' This rather convoluted sentence at the end of The Story of Christian Theology: 20 Centuries of Tradition and Reform by Roger Olson summarises neatly the difficulties this reviewer had in reading the book. EN readers will be fascinated to know that they are 'monergists', something seemingly unknown in the church until Augustine came along, and then popularised by that well-known 'dictator' Calvin, a man who never had any original thoughts of his own. A chapter entitled 'Anabaptists go back to the roots of Christianity' also rather gives the game away - this is not an objective history of Christian theology at all, but a strongly biased, zealously Arminian approach, representing the opinions of someone best described as an 'evangelical synergist' with sympathies towards 'progressive evangelicalism'. Those of us, and I imagine that this would encompass most EN readers, who believe in the doctrines of grace because they are firmly founded in Scripture, will find a lot to disagree with in this rather heavy-going tome. Some of it is valuable - we know all too little about the early Church Fathers, the great debates over the nature of the Trinity and the formation of the Church creeds. Those for whom the Orthodox churches are a mystery will find much here. But as for the rest of it, it is a highly polemical volume, whose treatment of Reformed theology is contentious, to say the least, and whose omissions, especially in the 20th century, re-veal more about the author's own views than about the actual history of Christian theology. A book describing Christian theology to an intelligent but non-specialist audience is an excellent idea. Sadly, for those of us holding to biblical, Reformation doctrines, this is not it. C. Catherwood© Evangelicals Now - November 1999 |