Evangelicalism divided?
The “atonement debate” has been all over the internet again in recent weeks. Adrian Warnock has been running a bit of blog series on it. That link is simply the latest post at the time of writing. Along with that it’s been running throughout evangelicalism itself again recently, with Steve Chalke as always in the firing line.
Firstly there was the landmark book Pierced For Our Transgressions: Rediscovering the Glory of Penal Substitution. It’s rather wonderful. Go and get it - it’s exactly what it claims to be: an exhaustive treatment of the glory of the wrath-bearing death of Jesus on my account. We’ve been talking about that recently in my ‘The Gospel‘ series. We probably will be again, since it is such a central concept to a biblical model of the atonement.
The other thing, which I find really interesting, is ‘New Word Alive.’ Word Alive was formally a conference within a conference at Spring Harvest, the more biblical bit without the incessant trappings of evangelical subculture, if you will. Less flag waving, prophetic painting and false stumbling blocks to the cross of Christ, that kinda thing. In other words: it was reformed.
Note: All references to ‘reformed’ against ‘evangelical’ in this article are intended to be humourous.
Anyway, they’re splitting. As a result they’ve managed to get the biggest reformed charismatic names to speak: Virgo, Carson and Piper. Awesome.
Why did they split? Apparently over Spring Harvest’s refusal to separate with Steve Chalke and his denial of Penal Substitution. As evangelicals, that should be part of a statement of belief. Chalke claims to be an ‘evangelical’ which is as interesting as Wright with his doubts over Jesus’ messianic self-consciousness being an ‘evangelical.’ Apparently, and when I say apparently I mean that this is the way the story was passed on to me, and I’d love to be corrected: apparently Spring Harvest won’t separate with him because he can sign the Evangelical Alliance statement of faith.
Two thoughts occurred to me at this junction. 1) What the heck is up with that doctrinal basis! 2) Evangelicals are supposed to have balls. We separate with heretics in order to preserve gospel truth. I thought we accused people not interested in truth as either being liberals or postmoderns? We seem to have changed our character somewhat, after all. Let’s remind ourselves what the Reformers did: they burnt people. (WINK WINK. Just in case you don’t get it).
So I went and looked at the statement of faith: it isn’t clear on penal substitution at first glance. At second glance we find these 2 articles:
4. The dignity of all people, made male and female in God’s image to love, be holy and care for creation, yet corrupted by sin, which incurs divine wrath and judgement.
Got that? People are corrupted by sin, and that incurs wrath. Ok - so sin brings wrath as its result. That’s nice and biblical, and from an organisation which has no interest in being confessionally reformed we wouldn’t expect a statement of total depravity.
6. The atoning sacrifice of Christ on the cross: dying in our place, paying the price of sin and defeating evil, so reconciling us with God.
Two things here: Jesus dies in our place, that’s substitution. Jesus pays the price of sin. We’ve just affirmed 2 articles above that sin incurs wrath. So the price of sin should be construed as wrath is what we assume. That means Jesus died in our place to satisfy the wrath of God, doesn’t it? That’s penal substitution.
Yes, fine, I have overlaboured that slightly, and perhaps mine isn’t the only interpretation. Steve Chalke clearly has a fairly interesting reading of this. What the heck does he think, anyway?
What’ve we learnt? Either Chalke really shouldn’t be signing that, or it’s a rubbish statement of faith for evangelicals. We’re the people who believe the things the bible teaches, remember?
I’m not convinced evangelical means anything anymore. In this post-Christian post-evangelical post-truth wasteland … evangelicals are supposed to be the ones who say: here is truth. Why do I think Chalke, and hence evangelicalism in its droves, can’t? Because it’s more interested in flag waving than proclaiming the substitutionary wrath-bearing death of Christ. It’s replacing the cross with a social gospel, a neutered people and a voiceless church.
Explore posts in the same categories: Church & Culture, Heresy And Such
April 14th, 2007 at 8:13 pm
And this is why I tend to refer to myself as “Conservative Evangelical” or plain old “reformed”.
