Posted on 09/26/2011 4:56:20 PM PDT by rhema
Who is and is not an evangelical? With whom should evangelicals cooperate in gospel efforts, and with whom not? Which theological expressions are truly evangelical, and which are beyond the pale?
These questions are central to the ongoing crisis of evangelical identity. In 1989, Carl F. H. Henry spoke to the urgency of answering these questions:
“The term ‘evangelical’ has taken on conflicting nuances in the twentieth century. Wittingly or unwittingly, evangelical constituencies, no less than their critics, have contributed to this confusion and misunderstanding. Nothing could be more timely, therefore, than to define what is primary and what is secondary in personifying an evangelical Christian.”
Just a year after Henry offered those words, Robert Brow called for a complete transformation of evangelical theology — and did so within the pages of Christianity Today, the flagship periodical once edited by both Carl Henry and Kenneth Kantzer. Brow’s manifesto was a clarion call to abandon the Augustinian-Reformation model in favor of a new Arminian and postmodern model. Brow declared that the intellectual context of postmodernity made such an exchange necessary. He argued that doctrines such as the omnipotence, omniscience, and sovereignty of God would have to be radically reinterpreted in light of current thinking. He explicitly rejected doctrines such as the substitutionary atonement, a penal understanding of the cross, forensic justification, and imputed righteousness. With remarkable boldness, he called for the rejection of the traditional doctrine of hell, and he denied both a dual destiny after judgment and the exclusivity of the Gospel. As he made these demands, he informed his readers of the inevitability of an evangelical “megashift” because, “a whole generation of young people has breathed this air.”
(Excerpt) Read more at albertmohler.com ...
Never defined in the editorial.
1. Is Christ the Son of God, part of the Holy Trinity and the only one true way to heaven?
2. Is the Bible inspired by God, infallible and inerrant?
Answer yes to both questions and you’re probably an Evangelical. Answer no to either, and you’re something else - even if you consider yourself an Evangelical. In fact, answer no to either one and you’d probably want to re-evaluate your entire theology in light of Christ’s words (assuming you like to think of yourself as a Christian).
Bookmark
ELCA leadership is questionable.
I’d modify your thought somewhat: ELCA leadership is questionable to the questionable. The side of the line the ELCA is on is pretty clear.
Christianity Today has not been “Evangelical” in any meaningful sense of the word, for years. If they had their way, Evangelism would be toast.
Although I’m Catholic, I would hate to see this happen. Who you gonna listen to, The Bible and the Holy Spirit, or a bunch of liberal academics?
Who is and is not an evangelical?
Never defined in the editorial.
****************************************
“I would argue that evangelicalism is marked by a desire to establish a conscious and genuine continuity with the classical, biblical, and orthodox Christian tradition.It is by now apparent that the reformist evangelicals are not actually calling for a reformation of evangelicalism as a movement of conscious continuity with the classical Christian tradition. At least some of them are calling for the abandonment of the very theological foundations on which the evangelical tradition was established.”
“But the founders of the evangelical movement sought only to defend the crucial doctrines of biblical inerrancy and infallibility, the plenary verbal inspiration of the Scriptures, the Nicaean and Chalcedonian consensus on Christology, the substitutionary character of Christ’s atonement, and the entire structure of the classical Christian tradition.”
Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., serves as president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
To me, this is a fascinating summary of authentic evangelicalism: Mohler urges the necessity of a coherent interpretive tradition going back to the Ecumenical Councils of Nicaea and Chalcedon.
To what is he referring, if not unruptured continuity with the Fathers of the Church and the Councils of the Church?
Is this a remarkable? Or not?
Today, instead of Baptist using the very robust and detailed London Baptist of Faith of 1689, they instead point to 5 or 6 points on the wall.
If even that.
A distressing number of churches I see (judging from how they see fit to present themselves to the world on their websites) have no discernible rule of faith. Generic Christianity is assumed, whatever that is.
