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| Clark Pinnock |
On Friday, November 18, many of us gathered in San Francisco to celebrate the life and contribution of theologian Clark Pinnock. Five of us read papers about Pinnock, including his daughter Sarah who teaches theology at Trinity University. Other presenters were Scot McKnight, Linda Mercadante and John Sanders. Below is some of what I said about Clark, one of my theological heroes, who passed away last year:
“Clark Pinnock pioneered a new way of being an evangelical in theology. I call that new way “postconservative” — a label Clark himself used in
Tracking the Maze (Harper & Row, 1990) for certain
post-Vatican 2 Roman Catholic thinkers and for what he called “another group of
theological moderates from the Protestant end of the spectrum.” (66)
What is clear to me is that
Clark laid out the charter for this postconservative type of evangelical theology in his programmatic 1979 Christianity Today article entitled “An Evangelical Theology: Conservative and Contemporary” the subtitle of which was
“Scripture is normative, but it always needs to be read afresh and applied in new ways.” (CT, January 5, 1979: 23-29) To be sure, Clark used the label “conservative” positively there, but he also
called for an approach to evangelical theology that transcends mere repetition of past doctrinal formulations and even mere restatement of traditional doctrinal formulation for cultural relevance.
Clark’s call in the
CT article for a new approach to evangelical theology would wrongly be interpreted as simply repeating Millard Erickson’s “translation” model expounded in
Christian Theology:1. There Erickson, a mainstream, postfundamentalist, conservative evangelical thinker, argued for restatement of the essence of traditional doctrines in new forms for the sake of cultural understanding. Erickson presented only two possibilities for a contemporary theology—either “translation” or “transformation.” The difference lies in their preservation or rejection of the permanent essence of doctrines.
Clark seemed to be working with a similar model for a truly contemporary evangelical theology in his
CT article, but I find there something more dynamic and exciting.
And he spent the rest of his theological career working it out in terms of restatements that amounted to faithful revisionings of traditional doctrinal loci from the doctrine of Scripture to the doctrine of God to the doctrine of salvation.
In his CT article Clark criticized both the “classical approach” to theology for “neglect of the contemporary situation” (24) and the “liberal experiment” for “losing continuity with Scripture and tradition.” (26) Overall he sides more with the classical approach which he described as “characterized by a concentration upon fidelity and continuity with the historic Christian belief system set forth in Scripture and reproduced in creed and confession.” (24)
However, he expressed dissatisfaction with that approach represented especially by B. B. Warfield and Francis Schaeffer. He wrote “
Much of the modern contempt of classical Christianity is due, not to its stand on Scripture, but to its nonessential narrow-mindedness in regard to the gifts of common grace that God has freely given us.” (25)
Clark’s own proposal in the CT article is the forging of a new evangelical theology that is genuinely conservative, in the best sense of faithful to given revelation, and at the same time contemporary in the best sense of responsible to culture and authentic in relation to truth. (27) One finds in the last few paragraphs of the article the difference from Erickson’s translating model of a contemporary evangelical theology. Pinnock calls for “creativity” in evangelical theology without accommodation to secular (especially naturalistic) thought forms. He declared
“I am not advocating static conservatism. Fidelity does not consist in simply repeating old formulas drafted in an earlier time.” (28-29) If he were following Erickson, one would expect him then to say something about restating the old formulas for cultural relevance, but he goes beyond that. Next he says “It includes the creative thinking required to make the old message fresh and new” and “
I see a kind of theological synthesis possible in which the Bible remains normative, but in which it is read afresh under the illumination of the Spirit who makes it live for us.” (29)
Clark’s program for a truly postconservative evangelical theology is only tentatively set forth in the
CT article, but a close reading of it reveals something new in evangelical theology.
