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The Christian Faith

Over at Credo’s “reviews and interviews” page, Matthew Claridge reviews Michael Horton’s outstanding new systematic theology, The Christian Faith (Zondervan, 2011). Claridge begins,

Michael Horton is a remarkably productive man not only in terms of the quantity of his output but also in terms of its quality. Possessing both of those together is a truly rare gift (and having the former without the latter is an all too common curse). Yet his gifts extend even further. He is equally at home in the academic guild as he is in popular evangelical discourse. All of these areas—quantity, quality, intellectual sophistication, and popular precision—have come together in his magisterial Systematic Theology.

The strengths of Horton’s work are almost too numerous to mention. The chief of these, though it at first appears to be a liability, is actually Horton’s most outstanding contribution.  Horton’s volume may not achieve the accessibility or utility of Grudem’s popular installment only because Horton refuses to allow any of our ontological and epistemological assumptions go untested. A key strength of Reformed theology has been its ability to articulate its own “world of meaning” within the circle of Scripture alone. Always present in embryonic form, this emphasis blossomed in the late 19th through 20th century under the auspices of Bavinck, Kuyper, Vos, Van Til, Vanhoozer, and John Frame among others. Horton is in many ways a capstone to this illustrious history. He is as familiar with the ancient fathers and reformed Orthodox as he is with the philosophers and their contemporary progeny.  He incorporates the best of recent theological developments (e.g., Speech Act theory, “already/not yet” eschatology), makes room for some others missing from our Western heritage (e.g., the Eastern “Essence/energies” distinction), and without fail brings new insights or fresh defenses to classic doctrines. Above all, he attempts to construct a systematic theology on Scripture’s terms. Where Kevin Vanhoozer’s structural device of theatrical “drama” runs the risk of imposing its own foreign paradigm (c.f., his Drama of Doctrine), Horton allows Scripture’s ‘covenantal’ self-understanding to guide all aspects of his project. In my opinion, Horton provides the best overall prolegomena for evangelical “consumption” on the market today.

Guiding Horton’s thought is a taxonomy derived and augmented from Paul Tillich to which Horton returns again and again in many and various contexts: the distinction between “overcoming estrangement,” “the stranger we never meet,” and “meeting a stranger.” It is remarkable how much of the history of philosophy and theology Horton is able to illuminate by this taxonomy. At its heart are three different perspectives on the most basic issue of ontology: the Creator-creature distinction. By “overcoming estrangement,” Horton has in mind the platonic trajectory with its focus on “essences” and the “chain of Being” extending from the eternal to the temporal, the Real to the ephemeral. Its basic impulse is an optimistic striving to collapse the creature into the Creator. By far, this project has exerted the greatest force in history and by it Horton explains much of the rationale behind Roman Catholicism, Enlightenment rationalism, Liberal Protestantism, and German Idealism.

Read the rest of the review here.

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