John R. W. Stott (1921–2011)

In 1978 John Stott published a commentary on the Sermon on the Mount entitled Christian Counter-Culture. It's a testimony to the insight of Stott's exegesis and, more importantly, to the power of Matthew 5-7 that thirty-seven years later, this is still a counter-cultural document.

Stott had a gift for making complicated things simple. Here he takes not only the Sermon itself, but also a multitude of various interpretative traditions and distills them into neatly numbered lists.

There are show more elements of his interpretation that I would disagree with. For example, on Matthew 6:5-6 Jesus exhorts his followers to pray in private, not like the hypocrites who love to be seen in public. Stott notes that there was nothing inherently wrong with praying on street corners and synagogues "if their motive was to break down segregated religion and bring their recognition of God out of the holy places into the secular life of every day" (133). In the first place, isn't the Synagogue a holy place? More importantly, this statement presumes (anachronistically) that first century Jewish people divided their life into religious and secular spheres—a trademark problem of the Enlightenment.

Yet for every passage that makes me shake my head, there are twenty more that reveal the sort of understanding only a committed follower of Jesus can demonstrate.

In the introduction, Stott wrote:

"Of course commentaries by the hundred have been written on the Sermon on the Mount. I have been able to study about twenty-five of them, and my debt to the commentators will be apparent to the reader. Indeed my text is sprinkled with quotations from them, for I think we should value tradition more highly than we often do, and sit more humbly at the feet of the masters" (9).

John R. W. Stott is now one of the masters he wrote about in 1978. I always benefit from sitting humbly at his feet. show less

To understand why we respond to a given work in a particular way we have to know something about ourselves; to tell others why we respond as we do we probably need to tell them at least something of who we are. So to be fair to John Stott and his latest offering [1] I need to say at least something of who I am. Cryptically I could say it all by saying that less than one third of one per cent of my theological books are from the IVP stable. The proportion was once far greater, but times have show more changed.

So I come to John Stott with a sense that it’s been a long time since I’ve been there. The conservative evangelical Christianity of Stott, Watson, Green, Packer and others is something of a blast from a distant past, and I approached The Contemporary Christian with considerable misgiving.

To some extent my misgivings were realised. Stott is, as he should be, unashamedly evangelical, and biblically conservative. Not fundamentalist, to be sure: the scriptures are not tablets from on high, are the work of human hands, but nevertheless their content is “determined by God” (69). I find myself happy to accept that premise.

In fact I find myself happy to accept more and more of Stott’s premises as I go along. Given that (perhaps unintentionally) he has a fairly clear target audience of middle class (143) Protestant (131) evangelicals (193, 227) who have almost inevitably undergone a conversion experience (139), the premises are almost natural. I have no difficulty with the premises.

But I do find myself at times having difficulty with the target audience. I feel hackles rising when Stott blunders into the characteristic evangelical assumption that the apostolic succession runs from Paul (139) through Augustine (54, 227) to Luther (92) to Calvin (97) and the Protestants. And Athanasius gets a Guernsey (26). But other pre-Lutheran Christians seem to be mentioned only as being errant. Tertullian mucked up our theology of ministry/priesthood (275), Arius and Eunomius were heretics, and no one else features. What of the Cappadocians, of Gregory the Great, of Hillary, of Francis, to name just four foci of faith? If we ignore the ancient heroes of our faith we run the risk of becoming Latter Day Saints, substituting Martin Luther for Joseph Smith.

As a non-evangelical – (do these labels really work? I too seek to proclaim the evangel – see 337-355) – I find the language of a personal Satan somewhat unfamiliar, at least as it is presented without any discussion of the questions of theodicy: what is the Satan, what is evil, how does the existence of evil, briefly mentioned at 179, fit into thought about the existence of a good God? I think a book on contemporary Christian life needs to consider these questions more fully before talking about substitutionary atonement (310, though with the welcome mention of God’s identification with humanity on the Cross, too).

The too-easy dismissal of the historic episcopate (182) is overly simplistic: certainly those who see it as a sine qua non of unity (and I think they are probably referring to unions, not unity) are taking a rigorist line, but consistent with the Johannine acknowledgement that structures are necessary (3 John 9-12) as more than merely as “pastoral ideal” (182). And the notion of “religionless Christianity” should have been put into the context of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, surely one of the greatest evangelicals of this [20th] century, rather than applied to (presumably) such extreme liberals as Paul van Buren, who cribbed the phrase second-hand (243).