April 15th, 2007 at 4:29 pm
The Evangelical Alliance has many good Christians involved with it, but to me it seems a bit weak when it comes to doctrinal conflict. Steve Chalke and penal substitution is not the only example I could think of. I would quite like to see more evangelical churches (including Newfrontiers churches), support Affinity instead.
http://www.affinity.org.uk/about/
http://www.affinity.org.uk/belonging/
April 15th, 2007 at 8:16 pm
What is, to your mind, the purpose of an inter-’denominational’ para-church organisation such as this? What is the benefit of denominations or apostolic networks ‘joining’ it?
I’m interested rather than being pointed - how do you think it would help?
April 15th, 2007 at 9:19 pm
That’s a good question.
I go to two churches because I am a student. Both are affiliated to the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches (FIEC). I agree with having independent, local churches. Some of the possible benefits of parachurches, such as Affinity, or FIEC are:
1. A public declaration of unity. It can be encouraging to be part of a network of about 500 churches (e.g. FIEC).
2. Both FIEC and Affinity report things happening in affiliated churches. So I can hear about new church plants, or churches that are growing. This can be encouraging, and can help people pray. (e.g. FIEC send out prayer emails)
3. Parachurch organisations can give advice to churches. For example, FIEC are organising seminars on charity law - which affects all churches. There are lots of legal obligations for churches to follow. National organisations can be helpful in giving advice to local churches.
4. United responses to social issues, for example Affinity has a social issues team which has produces briefings on issues such as abortion and the sexual orientation regulations. A united response from several churches may carry more weight than one local church.
5. Affinity help give advice for pastors fraternals. I think there is real benefit in local churches being aware of each other, being able to pray for each other, and maybe doing some forms of evangelism together.
http://www.affinity.org.uk/activities/article/fraternals/
6. On a local level, there are a number of regional gospel partnerships
http://www.affinity.org.uk/news/article/partnering_for_the_gospel/
My church in Leeds hosted a Yorkshire Gospel Partnership weekend conference which had Don Carson as a visiting speaker.
The Northwest Partnership has a training scheme. My church in Liverpool has some apprentices who do one day a week studying with North West Training, and spend time during the week working for the church.
7. FIEC organises conferences, such as the new Cheltenham Bible Festival which is going to have Don Carson speaking at it.
I think Affinity allows churches to keep their theological distinctives. For example there are independent churches (like FIEC affiliated churches), there are presbyterian denominations, and there is the Apostolic Church. These all have different church polity. These churches should be challenging each other to be more Biblical (because they cannot all be right). However, I don’t think the differences between them should be barriers to inter-church unity and some amount of working together as churches.
April 16th, 2007 at 10:48 am
Regional church partnerships I get - they can work together in gospel work.
Since, as you’d expect, I disagree with the basic idea of an “independent church” that is truly independent, I can see how it could solve that problem for some too. However, most of these things seems to be roughly what newfrontiers (or a similar group: e.g. Salt & Light or SGM) does for our own churches except we’re bigger and international, there’s more direct apostolic oversight and there will be less, if any, theological distinctives between local churches.
Obviously again, as you’d expect, if the thing that makes the churches not independent is para-church itself, it would raise concerns in an ecclesiology like mine. But, I don’t really think this is the place to debate that.
Why would a stream/denomination/apostolic network - as opposed to an independent church - join another church network: don’t they already provide all of that to themselves except on a very local (e.g. city) level?
April 16th, 2007 at 10:50 am
Oh, Gareth - the reason to want to keep the word ‘evangelical’ would be because it effectively means ‘gospel man.’
We shouldn’t let people who aren’t gospel people steal gospel words.
Gospel gospel gospel.
April 16th, 2007 at 10:51 am
Oh, and there’s already a Nottingham pastors fraternal that I don’t believe is associated with anyone - could be wrong: I imagine a group of local churches is capable of figuring those kind of things out?
April 16th, 2007 at 2:46 pm
“Why would a stream/denomination/apostolic network - as opposed to an independent church - join another church network: don’t they already provide all of that to themselves except on a very local (e.g. city) level? ”
I am not sure I can give much more. I know some presbyterian denominations see benefit in being part of Affinity, and some presbyterians denominations are part of the National Association of Evangelicals in the US.
