David Wells
(Professor, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary)
What is striking about our culture today is that its corruption is not simply at the edges. It is not simply found amongst the culture elite, the new class that stands at the gates of our national institutions to bar entry to those whose views they consider intolerable. And it's not simply found amongst postmodern academics who are bent upon overturning all meaning and moral principle, or among vicious street gangs, or among rappers who spew forth obscenities and violence, or among the vendors of pornography, or in the bizarre and unashamed revelations of deeply private matters that are aired in the talk shows. What is striking is that this corruption is now ubiquitous. It is not located in this or that pocket of depravity, but is spread like a dense fog throughout our society. "Wherever one looks," writes Robert Bork, "the traditional virtues of this culture are being lost, its vices multiplied, its values degraded, in short, the culture itself is unraveling."
And it is surely a matter of poignancy for us to realize that at the very moment when our culture is plunging into unprecedented darkness, at the very moment when it is becoming so vulnerable, the evangelical church is losing its nerve. At the very moment when boldness and courage are called for, what we see all too often is timidity and cowardice. Instead of confronting modernity, we are capitulating to it. The gospel that we should be preaching should be offering an alternative to our cultural darkness, but the gospel that we often are preaching contains some of the elements of that darkness. Because therapeutic language now dominates in the church and in the preaching of the gospel, and because the quest for wholeness has often taken the place of holiness, sin has become dysfunction and salvation has become recovery. It is a gospel more about self-sufficiency than Christ's unique sufficiency. The truth is that today the fields have never been so ready for harvesting. Our culture has never been riper to hear about a God large enough to provide meaning, meaning rooted in his own transcendent character and forgiveness which is objective because of Christ's cross. And without knowing why, many today ache to hear such things, and this is no time to lose our nerve. It is the worst of times, but it is the best of times too.
Ervin Duggan
(President, PBS)
I don't think we can find any instructive model in the recent history of the mainline Protestant churches. What an irony that they have suffered their greatest decline in numbers, influence, contributions and relevance at precisely the time they struggled most vigorously for political and cultural power in this world. For years the denominations most accurately described as mainline, have selected their agendas almost totally from what I call the "steam-table" of hot issues in the secular political cafeteria. Desperately eager to be seen as prophetic in this world, wistfully desiring to be relevant, mainline church professionals for thirty years have beckoned their flocks willy-nilly to the partisan political barricades and pell-mell into corporate disaster. Their influence on the culture ironically is less today than ever before precisely because they wished to have power in this world and they were distracted from the central work of the church.
The self destruction of the mainline churches by succumbing to the political temptation is apparently, however, not a sufficient cautionary example to many evangelicals. As if in imitation, their clergy, their professionals and their members are now marching to the right-wing partisan barricades as eagerly as their mainline siblings marched in an earlier decade to the left-wing ramparts. Joining coalitions, manning phone banks, endorsing candidates and advocating specific legislative remedies with the same naive fervor that brought their mainline brothers and sisters first to distraction from their true mission and then to irrelevance and then to ruin. In the process, they abandoned the eternal for the evanescent exactly as their mainline counterparts had done. They distract themselves and their flocks from the legitimate mission of the church in this world, and they bid unwittingly, but nevertheless blasphemously, to substitute political coercion for the free working of God's grace in the individual human soul. Can anyone doubt that the evangelical dalliance with the political temptation will be fully as disillusioning and damaging as the mainline's earlier flirtation?
Al Mohler, Jr.
(President, Southern Baptist Seminary)
Researchers increasingly report that a majority of evangelicals reject the notion of absolute or objective truth. The seductive lore of postmodern relativism, and, even now, nihilism, pervades many evangelical pulpits and countless evangelical pews, often couched as humility, sensitivity, or sophistication. The culture has us in its grip, and many feel no discomfort at all. The absence of doctrinal precision in biblical preaching marks the current evangelical age. Doctrine is considered outdated by some and divisive by others. The confessional heritage of the church is neglected and in some cases seems even to be an embarrassment to updated evangelicals. Expository preaching, once the hallmark and distinction of the evangelical pulpit, has been replaced in many churches by motivational messages, the therapeutic massaging of the self, and formulas for health, prosperity, personal integration and celestial harmony. The modern attempt to dominate truth has given way within sectors of the church to the postmodern rejection of truth itself. Indeed, in many denominations and churches, notions of orthodoxy and heresy have become conceptual emptiness; the boundaries have vanished. The very possibility of heresy is dismissed in many circles within mainline Protestantism and many evangelicals seem to have no better grasp of the moral imperative to honor the truth and oppose error.
