Oct 28, 2008
A PC USA Pastor and Two Baptists on Coffeehouse Theology
Today on the Coffeehouse Theology blog tour Jim Bonewald, a PC USA pastor, shares his take on my book:
Ed’s concern is that the way we think about God must first be formed by scripture, but then fleshed out and broadened beyond our own narrow perspective by listening to other voices of faith such as the ancient church and the global church.
Very helpful after each chapter is a list of resources for further reading and study. They are a very good place to start, though I personally would like to see the inclusion of some more liberal (especially in the biblical resource section) as well as female voices in his various resource lists.
Baptists Todd Littleton and Tripp Fuller also weighed in.
Fuller notes:
As many theologically interested people know we are in the middle of a Trinitarian revival of sorts and Ed not only joins the revival but talks intelligibly about the Trinity (as in your friend who keeps rolling their eyes when you bring it up could understand it as a substantive and positive contribution to theology). He does this by developing a rich missional approach to theology and examining how it is informed by God’s own nature. Ed’s missional focus is on the forefront throughout the book as he discusses other topics like scripture or culture.
Todd Littleton, a friend from my ETREK days, establishes the place of Coffeehouse Theology among the leading works in theology and culture today:
Ed combines the work of Guder on the missio dei, from Missional Church, with the epistemological proposal in Grenz and Franke’s Beyond Foundationalism, and the approach to reading Scripture described in Scot McKnight’s Blue Parakeet. Interestingly Ed does so without the benefit of the publication of Scot’s book. That means, for me, Ed and Scot think along the same lines. Not bad company for Ed from where I sit.
Ed’s book came at a good time as I was looking for a book to help my Sunday morning group discover how often they do theology and how this translates in their lives to give witness to Jesus. We do need to know, on a popular level, how we are influenced and what those influences are. The idea what we know is pristinated through our vaunted reason no longer holds much water, or coffee for that matter.