Draft for a new church concept. A bit long but fitting to the topic:
Broadly speaking, there are two major groupings of Protestant churches in America—(1) the denominational/institutional church and (2) the non-denominational Bible/community church movement. As regards the first group, nearly all of the “mainstream” denominational churches have been steadily losing adherents for a half-century or more for a number of reasons which include creeping culturalization and liberalization often associated with arbitrary denial of historic biblical truths. Even denominations which have retained a strong official commitment to historic Christian beliefs have experienced an incursion of skepticism or heterodoxy, and many of their local churches continue to pursue worship and outreach strategies designed more to accommodate the gospel to the culture than to speak truth to the culture. At the root of these troubling trends are serial failures, among them: a failure to respond to skeptics and to communicate the many solid reasons why the Bible is true and trustworthy, failure to impart a biblical worldview on its members, failure to hold people accountable for their faith, nominalism, malaise from institutionalization and bureaucracy along with a measure of ecclesiastical tyranny, reliance on tradition rather than on a strong biblical foundation—and more. These are failures of the institutional church, not of God, his truth, his power, or his love.
On the other hand, the non-denominational church movement has experienced growth in recent decades. But while this movement continues to grow rapidly in the third world, we perceive that it is slowing and is probably capped in the U. S., or at least is at a turning point. This is likely due to several factors, including the erosion of the credibility of certain of the highly-visible preachers and authors especially in the neo-pentecostal movement, the dubious gospel of prosperity, fundamentalism (the hyper, rigid literalization of certain biblical texts taken out of context or clearly meant symbolically or literarily), and especially the pervasive influence in the movement of millennialism—in particular dispensational premillennialism.
Millennialism has been a breeding ground for false prophets. The false prophecies of millennialists have been an embarrassment to Christianity. Indeed some Christians throughout Christian history have been falsely predicting various eschatological events, even the imminent destruction of the planet. But “end times” prophecy has become a hallmark of modern American evangelicalism, inside and outside of conservative denominations. Eschatology, though important and to be rightly understood, is arguably not the epicenter Christian theology. Yet its prominence in the evangelical community today has rendered it a keynote issue for the church. We think there is inadequate biblical warrant for a utopian political rule of Christ on earth for a literal thousand years. This is essentially the same error that the first century Jews made concerning the advent of the Messiah. We see millennialism as at best a prominent distraction and at worst a serious error (Deuteronomy 18:20-22, Matthew 7:15-23). It can be seen potentially as a different gospel promising a false hope (2 Corinthians 11:1-4, Galatians 1:6). The Christian’s hope is in Christ’s finished work on the cross (John 19:30), not on a coming political messianic kingdom. Many evangelical Christians today have been so steeped in millennialism that they think it is normative. A few of the early church fathers apparently held to some type of millennialist view. But millennialism was, in effect, rejected by the church at the Councils of Constantinople (381 AD) and Ephesus (431 AD). John Calvin in his Institutes of the Christian Religion said that millennialism is a “fiction” that is “too childish either to need or to be worth a refutation.” Lutherans also formally rejected millennialism in The Augsburg Confession (Article XVII), as did Martin Luther himself.
In all of this, the worship services of many churches have morphed into little more than rock concerts and do not display the reverence that we think God deserves. Services are “me” oriented rather than God honoring. Meanwhile, survey after survey has revealed that there is widespread ignorance among professing Christians about truly important Christian doctrines—the nature of God, the nature of man, how Christianity compares to other religions, the meaning of sin and death, salvation and the afterlife. All of these factors have resulted in an anemic church. These things are unacceptable and must be reversed in order for the church to be credible and healthy.
