Stott will get overly rated by an undiscerning US press and by many, including some Reformed commentators, who are used to writing "blurbs" for book covers. He's been known to be quite weak for quite some time on several issues, including the ordination of women to the diaconate and presbyterate. He's been known to be very, very weak for a long, long time.
Again, the US press is underwhelmingly educated and is overwhelming ignorant in elemental theology. John's books were never really challenging or classical. They were suitable for a first or second year college student, but not much more. My father handed me Louis Berkhof's Systematic Theology and Charle Hodge's Systematic Theology, 3 volumes, upon graduation from high school. He said, "Son, read 10 pages a day while in university. Also, read 8-10 chapters from the Old Testament and 8-10 chapters from the New Testament daily." While double-majoring in philosophy and chemistry, I kept that discipline up, oddly and rather-outta-the-way for my peers. Years later, there was a pay-off. When coming across Rev. Mr. John Stott, it was rather--if we may say so--rather sophmoric.
It "was" what it "was" and "is" what it "is." As an Anglican, he grandly sold the old BCP Churchmen out--post-WW2 Churchmen--in the 70s and 80s by his unjust and unfair reviews of faithful Anglican men. Older men saw the sell-out also. That's an unreported story. It was also seen with James Packer too, especially the "burial of the hatchet" with the Anglo-Catholics. Both talked a good game, but death takes us all.
In the last analysis, the question is one of fidelity. We are not impressed with John or Jim, scholarship for Jim notwithstanding.
Reformed Confessional and Liturgical Churchmanship is not in John's legacy...his legacy will be his alliances with broad, non-Reformed, and non-liturgical Churchmen--exactly folks those lauding him in the Christian press and blogosphere.
Phil, here's my reaction to Stott's passing:
ReplyDeletehttp://unclecephas.blogspot.com/2011/07/john-stott-1921-2011.html
You may find it overly laudatory, and perhaps you are right about Stott being more a part of a broadly Evangelical milieu than a pillar or Reformed orthodoxy, but I confess that he was a very helpful brother to me at a very difficult time in my Christian walk.
In the summer of 1972, after being badly burned by the charismatic movement that was then active in our campus fellowship, I went to England to visit my sister and her family, who were living there then. Having read _Mere Christianity_, I thought I ought to go visit All Souls Parish in the hope of hearing Mr. Stott preach.
I heard Stott. He preached on Gal. 4:4-7, pointing out the Trinitarian character of the passage and how Jesus' work was to give us an introduction to the Father. Oh, how I needed to hear that after being surrounded by people who often were unthinkingly (rather than deliberately) Unitarians of the Second Person or Binitarians of the Second and Third Persons!
While my theological home is definitely in the Confessional Reformed camp, Mr. Stott's sermon, heard by a pumpkin-headed young American tourist, led me to a deeper study of Scripture, especially the New Testament, and an interest in knowing what the "Big Names" of the Christian past actually said; so Mr. Stott, in the ordinary exercise of his pastoral duties, indirectly started me on a journey that has introduced me to Augustine, Cyprian of Carthage, Ephrem Syrus, Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Owen, Watson, Edwards, and Warfield.
Further, since hearing Stott, I have been unable to see how the doctrine of the Trinity is irrational or unimportant to the Christian layman. Now, this might seem a strange sentiment to people raised in good, solid homes; but I was raised in a thoroughgoing pseudo-Protestant modernism with a little input from liberalized Judaism. When I heard Mr. Stott, I was emerging from that milieu, and, thank God [a prayer, not a careless ejaculation], that brother started me on a lifelong love of the deep things of the Gospel.
BTW, I put in a few comment on Stott on Virtueonline.
Thanks, Peter, a good word.
ReplyDeleteI'll reactivate the following of your blog. It went dead for awhile. I stopped following it. I need to clear out some other old blogs also that are inactive.
A good word on John. The broad evangelicals will continue to enthuse. Glad John was helpful for you. I hope they did the 1662 Book of Common Prayer the morning of your attendance. If not, they ditched old school Anglicanism.
Yet, being in the Old School, his legacy will not be Reformed, Confessional and Liturgical Churchmanship, the need of the hour.
Again, Peter, I know whence thou comest. You're a solid Churchman and fellow saint in Christ.
Regards.