BOOK REVIEW:
Theology in the Service of the Church: Essays in Honor of Thomas W. Gillespie. Edited by Wallace M. Alston, Jr. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2000. 281 pp. ISBN 0802838812. 

Thomas W. Gillespie has been the president of Princeton Theological Seminary since 1983; and during the years of his presidency he has earned the respect of many colleagues, both at the seminary and throughout the world. This collection of essays, assembled in his honor, is a fitting tribute. As academics may observe, it is a Festschrift for an administrator!

After a laudatory preface by the editor and a biographical sketch by a seminary classmate of Gillespie’s, the body of the book consists of twenty-four essays on a range of ecclesiastical, exegetical, and theological topics. The announced theme of “theology in the service of the church” is appropriate to Gillespie’s own interests. But, although the editor assures us that “each author was invited to write with that theme in mind,” it is obvious the request was not widely heeded. The essays appear alphabetically by author, from Robert Adams to Robert Wuthnow.

The contributors are a varied lot. Although many of them might be thought of as “mainstream” Americans, there are also contributions from Hungary, Japan, Korea, Peru, Rome, and South Africa, as well as Germany Scotland, and Switzerland. The group includes pastors, ecclesiastics, biblical scholars, a sociologist, and several theologians. Diversity is manifest in the topics, the methods, and the genres; and this, in its own way, is testimony to the breadth of acquaintance that Gillespie embodies. It may be noticed, however, that the list of twenty-five contributors includes only two women. And one of these, Ellen Charry, remarks dismissively, “liberation theologies and feminism have distanced theology from the church.” Further, while some of the essays are addressed to Gillespie, even if not to the topic, the essays by John Leith and David Willis date from the nineteen-sixties.

Nonetheless, many of the essays suggest some dimensions of a Reformed sense of the tasks and worth of theology. For example, Don Brown situates the present “male problematic” within its origins, not in the Bible but in Aristotle and Aquinas. In his essay, Cardinal Cassidy suggests the place of theology in ecumenical endeavors. Peter Gomes says a good word for preaching. Bruce McCormack understands that theology is engaged with matters of knowledge, while Gerhard Sauter affirms that theology begins with the axiomatic, with what we must say “for God’s sake.” Leanne Van Dyk reflects upon the values of “doctrinal preaching.” In his winsome discussion of “Habitats of Infant Baptism,” David F. Wright shows the interplay of theory and practice.

The quality of these essays, and of others as well, is a reminder that theology is alive, healthy, and not terminally arcane. Nevertheless, despite the worthiness of many of the essays, one may wonder how these several writers might respond to the proposal, made by David Tracy in The Analogical Imagination (1981), that theology is a“ public” enterprise, addressing not only the church but also the academy and the wider society. To be sure, some of this is manifest in the essays by Botman and Gutiérrez, who speak from places where the church has confronted social realities. But, apart from them, many of the tendencies are narrowly ecclesiastical, if not parochial.

What is missing is any shared sense that it may also be the task of theologians (especially of those who consider themselves to be Reformed!) to speak in ways to be heard beyond the churches and the seminaries. Such, surely, was the wider influence of John Calvin, as he shaped language and culture to his purposes. It was the interest of Friedrich Schleiermacher, as he sketched an understanding of modernity. It was the impact of Reinhold Niebuhr, as he spoke to a whole generation. And it was something of the vision of John A. Mackay, who—in 1953 while Tom Gillespie was still a seminarian—courageously drafted a landmark public document, “A Letter to Presbyterians,” which fruitfully related the “great principles of truth and justice” to an era of political and theological witch-hunting. After all, God’s sovereignty transcends the boundaries of all our cloistered enclaves; truth sometimes beckons us beyond the margins of even our most cherished institutions; and theology, while it may be of some help to the Church, is truly and ultimately to be done in the “service” of God. 

John E. Burkhart
Professor Emeritus of Theology
McCormick Theological Seminary

PUBLISHED IN THE BULLETIN OF THE INSTITUTE FOR REFORMED THEOLOGY, WINTER 2002, VOL. 2, #3.