A lot of the reasons are pragmatic rather than specifically Biblical. Churches should support each other (2 Corinthians 8-9, Romans 15:25-27 is a Biblical example of this). Parachurch organisations like Affinity are a formal way of achieving this. The important thing I think is not that we support one particular parachurch organisation in order to achieve inter-church support, but that local churches are supporting each other when there are needs.
What do you think the 150 Newfrontiers churches who are part of the Evangelical Alliance gain from membership?
April 16th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
Very little ;)
I take your point - if churches are insular and not supporting one another, especially local churches supporting other local churches, then the church has lost her universal vision. That would be terrible.
Personally I see this as being worked out better on a local level - and I’m aware that many of these local partnerships often consist of no actual organisation or the like, they’re simply partnerships.
There’s something to be said about having 1 universal church. It’s a shame she apostated from the gospel, eh?
Thanks for your comments, they’ve been helpful and interesting. You’re right in pointing out a flaw in a church with too small a universal view!
April 16th, 2007 at 2:58 pm
There’s a newfrontiers catchphrase: “narrow in doctrine, wide in love’ that characterises the way we try to join with other local churches or groups of churches. Basically we hold other gospel declaring churches as brothers in Christ who we love, and we attempt to demonstrate that love to them. On a local level we attempt to work with them in love as much as possible.
Equally our doctrine is our doctrine is our doctrine - it isn’t going to be compromised in an attempt to partner with anyone, and we’re going to do our thing that our beliefs influence instead of this thing that people we love want to do.
However, I realise you aren’t suggesting anything different, just the same thing on a bigger scale. I don’t think anyone with their head screwed on really operates in a different way.
April 18th, 2007 at 11:25 pm
Great post. It has to be said that Joel Edwards strengthened the EA statement of faith so that it was more explicit on penal substitution, as you’ve outlined. I’ve no idea what the old and what the new basis was though. But I think the problem thereupon becomes not the basis itself but how anyone can in honesty claim to hold to a thesis in one hand, its antithesis in the other, and happily claim synthesis… classic 1920s liberalism, if not earlier. Nothing pomo about it, just deceitful.
What I’m pondering though from the ensuing comments discussion (:D), is how does newfrontiers keep ‘narrow in doctrine, wide in love’, not compromising doctrine, when newfrontiers isn’t confessional but relational? Not taking a dig - I’m lovingly concerned about this so I’m really wanting you to show me how it is actually confessional, how there’s confessional accountability :) Since in this post you show a right warm concern for accountability to doctrine. So how is that done without a confession, or statement of faith? It makes me concerned for the future, see :(
A little point of clarification on Ben’s posts: FIEC is IN Affinity :) As are, as he said, presbys (of many stripes!), independents, Apostolic, evangelical anglicans, congregational, baptist, and others. It’s a formal expression of the gospel unity that God has given us by his Spirit - so that those around can see blatantly that we’re not just building our own little kingdoms but share in God’s gospel, and so people around can see it’s not just a bright idea in one particular town where the churches are ‘nice’ to each other, but a nationwide thing of gospel-committed local churches. And it’s very much confessional - Affinity doesn’t let anyone join who just wants to. It’s then expressed on a local level in all sorts of ways, pre-existing or not - pastors’ fraternals, preaching clubs, inter-local-church ministry training courses, regional gospel partnerships, ethics / political engagement stuff, theology output… :)
April 19th, 2007 at 10:55 am
It’s a good question. It’s a flipping important question for us to address as a movement. Newfrontiers is, as you say, not really confessional. I personally see no reason why it shouldn’t be - but I obviously don’t (yet! ;) ) speak for the movement in any real sense. I may go and chat to my elders about this.
When I attach that tag line to ‘newfrontiers’ I wonder if I’m being dishonest or not. I’d like to think I’m not, but I hear it on the lips of Nick (our church leader) in the context of the local church working with other local churches in Nottingham. Then again, as a church we don’t have a codified confession - I can see why you would hold one in such importance. While the church has certain doctrinal convictions: and on most issues, they aren’t written down anywhere. This is probably a lack on our part.
As far as I am aware, leaders are accountable to their apostolic overseers for doctrine - I am afraid I don’t have any personal experience of this process and as such cannot personally speak as to how tight it is.