Clark was calling for theological creativity without capitulation to non-Christian norms [sic, folk lore religion*]. He spelled it out in more detail in
Tracking the Maze where he labeled it “postconservative” and
compared it with post-Vatican 2 Catholic thought that affirms the essentials of the faith, basic Christian orthodoxy, but is willing to make some changes in theology that go beyond altering the ways in which they are expressed. Among these changes he mentions:
November 23, 2011
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| Clark Pinnock |
I was kindly asked by Tom Oord as a leader in the Word Made Fresh group of AAR/SBL to participate in a wonderous event that paid tribute to the late Clark Pinnock. The treat to this event was a presentation by Sarah Pinnock, Clark’s daughter, on her father; Linda Mercandante reflected on her experience as a student of Clark’s; John Sanders gave a presentation on the hassle he experienced with Clark in the open theism debate, mostly notably in ETS; the final paper was by Roger Olson on the place of Clark in evangelical theology. My paper, which was shortened so I had to speak from my feet at times, is below. I didn’t enter into the open theism debate as my assignment was on Clark’s use of the Bible and I had my hands full with three other of his topics — all of them hot and debated: Scripture, inclusivism and annihilationism. The highlight of the night was when the papers were all over — six in one hour — and folks in the room stood to witness to the influence of Clark in their life.
Introduction
Clark Pinnock and the New Testament: A Man on the Move
When I was asked to offer a presentation about Clark’s hermeneutics I thought back to my college days when I bought and read his 1971 book called
Biblical Revelation. That book was one of the impulses that made me think of studying at
Trinity because Clark taught there, though by the time I arrived Clark had moved on to
Regent and then to
McMaster. The invitation also made me think of Clark’s “revision” of that book on Scripture in his book
The Scripture Principle, which I still think was a courageous book in its day. (In some ways
his successors today are Kent Sparks and Pete Enns.) The invitation also made me think of Clark’s stuff on hell and annihilationism. What the invitation also triggered was a conversation I had with a friend when I was a student at Trinity. My friend’s name was Bill and he said he took Pinnock for a class and, if I remember this correctly, he said, “
Pinnock began as a Calvinist, midway through the course he became Ariminian, and then by the end of the semester he had become Calvinist again.” Then he said something that probably each of us both knows and admires about Clark Pinnock. Bill said,
"I liked Pinnock because he was man on the move. His theology was always growing." He then said, “…
unlike …” and I shall not mention the name. The other name won. Clark did call Trinity a “ghetto,” and Clark moved on.
My time is limited so I want to make four brief points about Clark’s approach to the Bible as the means of theologizing in our world today, but first a few general comments. As I read Pinnock, I read a theologian who was essentially
a biblical theologian who explored topics that matter to contemporary theologians, particularly those in the classic evangelical orbit. Maybe I can say that
Clark Pinnock is what happens when New Testament PhDs decide to become theologians, which happened to Clark when he was teaching at New Orleans among the Baptists.
I don’t see him as a systematician so much as a theologian who operated through the Bible’s categories, and this is what we would expect from
a student of F.F. Bruce. And his approach to the Bible might be called mostly a “plain reading” of the Bible, though at times he resorts – as nearly all theologians do – to some more arcane and intricate interpretations.
That “plain reading” tilts in the direction of the Arminians and charismatics though by that I don’t want any suggestion it is not anything less than rigorous. All of this has been told well in Barry Callen’s wonderful book on Clark’s light landings in moderate evangelicalism,
Journey toward Renewal.
I.
I begin, first, with this: Clark Pinnock’s approach to the Bible was
courageous.
Evangelicalism is a wonderful group as long as you are safe, but the moment you wander outside that safety, which is protected by alarmists positioned everywhere, made even worse by the internet and blogs,… once you wander outside you are susceptible to alarms and charges and trials, some of them apocalyptic.
Clark somehow managed to sustain sanity while setting off alarms in all directions. Like Aslan, Clark was not a tame theologian. In
A Wideness in God’s Mercy, when Clark explored the “Bible’s view of other religions,” he transgressed the boundaries the missionary movement had established, convinced as it was of a strong exclusivist posture toward all things religious. Having read
Jean Daniélou’s Holy Pagans of the Old Testament, Clark feasted on the generosity of God at work in the world outside Israel, and then was willing to probe into the implications of those holy pagans for religions today. Thus, he can say, “Some [outside the church today] intend the same reality Christians intend when they believe in God (as personal, good, knowing, kind, strong etc.)” (96). And then this: “People fear God all over the world, and God accepts them, even where the gospel of Jesus Christ has not yet been proclaimed” (97). And he digs:
“One can make a faith response to God in the form of actions of love and justice” (97). He then pokes evangelicalism in the eye: “We have tended to ignore this line of teaching in Scripture because of a control belief which blocks it out” (99). He pushes further:
“World religions reflect to some degree general revelation and prevenient grace” (104).
