(Part Two)

(Adapted from chapter one of ‘Recent Trends Among Evangelicals’ by Rowland C.Croucher, John Mark Ministries 1986/1995.

Evangelicals today

A significant variation in evangelicals’ ‘confessions of faith’ took place in the 1970s, which provides the major clue to their ‘growing edge’. Back in 1951, the British Inter-Varsity Fellowship revised their ‘Official Interpretation of the Doctrinal Basis of the IVF’ and began their statement with an affirmation about ‘the divine inspiration and infallibility of holy scripture, as originally given, and its supreme authority in all matters of faith and conduct…’

Twenty years later, the Lausanne Covenant begins quite differently: ‘We affirm our belief in the one-eternal God, Creator and Lord of the world, Father, Son and Holy Spirit…’

When we study an historic creed like the Apostles’ Creed, we notice that in its dozen or so affirmations it makes no mention of scripture. Belief is directed more to the living God: Father, Son and Spirit. The same is true of the Nicene Creed (AD 325) and of the many theological statements which followed from it. It was not until the post-Reformation era that a doctrine about scripture started becoming integral to a confession of faith.

The simple historical fact is that, since the Reformation, evangelical Christian creeds and confessions of faith have become ‘contaminated’ by their addressing the issues of dividing Christians from one another (in Western Europe) rather than affirming the gistoric areas of our unity. Now, in a sense, every credal formulation is locked into its historical context and the debates of each particular era. As H. Richard Niebuhr points out in ‘The Meaning of Revelation’, ‘formulations of Christian doctrine have always taken place in the context of polemics’. But Christians surely are called upon to take the ‘longer view’ when engaging in such an important exercise.

So modern evangelicals have inherited statements of faith which, I believe, have deviated from the emphases of scripture itself. For example, in T.C. Hammond’s booklet (undated, but probably published in the 1940s), ‘What is an Evangelical?’, the chapter ‘What Evangelicals Believe’ begins with the authority of scripture. He then moves through a discussion of justification by faith, assurance of salvation, substitutionary atonement, the church and sacraments, baptism and regeneration and Holy Communion – and has nothing, nothing, about evangelicals believing in the greatest thing in all the world: love of God and love of one’s neighbour!

Similarly, in the IVP booklet ‘Evangelical Belief’, the official commentary on the IVF’s doctrinal basis, I couldn’t find the word ‘love’ anywhere. There’s a short section on the Holy Spirit, mainly emphasising doctrinal matters; there are one or two sentences about our needing to be partakers of the divine nature which ‘expresses itself in a growing likeness to the Lord Jesus Christ, “the fruit of the Spirit” (Galatians 5:22-23). The Holy Spirit thus perfects Christian character.’ That’s the only reference to ‘orthopraxis’ in twenty-eight pages!

An article in the British evangelical magazine, ‘The Christian’ (March 23, 1962), entitled ‘Evangelical Distinctives’ by A. Morgan Derham, says there are essentially three: the book (our view of scripture), the experience (of Christ) and the hope (of Christ’s return).

It is interesting that when the general secretary of the Indian Fellowship of Evangelical Students, P.T. Chandapilla, spoke in January 1976 to an AFES conference in Melbourne, he answered the question ‘What is an evangelical?’ quite differently: ‘An evangelical affirms the true and only God (Hinduism has 330 million gods); Jesus as my Saviour, my Lord and my God; and the authority of the scriptures…’

I personally believe that’s the correct order for these affirmations if we are to be theologically correct – to address the larger audience (the world, rather than other Christians from whom we differ). If I have any disappointment in the Lausanne Covenant, it would centre on Sections 2 and 3 – the authority and power of the Bible, and the uniqueness and universality of Christ – being in the wrong order. Theologically, our view of scripture has to be derivative from our view of Christ, not the other way around.

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