Draft for a new church concept. A bit long but fitting to the topic:
Broadly speaking, there are two major groupings of Protestant churches in America—(1) the denominational/institutional church and (2) the non-denominational Bible/community church movement. As regards the first group, nearly all of the “mainstream” denominational churches have been steadily losing adherents for a half-century or more for a number of reasons which include creeping culturalization and liberalization often associated with arbitrary denial of historic biblical truths. Even denominations which have retained a strong official commitment to historic Christian beliefs have experienced an incursion of skepticism or heterodoxy, and many of their local churches continue to pursue worship and outreach strategies designed more to accommodate the gospel to the culture than to speak truth to the culture. At the root of these troubling trends are serial failures, among them: a failure to respond to skeptics and to communicate the many solid reasons why the Bible is true and trustworthy, failure to impart a biblical worldview on its members, failure to hold people accountable for their faith, nominalism, malaise from institutionalization and bureaucracy along with a measure of ecclesiastical tyranny, reliance on tradition rather than on a strong biblical foundation—and more. These are failures of the institutional church, not of God, his truth, his power, or his love.
On the other hand, the non-denominational church movement has experienced growth in recent decades. But while this movement continues to grow rapidly in the third world, we perceive that it is slowing and is probably capped in the U. S., or at least is at a turning point. This is likely due to several factors, including the erosion of the credibility of certain of the highly-visible preachers and authors especially in the neo-pentecostal movement, the dubious gospel of prosperity, fundamentalism (the hyper, rigid literalization of certain biblical texts taken out of context or clearly meant symbolically or literarily), and especially the pervasive influence in the movement of millennialism—in particular dispensational premillennialism.
Millennialism has been a breeding ground for false prophets. The false prophecies of millennialists have been an embarrassment to Christianity. Indeed some Christians throughout Christian history have been falsely predicting various eschatological events, even the imminent destruction of the planet. But “end times” prophecy has become a hallmark of modern American evangelicalism, inside and outside of conservative denominations. Eschatology, though important and to be rightly understood, is arguably not the epicenter Christian theology. Yet its prominence in the evangelical community today has rendered it a keynote issue for the church. We think there is inadequate biblical warrant for a utopian political rule of Christ on earth for a literal thousand years. This is essentially the same error that the first century Jews made concerning the advent of the Messiah. We see millennialism as at best a prominent distraction and at worst a serious error (Deuteronomy 18:20-22, Matthew 7:15-23). It can be seen potentially as a different gospel promising a false hope (2 Corinthians 11:1-4, Galatians 1:6). The Christian’s hope is in Christ’s finished work on the cross (John 19:30), not on a coming political messianic kingdom. Many evangelical Christians today have been so steeped in millennialism that they think it is normative. A few of the early church fathers apparently held to some type of millennialist view. But millennialism was, in effect, rejected by the church at the Councils of Constantinople (381 AD) and Ephesus (431 AD). John Calvin in his Institutes of the Christian Religion said that millennialism is a “fiction” that is “too childish either to need or to be worth a refutation.” Lutherans also formally rejected millennialism in The Augsburg Confession (Article XVII), as did Martin Luther himself.
In all of this, the worship services of many churches have morphed into little more than rock concerts and do not display the reverence that we think God deserves. Services are “me” oriented rather than God honoring. Meanwhile, survey after survey has revealed that there is widespread ignorance among professing Christians about truly important Christian doctrines—the nature of God, the nature of man, how Christianity compares to other religions, the meaning of sin and death, salvation and the afterlife. All of these factors have resulted in an anemic church. These things are unacceptable and must be reversed in order for the church to be credible and healthy.
Unlike the Catholics who really never had a systematic theology past 600AD, the Protestants at one time put together a comprehensive systematic theology. This theology is documented in the Westminster Confession and/or the Baptist Confession. And, yes, this theology is structured on the church fathers in the classical Christian tradition dating prior to 600AD when the Church became corrupted with Cassian’s doctrine.
Many Protestants abandoned these confessions in favor of “winning the masses”. When they did so, they embraced the errors of Rome. It is not hard to understand why many Protestants and Catholics get along so well.
