Lexham Survey of Theology - feedback

From the perspective of IT/AI a common ontology should be relatively easy with the Nicene Creed providing an outline that has been commonly applied across space and time.

If we were just going to restrict the LST to the articles included in the Nicene Creed, then of course we could accomplish something upon which we could almost all agree. But that would a much more limited project than the LST, and much less useful.

But it should be possible to make one sufficiently neutral for everyone to be able to find things easily.

Yes, and I think they've done a good job of doing that. But even the outline is still obviously protestant.

I think that you misunderstand how the Catholic church views church documents:

And I think you're misunderstanding the difference between systematic theology and historical theology :-). The Lexham Survey is intended to be the former, not the latter.

The presentations of the Catholic faith are rarely ones I can identify with as a Catholic.

The section on Purgatory is a good example of this.

This section for a "mature form" of the Catholic doctrine is unrecognizable as Catholic:

"Based on how sorrowful believers are in confessing their sins (contrition), such temporal punishment is removed. Nevertheless, since believers are never perfectly contrite, some temporal punishment needs to be suffered. This is the rationale for the priest’s act of assigning penance. When penance is not completed on earth, then it must be completed in purgatory in the afterlife."

The Lexham Survey of Theology was produced by Calvinists, Arminians, Anglicans, Lutherans, and other Protestants. The editorial team (mainly me) did require that they all be "objective, sympathetic, and reverent" within the "small-'o' orthodox" Christian tradition. When "sympathetic," in a few first drafts, undermined "objective" by leaving out opposing views, I pushed back and required historical theology and/or descriptions of the current debate over the doctrine at hand. Naturally, in a multi-author project, some contributors defaulted toward academic-descriptive and others to warm-hearted-sympathetic (to their own viewpoint!). I tried to pull both toward a middle ground which met all three of our criteria.

There is little denying that, often, that middle ground is very Protestant-looking. It is of the nature of Protestantism from its earliest days to claim that it is the proper heir of small-"o" orthodoxy (I've been reading in In Search of Ancient Roots: The Christian Past and the Evangelical Identity Crisis myself and have seen this repeatedly). But as in my own small amounts of writing on Catholicism and Protestantism over the years, I pushed for contributors to be scrupulously honest. If I failed to help them do that in any place, it was not due to some plot on the part of Faithlife to pass off Protestantism as the default Christian viewpoint; it was simple human finitude! My team did reject some submissions, and heavily edit others, because they failed to describe small-"o" orthodoxy. And we discussed multiple times, explicitly, how to be fair to non-Protestant readers while still serving our majority evangelical Protestant clientele. But I'm with Mark Barnes: I don't think any theology resource covering as much ground as the LST covers could succeed in being equally useful and unobjectionable to Protestants and Catholics. (And, FWIW, I've gotten a little feedback from at least one Protestant that a key article was too high-church Anglican!)

I would suggest, however, that users of the LST remember where the LST is headed. In particular, view the "Recommended Readings" at the end of each piece within the context of what the tool will be in time. We want it to index all of the systematics in Logos—all of the systematics in Logos! That is huge! I myself am looking forward to it very much! And I can confirm on the authority of Phil Gons that it's our desire that eventually every ST in Logos will be tagged and show up in the Theology Guide. For now, think of the Recommended Readings as falling into three broad categories: 1) some contributors loaded us all up with lengthy bibliographies; 2) some mainly appealed to major STs (the way the tool itself is supposed to do as time passes); 3) some just seemed to grab the top few titles that occurred to them. And I'm still happy as a user/reader, because I think all of those different kinds of lists are all valuable. I did not push contributors to land in one of the three categories (though I did try to fill some obvious holes); I found it interesting to see where they defaulted. Each article is signed, so readers will not be led to think that the recommended readings are somehow wholly objective. And when the full list of STs someday dwarfs their recommended readings, I think those readings will still be valuable but will figure less prominently in showing what the tool is. In fact, once that huge list is included, the whole tool will take on a different feel. The introductory articles will still be valuable, as will be the key passages. But the index to all STs will be its main feature (with the map as a close second, I think), and thereby the whole tool will feel more objective, because its primary value will be to get you to whatever denominations/traditions/theologians you want to read. Our users are smart; they know that Christian groups differ. They want help getting oriented and then sent on a reading mission; the LST provides and will provide that help.

One more thought: it's encouraging to me, because I don't just work in Christian theology but personally believe it, that there are many branches of the subway-style mind map that, in my judgment, Protestants and Catholics would structure the same way. I'd rather share more Christian belief with others than less. The tree structure did require us in a few places, however, to "take sides." I think particularly of the Sacraments branch. You're either going to privilege Baptism and the Lord's Supper as dominical sacraments, or you're going to privilege an admittedly huge Christian tradition and put the five others on the same level. Yes, we defaulted to a Protestant viewpoint here: we call Matrimony, Confirmation, Ordination, etc. "Additional Sacraments." But even when we did so, the reason we gave ourselves was one that we felt Catholics could appreciate, and it's what I just mentioned. The two we privileged are dominical; they're the ones Jesus explicitly instituted. We also called The Lord's Supper with a more commonly Protestant name; we didn't say "Eucharist." Again, we had to choose. But then there are plenty of low-church Protestants who would object to our calling it a "sacrament" at all—you can't please everyone in theology!

I haven't wandered into the forums much over my years at Faithlife. I'm glad to see the LST inspiring such ardor! I can say that it was my desire while working on this project to give the church one more tool to help it grow in the light of the Bible. I was most pleased when contributors (I think of someone like evangelical Anglican Jonathan Warren) frequently brought in the Bible, wrote beautifully, covered the whole small-"o" orthodox tradition in short space, and led me to worship as I edited. If others are as edified as I was, I'll be very well rewarded.

For what it is worth, I for one appreciate what you did Mark and I understand it is a work in progress... As mentioned earlier it is impossible to please everyone though I am confident you and lexham will do their best to do so. Thank you

Am I right in assessing that this document (process) is focused on ecclesial theology rather than Biblical theology? I would certainly prefer a focus that is on the later.