Remembering aTeacher---A Book Review that takes stock of a Teacher's Legacy from Where I am Today
“Theology as Enabling a Meeting with the Living Christ: A Review of Bob Martin, God Our Father: Meditations in Theology from Creation to Consummation (Johnson University Press, 2011).
Many Christians see theology as a dry ethereal discipline that frequently exists apart from relevance to the life of God’s church even as theology continues to shape that life in often indirect ways. The Stone-Campbell tradition has often manifested this popular allergy to disciplined and reflection on faith and accordingly it has produced more biblical scholars than theologians. The life work of the late Robert Martin, Bob to his students at Johnson Bible College (now Johnson University), both contests this irrelevance and gives expression to it in his posthumously published God Our Father. Bob taught theology with quiet passion at Johnson over parts of four decades. He was my teacher when I was there in the late 1970s. I could almost hear again Bob’s quiet deep nearly Swedish Lutheran voice in God Our Father as this book represents the publication of lectures that I heard in some earlier form in classes on “Systematic Theology” and “Prayer and Worship”. To me Bob was always a rather pious Barthian who actually believed in theology as a discipline even as he transmitted to me a love of disciplined theological reflection---though my path was never the same as his path. Bob believed that theology's task "is to undergird--not undermine--our relationship with God." (p.vii) He had little affection for or commitment to theology as arid abstract reflection or as challenging aspects of the church’s spiritual life--even if it needed challenging.
The way Bob did theology as it comes to us in this book is as meditation on scripture (overwhelmingly the New Testament)--- it is theology as a Christian midrash on scripture or as a different manner of doing lectio divina. He covers many of the topics found in a typical survey of Christian doctrine organized by two big divisions: revelation and reconciliation and then community and commission. The book is best read in small segments when one first reads the primary scripture passage for a topic and then works through his meditation or comment on that passage in a manner that develops a particular theological theme, such as reconciliation. That exercise of reading a scripture text before the theological meditation is the core of Bob’s theological method. In some ways God Our Father can be read as a theological commentary on much of the epistle of Ephesians, except that it ignores the Gentile-Jew divide.
Martin was no fan of contemporary theology that he found to be critically destructive of a common lay believer’s spirituality or of the propositional and rational theology of a Francis Schaeffer or a Jack Cottrell, His systematic theology of meditation walks in a foggy “no man’s land” between doctrine and story-based narrative theology. Those familiar with the work of Karl Barth or Emil Brunner will only hear their echoes, as Bob never cites any theologian by name, but readers can appreciate Bob’s somewhat pious appropriation of a theology of personal encounter with God and the living Christ.
To today's church this text does have real limits. The book lacks any sense of or commitment to social justice. Theology drives Bob’s handling of scripture texts. This lack of critical exegesis mars his treatment of the kingdom of God even as he relies on kingdom-related themes of patriarchy [fatherhood] and sovereignty---but always in a relational sense. Discussing atonement and reconciliation, his emphasis on relationship with God and with fellow Christians lies at the heart of his theology, but his unacknowledged substructure of atonement is still pure substitution out of Anselm. In working out this theology of relationship with God, analogies from marriage and family are overdone as twentieth century romantic courtship can not adequately model God's love and singleness as a calling eludes him. While he maintains a Campbellite commitment to baptism in his relational theology, for myself as a longtime member of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), I was disappointed that he manifests so little concern with Christian unity or the broader Stone-Campbell tradition.
Theology done in this key pays scant attention to questions of ethics apart from an occasional aside on his view of the relational wrong represented by premarital sex. His emphasis on Acts 2:42 presents opportunities to imply an ethos about freedom and common property, but Bob does not take those steps. Also, far beyond the gendered title God Our Father, he exhibits no sensitivity to contemporary concerns about women’s equality in Christ.
While God Our Father is not a traditional academic text and it has real limits,it still speaks a worthwhile word to lay folk and ministers alike by focusing on meditation as a mode of discourse. Martin communicates a love of theology as a discipline and that love of theology led me to find more comfort in theological reflection that confronts the church than Bob would have been pleased with today. Even though he does not bring a challenging word to God's church, still he does "bless the Lord" (p.v) and that represents a necessary, but not wholly sufficient, way of reflecting on the good news that comes to us in the living Jesus Christ.