You’ve raised some interesting questions that I, as is probably clear (!), can’t really answer. I think I’m going to and talk to Nick about what the reason for lacking that explicit confessional stance is.
Then again, if we had a confession, we might count as a denomination. The radical restorationists would not be happy ;)
April 24th, 2007 at 7:14 pm
Rosemary,
It’s a question I’ve thought about a lot recently. This is what I wrote on Adrian’s blog on a similar theme:
“The very evangelical tendency to want to hone every major point of doctrine into part of a “statement of belief”, “doctrinal basis” or “policy document” is not one which blesses me. I appreciate a grace-filled approach which thoroughly and biblically teaches the gospel, without wanting to come up with a version of “The Bible in brief” which is often what these things become. The scriptures are sufficient of themselves, and any attempt to pin down exactly what the message of the Bible is in 10 points, will surely fail, or at best be looked back on as being defined by the culture it was reacting against.
Yes, we must make a stand for truth. But we do that (as will happen at New Word Alive - I’ll be going) by preaching the Bible, not by coming up with, or signing a doctrinal basis.
So to the extent that UCCF’s motivation was to be able to have Bible taught freely, it is an excellent move. Not because it gives us another clause in a prized statement of belief (or makes us underline certain bits), but because the only thing which can effectively teach into these things is the Holy Spirit-empowered (”Holy Spirit be our teacher” - as my favourite preacher often prays) preaching of the Word of God.”
That’s my instinct, and I would guess the instinct of others in Newfrontiers. If we’re looking for a principle to go by here, I suppose it would be grace. Also, where are such things in the Bible? We have they scriptures, are they not sufficient? Paul manages to address the issue of people aligning themselves more to Apollos than him, without creating a doctrinal basis to make the difference all the more marked! I would go as far as to say that Newfrontiers would not look as unified as it does today, if we had such a statement of belief, because one finds (narrow) margins within which there is some variation. We have allowed relationships to forge a unity a doctrinal basis cannot bring.
I would say that in practice, relationship done properly can get rid of the need for some kind of confession for us to gather around. And this is probably how it is currently working within the family. If you look at some of our distinctives (devotion to the Word, devotion to the Spirit, complementarianism, our ecclesiology) I could show you a person for each respectively who would struggle to bear with us for very long on each of those issues, to the degree that they couldn’t bear to join a Newfrontiers church, because those distinctives would be constantly thrown up, not only in the church structure but in the very people who become your friends! The bottom line: the status quo repels those who might want to bring wide doctrinal diversity.
When you’re joined that closely in friendship and relationship, it’s difficult for contrary views to infiltrate.
I’m not saying that’s how it should work, but how it most probably currently works.
I wonder whether doctrinal bases are more about who you believe than what you believe anyway. For instance, when someone signs the UCCF Doctrinal Basis, are they making a statement about who they are aligning themselves to, more than they are making a statement about their beliefs? Particularly as, the only reason people I know have had reason to sign this particular DB, is because they want to take up office. It’s an assertion of agreement with UCCF as much as it is an expression of belief.
Finally (I have gone on for way too long) there is such a thing as a Newfrontiers Theological Forum, a group which meets periodically to have papers presented to it by members of the family. I don’t know the ins and outs of their activity, but I know that they exist, their member are invited (relationship again) and that their papers can be seen on the website (link below). But they’re presented as written by one man, rather than forming a statement of belief. I suppose this is one outlet for accountability in doctrine.
Surely part of it too (very finally), is that we hold the concept of Newfrontiers lightly. Yes, we believe God has joined us. But the priority has always been to be faithful to the Word of God and attentive to the Spirit of God. There is no desire (as far as I’m concerned) to see the name of Newfrontiers endure in eternity. If it were, we might seek to record our beliefs so as to preserve them for future generations. As it is, we look back to our historical heroes and know that they got some things “wrong” in their lifetimes, and we full expect for future generations to do the same with us. Our only desire is that they say “they sought to be faithful to the Word of God and were attentive to the Spirit of God”.
April 24th, 2007 at 7:18 pm
http://www.newfrontiers.xtn.org/Resources/TheologicalPapers/module_index.php?id=11993
April 28th, 2007 at 2:06 pm
I liked Albert Mohler’s article on theological triage.
There are some disagreements that are an absolute barrier to any Christian unity.
