Dubuque Theological Seminary. His books include The Mission of Demythologizing: Rudolf Bultmann's Dialectical Theology (2015, which won the Rudolf Bultmann Prize in Hermeneutics from the Philipps University of Marburg), and he is the editor of Varieties of Christian Universalism: Exploring Four Views (2023).
Congdon applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, Who Is a True Christian?: Contesting Religious Identity in American Culture, and reported the following:
Here is what I found on page 99 of my book, Who Is a True Christian? Contesting Religious Identity in American Culture:Visit David W. Congdon's website.Newman provides seven tests to determine whether a development is the continuation or the corruption of the idea of Christianity, and the rest of the book applies these tests to particular points of doctrinal controversy. But as David Bentley Hart acknowledges, “these criteria amount to little more than a transparently forced ideological reconstruction of the historical narrative,” requiring both “willful narrative creativity” and “selective ignorance regarding those historical data that the preferred narrative cannot assimilate.” Reducing the complexity of history to the adaptability of an idea made it all too easy for Newman to reconstruct an account of Christian history that supported his argument, and any reconstruction under these presuppositions is “self-evidently specious,” an exercise in “saving the appearances.” Newman’s Essay is a stunning work of historical eisegesis, a retrospective reading of the past that already knows where history leads – namely, to his own position. His failure is thus an instructive one, serving as a cautionary tale for all those people, whether church leaders or Supreme Court justices, who wish to use history to prove the rightness of their beliefs.To my surprise, the Page 99 Test works rather well for Who Is a True Christian? This page is my analysis of John Henry Newman’s effort to establish historical continuity between the origins of Christianity and Roman Catholic orthodoxy in the nineteenth century. Newman was a prominent figure at the time, but he has become especially important in the last several decades, not only as an inspiration for many converts to Rome but also as an intellectual lodestar for Protestants seeking to prove their fidelity to the ancient rule of faith (regula fidei).
The problem, as I show (with some help from David Bentley Hart), is that Newman’s reconstruction of this history is a convenient just-so story that all too easily leads directly to his own position, as if his account of Christianity were foreordained from the beginning. Newman failed to consider that he could have constructed such a narrative for any version of Christianity. It is always possible to trace how later developments emerge from earlier ones, and if you already know how history ends, the path to get there can seem inevitable.
This passage is particularly fitting as a summary of my book, since I connect Newman’s misuse of history to church leaders and Supreme Court justices—highlighting the way my book joins theological and political history. The quest for “true Christianity” has a political counterpart in the quest for the “true America.” Theologians pursue “historic Christianity” while justices and politicians pursue the “original America.” I suggest in my book that both quests are best abandoned. With respect to religion, I propose replacing the exclusionary pursuit of true Christianity with the open-ended, pluralistic search for new Christianities. Perhaps the same might apply in politics.
The Page 99 Test highlights whether a book remains focused on a clear thesis, and I made an effort to keep the material in my book tethered to my central argument. While not every page in my book would succeed as well as this one, I am pleasantly surprised with how well this page captured a central theme of my work.
--Marshal Zeringue
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