Beginning in the middle of things: following James McClendon’s Systematic Theology

Abstract

The challenges faced by the Christian theologian have seldom been greater. After seventeen centuries the social project of Christendom has collapsed, and the secular experiments that sought to replace it are also foundering. The resulting "postmodern" situation, cobbled together from the debris of Christendom's demise, is euphemistically styled as pluralistic, but one suspects that such descriptions serve merely as a façade for a fragmented and incoherent setting. Sadly, the church mimics this state of affairs, its common life and language in disarray, its practices truncated and disjointed, its core convictions splintered into unintelligible bits and pieces, and its members at the mercy of every power, principality and advertising agency.In the three volumes of his recently completed Systematic Theology James McClendon, Jr. negotiates his way through this detritus with consummate skill and fidelity to the gospel. He knows full well the futility of trying to concoct some sort of method capable of lifting us out of this time and place and allowing us to view all the kingdoms of the world in a moment. He is also aware that theology is little more than the organized subjectivity of disparate individuals apart from the sort of thematic structure embodied in what he calls the baptist vision. 1 McClendon displays an uncanny ability to work in medias res, in the messy middle of our present circumstances, framing a picture of Christianity's life and language so timely, compelling and incisive, it enlivens the imagination as it engages the intellect. His theology retrieves the shattered fragments of Christianity's convictional discourse and reassembles them into a coherent whole, and thereby affords the church Modern