BOOK REVIEW:
Reformed Theology: Identity and Ecumenicity.  Edited by Wallace M. Alston Jr. and Michael Welker.  Grand Rapids, Michigan/ Cambridge, UK:  William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2003.  xiv + 449 pp.  (paperback). ISBN 978-0802847768. 

Reformed Theology: Identity and Ecumenicity is the product of a consultation of leading Reformed systematic theologians convened by the Center of Theological Inquiry.  The main aim of this consultation, which met in March 1999 at the Internationales Wissenschaftsforum in Heidelberg, Germany, was to identify motives in contemporary Reformed thought and to draw from the wells of the Reformed tradition in order to serve the ecumenical church. Containing 28 insightful essays by notable scholars such as Eberhard Busch, Jan Rohls, Bruce McCormack, William Stacy Johnson, Colin Gunton, Daniel Migliore, A. van de Beek, Dirk Smit, Dawn DeVries, George Hunsinger, and Russel Botman, this book offers a helpful overview of the challenges facing Reformed theology today. This publication is also enriched by the fact that the consultation wanted to be conscious of the broad spectrum of people, nationalities and rationalities identified within current Reformed scholarship. Consequently contributions are included from scholars from Austria, Canada, China, Czech Republic, England, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Scotland, South Africa, South Korea, Switzerland and the USA—thereby representing a more catholic Reformed community.  Reformed Theology furthermore serves as a good companion volume to an earlier collection of essays entitled Toward the Future of Reformed Theology: Tasks, Topics, Traditions (edited by David Willis and Michael Welker and published by Eerdmans in1999)—together offering an instructive overview of the state of recent Reformed scholarship.

In a well-crafted introduction, the editors comment that it is “characteristic of Reformed theology to be in constant search for Reformed identity and to define this identity time and again” (p. x).  On the other hand, one can also argue that such a constant search for identity may foster an introspective and self-absorbed mentality that conceivably could lead to harmful isolation and a false sense of security.  Thankfully most of the essays resist this temptation.  While the book indeed seeks to wrestle in diverse, yet overlapping, ways with the nature of Reformed identity, it does this in a manner that attempts to give a renewed account of Reformed theological convictions in the light of the challenges of our rapidly changing societies.

The editors’ introduction also calls attention to the fact that Reformed theology has been “one of the major critical voices which have challenged rationalistic, scientistic, moralistic, and political ideologies which claimed to posses the truth, or the only key to it” (p. xi).  In addition, the editors emphasize that in issuing this challenge, Reformed theology must also understand itself as a critical and self-critical part of the Christian church as truth-seeking community—therefore the significant reference to identity and ecumenicity in the subtitle of the book.  In reaffirming the important link between identity and ecumenicity, the book paves the way for Reformed theology to resist a mindset of enclosed identity as it searches, in communion with others, for truthful speech and embodiment.

Many of the essays use the notions of identity and ecumenicity as interpretive lenses and this gives the book a sense of coherence and structure.  Dealing with a range of topics that include the search for Reformed identity in historical continuity and contextual awareness, the shape of Reformed ecclesiology, the different contexts of Reformed pneumatology, the questioning of Reformed doctrines in ecumenical conversation and the ethical profiles of Reformed theology, this collection offers a wealth of insights stemming out of the scholars’ in-depth interaction with the Reformed tradition.   Most of the essays offer a perceptive analysis of our cultural contexts and give clear and informative descriptions of the main tenets of the Reformed faith.  However, it seems that part of the quest for the revitalization of Reformed theology will require an even greater ability to relate in an engaging and vibrant manner the cultural challenges and the logic of the Reformed faith.  What is needed is the ability to perform Reformed theology in a new key that brings Scripture into conversation with our complex cultural constellations in such a way that the liberating voice of Reformed theology is more clearly heard.  This said, any future project that strives for the renewal of Reformed theology, and Christian theology as a whole, will gain much from a careful study of this valuable publication. 

Dr. Robert Vosloo
Department of Systematic Theology and Church History
Faculty of Theology
Stellenbosch University, South Africa

PUBLISHED IN THE BULLETIN OF THE INSTITUTE FOR REFORMED THEOLOGY, SPRING 2008, VOL. 8, #1.