The secularization of mainline Protestantism and the dominant theological academy is evident in the evisceration of the Christian truth claim at the hands of the theologians and church leadership. Virtually no doctrinal essential has been left untouched, no truth left intact, no creed or confession defended against compromise. Increasingly–in the name of pluralism, tolerance, inclusivity, and sensitivity–all that is solid appears indeed to melt into air.
And yet, the tragedy is not limited to mainline liberal Protestantism. The modern secular worldview is increasingly apparent within evangelicalism as well. An aversion to doctrinal Christianity has been growing for several decades, along with an increasing intolerance for doctrinal and confessional accountability. Evangelicals have embraced the technologies of modernity, often without recognizing that these technologies have claimed the role of master rather than servant.
The ubiquitous culture of consumerism and materialism has seduced many evangelicals into a ministry mode driven by marketing rather than mission. To an ever greater extent, evangelicals are accommodating themselves to moral compromise in the name of lifestyle and choice. Authentic biblical worship is often supplanted by the entertainment culture as issues of performance and taste displace the simplicity and God-centeredness of true worship.
In some churches and denominations where the maxims of modernity have reigned for most of this century, by God's grace the light may yet again shine. This must be our hope and prayer. Nevertheless, our primary concern must be to see our own houses are put in order. Evangelical compromise and disarray demand our humility, and our urgent prayer for revival, reformation, and renewal. We must take measure of our own doctrinal fidelity, and acknowledge the extent to which we have failed to apply the truth of God's Word and to embody that Word in doctrine, worship, and life.
We are not without assistance from the saints who have gone before us. With humility and gratitude we look to the Reformers with the humble acknowledgment that our churches are in need of reformation, even as were the churches of the sixteenth century. Our churches are worldly in lifestyle, worship, and piety. We have too often sacrificed doctrinal clarity on the altar of progress, statistics, and public opinion. We have seen the worship of God too often made into a human-centered entertainment event. We have allowed our confessions of faith to be historic markers rather than living affirmations.
In the spirit of the Reformers, and following their example, let us determine to confess the truths of God's Word–and all the truths of God's Word.
Let us confess Sola Scriptura, and therefore submit ourselves before the truth of the Word of God, preaching, teaching, and applying that Word to all dimensions of life. Let us submit to no other authority, whether such be a pope, a self-declared prophet, or ubiquitous public opinion.
We also confess Solus Christus, for we have nothing to claim for our salvation but the mercies and merits of Christ and His atonement. This is all we need, and unspeakably more than we deserve. Furthermore, we must confess that Christ is the only Savior, for there is salvation in no other name.
We confess also Sola Gratia, for salvation is by grace alone. Indeed, all that is ours is by grace–even the very knowledge of God. We are sinners who were spiritually dead, and but for grace would die not only lost but ignorant of our lostness. By grace we have been elected unto salvation by the sovereign act of God. By grace we are kept by the power of God.
We preach justification by faith–the material principle of the Reformation, and thus we confess Sola Fide. By this article the Church stands or falls, for justification by faith alone is the essence of the Gospel. To make this assertion is to admit that the contemporary evangelical movement has sadly, tragically, and progressively abdicated justification by faith, and thus in some sectors is preaching a false gospel. We stand by the chief article of the Reformation–not as a historical referent, but as our living confession.
And we confess Soli Deo Gloria, and we pray that in all things, God alone will be glorified. To Him all glory is due, to Him all glory belongs. He is the King of Glory. Let us therefore reject the glorification of any substitute, of any rival.
In an age of untruth, we contend for the truth–knowing that it is not our own, but that truth which is revealed by God in His Word. Such contending calls for a holy boldness wedded to a proper humility.
