Steve Holmes answers a few questions

Steve Holmes has kindly answered a few questions. Steve is among many things a British Baptist theologian (see here)

What theologian has had the most influence on your theology?
There's a poem by Wendy Cope that goes something like 'When they ask me for my favourite poet / I better not mention you / Though your certainly my favourite poet / And I quite like your poetry, too.' The two theologians who have had most influence on me, incomparably, have been my two teachers and mentors, John Colwell and Colin Gunton.

What was the last book you read?
An American detective novel called 'Thyme for Murder' or something which I picked up for a flight back from Seattle last month. Better than I thought it would be.

Theology: umm--I'm honestly not sure, if by 'read' you mean 'starting at page one, and working through to the end, reading every word on the way.' I've been through a dozen or so commentaries and monographs on Hebrews this morning, for a paper I'm giving at our conference this summer, and spent some time collating biographical information on Calvin for a book I'm writing, but in both cases it was using, rather than reading, the books. And it's been like that for weeks, to be honest--the urgency of the immediate pushing out anything more serious. It might have been Lowry's The Homiletical Plot about a month ago--I am teaching a course on preaching next year, and so have been catching up with some standard works I'd not read before. But, come to think of it, I have a feeling I decided I'd read enough and skipped quickly through the last couple of chapters even with that one.

How does being a baptist shape how you do theology?
Probably in lots of ways I don't realise. But what I do know:

In terms of method, I think (something I learnt from Colin Gunton, who was a Congregationalist, of course) that a deep rootedness in a particular church fellowship is really important. This affects content when it comes to questions of ecclesiology, etc., but more importantly I think lends a particular cast to the way all theology is done, which is difficult to pinpoint, but I think you know it when it's there. Something like a lack of abstraction? Also perhaps some level of interest in and/or openness to the radical wing of Christian theology (Anabaptists, peace churches, communitarians, etc.), which I suspect comes from being in semi-regular contact with these things through the life of the church. Finally, I think there's a level of pragmatism you get from being Baptist--we tend to do things first and think about them afterwards, and to be more interested in visible results than being correct in theory. It drives me nuts--I am a theologian--but provides, I think, a healthy corrective to a certain sort of 'well, it must be perfect before I get involved' attitude that causes too many academic theologians to live and think at a distance from the messy reality of church life.

In terms of content, I have found most of my writing over the past two years has been turned towards questions of the atonement, & particularly penal substitution, and to the history, shape and future of evangelical theology, just because people have asked me to do this. I guess that has had something to do with being Baptist?

What do you think will be major discussion points in baptist theology or in
theology in general over the next 10 years?
In Baptist theology: I think perhaps we don't know who we are. With theologians getting more and more interested in tradition-based enquiry (postmodernism and the rest), I suspect we are going to see increasing levels of debate over identity. Do we see ourselves as Anabaptist or Reformed? Evangelical or Broad? Mainstream or Radical? And how do we define any of these words? I imagine this will be true in different ways in Britain, and worldwide--if you know where to look, you can already see (self-appointed) BWA loyalists and (self-appointed) SBC loyalists fighting battles over who stands in continuity to Keach and the C17th confessions.

In theology in general: such a big field! Roman Catholic theology is, I think destined for a 'postmodernist crisis' like, but hopefully better handled than, the 'modernist crisis' it went through around Vatican I. Old-fashioned liberalism will continue to die quietly away. Evangelicals need to decide if they care about historic Christianity or not. Feminist theology will finally decide it wants nothing to do with Christianity--if it hasn't already. The most interesting theology will emerge from the growing churches in sub-saharan Africa or East Asia, and will cut across traditional distinctions in surprising ways. I hope the big argument will be about the doctrine of God, but I imagine it will be about something much less pastorally relevant (sexual ethics or emerging church or something).

Can you tell us anything more about your current writing project/s?
Two major-ish ones, concurrently. A relatively lightweight book on the atonement for Paternoster, trying to suggest that almost everybody in the Evangelical world arguing about penal substitution is starting from the wrong place, which should have been finished a year ago. And a serious book on Calvin for Ashgate that should have been finished five years ago. Both to finish this summer, hopefully.

How would you describe yourself in three words?
Theological words: Reformed. Baptist. Evangelicalandcharismatic.

Non-theological words: ...

...no, too difficult. I will just claim all words are theological!