Yet, religions are part of a fallen human culture, but God uses them – and thus the Bible, Pinnock is claiming, opens up a more generous approach to the religions of the world.
Another example of his courage. Anyone who wants to talk about inerrancy has to be courageous, or foolish. Clark was the former. As he puts this in
The Scripture Principle: “But the case for biblical errorlessness is not as good as it looks. Of course God cannot lie,
but that is not the issue” (added) – that very comment, which goes against the grain of the deductive habit of inerrantists, is both not the point and the point. It depends on which theologian is writing. He adds, “What we might expect God to do is never as important as what he actually does” (57). He gets personal, but this has been omitted from the newer edition of
The Scripture Principle (84): “I can only answer for myself, as one who argued in this way [of total inerrancy] a few years ago. I claimed that the Bible taught total inerrancy
because I hoped it did – I wanted it to” (58). He did get personal again in the second edition, in the Appendix, with these words: “I have moved from defending the Bible in a scholastic manner to understanding it in a more pietistic way” (255), and Clark uses the word “neo-evangelical” for himself (258), and so he describes his move from “philosophical” to “simple” biblicism (257). Perhaps most clearly, he said he moved from Francis “Schaeffer’s militant rationalism to [F.F.] Bruce’s move bottom-up irenic scholarship” (258).
But Pinnock wasn’t about to give in completely. “I wish also to state my conviction,” Clark claimed at the end of his
Scripture Principle book and, once again, this was revised slightly in the new edition of the book, “that it would be wise for us to continue to speak of
biblical inerrancy. Though the term is not ideal by any means, it does possess the strength of conviction concerning the truthfulness of the Bible that we need to maintain at the present time, while offering a good deal of flexibility to honest biblical study” (224). Now he gets positively provocative for the inerrancy camp: “Inerrancy is a metaphor for the determination to trust God’s Word completely” (225). That is, “…Scripture can be trusted in what it teaches and relied upon as the infallible norm of the church” (225). Which puts us where many have come: “The wisest course to take would be to get on with defining inerrancy in relation to the purpose of the Bible and the phenomena it displays” (225). Or, better yet, to where Clark came when the second edition was published:
“… the wisest course now is either to abandon this term altogether or to alter its common meaning to better fit the purpose of the Bible …*” (250). It would be fun to stop here and chat, and I am on record saying that the word “inerrancy” to me is mostly a posture word today and that there’s a better word – truth – but we can’t pause or we’ll run over time. I do want to say that many today would argue that once we do what Clark suggested in his more functionalist approach to the Bible we have in effect abandoned what most people, most notably ETS, mean by inerrancy. Asking ETS to change its assumptive definition of inerrancy in Clark’s direction is like asking Mohler to become a moderate again.
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II.
Alongside courage, second, Clark Pinnock’s approach to the Bible was
comprehensive. In a
Wideness in God’s Mercy, where Clark was examining the hopefulness of the Bible, we are treated not to a verse here and there and not to some theological deduction, as one finds in some less-than-biblical-focused theologians, but instead we are treated to a wonderful sketch in fifteen pages of the expansiveness of God’s vision and what Clark calls a “hermeneutic of hopefulness” (20-35).
The election of Israel is not a soteriologically-obsessed election but an election unto mission, as Chris Wright has recently articulated in his magnum opus, The Mission of God. For Clark, “this election is for the sake of
all peoples” (24). It is a “corporate election… and a call to service” (24). Then this:
“This is the election of a people to a ministry of redemptive servanthood. Election does bring privileges, but primarily it carries responsibilities” (24).
To show this angle on what God is doing in the world, we get a treatment of Job, Abimelech, Jethro, Baalam, the Queen of Sheba up to the Magi and we could go on. It is Clark’s comprehensiveness that I’m concerned with here. He turns over one stone after another in the quest to sort out what the Bible says for a theological problem today:
who will be saved? Is God’s mercy narrow and stingy or wide and expansive? His question is that of YHWH to Abraham, “Have you seen the stars? Go ahead,” God says, “count them. So will your seed be.”