Gene E. Veith
(Professor, Concordia University, WI)
Today, modernism, though existing in certain isolated pockets, is all but over. The promises of reason, the notion that the human mind can engineer the perfect society, that science and technological progress can solve all problems, have faded in bitter disillusionment. The reasons for the passing of modernism are complex, ranging from the findings of technical scholarship to the practically universal disenchantment with the bloodshed, tyranny, and corruption of the 20th Century, that "modern age" looked to with such optimism by believers in progress. Around the time of the 1960's, academics were dismantling the claims of reason, and the general public turned away from the apparent meaninglessness of the objective world and began an inward quest for subjective fulfillment.
Today we hear casual epistemological statements that would stagger both classical and modernist philosophers. "That may be true for you," someone says in a discussion of religion, "but it isn't true for me." Every casual discussion seems to end with the mantra, "everyone is entitled to their own beliefs." The assumption is that everyone is locked into their own private virtual realities. Since there are no objective criteria for truth applicable to everyone, attempts to persuade someone to change his or her beliefs are interpreted as oppressive acts of power: "You have no right to impose your beliefs on someone else."
The language of rational assent is replaced by the language of aesthetics. Instead of saying "I agree with what that church teaches," people say, "I like that church." Instead of saying, "I believe in Jesus," people say, "I like Jesus." Of course, they usually do not "like" the Bible's teachings on sin, Hell, and judgment. What they do not like, they do not believe. Truth gives way to pleasure; the intellect is replaced by the will. When people exclude truth, basing their faith on what they enjoy and what they desire, they can believe in literally anything.
While relativism may be postmodern, it is not particularly new. The notion that truth is unknowable, that morality varies from culture to culture, and that there are no absolutes was first articulated in ancient Greece by the Sophists. In reaction, Socrates rose up to show that there are indeed absolutes, thereby, with Plato and Aristotle, founding classical philosophy.
When classical civilization was exhausted, relativism returned with the Stoics, Epicureans, and the cultural diversity of the Roman Empire. This may well be reflected in Pilate's comment, "What is truth?" (John 18:38), when the Truth was standing right in front of him. The era which entertained itself with sex and violence and tolerated all religions except Christianity turned out to be the greatest age of the Church, which not only remained faithful, but converted the whole Empire to Christ.
The early church was not market-driven. It did not make Christianity particularly user-friendly. Converts had to go through extensive, lengthy catechesis and examination before they were accepted for Baptism. In the ultimate barrier to new member assimilation, those who did become Christians faced the death penalty. Nevertheless, by the power of the Holy Spirit, the Church grew like wildfire.
The temptation to preach what people want to hear is always great, but today it has become in some circles almost a homiletical principle. My own pastor tells of attending a Church Growth conference in which he was told, "Don't preach sin anymore. People don't want to hear that. You need to give them a positive message." Of course, people have never wanted to hear about sin. Repentance hurts. And yet, people need to hear God's demands, particularly now in this age of moral relativism; we need to be convicted of sin, so that we can turn in faith to God's forgiveness in Jesus Christ.
Those who do not want to be told they are sinners have a special need to hear God's Law. Those who want to hear about how they can be happy need to hear about bearing the Cross. To be most relevant, a sermon should preach against the culture. The tendency today is to pick and choose teachings from the Bible that correspond to our likes and interests. But the test of following the Bible is accepting what goes against one's personal preferences. The Bible is thermostatic, humbling the exalted and exalting the humble (Luke 14:11), and so should our sermons be.
Ultimately, though, a sermon will contain only two messages: the Law and the Gospel. Each must convey the truths of God's Word. The truth of the Law must be preached in all its severity. The preaching of the Law is not mere moralism, however. The temptation is to water down God's transcendent, all-consuming demands so that they are more easily fulfilled. This only creates self-righteousness, which is the greatest barrier to faith in the Gospel. Moralistic preaching can easily become self-congratulatory, giving the congregation smug reassurance about how good they are. Such preaching creates not Christians but hypocrites. The preaching of God's objective, transcendent law, and its condemnation of the specific sins of relativism and self-righteousness is only a prelude to proclaiming the real solution to the postmodernist condition, the truth of the Gospel.
On the Cross, Truth was crucified, objectively, outside ourselves. With Him, our relativism, subjective experiences, and attempts to evade truth are put to death, nailed to that objective tree. In the same way, our sins–both our sinful actions and our sinful condition–are objectively removed from us. Ours is an objective Atonement, which means that we do not have to rely on our changeable moods and experiences, our illusions and petty choices. Because Jesus is the truth, we are liberated from our unstable, reinvented selves. When Jesus objectively rose from the dead, our salvation was won, not as a subjective interpretation, but as a fact.
