Evangelical Historiography in the Colonial and Postcolonial Eras

2.1 Orr in contrast with Feuerbach, Nietzsche, and Harnack

As we consider Orr’s thought over against that of Feuerbach, we gain insight into the debate of that time over the categorisation of theology as an academic discipline. Feuerbach argued that theology could never be anything more than a sub-discipline of anthropology. The epistemological foundation of enquiry could not be the notion of a divine, transcendent reality. Only in the study of man could the truth be found: “Man alone is the reality, the subject of reason…The new philosophy does not depend on the divinity; i.e., the truth of reason for itself alone. Rather, it depends on the divinity, i.e., the truth of the whole man.”^[17]

Feuerbach had sharply criticised Christian theology for its failure to recognise its own limitations and historicity.^[18] He rejected the assertion that Christian theology is epistemologically rooted in divine revelation or any form of absolute truth. Soares explains that, “Feuerbach sought the empirical sources of human beliefs, because he did not believe that there is anything above the material world, anything that does not exist limited by space and time. Thus he rejected everything that claimed to be beyond sensory and empirical knowledge.”^[19]

Orr, in contrast, argued that if this is true, then any notion of progress in theology is impossible. He writes:

For if it be really the case that the foundations of historical religion are subverted; if God, in truth, has not entered by word and deed into history, and given to man sure and reliable knowledge regarding Himself, His character and purpose; if the Son has not truly come as the Saviour of the world, and the promise of the Spirit to guide into all truth has not actually been fulfilled; then, beyond doubt, the legitimacy, and even the possibility of dogma – above all, the legitimacy of such a development of dogma as history presents to us – fall to the ground.^[20]

On this basis, then, Orr argued that theology is an enquiry into the transcendent nature, character, and action of God himself. Theology begins with that which is external to man, and thus cannot be studied simply as sub-discipline of anthropology. In Orr’s thought, Theology exists because revelation exists. And he therefore argued that Theology progresses because God, by the work of the Holy Spirit, has continued to reveal himself to humanity.

Another element of nineteenth-century historical–philosophical discourse concerns the notion of continuity in theological thought. Orr compared the progress of theology to the construction of an edifice, wherein foundations had been laid and each generation built upon the accomplishments of its predecessors. This idea stands in contrast to the deconstructive hermeneutic set forth by Friedrich Nietzsche. In his 1887 book On the Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche had argued that the origin of an idea (or a thing) does not determine how it will be utilised in future generations. New needs arise, new powers arise, and whatever meaning an idea held at its point of origin will be totally distinct from what that idea means now. He wrote:

The origin of the existence of a thing and its final utility, its practical application and incorporation in a system of ends, are toto coelo opposed to each other – everything, anything, which exists and which prevails anywhere, will always be put to new purposes by a force superior to itself, will be commandeered afresh, will be turned and transformed to new uses; all “happening” in the organic world consists of overpowering and dominating, and again all overpowering and domination is a new interpretation and adjustment, which must necessarily obscure or absolutely extinguish the subsisting “meaning” and “end.”^[21]

Nietzsche’s thought would lead us to view the task of theology as a non-foundationalist endeavour. The meaning that we apply to any theological idea: salvation, righteousness, justice, love, cannot be anchored in the meaning this idea had before. What these words originally meant and the usefulness that they once had are completely distinct from their meaning and purpose today. All that we can inherit from previous generations is a semiotic system – bare words and labels. And these can be freely employed (by a superior force) to address contemporary issues or concerns without reference to their history of meaning.

Orr, again, argued for an inalterable core of Christian theology, whose meaning is rooted in the past and which is passed down from generation to generation. He writes:

Christianity is not something utterly formless and vague, but has an ascertainable, statable content, which it is the business of the Church to find out, to declare, to defend, and ever more perfectly to seek to unfold in the connection of its parts, and in relation to advancing knowledge; that this content of truth is not something that can be manipulated into any shape men’s fancies please, but something in regard to which we should not despair of being able to arrive at a large measure of agreement… so far from the history of dogma being the fatuous, illusory thing that many people suppose, there is a true law and logic underlying its progress, a true divine purpose and heading in its developments, a deeper and more complete understanding of Christianity in its many-sided relations being wrought out by its labours.^[22]

A final point to consider in the context of nineteenth-century discourse concerns the continuity of the apostolic teaching, or regula fidei. Adolph von Harnack had argued that, particularly through the work of the second-century apologists, Christianity embraced a Hellenistic approach to doctrine that was foreign to its semitic origins. He wrote:

As regards its content, this system of doctrine meant the legitimising of Greek philosophy within the sphere of the rule of faith… What is here presented as Christianity is in fact the idealistic religious philosophy of the age, attested by divine revelation, made accessible to all by the incarnation of the Logos, and purified from any connection with Greek mythology and gross polytheism… The majority of these were successfully manipulated by theological art, and the traditional rule of faith was transformed into a system of doctrine, in which, to some extent, the old articles found only a nominal place.^[23]

In direct response to Harnack, Orr argued that “a truth does not cease to be Christian because it is also in accordance with reason.”^[24] What Orr assumes throughout his lectures is that Christian theology can and must address the questions of each generation, and that the articulation of theology within the intellectual framework of each era does not, in and of itself constitute, a severance with the primitive rule of faith.

2.2 A prophetic voice

Prior to the nineteenth century, history was most often articulated as an organic process of development, a genealogy of events and ideas where, across time, one idea led to another and one event spawned successive events. Postmodern historiography essentially dismantled this notion of genealogical connectivity. Michel Foucault carried the ideas of Nietzsche into the twentieth century, arguing that “the search for descent is not the erecting of foundations: on the contrary, it disturbs what was previously considered immobile; it fragments what was thought unified; it shows the heterogeneity of what was imagined consistent with itself.”^[25]

Renie Choy explains:

This postmodern genealogy vehemently opposes a traditional genealogy which treats an object as a fundamentally unified, historically developing entity, the progress and complexities of which we can track over time, finding always how one thing has led to the next. In Foucault’s rendering, a true, critical genealogy must show no such continuities: its job is to undermine the very idea that an object can be traced to origins, or that its legitimacy derives from a connection to origins.^[26]

Pulling together the thought of Feuerbach, Nietzsche, Harnack, and Foucault we arrive at a postfoundational rendition of the history of dogma might look something like this: There are no “historical origins” to Christian doctrines, as the actual teachings of Jesus are lost in history. Consequently, Christian teaching has no claim to some foundational, original authority. The formation of Christian doctrine over the centuries has been driven by conflict and the will to power. Certain teachings prevailed not because they were necessarily “better” or “more true,” but simply because they were promoted by people who held power. In the attempt to maintain their position, Church leaders and theologians have sought to surround their teaching with an aura of “divine authority.” But at various points in history, rebels have arisen and new centres of power have displaced the old. Today we are left with a morass of teachings and doctrines that all claim to be “authoritative” or “biblical,” and yet there exist no objective criteria upon which one teaching can be considered superior to another.^[27]

Orr seemed to have seen this coming, and in many ways he was a prophetic voice warning evangelical Christians how to stand their ground. He foresaw that the only defence against a postfoundational unravelling would be a staunch insistence on the coherence and historical continuity of Christianity’s great teachings. He argued: “I do not think it can be sufficiently emphasized that Christian truth forms an organism – has a unity and coherence which cannot be arbitrarily disturbed in any of its parts without the whole undergoing injury.”^[28]

In the historical narrative of doctrinal formation, evangelicals will insist that certain affirmations must be held as non-negotiable: Jesus is God incarnate and therefore an authoritative and comprehensive manifestation of truth; the NT Scriptures faithfully convey the teachings of Jesus and his apostles; the Holy Spirit has remained present in the church, guiding it (as Jesus promised) to all truth. When one of these foundational tenets is removed, all notions of dogmatic coherence, continuity, and progress collapse.

As twentieth-century evangelical theologians engaged with Orr’s work, many were quick to recognise its value. No less a figure that JI Packer would say:

I urge now that it is time he was rediscovered, for Orr’s stances in face of what he saw as the aberrant Zeitgeist of his day can, I believe, help us considerably as we face the incoherence of postmodern relativism and clever anti-intellectualism… and I am venturing to claim that his work of a century ago models for us the kind of apologetic stance and strategy that can best serve us today.^[29]

But even as evangelicals appreciate the ongoing relevance of Orr to the cause, his particular concept of dogmatic progress should not be embraced uncritically. Underlying many of his arguments are certain presuppositions that will be perceived as problematic in twenty-first century, even for the most conservative scholar.