Clark takes that as gospel truth: God’s people is wide and inclusive and expansive and way beyond our expectations, and it outstrips our exclusivity. In reading Clark, I’ve been impressed time and time again with his comprehensive grasp of the Bible.
III.
Next to his comprehensive approach to the Bible, I see a third thing: in Pinnock we find a rock-solid
commonsensical approach to Bible reading. He asks in
Scripture Principle (xix),
"Why do Christians believe the Bible?" He answers – and I love what he says: “…
because it has been able to do for them exactly what Paul promised it would: introduce them to a saving and transforming knowledge of Christ.” On the near idolization of the Bible among some sorts of Christians that leads to a neglect of God’s manifestation in other ways, Clark says this:
“For my part, I cannot see how any revelation from the God of the gospel can be other than saving in its basic significance if it is truly a revelation of him [who is a saving God]” (7). That commonsensical approach leads to his chaser comment: “If we grant that such a revelation to all peoples… then it must be the disclosure of the gracious God from whom our creaturely existence flows.”
There you have it: a brief apologetic for accessibilism or inclusivism or some kind of universal revelation of God’s gracious ways to all humans who have ever been capable of comprehending the world in which God has placed them.
IV.
Clark’s approach to the Bible has been, fourth,
rhetorically compelling to many. I am teaching a course on Universalism and Hell to our 4
th Year Students this Fall. The first assignment was to read the principal essays in Bill Crockett’s book called
Four Views on Hell. Prior to that reading I had given two lectures on the method in theology and the options on these topics. No one in the class was at that time an annihilationist. Most, so it seemed to me, had not even heard of such a view. When the students had read the
Four Views, where
Clark takes the annihilationist view, Clark had convinced a number of my students that the traditionalist view of Walvoord and the metaphorical view of Crockett were not adequate. I read this chp again for this paper and when we come to his conclusion, I have to say it is nothing short of
rhetorically compelling to the reader:
“I conclude,” he says, “that the traditional belief that God makes the wicked suffer in an unending conscious torment in hell is unbiblical, is fostered by a Hellenistic view of human nature, is detrimental to the character of God, is defended on essentially pragmatic grounds, and is being rejected by a growing number of biblically faithful, contemporary scholars.” And then this: “I believe that [a] better case can be made for understanding the nature of hell as termination” (165).
But Clark is a persuader, after all he was Baptist:
“The real choice,” he says in the last words of his essay, “is between universalism and annihilationism, and of these two, annihilation is surely the more biblical because it retains the realism of some people finally saying "No" to God without turning the notion of hell into a monstrosity” (166). One can’t help be caught into his rhetorical web of logic in this chapter, though I have not yet myself been convinced of annihilation (though for me it is entirely within the spectrum of sound evangelical theology). [You can read what I think in my book
One. Life.
I took another poll of my students yesterday; only one is now an annihilationist; nearly all of my students voted for the metaphorical view as the most biblical and theologically sound.]
Conclusion
Well, I’ve now run out of time. One might be tempted to think Clark Pinnock was also creative, but as I read him he doesn’t offer brand new ideas, but he takes the old message of the Bible and gives it life for a new day when people are struggling with potent problems in a modern and postmodern context. In the 9
th chp of his
Scripture Principle, where he offers how to read the Bible, Clark offers a two-fold plan, and it is as old as it is important:
first, we listen to the text as God’s Word in human language given to us, and second, we open ourselves to God’s Spirit to reveal the particular significance the text has for the present situation” (197). Clark had both an objective dimension and at the same time was unafraid of the subjective, which goes all the way back to his dissertation on the Holy Spirit in the New Testament in 1963.
This subjective side made some nervous. I sort of think Clark liked that others were nervous about what he might say next, and in part this was because Clark was not afraid of pneumatology in his hermeneutics. Many are.
Most of the women and children remained on board the Mayflower until suitable log huts were erected for their reception, and it was March 21, 1621, before they were all landed. Those on shore were exposed to the rigors of winter weather and insufficient food, though the winter was a comparatively mild one. Those on the ship were confined in foul air, with unwholesome food. Scurvy and other diseases appeared among them, and when, late in March, the last passenger landed from the Mayflower, nearly one-half the colonists were dead.