Stott’s understanding of Catholic and Orthodox sacramental theology is ill-informed: the fact that Catholic clergy live in presbyteries should make clear that the Roman priesthood is a presbyterate, not a sacrificial priesthood. A reading of Schillebeeckx’s Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God (or later works) could have helped: “Sacramental symbolic activity, although performed through the church by the mediation of the minister, is fundamentally a personal; act of the Kyrios, who is the actual High Priest throughout the action” (Schillebeeckx, Christ the Sacrament. London: Sheed and Ward, 1963, 98) – Schillebeeckx didn’t get his knuckles rapped for that statement!). Likewise Stott needs to place his explanation of Catholic language of “sacrifice” into the context of anamnesis and “re-presentation” in the light of Kairos -time; reading Louis Bouyer (Eucharist , London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968) could have helped him avoid mere Protestant propaganda. And I rest very uneasily with the non-sequitur that “non-evangelical Christians” have “small confidence in scripture” (173). Perhaps Stott hasn’t turned to the commentaries of such a great “non-evangelical” as Raymond Brown? In the light of these misunderstandings, and because Stott gives Catholic missionary Vincent Donovan due credit as a reputable missionary (363), it is clear that he needs to offer a more nuanced reflection of definitions and relationships of “Catholic” and “evangelical.”

So some of my fears were well grounded. Yet Stott’s work – not to mention his great integrity as a Christian – is too great to be ignored. He is not blind to the faults of evangelical Christianity, faults that drove me to more liberal and Catholic views. His critique of evangelical worship is severe: “We who call ourselves ‘evangelical’ do not know how to worship. Evangelism is our speciality, not worship’ (227). That’s far more harsh than I would want to be. I still remember David Penman’s liturgical presence as one of the most worshipful that I have encountered[2], and know how committed the editor of this magazine is to integrity in worship.[3] But Stott is sadly close to the truth: prayer sandwiches, or the type of liturgy that tacks on a Eucharist as an unfortunate afterthought following a sermon, are insulting to God, poor vehicles indeed of the awe and majesty of the one whose evangel we seek to proclaim.

Stott’s critique of evangelical triumphalism is no less telling: “In the evangelical tendency to triumphalism there seems little place for tribulation” (363). Well he has conveyed the message of many of the “third world” delegates to the Manilla World Evangelisation Congress.
Strangely, Stott is perhaps overly harsh in his criticism of the evangelicals’ commitment to social justice and global peace. The first Christian social conscience writers I discovered were evangelical, and they continue to rate amongst the best: Stanley Mooneyham, Alan Storkey, John Yoder, Ronald Sider, David Sheppard come immediately to mind. Tet there is some truth in his assessment.

Stott’s call to be biblically informed is well reasoned and presented, though as one of those liberals that Stott often seems to chastise I find myself in unfamiliar territory when he treats the nature miracles as literal happenings (387), and turns ideological somersaults in order simultaneously to suggest that the “signs and wonders” so beloved of a John Wimber are pre-dominantly a past event, yet remains open to the possibility that they just might occur again today as well. Here he seems to tread a fine and not wholly consistent line between old-fashioned dispensationalism and contemporary Pentecostalism. In doing so he leaves no room for the approach that I would take, that the nature miracles are powerful metaphorical statements as to who Jesus was in the eyes of the evangelists and the early Church, without necessarily being limited to the merely literal.

I also suggest that Stott does not offer any satisfactory explanation for his suggestion that liberation theologians are less accurate in their biblical understanding than evangelicals (351). James Cone seems to me very biblical! But Stott is whimsical on the matter: “I wish evangelical Christians had got in first with a truly biblical theology of liberation. But to equate material ‘liberation’ with ‘salvation’ is to misunderstand and misrepresent Scripture” (351).

In his commitment to mission Stott is exemplary. Having stated well the need to “transpose the word” (though with an old-fashioned confusion of “pro-creational” and “recreational” sex when he attempts to address the question of homosexuality – 205) he presents a case for the uniqueness of Christ that could be compulsory reading for every theological student and every missionary in training. Accepting the value of the study of comparative religions, Stott emphasises that its value lies in helping us to understand the unique nature of the salvation offered in Christ.