Preach the truth of the Law and the truth of this Gospel, against all pressure, and the barriers against Christianity, no matter how formidable they seem, will, like the walls of Jericho, come tumbling down.
W. Robert Godfrey
(President, Westminster Seminary California)
It's not very interesting to hear someone stand up and read a chapter of Scripture. It's certainly not very interesting to close your eyes and hear someone drone on in prayer. We're used to a livelier life. We're used to fast paced images. We're used to being excited. And none of this is very exciting. And so there seems to be an obvious impulse to "pep things up," and to make it more exciting. And of course for most evangelicals, that excitement is a part of the long standing tradition of revivalism that has influenced so many of us. And the great apostle of this path is Charles G. Finney. And the wonderful thing about Finney is that he is so clear. I make my students read a big chunk of Finney at seminary because I've always believed that if I tried to summarize him, they wouldn't believe that I was being fair. Because, in the whole history of the church there is probably not a theologian as Pelagian as Finney. Finney begins to make Pelagius look good. And Finney's great insight, made perfectly clear on the first few pages of his Lectures on Revival, is that conversion comes about by the exercise of free will. And how do you as a preacher get people to exercise their free will to convert? It's by exciting the will. The more excited the will is, the more likely it is to convert. And therefore the meeting must be exciting. Now, in order to have an exciting meeting, Finney says, you must always have new things because old things lose their excitement.
But what most people who have studied Finney haven't noticed is that Finney himself makes clear in his book that this approach can work only because he believed as a postmillenialist that we were right on the eve of the millennium. He said that this approach cannot work long term because excitements often repeated ultimately destroy the body. But because the world is almost about to enter its golden age when we won't need excitement anymore we can do this for a little while as a short term strategy. The problem is that we've done it for a hundred and fifty years and we've destroyed the body. We haven't listened closely enough to Finney in an ironic sort of way.
B.B. Warfield once observed of the theology of Charles Finney: "God might be eliminated from it entirely without essentially changing its character." The same might be said of contemporary evangelicalism. We need sharper analysis and pointed refutation. In our day evangelicals need to engage in more debate on matters of doctrine, worship and life. True ecumenicity will require a return to polemical theology which, while scrupulously civil and honest, is also sharp and spirited. Polemics cannot only be a treasured part of Christianity's heroic past, but needs to be part of our present. Defenders of the faith today must follow in the train of Athanasius and Augustine, of Luther and Calvin, of J. Gresham Machen and Robert Preus.
Today as always, doctrine, worship and life remain closely interdependent. Where doctrine teaches that man is good and God is benevolent, worship will be upbeat–the children's playroom–and life will be oriented to self-fulfillment. Where worship focuses on human needs and entertainment, the doctrine of God, sin and grace will wither and life will become self-centered. Where life is self-indulgent, doctrine and worship will also be self-indulgent.
Evangelicals need to repent. Too often we have replaced the consuming fire with a mild-mannered God; replaced the worship of the invisible God with some forms of human invention; replaced the moral law of God with the fulfillment of felt-needs. J. B. Phillips decades ago stimulated evangelicals with his book, Your God Is Too Small. Today we need a book entitled, "Your God Is Too Bland" or even, perhaps, "Your God is a Pagan Idol." Evangelicals need a spirit of repentance that will lead to a thorough reformation of doctrine, worship and life.
David Scaer
(Professor, Concordia Seminary, IN)
Traditional churches have suddenly discovered freedom from liturgical confinements. A divine creation of six days is followed by a Darwinian providence prolifically evolving new and exciting forms to tickle ears and entertain eyes. A rock band with guitars and amplifiers transforms the chancel into a stage with spotlights. If it were not Sunday morning, we could hardly be sure it was church. A time for silent prayer is replaced by a fifteen minute warm-up session. These innovations are intended to reach unbelievers; sadly they sacrifice the fundamental Christian truths of repentance, Christ's atonement for sin and the demand for faith to which they seek to convert. Confession of sins, singing of the psalms, Bible reading, sermons and the sacrament are replaced by what is presumptuously deemed relevant. Aesthetically, the word "relevant" is annoying. It assumes the audience is suffering from the academic deficiency of delayed adolescence. Our task now is to entertain the bored. The next step may be distributing crayons, coloring books and toy trucks to distract churchgoers from confronting anything seriously religious. It is the dumbing down of Christianity. It raises the question for evangelicals: When is a church no longer one?
