1

As a student at Regent College, I had the opportunity to study under Mark Noll and David Livingstone (of Queen's College in Dublin) when they taught a class together on the dialogue between science and faith in the modern era. It remains one of my favorite memories of Regent, despite the fact that the class subject didn't really light my heart on fire.

If nothing else, the creation of Books & Culture would make Noll my hero. Three cheers.

2

Along the way, I'd gotten the impression that Mark Noll was no friend of Bible-believing Christians, and you can't be an Evangelical without being one.

What is your evidence that he holds to the three ecumenical creeds, the Lausanne Covenant and the two Chicago Declarations that define the movement known as 'Evangelical'?

3

Dear Puzzled, I in my turn am puzzled. What gave you the impression Noll does not hold to evangelical standards of belief?

You may well know something I don't. I have read only The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind around '97 or so, and I don't recall anything exceptionable in it. But perhaps there's something else. Do tell if you know something.

4

Puzzled, I'd like to suggest you change your name to Puzzling, because you make comments so bizarre it's hard to even know how to respond.

5

Joe: Consider adding to the list of books America's God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln, which is considered to be Noll's magnum opus and won The Historical Society's Eugene Genovese Best Book in American History Prize (and would have won other major awards if published a different year, imo).

6

I had the pleasure of taking a class from Dr Noll at Wheaton. Since Wheaton IS the Harvard of Christian colleges ;-), his pedigree as an evangelical is something best not trifled with there Mr. Pzzled.

7

I can't remember if Noll is a member of the group that came out against inerrancy while affirming the authority of the Bible. I also can't remember if George Marsden was in that group. Those are the two names that I think were I heard mentioned. If so, that may be what Puzzled is referring to.

The people I'm thinking of (whether these two were in it or not) were saying things like that there are factual errors that the Bible reports as facts but turn out false. I think some evangelicals can treat Jonah as a parable that never was intended to be taken as fact, can say that the creation accounts are the genre of myth (which doesn't mean falsity but just not a historical or scientific account but rather a poetic account of theological truth), can say that Isaiah was responsible for chs.1-39 but 40-66 were written by other authors later without denying that God was behind it or that predictive prophecy is involved. All those views have a high view of scripture but deny some of the presuppositions most evangelicals have about what the scripture really says. I don't believe all those things, but I think you can be an evangelical and believe them. I'm not so sure you're an evangelical if you believe the so-called conflicting reports in Kings and Chronicles are conflicting because they're not all correct.

8

I don't pretend to know Noll (or his theology) personally, but I'm weary of Puzzled's "guility until proven innocent" drives to define people OUT of the evangelical community. If you're going to make vague charges like "I'd gotten the impression that Mark Noll was no friend of Bible-believing Christians," is it too much to ask that you back it up with something? Anything? Like Puzzled, I'm an Iowa native, but it seems that he never learned "Iowa nice" (the civility and prudence that characterizes Iowans in their interactions with other people).

Now...to move the issue of Noll's views on faith and politics into the realm of actual evidence, here is an interesting excerpt (via the Center for Public Justice at http://www.cpjustice.org/stories/storyReader$1177) of his contribution to the new book, "One Electorate Under God," available from Brookings.

The last paragraph represents (in his own words) at least a preliminary defense of Noll's faith.
_______

Voting Not to Vote
by Mark A. Noll
As has been the case for the last few presidential elections, on November 2, 2004, I will almost certainly cast my vote once again for "none of the above." Here's why.

Seven issues seem to me to be paramount at the national level: race, life, taxes, trade, medicine, religious freedom, and the international rule of law. My disillusionment with the major parties and their candidates comes from the fact that I do not see them willing to consider the political coherence of this combination of convictions, much less willing to reason about why their own positions should be accepted, or willing to break away from narrow partisanship in order to try to act for the public good. Sketching the reasons for my political convictions will make my electoral dilemma clear.

Race

From 1619, when the first African indentured servants were offloaded in the American colonies, until the 1960s, American political institutions wavered in deciding whether African Americans could be full and equal citizens of a democratic nation. The United States pays a heavy price, and it pays it daily, for its history of injustice to African American citizens. Full attention to the racially infested plight of impacted urban areas--a Marshall Plan in some shape or form--is certainly the least that could be asked of the major political parties as recompense for America's longest lasting and most debilitating political crime.

Life

I am militantly pro-life because I do not want the United States to commit the social suicide that results when nations allow personal preference to trump human life. Assumptions that are nearly universal in human history testify that, without compelling reasons to the contrary, life should be favored over death. With all necessary qualifications, it is nonetheless imperative for nations that want to promote "liberty and justice for all" to stand securely behind the principle of life and against any effort, however well intentioned, to compromise that fundamental principle.

Taxes

The United States needs sharply progressive income taxes as a policy based on broad views of justice and equity. The ability to create wealth does depend on personal initiative, personal intelligence, personal work, and personal luck. It also depends upon social infrastructures that allow initiative, intelligence, hard work, and luck to result in the creation of wealth.