Stott has no time for those theologians (and others) who believe that “to absolutize our image of God is idolatry” (302; see all of 298-305), and his criticism of their view is caustic. To remove the absoluteness of God, and to relegate God as revealed in Christ to the one-amongst-many basket is to rob Christianity of any message, Stott emphasizes. He does so always with the understanding that “it is not ‘Christianity’ as an empirical institution or system for which Christians should claim superiority. It is Christ, and only Christ” (367).

Perhaps in his outlining of evangelical exclusivism, Vatican II’s inclusivism, and the pluralism of such liberals as John Hick, William Cantwell Smith, Rosemary Radford Ruether and others (277-298) I would have liked to see a further category[4], Christological Universalism, to which I hold, but which tends to be bracketed with inclusivism. Nevertheless I was able in the end to add my “amen” to those of the evangelicals as Stott champions the uniqueness of Christ, and makes his call to “holistic” and christologically centred mission.

This is a great book, one that for all its misunderstandings of Catholic and some liberal theologies and motivations will offer a healthy challenge to evangelicals and non-evangelicals alike: the challenge to be Christ-centred and proclamatory in all that we undertake. Just don’t expect the budget-priced IVP bindings to last as long as the value of the book’s contents!

[1] This review was originally published in the April 1993 edition of Christian Book Newsletter (Vol. 11, No. 3) in Australia. I might be a little less prolix and perhaps less opinionated today!

[2] David Penman was Anglican Archbishop of Melbourne from 1984 until his untimely death in 1989.

[3] The editor referred to was Charles Sherlock, then a senior lecturer at Melbourne’s Ridley College. A dedicated liturgical scholar, Sherlock is author of inter alia Performing the Gospel in Liturgy and Lifestyle (Melbourne: Broughton Books, 2017).

[4] Stott is following Alan Race’s categories defined in the latter’s Christians and Religious Pluralism (second edition London: SCM, 1993). show less

Para muitos, é uma grande surpresa descobrir que os seguidores de Jesus Cristo são chamados de “cristãos” apenas três vezes na Bíblia. Claro, sabemos que tanto as palavras ‘cristão’ como ‘discípulo’ implicam relacionamento com Jesus. Mas, por que “discípulo radical”? Para John Stott, a resposta é óbvia. “Existem diferentes níveis de comprometimento na comunidade cristã. O próprio Jesus ilustra isso ao explicar o que aconteceu com as sementes na Parábola do show more Semeador (Mt 13.3-23). A diferença está no tipo de solo que as recebeu. A semente semeada em solo rochoso ‘não tinha raiz’”. Evitamos o discipulado radical sendo seletivos: escolhemos as áreas nas quais o compromisso nos convém e ficamos distantes daquelas nas quais nosso envolvimento nos custará muito. No entanto, como discípulos não temos esse direito. show less

An excellent read. Stott considers the preacher as a steward (a preacher's proclamation and appeal), a herald (a preacher's message and authority), a witness (a preacher's experience and humility), a father (a preacher's love and gentleness), and a servant (a preacher's power and motive). There is one chapter for each portrait. The book is very expositional in nature which is what makes it so profitable. Stott gives a very careful and enlightening exposition on specific texts that portray show more the man of God in the "portraits" listed above.

In his chapter on the witness, Stott shows from John 15 how Christian witness is borne before the world, to the Son, by the Father (the Father is the chief witness), through the Holy Spirit and the Church. In this same chapter he also gives a very helpful explanation of how Christ is our advocate in Heaven, while the Spirit is Christ's advocate on earth (p 68).

Particularly enlightening was his explanation of the Trinitarian aspect of preaching from 1 Corinthians 1-2 (in the chapter on "servant"). Preaching is to be the Word from God the Father, about God the Son, empowered by God the Holy Spirit. I found this chapter especially helpful in tying together the first two chapters of 1 Corinthians into a comprehensive, yet laconic statement on the Christian ministry of preaching.

I would highly recommend the book as very instructive and stimulating to the mind for any man in the ministry. The fact that it is John Stott (an evangelical Anglican who is now cozier with the Catholics than those in the "high church" and heirs of the Tractarian Movement ever were) is troubling. I suggest trying to forget who the author is. If that doesn't work, remind yourself that God uses earthen vessels, some of which are down right muddy. (It may also be helpful to know that this is the Stott of 1961, not of today.)

I liked this book because I learned so much from this book--about specific passages of Scripture. It is certainly not another rehash on preaching. It is a well drawn, artistically written portrait of what God's preachers ought to be. show less