3.1 A case in point: Fifth-century Christology and the oriental church

We have noted in Orr’s work that progress is an innate characteristic of Christian dogma. By necessity, it moves from simple to more complex stages. As we read through the Progress of Dogma, there is a discernible pattern of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis in the development of Christian doctrine. This in itself is not necessarily problematic. For example, in the wake of the Nicene council, “the affirmation of the oneness of essence of the Son with the Father…raises the question of how this divine, co-essential Son is related to the humanity in which He appeared on earth.”^[39] A new dialectical cycle is opening. Appolinarius (the bishop of Laodicea) had proposed that in Jesus, the divine Son (or Logos) takes the place of the rational soul in the ordinary human being (thesis). In response, the Council of Constantinople (381 CE) determined that Christ possessed true and unimpaired humanity. That is to say, he had a fully human soul (antithesis). Orr argues, however, that the issue was not yet resolved, for this solution “only raised in a more acute form the question of how this union of the divine and human in His Person was to he conceived.”^[40] The matter was ultimately resolved at the Council of Chalcedon (451 CE) wherein the doctrine of the two natures of Christ was more fully explained and confirmed (synthesis).

Caught up in the middle of these debates was Nestorius, the bishop of Constantinople. It is well known that Nestorius was uncomfortable attributing to Mary the title Theotokos, “Mother of God.” Nestorius’ willingness to call Mary Christotokos “Mother of Christ,” left him vulnerable to the accusation that he was “dissolving the unity of the personality of Christ” by creating this distinction between the divine and human Son of God.^[41] The issue was dealt with at the Council of Ephesus (431 CE) and Orr would lead us to think that Nestorius was left a broken man: “In a day’s time Nestorius was condemned, excommunicated and deposed… He died, after many hardships, in exile.”^[42]

There is more to the story, however. At the beginning of the fifth century, Christianity was thriving across Mesopotamia and even into central Asia. At the Synod of Seleucia-Ctesiphon (410 CE), the eastern churches consisted of six provinces (under metropolitan bishops), uniting around eighty bishoprics. After the council of Ephesus, these churches sided with the Christology of Nestorius and declared their full independence from Antioch (and Rome) in the year 486.

Separated from the West, the oriental churches continued to thrive. By the end of the fifth century, twenty four new bishops were appointed. Over the next two centuries, this church would spread into Afghanistan, the Persian Gulf, Qatar, Samarqand, India, and China.^[43]

Church historian John England lists various expressions of their cultural and spiritual richness:

Vital contributions in education, scholarship, theological insight and the humanities; their use of lay-people, along with bishops, monks and patriarchs, in the extension of Christian presence within and beyond Syria and Persia; and the development of Christian identity and polity independent of the Graeco-Latin church, while remaining an often persecuted minority in the Persian, and later Arab, Empires.^[44]

But in the Progress of Dogma, all of this theological, missional, and cultural richness seems to have counted for nothing. Nestorius was excommunicated in 431 CE, and therefore – to Orr – his ideas no longer mattered. As with Hegel, Orr’s concept of progress requires a ruthless rejection of failed ideas. Once a synthesis has been reached, and once the guardians of truth (the holders of authority) have given it their sanction, there can be no going back. And in the progress of history, competing ideas cannot walk side-by-side. There can only be winners and losers.

3.2 The tree of history

In order to understand the appeal of Hegel to nineteenth-century theologians like Orr, we here consider a predominant metaphor that emerges from Hegel’s thought which is still used today to explain the growth and expansion of the Christian church. This is the metaphor of a tree. Choy unpacks Hegel’s idea of historical progress in this way:

The history of humanity is like a tree unfolding itself gradually, evolving when a new idea is nurtured in the environment of the old, the new overtaking the old while preserving its essence and raising it to a higher level. History is therefore developmental, its progress proceeding dialectically, sequentially and epochally towards the end result of a full actualization of the ‘Spirit’.^[45]

She goes on to say that (particularly through the influence of Schaff) this imagery became predominant among nineteenth-century conceptualisations of church history:

The metaphor of a seed growing into a tree regularly features in nineteenth-century writing on the history of Christianity. It is the most vivid illustration of genealogical thinking, which takes its object of investigation (the Church) to be an internally unified subject, growing over time, but always remaining true to its own nature, as an acorn seed can grow into an oak tree but can never become an apple tree.^[46]

In this paradigm, the trunk is construed as the original teachings of Christ and the primitive church. Over the centuries, many limbs and branches have sprouted from the main trunk – with some of these failing to thrive because of their doctrinal deficiencies. Nineteenth-century Protestant historians generally argued that whereas the Roman Catholic church did represent the main trunk for a period of time, the connection between the upper limbs and the historical trunk gradually became choked. This was particularly true with regard to the doctrine of personal salvation. Orr notes: “There is no question, then, from the Protestant, and I believe also from the Scriptural standpoint, but that the Church, from a very early period, went seriously astray in its doctrinal and practical apprehension of the divine method of the sinner’s salvation.”^[47]