R. C. Sproul
(President, Ligonier Ministries)
Why am I a Christian compared with some of my best friends I grew up with who are not? Is it because I was more righteous, or I was more intelligent? We all know better than that. I can only say I have no earthly idea why God in his mercy, while I was dead in my sin and trespasses made me alive through the Holy Spirit. And as Paul makes it so clear in Romans 9, its not because God looked down the corridor of time and said I know that if I give the offer of the gospel to R. C. Sproul he's going to jump at it. Because if God would have looked down the corridor of my personal history, he would have seen one who had only one destiny, and that was perdition. There are a lot of doctrines we can study abstractly, but few that we experience with more drama than this one. Brothers and sisters, what did you do to get into the kingdom of God that was not the result of a monergistic work of divine grace immediately and supernaturally changing your heart of stone to a heart of flesh, where suddenly the scales fell from your eyes and that which seemed odious or indifferent to you prior to that moment suddenly became bathed in the highest sweetness and the most glorious beauty that it became the most intense desire of your heart because somebody came into the cell of your soul and set you free, by grace, by grace alone?
I honestly don't know how Jesus could make it any clearer when he says, "It is the Spirit who gives life, the flesh profits nothing" (John 6:63). The flesh profits nothing. Earlier in the discourse with Nicodemus he said "That which is born of flesh is flesh and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit," and "unless a man is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God." We have a whole generation of evangelicals who believe that man in his fallen condition still can see the kingdom, still can enter the kingdom, still can come to Christ. Within a couple of years after the ninety-five theses, one of the earliest volumes Martin Luther wrote was the Babylonian Captivity of the Church. I am convinced that if Luther were alive today and were living in America, the book that he would write would be the "Pelagian Captivity of the Church." And Luther, commenting on John 6 where Jesus says, "The flesh profits nothing," writes in the margin, "That nothing is not a little something." But do you see that in the Pelagian or even semi-Pelagian view it profits eternal life? You might say, well we wouldn't have that profit if we didn't get a loan from God, we needed the start-up capital to make it. But in the final analysis it was the flesh that makes the decisive move, and that is not Sola Gratia! And Luther saw the link between Sola Fide and Sola Gratia, and that link has been severed in our time!
Sinclair Ferguson
(Professor, Westminster Seminary, PA)
Although provoked by the indulgences peddled by Johannes Tetzel, the very first proposition which Luther offered for public debate in his Ninety-five Theses put the ax to the root of the tree of medieval theology: "When our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, said 'repent,' he meant that the entire life of believers should be one of repentance." From Erasmus' Greek New Testament, Luther had come to realize that the Vulgate's rendering of Matthew 4:17 by penitentiam agite ("do penance") completely misinterpreted Jesus' meaning. The gospel called not for an act of penance but for a radical change of mindset and an equally deep transformation of life. Later he would write to Staupitz about this glowing discovery: "I venture to say they are wrong who make more of the act in Latin than of the change of heart in Greek!"
Is it not true that we have lost sight of this note that was so prominent in Reformation theology? We could well do with a Luther redivivus today.
For a number of important reasons evangelicals need to reconsider the centrality of repentance in our thinking about the gospel, the church and the Christian life.
One of our great needs is for the ability to view some of the directions in which evangelicalism is heading, or perhaps more accurately disintegrating. We desperately need the long term perspective which the history of the church gives us.
Even within the period of my own Christian life, the span between my teenage years in the 1960s and my forties in the 1990s, there has been a sea-change in evangelicalism. Many "positions" which were standard evangelical teaching are now, after only three decades, regarded as either reactionary or even dinosauric.
If we take an even longer-term view, however, we face the alarming possibility that there may already be a medieval darkness encroaching upon evangelicalism. Can we not detect, at least as a tendency, dynamics within evangelicalism which bear resemblances to the life of the medieval church? The possibility of a new Babylonian or (more accurately, following Luther), the Pagan Captivity of the Church looms nearer than we may be able to believe.
