Though I may be at odds with most evangelicals over this I still think myself an evangelical; one who declares God’s Good News, which is that his grace has covered all the sin even committed by anyone in this planet. That’s really good news, not just that we Christians are “saved.” This has tremendous ramifications in how we regard people of other faiths, or of no faith at all. I’ve written about this in previous editions of the NA and for Arab West Report, a Cairo thinktank run on a shoestring by friends there, and shall be writing more some time in the future, Insha’Allah, as I believe it’s a path the Holy Spirit is guiding us along.

I find that the older I get the more heretical (in the opinion of my evangelical friends) I become.

Michael

The result of this misunderstanding is the creation of a dichotomy where there isn’t one (or, at least, ought not to be). The suggestion that evangelical theology is necessarily “exclusive” is certainly inaccurate, and suggesting that all evangelicals are binitarian is a vast overstatement. I would hope that all Christians would say that “the Bible is a window through which we view Jesus Christ, our Lord”, but remember that our Lord put forth a law to follow (or at least try, and admit when we’re not doing so). As it happens, this is most accurately recorded — through the work of the Holy Spirit — in the Bible.

Since the term “evangelical” seems to be bruited about quite a bit, it’s worth attempting to define what that actually means. J. I. Packer does this rather well in his essay “A Stunted Ecclesiology?” (in Ancient and Postmodern Christianity, edited by Kenneth Tanner and Christopher A. Hall, pp. 120-127). His paper is actually a criticism of evangelical “churcliness”. He identifies six equal “belief-and-behaviour principles” in normative evangelicalism, as follows (pp. 121-122):

- enthroning holy Scripture, the written Word of God, as the supreme authority and decisive guide on all matters of faith and practice
- focusing on the glory, majesty, kingdom and love of Jesus Christ, the God-man who died as a sacrifice for our sins and who rose, reigns and will return to judge humankind, perfect the church and renew the cosmos
- acknowledging the lordship of the Holy Spirit in the entire life of grace, which is the life of salvation expressed in worship, work and witness
- insisting on the necessity of conversion (not of a particular conversion experience but of a discernibly converted condition, regenerate, repentant and rejoicing)
- prioritizing evangelism and church extension as a life project at all times and under all circumstances
- cultivating Christian fellowship on the basis that the church of God is essentially a living community of believers who must help each other to grow in Christ

The first point, of course, needs to be understood within the evangelical interpretation of Scripture. The Bible, of course, cannot be understood without the Holy Spirit. Packer goes on to clarify that “because evangelicals know that the Holy Spirit’s guidance into truth was and is a reality, they expect to discover that tradition is full of truth and wisdom” (p. 122).

Certainly, there are evangelicals that do not fully realize what is described here, and furthermore miss much from other traditions; it is these that Packer criticizes. It is manifest that evangelicals have made many mistakes over the years, and continue to do so. Furthermore, it is unhealthy to follow evangelicalism’s usual emphases as describing the full work of the church. It is equally unhealthy, however, to write it off entirely because of this, for no part of the church, in its fragmented state, is complete in itself. Isn’t that why we’re Anglican?