He goes on to say that it was through the Reformation that the church re-connected with its life-giving roots: “We can now perhaps understand how it was that the Reformers, in their proclamation of the doctrine of justification by faith, could uniformly claim to stand in unbroken connection with the Church of God in the past.”^[48] The Protestant church thus, is the rightful heir of the early church, and consequently any subsequent progress can only happen within her confines. Schaff noted:

The Reformation of the sixteenth century is, next to the introduction of Christianity, the greatest event in history. It marks the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of modern times. Starting from religion, it gave, directly or indirectly, a mighty impulse to every forward movement, and made Protestantism the chief propelling force in the history of modern civilization.^[49]

In this way, we understand that in nineteenth-century Protestant historiography the main story of the church is the Protestant story. It is only this expression of Christianity that preserves the genetic code of the primitive church in its least adulterated form. And it is for this reason that the Protestant church alone is the sole steward of the church’s forward progress. Some of the historical limbs and branches of “alternative” Christianities might limply hang on, but they are not sources of life and vitality. Many of them have simply died and fallen from the tree, and none of them are relevant to the church’s future.

Orr was convinced that the advance of the Christian church was in many ways about the “survival of the fittest” or what he called the “unerring verdict of history”:

Here is a tribunal before which the personal equation in the individual judgment is cancelled; the accidental elements in the thought of an age drop away, and only its abiding contribution to truth is retained. We are familiar with Schiller’s saying that the history of the world is the judgment of the world. It is at least true that the history of dogma is the judgment of dogma.^[50]

And it’s important to note that once a doctrine had been deemed “unfit,” it was forever doomed. There could be no going back, no reconsideration of what has been rejected:

No phase of doctrine which the Church has with full deliberation rejected – which, on each occasion of its reappearance, it has persisted in rejecting – need raise its head now with any hope of permanent acceptance. And this principle alone, as we shall see, carries us a long way. The history of dogma criticises dogma; corrects mistakes, eliminates temporary elements, supplements defects; incorporates the gains of the past, at the same time that it opens up wider horizons for the future. But its clock never goes back.^[51]

Looking back at our example of the Nestorians, we see that in Orr’s paradigm such movements were doomed from the outset to the rubbish bin of history. The fact that by the end of the nineteenth century Nestorian Christianity was all but decimated would only confirm to Orr that its doctrinal deficiencies had led to its own demise. Having been solidly rejected on a doctrinal basis, and having diminished numerically – Orr would lead us to the conclusion that there is little value in studying or reconsidering the teachings or history of this failed expression of Christianity.

3.3 The superiority of the West

Hegel had argued that “The history of the World travels from East to West, for Europe is absolutely the end of History.” He presented a paradigm that was both geographically and racially constructed. The club was founded in the East. The Global South was never invited to join. And once Asia failed to move forward with the progress of the dialectic, the realisation of their philosophical aspirations passed onto to Europe.

Once again, we find no evidence in the Progress of Dogma of any deliberate racial or geographical bias within Orr’s thought. But that doesn’t mean that he’s off the hook. In church history (as in global history), ideas tend to have geographical and ethno-cultural loci. When “alternative” doctrines were rejected by the diverse church councils, this often resulted in the “cutting off” of entire regions of the church. The Syrian, Ethiopian, and Egyptian churches were Monophysite. What may have originally been intended as a mere difference in doctrine inevitably became a racial division within the church. Perhaps inadvertently, Orr’s path of dogmatic progress becomes increasingly white and increasingly European over the centuries.

As he looked upon the dawn of the twentieth century, Orr concluded that the major tasks of theological progress had largely come to a point of consummation. He wrote:

the presumption, practically the certainty – is, that the great decisive landmarks in theology are already fixed, and that we are not called upon, nor we will be able, to remove them… The men behind us have laid the foundations, and we must be content to build on the foundations they have laid…. We shall not make less progress by realising that there is firm footing for us in the past to start from. ^[52]

Orr anticipated that the primary task of the twentieth century would be to “bring Christianity as an applied power on the life and conditions of society.”^[53] The great debates having been resolved in Europe, the next step in history was to ensure their application in this continent and around the world.

