The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind
I want to know if there is any changes from the first edition of The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind to the revised edition of the same volume.
Comments
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Usually revised editions do have changes. At least minor typo fixes if nothing else. There's not likely anyone here who knows what changes were made to a book that was published in 1994 and again in 2022. There's probably no way to know without doing a digital compare and that's not easy even you already own both versions, since you'd have to export them to external file formats (e.g., text or Word) that can be compared, and Logos limits how much text can be exported. I only own the 1994 version.
My policy is if I already own the book, I don't buy the revised edition (especially if I've already ready it), unless it is a commentary on a book I'm hungry for more study of and/or it's by a new author. If I don't own it yet, and both the original and a revised edition are available, I buy the revised edition.
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I’ve only got the earlier edition, but your best bet is to check the preface to the second edition - that’s normally where the author of a second or later edition will set out what they have changed, whether it be just updating the bibliography, or updating (or even adding) chapters to deal with criticism of the earlier edition. The See Inside on Logos only gives you the first couple of paragraphs. If you have online journal access your best bet is to search the journals for a review of the revised edition, which will probably give you good information on what’s changed.
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Old Book: 284 pages.
[quote]
Contents
- The Scandal
- The Contemporary Scandal
- Why the Scandal Matters
- How the Scandal Has Come to Pass
- The Evangelical Mind Takes Shape—Revival, Revolution, and a Cultural Synthesis
- The Evangelical Enlightenment
- The Intellectual Disaster of Fundamentalism
- What the Scandal Has Meant
- Political Reflection
- Thinking about Science
- Hope?
- Is an Evangelical Intellectual Renaissance Underway?
- Can the Scandal Be Scandalized?
New Book: 291 pages
[quote]
Contents
- New Preface (2022)
Part One: The Scandal
- The Contemporary Scandal
- Why the Scandal Matters
Part Two: How the Scandal Has Come to Pass
- The Evangelical Mind Takes Shape—Revival, Revolution, and a Cultural Synthesis
- The Evangelical Enlightenment
- The Intellectual Disaster of Fundamentalism
Part Three: What the Scandal Has Meant
- Political Reflection
- Thinking about Science
Part Four: Hope?
- Is an Evangelical Intellectual Renaissance Underway?
- Can the Scandal Be Scandalized?
- New Afterword (2022)
My guess, and that is all it is, a guess, is that the only significant changes are those that I have highlighted, namely a New Preface and a New Afterword.The old preface is only one page long and the old book has no afterword.
0 - The Scandal
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From a review:
This new edition includes two new pieces in addition to the entirety of the first edition, which seems unaltered. They are a new “Preface (2022)” and a new “Afterword (2022).”.............
And now to the new material in this second edition. I will pass by the new preface and focus on the “Afterword (2022).” There Noll raises and answers four questions in light of the years between the two editions (1994 and 2022). “What do we mean by ‘evangelical?” “How should the contemporary academy be viewed?” “What kind of scholarship are evangelical or evangelical-connected thinkers producing?” and “What is the theological vision grounding such scholarship?” (257) While nodding to historian David Bebbington’s description of an evangelical as one who is devoted to conversion, the Bible, the cross, and action, Noll rightly concludes that white American evangelicalism is so market-driven and divided that “it is impossible to speak of an American evangelical mind” (261). This reviewer would like to say here, as I have elsewhere, that the American evangelical movement is dead and gone, although some remnants and relics remain, but the evangelical ethos is alive and well and always will be. Bebbington describes the ethos, but, unfortunately, that ethos has not given rise to the kind of intellectual reflection and production either Noll or I look for.
In answer to the second question Noll rightly decries the intense specialization one encounters in academic institutions including evangelical ones such that “communication among specialists on universal considerations, like the bearing of Christian faith on intellectual effort, has become increasingly difficult” (262). This condition discouraged me during my tenure as editor of this journal because the majority of the manuscripts we received, all of which I read, selecting some to publish and some to reject, were either so highly specialized, filled with technical jargon specific to a discipline, or lacking any Christian perspective on the subject, or both, that they could not be included here.
During my forty years teaching Christian thought at three Christian universities, I found great resistance to, or neglect of, the whole endeavor of faith-learning integration, something Noll’s mentor, Wheaton College philosophy professor Arthur Holmes, explained and promoted. This journal has been dedicated to it for over half a century and has contributed to it more than any other single publication. Still, and nevertheless, the project has never really been whole-heartedly embraced by the majority of scholars teaching in evangelical institutions of higher learning.
Noll rightly extols the efforts of many evangelical theologians to produce high-quality theology, but he finds only points of light here and there among evangelicals when it comes to “Christian-inflected learning” (267). He lists several exceptions, individuals, publishers, institutions, but finally concludes that a renewal of Christian learning by evangelicals “has not created a flourishing ‘evangelical mind’” (268).
Noll’s answer to the fourth question is cursory, constituting less than two pages (269-270). Reading somewhat between the lines, I detect that Noll is displeased with what he regards as too much theological diversity among evangelicals and wants evangelical theologians to work together, across confessional boundaries, on the theological and other implications of something like C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity. Noll concludes the second edition by opining that “given the almost completely unorganized state of American evangelicalism, it is not surprising that many evangelicals could not care less about what the denizens of the discredited ivory tower were up to, even if they call themselves Christians” (270). That’s somewhat cryptic, but I suspect he may be talking about how deeply entrenched some evangelical theologians are in their own narrow confessional theological projects, many of which are defensive.
https://christianscholars.com/the-scandal-of-the-evangelical-mind-with-a-new-preface-and-afterword/
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