There are some issues that are important, and have practical implications, that may make working together difficult, but we can still recognise each other as Christians. I think baptism, complementarianism, charismatic gifts, and church polity/eccelsiology fit into this category.
Then there are third order issues, which we can disagree on, and remain in close Christian fellowship - even in the same church.
I have strong views on some of these second order issues. I think they are important issues. But I still want to have some level of co-operation with those who disagree. In order to do this, it may be helpful to be clear what is important, but of secondary importance.
I think one advantage of having statements of faith is that you can be intentional about who you work with and who you don’t. I know some Christians who are unhappy with having a specific Doctrinal Basis, but who in practice are not very keen to work with other churches/ groups because of disagreements about things like worship style, attitude to social action, etc. I think these people are in danger of reversing the order of importance of primary and secondary issues - and dividing more over secondary issues, e.g. style of church, than more important issues such as the atonement, for example.
April 28th, 2007 at 11:28 pm
Sorry, a long comment again. I think I agree with the thrust of what you’re saying, Ben - we must facilitate a thorough thinking-through, not only of the issues themselves, but of what priority they should take.
My feeling is that if I approach a Christian with the primary aim of relationship and the secondary aim of sussing out their doctrine, I effectively build a good friendship and in the process learn what the boundaries of that friendship are to be.
It’s rather sad that you know of some Christians who (it would seem) use their desire for no formal DBs to almost abdicate their responsibility to associate with brothers who are different. However, I don’t believe it has to be this way. And I probably would think the opposite way.
For example, one of my housemates is a very different ‘type’ of Christian to me - he goes to an Anglo-Catholic church wheras I am a reformed charismatic. If I approach the friendship with a list of what each of us believes, to me that is focusing on the things which divide. Wheras if I come to him with the sole aim of relationship, we very quickly find common ground whilst gaining a greater genuine understanding of where the other is coming from (although not changing our views!).
To use an example which might speak more to you personally, I am sceptical of the parachurch for reasons I feel are Biblical. This (when I’m wearing my theoretical hat) would extend to CUs. If I approach my local UCCF Staff Worker with the list of our differences in my hand, my aim being to ’somehow’ build a friendship within that framework, to me that is more unnecessarily difficult than coming empty-handed with the sole aim of relationship. In my experience, when I do the latter, we a) discover true friendship a lot more quickly and b) we come to a greater and more meaningful understanding of our differences, but more importantly, what unites us. And actually, when I’ve done the latter, I’ve come to a greater sympathy with CUs existence (big of me, eh?! ;) ), precisely because I’ve focused on people first and doctrine second.
Obviously Sola Scriptura and all that - what we believe affects what we do - I believe in the authority of scripture and think we need sound doctrine to be taught widely in the church. But in terms of talking about what fosters Christian unity, I would say a people-focused, relationships-orientated approach is far more Biblical and successful (both in terms of bringing us closer together, and also a thorough understanding of are respective theologies) than an approach which comes to a new relationship with a set of pre-conceived ideas about what the other believes.
So I suppose what I’m saying is that it’s not just the absence of DBs, but replacing that with a genuine desire for relationship which can perform the same function as a DB with a great deal more success. (It’s also more fun!).
May 6th, 2007 at 7:31 pm
Hi Tim
you are a busy chap! When do you find time for studying.
2 points.
Re spring harvest split. I’d just go back and check the facts if I were you. It’s my understanding that the ’split’ was not on doctrinal lines & that Terry recently clarified some comments that he had made that seemed to imply that it was. Nick would know more.
2 As far as being ‘non confessional’ we do have a basis which is our vision and values statement available both in print and in audio form! which is very close to a newfrontiers position.
May 7th, 2007 at 9:14 am
Thanks Matt - about the Spring Harvest thing, the only confusing bit is that the UCCF statement about it seemed to make it about Steve Chalke, whereas the others didn’t, and people who were there (which was all I was working off when I wrote this, I hadn’t seen any statements then) seemed to make it about Steve Chalke too.
Then again, Terry probably knows what he’s talking about ;)
May 7th, 2007 at 4:18 pm
[…] In a comment on another post Matt said, “you are a busy chap! When do you find time for studying.” […]