3.4 Knowledge lost

The historical consequences of this kind of thinking have been disastrous for global Christianity. In Ehrman’s Lost Christianities there is a section entitled “The Winners as Losers.” He here notes that “in some senses, the intolerance that brought about the victory of proto-orthodoxy led to its own demise.”^[54] The historical formation of doctrine is described as a process by which “victors themselves came to be vanquished when the exclusivistic rhetoric they used in countering the views of their opponents was eventually turned on themselves.”^[55]

At the conclusion of the Progress of Dogma, it’s quite evident that the “winner” in church history is the European Protestant Church. But the question needs to be asked: To what extent has this process of dismissing and discarding many historically significant Christian movements resulted in a loss for the global church? With reference to development of Christianity in Asia, England laments:

Merchants and traders, monks and bishops along the length of the ‘silk roads’ and in all major ports of Asia: mothers and matriarchs, princesses and queens in oasis communities nomadic tribes and the courts of the khans; physicians and teachers, pastors and ascetics, scholars, artists, chancellors and governors – in Samarqand, Turfan or Chang-an, Cranganore, Anuradhapura or Pegu, in Foochow, Kyoto, or Karakorum… Despite the surprising vitality and diversity of their life and witness and its penetration to the limits of the Asian region over many centuries, their stories are, with few exceptions, largely unknown.^[56]

We ask what might be different about Protestant faith if our histories had included the stories of Mary the Pilgrim (a sixth century mystic in Mesopotamia) or the theological contribution of Mar Babai the Great (551–628 CE)? How might Nestorian theology inform missiology today? How might the experience of twelfth-century Christian communities in Central Asia inform Christians today who live in Muslim-majority nations? The examples are too numerous to recount. In discussing Asian Christianity prior to 1500, we’re talking about the “faith of half the churches of the world for more than 1000 years.”^[57] The sheer volume of the knowledge that has been lost or ignored is incalculable.

3.5 No invitation sent

In Orr’s survey, Europe is the “main stage” upon which all of the great doctrinal debates took place between the fifth and sixteenth centuries. From Leo the Great, to Anselm and Abelard, to Calvin and Luther – Europe was the context for the formation of the great doctrines of Protestant Christianity. The debates were carried out in European languages, in European cities and universities. The exegetical methodologies, the hermeneutics, the appeals to reason – were deeply embedded in European thought and culture.

By the time the gospel arrived in Sub-Saharan Africa, most of the great debates had already been resolved. Orr had noted that by his day, “the great decisive landmarks in theology are already fixed, and that we are not called upon, nor we will be able, to remove them.”^[58] The outcome is that unlike European Christians – who for centuries enjoyed meaningful participation in the formation of their own faith sub-Saharan Africans were never given the opportunity to join in on the process. The echo of Hegel’s “Geographical Basis of History” is hard to ignore.

Granted, the peoples living in this region of the world are relative newcomers to the Christian faith. In 1900, less than 2% of the world’s Christians were living on the continent (while 70% were in Europe). But we note that by the year 2100 it is projected that over 50% of the world’s Christians will be living in Africa (with less than 10% living in Europe).^[59] What this means is that by the end of this century, most Christians will be following a doctrinal system that neither they nor their ancestors had any role in shaping.^[60]

Although ancestral participation in the formation of Christian doctrine may be something that White Protestants take for granted, for Christians from the Global South, their historical “outsider” status can be disorienting. Choy explains:

Europe is seen as the site on which many events crucial to the development of Christianity occurred: military campaigns, annexation of temporal power and ideas of sacral kingship, doctrinal debates and pronouncements, clerical and episcopal structures, technological advances, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, dissent, toleration, modernity, liberalism, and so on.

Consequently, someone from the Global South “finds with his conversion to Christianity that he has suddenly gained 15 centuries of history to learn if he wishes to understand why he prays the way he does, or why his church looks the way it does, or why he sings the hymns he sings.”^[61]

But perhaps even more problematic than this sense of belatedness is the sense, felt by many Africans, that the theology conveyed to their ancestors by European missionaries was tainted by the colonial mindset. Ezigbo and Williams comment:

This Christian narrative of racially divided continents included a racialized, European, imperialist Christ who gave privileges to Europeans by becoming the divine representation of their superiority over others. In addition, modern, imperialist Europeans replaced traditional connections native peoples made with their geography as a way to identify themselves with European-defined self-understandings. Traditions connected to geography were stripped from people who came to know themselves, instead, by physical features, like skin color. Europeans derived their rights to take creative liberties with the humanity of other people from a supersessionist worldview that understood Christian Europe, not Israel, to be the center of God’s salvific purpose in the world.^[62]

The era of colonialism may be long over. But as we have mentioned above, its residue remains. African Christians and Christians from across the Global South will assert that the passage of time has not healed the wounds of the colonial enterprise.

