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Purpose-Directed Theology: Getting Our Priorities Right in Evangelical Controversies
Darrell L. Bock
InterVarsity, 114 pages, $14

The Evangelical movement is in a moment of identity crisis. Not that the movement ever had a single clear identity, any more than I have a single identity. What I am depends on my purpose and context: I am father, husband-lover, son, editor, boss, employee, neighbor, music minister, small-group member, playmate (to my dog), and more.

Likewise, the Evangelical movement has had multiple overlapping identities, depending on which of its historic purposes is dominant in a given time and context. As reformers of the 16th-century European church, the evangelicals were polemical theologians devoted to the authority of the Scriptures and the pure gift of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. As renewers of Protestant orthodoxy, they were passionate lovers of Jesus who wrote great hymns and formed circles of the committed to foster warm-hearted faith. As reformers of British and American society, they applied revivalistic fervor to the eradication of slavery, of the exploitation of women, and of the evils symbolized by Demon Rum. As foes of modernism, they built institutions in exile.

Each of these historic moments created an evangelicalism with a purpose, and therefore a clear sense of identity. But how do the contemporary heirs of these multiple evangelicalisms define themselves?

Darrell Bock's slender volume, Purpose-Directed Theology, addresses the issue of evangelical identity for the benefit of its theological and biblical scholars. The book is an expansion of the presidential address he gave to the Evangelical Theological Society in November 2001.

The history of the ETS can be viewed as a series of controversies which became exercises in self-definition. Bock surveys the ETS's five decades and finds five hot topics that consumed the society's attention. They are (in historical order) "science and the Bible, especially origins . . . ; inerrancy, its definition and supporting hermeneutics . . .; the role of historical criticism … women and the Bible … and openness theology."

During the historical criticism debate, one member was asked to resign, which he did for the good of the society. In the most recent case, some of the discussion has turned contentious, and the society has voted to challenge the membership of two "Openness" theologians. That suspension, however, cannot become final until next fall.

Bock thinks that all five of these controversial topics are worth serious study and discussion. But he worries that when the discussion turns polemical, it may sap needed energies from the society's primary purposes.

Bock knows that life is full of competing purposes. As individuals, we all choose between the many good things on our to-do list, and one sign of a healthy life is the ability to set priorities and balance demands. Bock sees the question of priorities as the key to the question of identity.

The Evangelical movement is made up of a loose network of organizations, some of them churches, many of them churchly, and many others designed to come alongside the church and aid some aspect of its mission. Bock divides the organizations into two types: circles and public squares. The circles are organizations with tightly defined reasons for being. They often have longish statements of belief suited to a well-defined membership. A denominational college or seminary, for example, will have a more clearly defined statement of beliefs than will a school that is designed to serve students from a variety of church backgrounds. Likewise, a society for Wesleyan, Reformed, or Dispensationalist scholars will have certain belief expectations of its members that a pan-Evangelical society would not.

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February 2003, Vol. 47, No. 2