Jess Hale is an attorney in public service in Nashville, TN who is a member of Eastwood Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Nashville.
Many Christians see theology as a dry ethereal discipline that frequently exists apart from relevance to the life of God’s church even as theology continues to shape that life in often indirect ways. The Stone-Campbell tradition has often manifested this popular allergy to disciplined and reflection on faith and accordingly it has produced more biblical scholars than theologians. The life work of the late Robert Martin, Bob to his students at Johnson Bible College (now Johnson University), both contests this irrelevance and gives expression to it in his posthumously published God Our Father. Bob taught theology with quiet passion at Johnson over parts of four decades. He was my teacher when I was there in the late 1970s. I could almost hear again Bob’s quiet deep nearly Swedish Lutheran voice in God Our Father as this book represents the publication of lectures that I heard in some earlier form in classes on “Systematic Theology” and “Prayer and Worship”. To me Bob was always a rather pious Barthian who actually believed in theology as a discipline even as he transmitted to me a love of disciplined theological reflection---though my path was never the same as his path. Bob believed that theology's task "is to undergird--not undermine--our relationship with God." (p.vii) He had little affection for or commitment to theology as arid abstract reflection or as challenging aspects of the church’s spiritual life--even if it needed challenging.
The way Bob did theology as it comes to us in this book is as meditation on scripture (overwhelmingly the New Testament)--- it is theology as a Christian midrash on scripture or as a different manner of doing lectio divina. He covers many of the topics found in a typical survey of Christian doctrine organized by two big divisions: revelation and reconciliation and then community and commission. The book is best read in small segments when one first reads the primary scripture passage for a topic and then works through his meditation or comment on that passage in a manner that develops a particular theological theme, such as reconciliation. That exercise of reading a scripture text before the theological meditation is the core of Bob’s theological method. In some ways God Our Father can be read as a theological commentary on much of the epistle of Ephesians, except that it ignores the Gentile-Jew divide.
Martin was no fan of contemporary theology that he found to be critically destructive of a common lay believer’s spirituality or of the propositional and rational theology of a Francis Schaeffer or a Jack Cottrell, His systematic theology of meditation walks in a foggy “no man’s land” between doctrine and story-based narrative theology. Those familiar with the work of Karl Barth or Emil Brunner will only hear their echoes, as Bob never cites any theologian by name, but readers can appreciate Bob’s somewhat pious appropriation of a theology of personal encounter with God and the living Christ.
To today's church this text does have real limits. The book lacks any sense of or commitment to social justice. Theology drives Bob’s handling of scripture texts. This lack of critical exegesis mars his treatment of the kingdom of God even as he relies on kingdom-related themes of patriarchy [fatherhood] and sovereignty---but always in a relational sense. Discussing atonement and reconciliation, his emphasis on relationship with God and with fellow Christians lies at the heart of his theology, but his unacknowledged substructure of atonement is still pure substitution out of Anselm. In working out this theology of relationship with God, analogies from marriage and family are overdone as twentieth century romantic courtship can not adequately model God's love and singleness as a calling eludes him. While he maintains a Campbellite commitment to baptism in his relational theology, for myself as a longtime member of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), I was disappointed that he manifests so little concern with Christian unity or the broader Stone-Campbell tradition.
Theology done in this key pays scant attention to questions of ethics apart from an occasional aside on his view of the relational wrong represented by premarital sex. His emphasis on Acts 2:42 presents opportunities to imply an ethos about freedom and common property, but Bob does not take those steps. Also, far beyond the gendered title God Our Father, he exhibits no sensitivity to contemporary concerns about women’s equality in Christ.
While God Our Father is not a traditional academic text and it has real limits,it still speaks a worthwhile word to lay folk and ministers alike by focusing on meditation as a mode of discourse. Martin communicates a love of theology as a discipline and that love of theology led me to find more comfort in theological reflection that confronts the church than Bob would have been pleased with today. Even though he does not bring a challenging word to God's church, still he does "bless the Lord" (p.v) and that represents a necessary, but not wholly sufficient, way of reflecting on the good news that comes to us in the living Jesus Christ.
Jess Hale is an attorney in public service in Nashville, TN who is a member of Eastwood Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Nashville.
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