Brian Gerrish is one of the Reformed tradition’s finest historical theologians and his latest offering is a collection of essays on a variety of topics such as the nature of revelation, faith and morals, the question of constructing tradition, and Eucharist and grace. Although challenging reading at points, the essays contain nuggets of wisdom that prompt new insights and help map the way forward amid a variety of current issues. Indeed, Gerrish assumes that “The Christian tradition offers a wealth of answers to perennial human questioning (p. xv).”
For example, Gerrish’s lively discussion of Ludwig Feuerbach’s unmasking of religion as “wishful thinking” surely raises questions about our current obsession with marketing the church in order to give people what they want and about the paucity of prophetic challenge coming from the pulpit. His intriguing discussion of Charles Hodge, Friedrich Schleiermacher, and John Calvin not only raises the question of development in tradition (i.e., whether our grasp of truth is static or not), but also the question of whether it is our “duty” to expand it (ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda). A fascinating chapter on the Eucharist raised a question in my own mind as to whether most Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) members are, in fact, Zwinglian memorialists. Do we believe, with Calvin, that the signs of the sacrament participate in the reality to which they point?
The concluding chapter of the book, “The Grace of Christ,” deserves special attention. Gerrish helpfully traces the continuity and discontinuity of Western Christian notions of grace with both Hinduism and Eastern Orthodoxy, then outlines similarities and differences on grace in Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin. His compelling account led me to the overwhelming conclusion that we have failed to do justice to the riches of our theological heritage on this point. Indeed, a robust Reformed understanding of grace is nearly absent in our modern American religious context. I am struck, for example, how our current preoccupation with religious “practices” barely scratches the surface of the notions of grace bequeathed to us by our ancestors. My suspicion is that without such conversation, our “practices” can devolve into Pelagianism redivivus and contribute to the fully matured practice of individualism in American mainline religion. In fact, Gerrish ends the chapter (and book) with a haunting story about a 20th century Roman Catholic theologian who converted from Protestantism because he discovered a strange paradox: “the Reformation, begun to extol the work of grace, arrived at a Pelagianism never equaled before” (p. 275).
Not all the essays in the book are equally relevant, but amidst current ubiquitous claims that modern Christians are actually “postmodern” or on the cusp of a “new reformation” and much in need of “emergent” vitalities, Gerrish’s offerings are a fresh reminder that whatever emerges is solidly founded on, and ought to attend to, an already emergent past. Instead of wondering whether we are on the verge of something new, perhaps we should live as if we are!
ROGER J. GENCH is pastor of New York Avenue Church in Washington, D.C.
