DeYoung, Restless, and Reformed

Phillip Jenkins is a good scholar and important Christian intellectual. His book, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, on the rise of Christianity in the South and East, has already become a missiological standard. But while praising him for this work, Alan Jacobs, a professor at Wheaton College, still takes Jenkins to task, in a recent First Things article, for Jenkins' latest book, The Lost History of Christianity.

Here's the gist:

Jenkins presents, for our edification and (I think) admiration, the story of “Peter Phan, a Jesuit theologian whose main sin, in official eyes, has been to treat the Buddhism of his Vietnamese homeland as a parallel path to salvation.” And then he writes: “Following the ideas of Benedict XVI, though, the Church refuses to give up its fundamental belief in the unique role of Christ.”

Now here is where I pause in wonderment. Does Jenkins really and truly believe that “belief in the unique role of Christ” is an “idea” distinctive to the current pope? Can he be unaware that he would have come nearer to the truth by writing “Following the ideas of Benedict XVI, of every previous occupant of the throne of St. Peter, of the apostles, of the Church Fathers, of the leaders of the great Reformation traditions, and of most influential leaders of Christianity throughout the world, the Church refuses to give up its fundamental belief in the unique role of Christ”?

At one point in the article, Jacobs shows some well-deserved exasperation at Jenkins propensity to invoke ambiguous slogans instead of actual arguments.

It turns out that Jenkins’ claims and commitments are rather difficult to lay hold of, owing to his tendency to invoke anodyne nostrums in place of straightforward arguments. Consider this example: In our world, Jenkins writes, “teaching different faiths to acknowledge one another’s claims, to live peaceably together side by side, stops being a matter of good manners and becomes a prerequisite for human survival.” But what does acknowledge mean here?

“Over the past thirty years,” he adds, “the Roman Catholic Church has faced repeated battles over this question of Christ’s uniqueness, and has cracked down on thinkers who have made daring efforts to accommodate other world religions.” But what does accommodate mean here?

Or “if these Nazarenes could find meaning in the lotus-cross, then why can’t modern Catholics, or other inheritors of the faith Jesus inspired?” But what does find meaning in mean here?

Or “some day, future historians might look at the last few hundred years of Euro-American dominance within Christianity and regard it as an unnatural interlude in a much longer story of fruitful interchange between the great religions.” But what does fruitful interchange mean here?

Or “we could do a lot worse than to learn from what we sometimes call the Dark Ages.” But what does learn from mean here?

The difficulty should be evident. Only the coldest of hearts and the most tightly shut of minds could repudiate acknowledgment of one another and finding meaning in one another’s views and learning from one another and having lots of fruitful interchanges. Certainly I am eager to embrace all of those values, insofar as I understand them. But must I give up my belief that Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life in order so to embrace them?

One more paragraph, which serves well as a summary of Jacob's irenic polemic against Jenkins:

Jenkins continues, “For long centuries, Asian Christians kept up neighborly relations with other faiths, which they saw not as deadly rivals but as fellow travelers on the road to enlightenment.” But the quest of the Christian is not enlightenment; rather, it is love of God and neighbor and reconciliation with God, as God reconciles the world to himself. Yes, if you choose to voyage along “the road to enlightenment,” you can get along swimmingly with your Buddhist neighbors. But you will have ceased to practice Christianity and begun to practice Buddhism or something very like it.

Alan Jacobs is one of the best essayists around. So as they say, read the whole thing.