Trade

The United States should continue to defend principles of free trade and, wherever possible, expand the operations of free trade. Temporary assistance may be needed for segments of the economy hurt by the expansion of free trade. But in broader terms, free trade opens up opportunities for the kind of entrepreneurial activity that creates jobs and expands markets. It shows up dictators and statist regimes when their people witness elsewhere the economic advantages of free economic activity.

Medicine

Basic medical coverage, supplied at minimal cost and minimal bureaucratic frustration, should be offered to all. At the very least this is a policy of prudent self-interest. Those whom illness or disability incapacitate become a drain on the public purse and are kept from functioning as productive workers. Those who live in constant fear of being pauperized by illness or disability do not function productively or contribute to the institutions of political and civil society. A problem of nearly equal magnitude is the skyrocketing expense of medical coverage that results when individual parts of the medical system act only from their own perceived short-term interests. Political leaders must find the courage to propose comprehensive programs, the perseverance to push them along, and the commitment to make things change.

Religious Freedom

People must be allowed to exercise the basic human right of worshiping God, or not worshiping God, as they choose. That religious freedom is almost certainly the most basic human right has been demonstrated by the repeated social constriction and economic regression where it has been abridged.

The International Rule of Law

Since the United States is by far the strongest nation in the world--the new Rome of the early twenty-first century--it should ponder the over-extension, the short-sighted presumption, the failures of imagination, and the unilateral use of force that caused such difficulties in the latter phases of the Roman empire. Warfare remains the most explosive instrument of international policy.

These are political convictions to which I have come as a result of my Christian faith. Of course, I could be mistaken--either in what traditional Christianity should mean politically for an American citizen in the early twenty-first century or in how best to argue for these positions with reasoning not demanding a pre-commitment to traditional Christianity. But as long as I hold these positions, I am a citizen without a political home.

9

Wheaton -was- such a thing. I had a prof who had been there, but encountered much pressure to leave because of his Evangelical views. Franky Schaeffer V mourned the demise of Wheaton as an Evangelical institution some 20 years ago.

Noll -is- published condemning those who hold to the historicity of Genesis 1-11, a key Evangelical belief, indeed, a key -Christian- belief, as otherwise Creation-Fall-Remption has no meaning and the Cross is robbed of its power. In fact, he merely mocked, and did not engage intellectually with orthodox Christianity.

Jeremy, *by definition* Evangelicals believe in the inerrancy of the Bible in all that it teaches or affirms. People who disbelieve some of these things are *not* Evangelicals. They are something else. If you reduce Genesis 1-11 to a myth, you utterly destroy Christianity and Judaism. If you still want monotheism, you pretty much have to become Ba'hai, Zoroastrian, Muslim or Deist.

Kedron, my carefully qualifying what I was saying in asking for evidence for the claim of Noll being an Evangelical makes you weary? Everything you cite for Noll are merely political statements and do not address the question of his *religious* belief (or not) in the 3 ecumenical creeds, the Lausanne Covenant and the Chicago Declarations on Inerrancy and Hermeneutics, which define what Evangelicalism *is* and *is not*. These aren't something I came up with on my own. They are the definitions arrived at by the evangelical leaders, including Dr. Schaeffer, Harold O.J. Brown, CFH Henry who coined the term, etc.

I suggest you read Dr. Schaeffer's _The Great Evangelical Disaster_. You might find it interesting.

10

I read "Scandal of the Evangelical Mind" in 1999 while teaching at a Christian college which was palpably uncommitted to integrating faith and learning and did not see learning as a legitimate Christian calling. I felt like I had finally found someone who understood my misgivings and could articulate them better than I could. It remains one of the most influential books I've ever read.

I do remember reading on a discussion board that Noll wrote this book at a point where he had almost given up on evangelicalism because of the pervasive anti-intellectualism that his book decries -- that he had originally intended the book to coincide with his leaving evangelicalism for eastern Orthodoxy. But in writing the book he felt called to stick with evangelical Protestantism and fight the good fight. Which explains why in the preface he calls the book "an epistle from a wounded lover".

11

Godric, I agree that Noll had many good points, and I'm appalled that a Christian college would be against the integration of all learning in the Christian worldview.

But Noll's mockery and condemnation without engagement of Evangelicals in that book does not exactly make him a friend of evangelicals. I do not know his motives for staying at a formerly evangelical institution, nor what may or may not have been his thoughts about the eastern patriarchies, so I cannot address that.

12

Puzzled, if by "formerly evangelical institution", you mean Wheaton, I have a serious and femur sized bone to pick with you. Please inform me when Wheaton lost it's status as an evengelical institution? I will immediately cease my alumni giving!

13

Joe,

How about Dr. Harold O.J. Brown as an influential evangelical. I'm biased because I had a class with him this morning, but he would have to be up there with Mark Noll. Brown's work as an opponent of legalised abortion from the beginning is surely noteworthy.

