Classical Theology for the Modern Mind

Um, one of the things that is... uh, that, that I, that I noticed when I was in seminary, um, and most of my... well, I, I guess really all of my theology professors were Barthians, and, um, I, I went to a Southern Baptist seminary, not the Southern Baptist seminary, but a Southern Baptist seminary.

And back in the day, most of my teachers were, were Barthians.

And, and I'm not a Barthian, but, but one of the things I noticed... and, and I knew nothing at that time really.

I was a brand-new seminary student.

But one of the things I noticed were...

but both from, uh, those theologians who had learned from Barth, and I'm thinking about men like Thomas Torrance and others, um, one of the things I noticed was the emphasis they placed on the, the doctrine of the Trinity.

Now, that kind of stuck out to me.

Because again, I went totally green, uh, into seminary.

I didn't know what the current big debates were i- in terms of theological circles.

Um, the only theological debate I knew about was, as a young Southern Baptist, just debates over the doctrine of scripture.

But, but I came to learn that, that Barth and others, and, uh, l- such as Torrance and all, um, have, had observed a real neglect of the doctrine of the Trinity.

Um, or if not outright neglect, um, a, a, a, a version of Trinitarian theology such as social Trinitarianism that, that falls far, far short of our Nicene, if you want to put it, you know, Nicene heritage, um, in, in Christianity.

And of course since then I've, I've, I've, I've seen, yes, wow, for quite a long time, really since the, the passing away of the, of the Reform Scholastics, um, Protestant theology kind of went into a, a period where, um, oh, the, the, the thoughts and the categories, the definitions of, um, the classical era ... um, the early church, um, really became highly neglected, um, and in some ways, uh, distorted.

And there's really been kind of a retrieval effort since then.

Uh, w- we've seen it more pronounced, I think, in the last decade or so.

Um, but, but why, why do you think that within Protestantism, for quite a long period of time, the classical categories of, of the theology of the early church, for instance, be- it, it was either forgotten or, or neglected.

W- what, what, what was going on that caused us as Protestants, broadly speaking, to kind of l- l- lose that inheritance for a while, to the extent that we're still now trying to retrieve it?

Yeah.

It's, it's hard to give a single answer to that because I think there are, it, it, the phenomena you've described occurs in, uh, different ways in, in different sort of social segments of Protestantism, if you like.

Mm-hmm.

I think at the, we might call the grassroots level, uh, the, the, the development of a kind of revivalist evangelicalism that placed tremendous emphasis upon, you know, the experience of conversion and preaching-

Right

...

the simple gospel was impatient with the kind of, the kind of fine metaphysical distinctions and concepts upon which-

Mm-hmm