Book Review: Between Magisterium and Marketplace: A Constructive Account of Theology and the Church

Abstract

Between Magisterium and Marketplace: A Constructive Account of Theology and the Church. By Robert C. Saler. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 2014. ix + 192 pages. $49.00 (cloth).By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority? (Matt. 21:23). The question of the chief priests and elders to Jesus has persisted throughout two millennia of Christian history. Who authors / authorizes theology? Does the church stand as guarantor of the truth of any given theological assertion or can it be critiqued and found wanting by a theology it has not authorized? Is innovation possible in the realm of theology? If so, how is its veracity to be tested? Robert Saler s engaging book takes up these questions for the twenty-first century and offers an intellectually satisfying and eminently practical framework for authority within a church understood as an event of the gospel rather than a visible institution. To get to his conclusions he roots his argument in the differences between two ecclesiologies: polis (the church as an institution with a public) and (a diffusively spatialized event). Instead of championing one approach over the other, he points out the pros and cons of each but ultimately argues that the non-polis model speaks most directly to the current state of Christianity and its discontents.Saler lays the groundwork for his thesis in a review of the way innovation has moved from being a bad thing in theology (heresy) to an expected quality of any constructive theology (originality). He goes on to show the way these ideas play out in two great debates about the nature of the church, first between Thomas More and William Tyndale (an actual one) and then between John Henry Newman and Friedrich Schleiermacher (hypothesized). Instead of rehashing the doctrinal, social, or biographical issues at work in their differences, Saler susses out the ecclesiology operating beneath each man's reasoning, a choice that allows him to compare apples and apples. For instance, More and Tyndale each believe that the Bible and the Holy Spirit interact to authorize Christian belief, but More argues for the action of the Holy Spirit in the magisterium of the institutional church while Tyndale places it in the believer's heart and her inner conviction. Similarly, Newman and Schleiermacher each took the nineteenth century's undermining of Christianity's historic sources to heart as a call to creatively reengage them, but Newman could only bless innovations that developed organically from the church's teaching tradition, while Schleiermacher famously championed the virtuoso theologian who would author theology on his or her own while establishing its value over against worn-out doctrines. …