Dry and Boring Evangelical Theology

Andy Goodliff, on July 3, has been ‘fessing up to all kinds of virtues and vices. He says, with honest courage and reckless integrity,  ‘I confess: I find ‘evangelical theology’ dry and boring’.

Right. But that raised for me the problems of definition – All evangelical theology? This isn’t only a (good natured) response to Andy, but my way of agreeing with most of what Andy means, and suggesting a little less generality and a little more generosity!

1. Now if what is meant is evangelical popularist, best-selling pragmatic, self-therapeutic, feel-good theology that rewards me with what I want, rather than transforming desire and revolutionising motives, then I find it both dry and boring, and not very evangelical anyway.
2. If what is meant is chronic evangelical defensiveness, pedantic appeals to recognisable evangelical shibboleths, nostalgic attachment to sound and orthodox formulations that used to cut it, and these accompanied by a lust for excommunicating those who don’t say the words, sign the statements, toe the line, then I find this boring but also unfaithful to a gospel that is a cataract of grace thundering down on these little buckets held under Niagara.
3. If what is meant is that kind of theology, which when published by certain publishers, becomes predictably safe, the content edited and shaped to conform to the brand name, a theology without surprises, eschewing innovative thought and nervous of its constituency approval, then, yes, boring and dry, and in danger of fossilising.
4. If what is meant is a way of doing theology that is either a monologue amongst the like-minded, or a polemical  hostility to those whose experience, insight, and living out of the Christian Gospel is different, then I find these dry and boring; but also lacking the open intellectual curiosity and spiritual humility and adventurous integrity that should be possible for those who look on the world as created, fallen, redeemed and translucent of sovereign purposive grace revealed as redemptive self-giving love, and thus instilled with hope.

So – evangelical theology dry and boring. A matter of definition. Was Colin Gunton a non-evangelical? Or Stan Grenz? Or Donald Bloesch? Or Helmut Thielicke? Or T. F. Torrance? I would count them in – and so I suspect would Andy…which suggests to me that sometimes confessions need to be more specific…which of course makes them more interesting. So WHICH EVANGELICAL’S theological peregrinations are dry and boring? Now I can think of a whole raft of names to insert in the four clarifications noted above….but prudence constrains. Would be an interesting list to compile though???

Or in order to avoid chronological snobbery, what about those Evangelicals of previous generations – and here I get a wee bit self-defensive – P. T. Forsyth and James Denney, Wesley’s hymns and Jonathan Edwards best Sermons. Four of my personal pantheon – but of course at least two of them would be disenfranchised by those who want to be guardians of their brand of Evangelical theology – and excluding them would make Evangelical theology significantly drier and boringer!