Draft for a new church concept. A bit long but fitting to the topic:
Broadly speaking, there are two major groupings of Protestant churches in America—(1) the denominational/institutional church and (2) the non-denominational Bible/community church movement. As regards the first group, nearly all of the “mainstream” denominational churches have been steadily losing adherents for a half-century or more for a number of reasons which include creeping culturalization and liberalization often associated with arbitrary denial of historic biblical truths. Even denominations which have retained a strong official commitment to historic Christian beliefs have experienced an incursion of skepticism or heterodoxy, and many of their local churches continue to pursue worship and outreach strategies designed more to accommodate the gospel to the culture than to speak truth to the culture. At the root of these troubling trends are serial failures, among them: a failure to respond to skeptics and to communicate the many solid reasons why the Bible is true and trustworthy, failure to impart a biblical worldview on its members, failure to hold people accountable for their faith, nominalism, malaise from institutionalization and bureaucracy along with a measure of ecclesiastical tyranny, reliance on tradition rather than on a strong biblical foundation—and more. These are failures of the institutional church, not of God, his truth, his power, or his love.
On the other hand, the non-denominational church movement has experienced growth in recent decades. But while this movement continues to grow rapidly in the third world, we perceive that it is slowing and is probably capped in the U. S., or at least is at a turning point. This is likely due to several factors, including the erosion of the credibility of certain of the highly-visible preachers and authors especially in the neo-pentecostal movement, the dubious gospel of prosperity, fundamentalism (the hyper, rigid literalization of certain biblical texts taken out of context or clearly meant symbolically or literarily), and especially the pervasive influence in the movement of millennialism—in particular dispensational premillennialism.
Millennialism has been a breeding ground for false prophets. The false prophecies of millennialists have been an embarrassment to Christianity. Indeed some Christians throughout Christian history have been falsely predicting various eschatological events, even the imminent destruction of the planet. But “end times” prophecy has become a hallmark of modern American evangelicalism, inside and outside of conservative denominations. Eschatology, though important and to be rightly understood, is arguably not the epicenter Christian theology. Yet its prominence in the evangelical community today has rendered it a keynote issue for the church. We think there is inadequate biblical warrant for a utopian political rule of Christ on earth for a literal thousand years. This is essentially the same error that the first century Jews made concerning the advent of the Messiah. We see millennialism as at best a prominent distraction and at worst a serious error (Deuteronomy 18:20-22, Matthew 7:15-23). It can be seen potentially as a different gospel promising a false hope (2 Corinthians 11:1-4, Galatians 1:6). The Christian’s hope is in Christ’s finished work on the cross (John 19:30), not on a coming political messianic kingdom. Many evangelical Christians today have been so steeped in millennialism that they think it is normative. A few of the early church fathers apparently held to some type of millennialist view. But millennialism was, in effect, rejected by the church at the Councils of Constantinople (381 AD) and Ephesus (431 AD). John Calvin in his Institutes of the Christian Religion said that millennialism is a “fiction” that is “too childish either to need or to be worth a refutation.” Lutherans also formally rejected millennialism in The Augsburg Confession (Article XVII), as did Martin Luther himself.
In all of this, the worship services of many churches have morphed into little more than rock concerts and do not display the reverence that we think God deserves. Services are “me” oriented rather than God honoring. Meanwhile, survey after survey has revealed that there is widespread ignorance among professing Christians about truly important Christian doctrines—the nature of God, the nature of man, how Christianity compares to other religions, the meaning of sin and death, salvation and the afterlife. All of these factors have resulted in an anemic church. These things are unacceptable and must be reversed in order for the church to be credible and healthy.
