Today in 2000 James McClendon died. He authored Ethics, Doctrine & Witness & provided baptistic vision of theology
McClendon's baptistic theology was centred around a conviction that 'this is that.' His work sits alongside that of Hauerwas & Yoder.
Alongside his 3-volume systematic theology, McClendon did important work on biography as theology & the importance of convictions
IBTS in Prague & now Amsterdam through Parush Parushev, Keith Jones & now @StuartMBlythe has been a centre for theology Jim McClendon style.
The 3rd volume of The Collected Works of Jim McClendon @Baylor_Press is due out early 2016.
Hauerwas on MClendon: 'I always suspect that God gave Jim a Catholic body but forced him to live a baptist life - a small 'b' Baptist life'
The importance of Jim McClendon's theology is he starts with Ethics & then Doctrine reversing the practice of the way much theology is done.
Today is All Saints Day. A festival which should be celebrated by more Christians. I read Biography as Theology for the first time this summer and it sheds light on this festival. I think the book holds a seed which is ready to be planted today i.e. that Christian character is formed in community. I wonder whether this is a pathway for the church which has yet to be formed in the early years of this century. A church which starts with story, creates saints that exemplars and gathers to practice the Faith.
Did McClendon ever onside the the liturgical implications of this book in particular?
Posted by: John Rackley | November 01, 2015 at 09:29 AM
John, see the recent book by Paul Fiddes, Brian Haymes and Richard Kidd, Baptists and the Communion of Saints (Baylor, 2014).
Posted by: Andy Goodliff | November 01, 2015 at 05:26 PM