The Logos and His Logic

Chapter 6 engages with Jc Beall’s recent and fascinating Christological proposal. His bold and novel proposal is that we accept the traditional, creedal doctrine of the incarnation as a genuine and genuinely true contradiction. After introducing his views of logic and the relation of logic to theological claims in general and Christology in particular, the chapter raises some distinctly theological concerns; in addition to several issues that are grounded in the history of doctrine, it raises some worries that come directly from theological interpretation of the New Testament’s witness to Jesus Christ.

Three Theological Objections

The book begins with three very brief chapters that collectively introduce the work as a whole. Chapter 2 discusses three common theological objections to analytic theology: the objections from history, mystery, and practice. The objection from history argues that analytic theology does not take history or historical contingency seriously enough. Sometimes, this objection takes an even more direct form: analytic theologians are simply ignorant of the history of doctrine, and of historical sources more generally. According to the objection from mystery, analytic theology falters because it is not well suited for grappling with the mystery and paradox that lie at the heart of the Christian faith. The objection from practice holds that analytic theology is spiritually sterile and therefore not really a form of genuine theology at all. Although they all have some purchase, these three objections do not finally succeed as objections to analytic theology as such, though they may apply to individual analytic theologians. I outline the argument of Part III, which calls for a more “theological analytic theology,” and defends analytic theology from a nest of connected objections that all concern idolatry.

Legal History as Doctrinal History

This chapter investigates the idea of doctrine as a focus of historical scholarship, asking how the doctrinal mentality arose, and how historical approaches to doctrine emerged strongly in both common-law and civilian or Romanistic legal cultures. It first defines the meaning of ‘doctrine’, and sets out a guiding thesis. It argues that an important dimension of doctrine is communication; and jurists become fascinated by the history of doctrine when social and political conditions necessitate an expansion or transfer of the legal system, with concomitant transfers of doctrinal thought. The chapter then traces the development of doctrinal history from Gaius to the common law tradition.

Henry Boynton Smith and Church History in Nineteenth-Century America

Henry Boynton Smith (1815–1877) was one of the few nineteenth-century American scholars committed to disseminating German methods of ecclesiastical historiography to a country known for its anti-historical tendencies. However, modern scholars have generally overlooked his significant contributions in this area. Hence exploring his scholarly reception and specifically his History of the Church of Christ, in Chronological Tables will fill a niche in the historiography of church history.Philip Schaff (1819–1893), the renowned church historian and founder of the American Society of Church History, was one of the few contemporaries of Smith who understood that Smith's scholarship was on a par with that being produced in Germany. Schaff specifically praised Smith's chronological tables—evidence of Smith's German education among some of the best German historians of the period, including Leopold von Ranke and August Neander. This essay reviews Smith's History of the Church of Christ, in Chronological Tables in the context of the newly emerging scientific history and describes his contribution to nineteenth-century American scholarship. Smith is worthy of attention for establishing a central position for the history of doctrine and for promoting the field of church history and the use of chronological tables in nineteenth-century America.

Of Mandarins, Legal Consciousness, and the Cultural Turn in US Legal History: Robert W. Gordon. 1984. Critical Legal Histories. Stanford Law Review 36:57–125

This article traces the impact of Robert Gordon's “Critical Legal Histories” on scholars writing at the intersection of law and history. While Gordon's central claim about the constitutive character of the law has come to serve as a working assumption in the field, the case he made for the intellectual history of doctrine as articulated by legal mandarins has proven less influential in the twenty-five years since the article was published. Instead, legal historians have focused their attention on the interaction between official and lay forms of law-making with a decided emphasis on popular legal consciousness. For precisely this reason, the time may be ripe for reconsideration of mandarin materials, not only for what they have to tell us about the dynamics of cultural change, but also as sources of insight into basic puzzles of the human condition that have tended across time to be expressed in and through legal forms.

Historical and Systematic Theology in the Mirror of Church History: The Lessons of “Ordination” in Sixteenth-Century Saxony

Leopold von Ranke is probably best known for his dictum that written history must mirror the past wie es eigentlich gewesen. Practicing historians nonetheless know that even the greatest masters of their craft inevitably bring their own histories with them to their work. As a case in point, two decades ago Robert M. Kingdon observed in his address as incoming President of the American Society of Church History that students of the Catholic Reformation tend to focus their attention on institutions and practices, while Protestants and Lutherans in particular give center stage to the history of doctrine. Both, faithful to their own traditions, therefore produce a church history manqué that would benefit from combining the methods, presuppositions, and findings of the two approaches.