(Part Five)

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

Let us now, more briefly, note other trends in modern evangelicalism.

Ecumenism

Increasingly, for progressive evangelicals, ecumenism is becoming less of a dirty word. Donald Bloesch, for example, calls for a more ‘catholic evangelicalism’ and ecumenical dialogue with other traditions ‘from which it can learn and to which it can contribute’ (‘The Evangelical Renaissance’, 1973).

Many evangelicals are becoming more vocal in deploring our past divisiveness. The fragmentation of the church of Jesus Christ is a scandal which cannot easily be explained away to the world. In 1951, for example, the British Evangelical Alliance staged a United Evangelical Exhibition at the Central Hall, Westminster – with some 180 different groups and denominations represented! Fortunately, there is growing a greater commitment among evangelicals to make a text ‘All one in Christ Jesus’ an expression of reality rather than pious theory. What kind of explanation can we make to the Lord of the church who prayed that we might be ‘one’ when different Christians, all adhering to the confession that ‘Jesus Christ is Saviour, Lord and God according to the scriptures’, will not encourage full fellowship with one another?

We are now realising that we must ‘do our theology’ in community, rather than in isolated groups. No individual or denominational group knows as much about God as the church universal. Our only ‘creed’ – if we must have one – ought to be no more extensive than those truths which have been held in consensus throughout the church’s history by those who have accepted the authority and trustworthiness of scripture. Assuming an unchanging core of theological knowledge, we are called to a new humility and teachableness in areas where people differ. Christians who have inhabited ‘closed’ structures usually feel compelled to defend debatable positions and may be guilty of ‘party spirit’ (Galatians 5:20).

One of the astonishing things a person discovers when he or she emerges from such constricting thinking is that other Christians may espouse a greater degree of ‘orthodoxy’ than may be evident from a distance. Further, there grows on such a person the awareness that perhaps right practice – orthopraxis – is the test of right doctrine or orthodoxy. Sometimes the ‘less evangelical’ churches have more Bible in their liturgies than his or her church! And dialogue with such Christians leads one to eschew a purely rationalistic/deductive orthodoxy. The main weakness in Carl Henry’s six-volume work, ‘God, Revelation and History’ seems to me to be his assumption that Christianity is a tight, coherent system. His apologetic therefore is deductive and rational, and to that extent quite foreign to the more ‘dynamic’ approach of the biblical writers.

Another dimension in salvation history has been the mighty acts of God, his signs and wonders, which accompanied the proclamation at the great turning points of the human drama. Paul, for example, felt that his own evidence of ‘the power of God’, were as important as his preaching ‘the message of truth’ (see for example 2 Corinthians 6:1-10). Too often in evangelical circles it’s only the latter that has constituted orthodoxy!

Clark Pinnock once wrote:

Both liberal and conservative theologians have an intellectual challenge peculiar to them. The liberal theologian has to explain how to achieve relevance without accommodating to the culture and proving unfaithful to the gospel. The conservative has to explain how to remain faithful to the Bible without espousing apparent absurdities and appearing irrelevant. It boils down to the difficulty of being conservative and contemporary at the same time (‘Christianity Today’, August 6, 1982).

In other words, the tendency among conservatives towards what Peter Berger calls ‘deductive orthodoxy’ may be as dangerous as the theological syncretism of more liberal Christians.

With regard to the question of a ‘minimal creed’, what might it affirm? Here’s a suggestion. We affirm:

1. One God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit;

2. Jesus Christ as Saviour, Lord and God;

3. The Scriptures as authoritative in all matters of faith and conduct;

4. Love for, acceptance of and full fellowship with all who thus confess their allegiance to God through Christ; and

5. Our commission to continue the holistic ministry of Christ in evangelism and social action to a lost world.

Such a creed might be expressed through Johannes C. Hoekendijk’s three attributes of the kingdom: (a) kerygma: the proclamation that Jesus is Lord (b) koinonia: the family fellowship (c)

diakonia: our service to the world.

I cannot think of any other affirmation that would enhance fellowship and inhibit divisiveness and legalism that ought to be included. Christian love must transcend honest theological disagreements. What unites us is stronger and more important than what divides us. Our enemy is not the other Christian – there’s been a cosmic conspiracy here which has succeeded only too well in its diversionary purposes.

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