4.1 Incorporating the historical “losers” into evangelical ancestry

The Hegelian dialectic asserts that ideas are in a continual state of purification. We move from the “lower” to the “higher,” or as in Orr’s presentation, from “simple” to “complex.” It is the constant process of discarding the old and pressing on towards the new that drives the gears of human history. The problem with this paradigm (as we have mentioned above) is that there is never any justifiable reason to re-visit or re-engage with “failed” ideas.

The resources now exist for us to attain a more in-depth understanding of these “lost” communities and their teachings. It may be discovered that the issues that once divided previous generations of Christians may not be so problematic today. As Sunquist and Irvin note: “Many of these differences arose as a result of the Christian faith crossing historical borders of language, culture, identity. Time itself has introduced further changes in meaning, expression.” In the course of research and re-evaluation, evangelicals may come to the conclusion that many of history’s “heretics” weren’t so heretical after all.

A non-linear approach invites evangelicals to “circle around” and revisit doctrinal debates from the past. Rather than assuming that the historical determinations from these conflicts were “sovereignly guided,” this process calls for a humbler approach that is open to the possibility that mistakes may have been made.

Such a posture opens numerous benefits. First, it enhances dialogue and partnership between churches that have historically been divided. Second – and importantly for postcolonial discourse – this approach would open dialogue on the cultural and racial elements that may have formed part of historical doctrinal conflicts. And finally, such an approach may open the door for engagement with some “lost” theologies that contemporary evangelical Christians may find spiritually enriching.^[67]

4.2 Embracing living tradition to foster inclusivity

In Truth and Method Gadamer sets forth a methodology wherein historical study is carried out with an awareness of living tradition. The great doctrines of the church may be “set” with regard to their content, but their effect in history is an ongoing story. We think of the Nicene Creed, for example. This is not a text embedded in the past. Rather, there is a story of “hearing and heeding, interpretation and performance”^[68] that has characterised its reception over the course of 17 centuries. Only in the totality of this tradition – incorporating both the origin of the Creed and its effects throughout history – is the full meaning of the text understood. In this sense, the “origin” of a text or a creed is only the beginning of its history. As new communities embrace the great teachings of the Christian faith, they become participants in its living tradition. Thus, the full meaning of a text is in a perpetual state of becoming, where the past and present are constantly mediated.

Hebrews 11 recounts the stories of various men and women whose faith and choices somehow contributed to the unfolding of God’s purposes in history. The author concludes saying, “And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect” (39–40). The implications of these verses challenge Christians to re-evaluate the way they locate themselves in human history. In a sense, the great dogmatic formulations of the church exist in a state of incompleteness. Their “form” has been finalised in many respects, but their purpose has not yet been fully realised.

Here, the problem of belatedness or exclusion from the historical discourse is addressed with the recognition that the story hasn’t ended. As new communities embrace the great teachings of the Christian faith, they become participants in a living tradition. The teachings of the church are alive because “our historical consciousness is always filled with a variety of voices in which the echo of the past is heard. Only in the multifariousness of such voices does it exist.”^[69] Even though engagement with Christian doctrines may come centuries after their final codification, Christians in the Global South need not feel that they’re arriving “late on the scene.” Rather, they are part of a continuum that includes all Christians in all places. The church has inherited an understanding of dogma from those who came before us, and yet contemporary communities have an influence on how it will be received by those who come after them.

4.3 Summary

In this article, we have engaged Orr’s Progress of Dogma from a critical perspective. It has been seen that since the nineteenth century, evangelical historiography has been characterised by a dialectical, linear philosophy that has had disastrous consequences for the church. Rich traditions have been ignored or lost, Eurocentrism has prevailed, and many Christians whose home or origin is in the Global South continue to struggle with what they perceive as the residue of the colonial enterprise.

We have also seen, however, that Orr is not a figure that modern evangelicals should be quick to cancel. His argument for the cohesiveness and continuity of orthodox teaching remains as (what many evangelical scholars believe) the best defence against a postfoundational unravelling of Christian history and doctrine. The question that remains before evangelicals today is this: is it possible to maintain some understanding of doctrinal progress and continuity without a dependence on a linear, “tree of history” notions of progress? I have here proposed two lines of enquiry that may prove productive in this regard, and it is my hope that participation in this discourse will increase among evangelical Christians around the world.