Malcolm B. Yarnell III, The Formation of Christian Doctrine

摘要

The author identifies this work as a 'first step' in the direction of a distinctively Free Church account of the development of doctrine, partly (at least) in response to John Henry Newman's famous essay (pp. 115f.). Following an introductory chapter on theological method, the book offers brief summaries of the work of Joseph Ratzinger, Maurice Wiles and Herman Bavinck as examples of Catholic, Liberal and Reformed accounts of the foundation of Christian doctrine before outlining the elements of a Free Church theological foundation and illustrating this through an extended and detailed engagement with the work of Pilgram Marpeck, a sixteenth-century 'south German' Anabaptist. A chapter specifically on the manner in which doctrine develops outlines the 'classic' theory of Vincent of Lerins, the challenges to the theory culminating in the Reformation, the new theory of development proposed by Newman, and recent evangelical proposals by Peter Toon and Alister McGrath, before arriving at a distinctively Free Church proposal, developing the aphorism of John Robinson, the seventeenth-century English Baptist, that 'the Lord had more truth and light yet to break forth out of his holy word'. A final chapter exploring a Free Church history of theology (that includes an honest discussion of the historical support for slavery within the Southern Baptist Convention) brings the book to a conclusion.