14

Puzzled- It's certainly true that his book didn't win him any popularity contests among the evangelical establishment. I think that's primarily because the truth often hurts. And although he does take a fairly strident tone in the book, I believe that's mainly so that his point will come across loud and clear. Or that he's mad as **** and won't take it anymore regarding the absence of the evangelical mind.

15

"Noll -is- published condemning those who hold to the historicity of Genesis 1-11..."

Thanks for the clarification, Puzzled. I'm not trying to pick on you--I'm just trying to understand.

When you speak of the historicity of Gen. 1-11, do you consider those who hold to long Creation days or the Gap Theory to be denying the historicity of Gen. 1-11? Or is it enough to assert a literal and specific Adam and Eve who fell at a particular time in history?

For my own part, I no longer find the term 'evangelical' particularly useful (apologies to Joe and his Outpost :-). I have known people who denied the inerrancy of Scripture but who affirmed that the Gospel was the message of God unto salvation, that Jesus's death on the cross was the unique and necessary atoning act within history, that Jesus rose bodily from the dead, etc. As near as I could tell, these people loved the Lord and believed on Him savingly. I just think they hadn't confronted the confusion and inconsistency in their thinking about Scripture.

16

Thanks for the posts on "Knowing Your Evangelicals"; great idea and tremendously useful!

A couple more suggestions: Os Guiness, Udo Middleman, Michael Horton, Millard Erickson, John Piper, Harold O.J. Brown, Carl Henry and Tony Campolo.

Keep 'em coming!

17

Greg, great guys who are actually evangelicals, except for Campolo, who was dealt with by some of the others you mentioned.

Brian, Franky Schaeffer V made that call about 20 years ago. And I had a great prof at sem who had been a prof there, and the antipathy to orthodox Christianity was such that he felt pressured to leave.

Godric, I see a tremendous difference between Os Guinness' and David Wells' criticisms of the problems, and that of Mark Noll, who -wasn't- telling the truth when he mocked those who, as all evangelicals do, hold to the historicity of Genesis 1-11, and thus to Creation, Fall and Redemption.

Chuck, without a perfect and uncorrupt creation prior to the creation of Adam and Eve, the Cross is robbed of its power. If God created through secondary causes of sickness, death, suffering, etc., which is what the neo-Darwinian synthesis requires, then what, pray tell, did Jesus die on the Cross for? All of those 'sins' would be the very things that God called 'good'. I suppose you could become a Chardanist like Hugh Ross, but at that point you do have a different Gospel.

Those other people you refer to are called Neo-Orthodox, or Barthians. They aren't Evangelicals. Words mean things. We saw where neo-orthodoxy ultimately leads in the 'God is Dead' movement in the '60s. Word has it Barth himself was appalled.

18

What we see, then is how some who as youth were Evangelicals, moved over to neo-orthodoxy in hopes of being accepted by "Christianity's cultured despisers" as did the Bultmannians before them. I'm afraid they've traded for a mess of pottage, and have failed to learn from the developments of the 1880s through the 1930s.

J. Gresham Machen wrote a book on this called _Christianity and Liberalism_, and it is an informative read on the present situation.

Let us not repeat the same mistakes again?

19

Reading Christianity and Liberalism is an excellent idea, Puzzled - you'll notice, of course, that Machen never considered a literal interpretation of Genesis 1-11 to be essential to true Christianity. Machen usually avoided the subject, but when asked he would recommend the writings of his colleague B. B. Warfield, who believed God providentially used evolutionary processes.

20

Joe,

Good series. Russ is absolutely correct about adding "America's God" to the list. It, along with George Marsden's outstanding biography of Jonathan Edwards, were both named to The Atlantic's 10 Books of the Year in 2003. He was also elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences this past spring, which may make him the only faculty member at a Coalition of Christian Colleges and Universities to be a member of the Academy.

I'm amused by the conversation about inerrancy, its kind of a debate that's about 25 years old. Who knows what he thinks about it, though I don't question his evangelical bona fides in any case. The idea that he flirted with Orthodoxy while writing "Scandal" very much surprises me. I was at the pre-book "Scandal" lecture as I was a student at Wheaton. He's so solidly Reformed that I have a really difficult time imagining it. And the idea that he mocked evangelicals without engaging with him utterly and completely defies the imagination. He writes 'Scandal,' he stays at Wheaton, he founds Books and Culture, he continues to work for Christianity Today, he is very active encouraging evangelical scholars, he continues to publish with Baker, etc., etc. He's been so busy engaging evangelicals that it took him almost 10 years to publish "America's God."

I'll admit, I'm totally biased, he was my advisor at Wheaton. He's a brilliant scholar, a true gentleman, gracious, humble, and deeply dedicated to Christ and His Kingdom (to steal a phrase). And still alive, despite the fact that this may read like an obit.