Draft for a new church concept. A bit long but fitting to the topic:
Broadly speaking, there are two major groupings of Protestant churches in America—(1) the denominational/institutional church and (2) the non-denominational Bible/community church movement. As regards the first group, nearly all of the “mainstream” denominational churches have been steadily losing adherents for a half-century or more for a number of reasons which include creeping culturalization and liberalization often associated with arbitrary denial of historic biblical truths. Even denominations which have retained a strong official commitment to historic Christian beliefs have experienced an incursion of skepticism or heterodoxy, and many of their local churches continue to pursue worship and outreach strategies designed more to accommodate the gospel to the culture than to speak truth to the culture. At the root of these troubling trends are serial failures, among them: a failure to respond to skeptics and to communicate the many solid reasons why the Bible is true and trustworthy, failure to impart a biblical worldview on its members, failure to hold people accountable for their faith, nominalism, malaise from institutionalization and bureaucracy along with a measure of ecclesiastical tyranny, reliance on tradition rather than on a strong biblical foundation—and more. These are failures of the institutional church, not of God, his truth, his power, or his love.
On the other hand, the non-denominational church movement has experienced growth in recent decades. But while this movement continues to grow rapidly in the third world, we perceive that it is slowing and is probably capped in the U. S., or at least is at a turning point. This is likely due to several factors, including the erosion of the credibility of certain of the highly-visible preachers and authors especially in the neo-pentecostal movement, the dubious gospel of prosperity, fundamentalism (the hyper, rigid literalization of certain biblical texts taken out of context or clearly meant symbolically or literarily), and especially the pervasive influence in the movement of millennialism—in particular dispensational premillennialism.
Millennialism has been a breeding ground for false prophets. The false prophecies of millennialists have been an embarrassment to Christianity. Indeed some Christians throughout Christian history have been falsely predicting various eschatological events, even the imminent destruction of the planet. But “end times” prophecy has become a hallmark of modern American evangelicalism, inside and outside of conservative denominations. Eschatology, though important and to be rightly understood, is arguably not the epicenter Christian theology. Yet its prominence in the evangelical community today has rendered it a keynote issue for the church. We think there is inadequate biblical warrant for a utopian political rule of Christ on earth for a literal thousand years. This is essentially the same error that the first century Jews made concerning the advent of the Messiah. We see millennialism as at best a prominent distraction and at worst a serious error (Deuteronomy 18:20-22, Matthew 7:15-23). It can be seen potentially as a different gospel promising a false hope (2 Corinthians 11:1-4, Galatians 1:6). The Christian’s hope is in Christ’s finished work on the cross (John 19:30), not on a coming political messianic kingdom. Many evangelical Christians today have been so steeped in millennialism that they think it is normative. A few of the early church fathers apparently held to some type of millennialist view. But millennialism was, in effect, rejected by the church at the Councils of Constantinople (381 AD) and Ephesus (431 AD). John Calvin in his Institutes of the Christian Religion said that millennialism is a “fiction” that is “too childish either to need or to be worth a refutation.” Lutherans also formally rejected millennialism in The Augsburg Confession (Article XVII), as did Martin Luther himself.
In all of this, the worship services of many churches have morphed into little more than rock concerts and do not display the reverence that we think God deserves. Services are “me” oriented rather than God honoring. Meanwhile, survey after survey has revealed that there is widespread ignorance among professing Christians about truly important Christian doctrines—the nature of God, the nature of man, how Christianity compares to other religions, the meaning of sin and death, salvation and the afterlife. All of these factors have resulted in an anemic church. These things are unacceptable and must be reversed in order for the church to be credible and healthy.
Wow, so true, so very true.
The Church from day one has always taught and believed baptism is for the forgiveness of sins and the Eucharist is the Body of Jesus. The Church Fathers all believed this and the Catholic world ( greek and latin ) was united in these beliefs. The Protestant theology utterly rejected these central tenants of Christianity ( except maybe the Lutherans and Anglicans ) The Church Fathers all believed in the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, again something the Protestant theology utterly rejected. Exactly what “classical Christian tradition” are you referring to?
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