Consider the following five features of medieval Christianity which are evident to varying degrees in contemporary evangelicalism:
1. Repentance has increasingly been seen as a single act, severed from a lifelong restoration of godliness.
There are complex reasons for this–not all of them modern–which we cannot explore here. Nevertheless, this seems self-evident. Seeing repentance as an isolated, completed act at the beginning of the Christian life has been a staple principle of much of modern evangelicalism. It is sad that evangelicals have often despised the theology of the confessing churches. It has spawned a generation who look back upon a single act, abstracted from its consequences, as determinative of salvation. The "altar call" has replaced the sacrament of penance. Thus repentance has been divorced from genuine regeneration, and sanctification severed from justification.
2. The Canon for Christian living has increasingly been sought in a "Spirit-inspired" living voice within the church rather than in the Spirit's voice heard in Scripture. What was once little more than a mystical tendency has become a flood. But what has this to do with the medieval church? Just this: the entire medieval church operated on the same principle, even if they expressed it in a different form: the Spirit speaks outside of Scripture; the believer cannot know the detailed guidance of God if he tries to depend on his or her Bible alone.
Not only so, but once the "living voice" of the Spirit has been introduced it follows by a kind of psychological inevitability that it is this living voice which becomes the canon for Christian living.
This view–inscripturated Word plus living voice equals divine revelation–lay at the heart of the medieval church's groping in the dark for the power of the gospel. Now, at the end of the second millennium we are on the verge–and perhaps more than the verge–of being overwhelmed by a parallel phenomenon. The result then was a famine of hearing and understanding the Word of God–all under the guise of what the Spirit was still saying to the church. What of today?
3. The divine presence was brought to the church by an individual with sacred powers deposited within him and communicated by physical means.
Today an uncanny parallel is visible wherever cable TV can be seen. Admittedly it is no longer Jesus who is given by priestly hands; now it is the Spirit who is bestowed by physical means, apparently at will by the new evangelical priest. Special sanctity is no longer confirmed by the beauty of the fruit of the Spirit, but with signs which are predominantly physical.
What we ought to find alarming about contemporary evangelicalism is the extent to which we are impressed by performance rather than piety. The reformers were not unfamiliar with similar phenomena. In fact one of the major charges made against them by the Roman Catholic Church was that they did not really have the gospel because they lacked physical miracles.
4. The Worship of God is increasingly presented as a spectator event of visual and sensory power, rather than a verbal event in which we engage in a deep soul dialogue with the Triune God.
The mood of contemporary evangelicalism is to focus on the centrality of what "happens" in the spectacle of worship rather than on what is heard in worship. Aesthetics, be they artistic or musical, are given a priority over holiness. More and more is seen, less and less is heard. There is a sensory feast, but a hearing-famine. Professionalism in worship leadership has become a cheap substitute for genuine access to heaven, however faltering. Drama, not preaching, has become the 'Didache' of choice.
This is a spectrum, of course, not a single point. But most worship is to be found somewhere on that spectrum. Time was when four words which brought out goose-bumps on the neck of his grandfather–"Let Us Worship God". Not so for twentieth century evangelicals. Now there must be color, movement, audiovisual effects, or God cannot be known, loved, praised and trusted for his own sake.
5. The success of ministry is measured by crowds and cathedrals rather than by the preaching of the cross and the quality of Christians' lives.
It was the Medieval church leaders–bishops and archbishops, cardinals and popes–who built large cathedrals, ostensibly Soli Deo Gloria. All this to the neglect of gospel proclamation, the life of the body of Christ as a whole, the needs of the poor and the evangelism of the world. Hence, the "mega-church" is not a modern, but a medieval phenomenon.
Ideal congregational size and specific ecclesiastical architecture, thankfully belongs to the adiaphora. That is not really the central concern here. Rather it is the almost endemic addiction of contemporary evangelicalism to size and numbers as an index of the success of "my ministry"–a phrase which can itself be strikingly oxymoronic. We must raise the question of reality, depth and integrity in church life and in Christian ministry. The lust for "bigger" makes us materially and financially vulnerable. But worse, it makes us spiritually vulnerable. For it is hard to say to those on whom we have come to depend materially "When our Lord Jesus Christ said 'Repent!' he meant that the whole of the Christian life is repentance."
