I have read two books by Ben Witherington, Paul’s Letter to the Romans: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary and The Problem with Evangelical Theology: Testing the Exegetical Foundations of Calvinism, Dispensationalism and Wesleyanism. I have another of Witherington’s books sitting in my stack of to be read books. Next up for Witherington is Letters and Homilies for Jewish Christians: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary on Hebrews, James and Jude. Weighing in at just over 650 pages, I’m pretty sure I won’t be reading this book overnight.
After reading Paul’s Letter to the Romans, which is an excellent commentary, I looked forward to a lighter read in The Problem with Evangelical Theology. I presumed the latter would be less challenging than the former and I was correct. This book critiques Calvinism, Dispensationalism, and Wesleyanism primarily, and to a minor degree Pentecostalism. Since Pentecostalism is an offshoot of Wesleyanism, it is included in part three where Wesleyanism is discussed. Weighing in at around 290 pages, it is considerably less voluminous than Paul’s Letter to the Romans and Letters (approximately 420 pages) and Homilies for Jewish Christians.
To be honest I was a disappointed. I wanted to read this book largely for the Dispensational critique and the Wesleyan critique. My disappointment was in the Dispensational critique. I thought the Calvinist critique was spot on and the Critique of Wesleyanism was surprisingly candid. I do wish he would have included another offshoot of Wesleyanism via Pentecostalism, i.e., Church of the Nazarene.
Part one contains chapters one through four and critiques the Reformed Church, aka Calvinism. In describing the three main tributaries of Evangelicalism, Witherington writes, “the Augustinian-Lutheran-Calvinist juggernaut kept Evangelicalism focused on soteriology… Dispensationalism … Eschatology,” and “Wesleyanism/Pentecostalism stressed the experiential… p. 3”
I love this quote. Though it is directed at Calvinists, it implicates most of us, if not all of us. Witherington observes that “Sometimes with Reformed exegetes, indeed all exegetes, the problem is reading the text outside of its proper original contexts—historical, rhetorical, social, theological, and so on. Proof-texting and what I call the strip-mining of the text are endemic problems with Biblicists who cannot wait to get to the theological or ethical implications or the application pay dirt. p. 4”
In chapter 5 Witherington writes, “the major exegetical problems of Dispensationalism have more to do with eschatology, ecclesiology, and even ecology, not to mention its hermeneutics and understanding of prophecy.” I started out my walk with Christ in a Dispensational church with pastors who were graduates of Dallas Theological Seminary. I wasn’t raised in a Christian home and I knew next to nothing. I just accepted what I was taught was absolutely the Gospel.
Witherington continues, “Unlike the case with Calvinism, the Dispensational approach to the Bible did not arise after profound study of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures or detailed scholarly exegesis of the test. It was a system that apparently arose in response to a vision and as a result of a pastoral concern about the unfulfilled biblical prophecy, and was promulgated by various ministers and evangelists and entrepreneurs in the nineteenth centuries. p. 93” I found this so ironic, because Dispensationalists hold to a Cessationist view, denying that any of the “miraculous” Spiritual Gifts survived beyond the first century church. Yet, there very theology was based off a “vision.” Read George Eldon Ladd’s books the Blessed Hope: A Biblical Study of the Second Advent and The Rapture and The Gospel of the Kingdom: Scriptural Studies in the Kingdom of God for a fuller analysis.
In my opinion the critique of the Wesleyan tradition was the best and most interesting. Witherington, when critiquing his own tradition, did not turn a blind eye. Witherington states, “The problem is, Evangelical Wesleyans tend to be even less biblically grounded or knowledgeable about their own tradition and more experiential in their orientation than other Evangelicals, and in an affective, experientially oriented culture, that can cause serious difficulties. p. 171” Witherington surmises “One cannot help but be struck by how very dependent Wesley was on Paul for the essence of his message about justification, salvation by faith, and the work of the Spirit in the believer’s life. Of the first seventeen of the Standard Sermons, no less than twelve of them have as their theme text some passage from either Romans, Ephesians, or 2 Corinthians. It follow, of course, that—as with the case of the Johannine corpus—if Wesley badly misunderstood the thrust of the apostle to the Gentiles, this must mean he badly misunderstood matters at the hear of the ordo salutis. pp. 196 – 197” Witherington continuous stating, “There are, however, some difficulties with Wesley’s general assumptions in dealing with Romans y. He rightly recognizes that Paul believes in the bondage to sin of those outside of Christ, but this admission sits in the bondage to sin of those outside of Christ, but this admission sits somewhat awkwardly with Wesley’s theology of prevenient grace. p. 198”
As a new adherent in a local Church of the Nazarene, I had difficulty with the doctrine of Entire Sanctification, thus chapter 10 was a welcome relief to me. Witherington starts out the chapter with “One of the key principles of critical study of the Bible is that one needs to avoid reading too much into silences. Absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence. By this I mean that theology always involves the filling in of some gaps on the basis of the implications of biblical texts. For example, the NT says little or nothing about the inspiration of itself, but it speaks about the God-breathed character of the Hebrew Scriptures (2 Tim 3:16). This sort of statement is applied then by logical extension to the books we call the New Testament. It is thus not enough to say that the phrase prevenient grace does not occur in the NT. Neither does Calvin’s phrase common grace. The is whether the idea is present in the NT or is a logical extension of ideas are in the NT. p. 207” When confronted by Jehovah’s Witnesses, the crux of the matter is “who do you say that I AM,” which usually leads to the trinity(1), which the Jehovah’s Witness will point out is a term that cannot be found in the Bible. I don’t argue the point because he or she is correct, it is not found in the Bible, nor can the term theocracy(2) or any derivative be found in the Bible. Yet, as Witherington states, because of logical extension, both have legitimacy.
For a book that I was somewhat disappointed with, I find myself wanting to write more about the gems of knowledge weaved into this book. I might have to reevaluate.
+++++
1. Study Dictionary, Net Bible (04/29/2015), p. 1 <http://classic.net.bible.org/dictionary.php?word=trinity>
2. Study Dictionary, Net Bible (04/29/2015), p. 1 <http://classic.net.bible.org/dictionary.php?word=theocracy>
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