Just One Word

Take the word evangelical. It comes from the Greek word for the Gospel, euangelion, and originally described individuals who held a high view of the Gospel and the Scriptures that brought us that Gospel. Whatever disagreements existed among Christians in the era after the Second World War, evangelicals at the time were clearly doctrinal vertebrates of some description. But in recent decades, we have added more than a little money to the movement, some academic respectability, and a lust for influence, and the result is the widespread existence of evangelicals who think that dialogue is a verb and a promiscuous one at that.

The unfortunate result is a fundamental dishonesty in the use and retention of certain names. Years ago, J. Gresham Machen was exasperated by those theological liberals who were not willing to admit that they actually had become adherents of another religion. He wrote his profound Christianity and Liberalism to show that the two were rival faiths and not compatible expressions of the same faith at all. But the creedal dishonesty of liberalism ran deep, and so the guardians of the substance of those words were banished. This same dishonesty is operative today throughout the evangelical world.

A corrupt hermeneutic enables the charade about one's true convictions to continue. Those who want to twist Scripture have to fend off the possibility of any institutional discipline while they do so. This is why the right to continue to call oneself an evangelical is quietly assumed, while the heart, soul and center of evangelicalism is denied.

A sound hermeneutic of anything can never be sustained without discipline. If a man wants a garden full of weeds, be does not need to do a thing. And if a church wants its lampstand removed, in a fallen world, all that is necessary is a little more standing around. A sound hermeneutic does not and cannot protect itself. Words and names are protected by honest men or they are neglected by careless men.

Consider the advertising blurb for a recent non-Christian book, being marketed as a Christian book by what is, in my opinion, a brazen, formerly evangelical publishing house: "Many will find things to disagree with in this book, but everyone should agree that it has significantly raised the level of discussion." The book in question promotes a new "openness of God" theology, one that maintains that God does not know the future, thus enabling Him to be more relational - more of a '90s God.

Now why would we want to obey the exhortation implied in this blurb? Did Irenaeus want to raise the level of discussion with the Gnostics? Did Athanasius want to conduct a cooperative and helpful dialogue with the Arians? Because the possibility of any kind of creedal discipline is negligible in our day, those who have abandoned the Gospel openly seeking to make into negotiable items, and want to be held by all as being "with-in the pale." Thus, we do not have to agree with them, but we do have to agree to disagree, and we do so as fellow ... evangelicals. They do not resist disagreement; in fact, they welcome it. But the disagreement must come in the form of continuing dialogue, and not in the form of showing them the door.

Our complacency shows nothing more clearly than how cold our love has grown. If a man were to see his wife being attacked by rapist, all his professions of love and deep concern would be meaningless unless he fought for her. Under such circumstances, a refusal to fight would not stem from a love of peace, but rather from his now-revealed contempt for his wife. In the. same way, a refusal to discipline is but a manifestation of contempt for that which we refuse to protect through the needed discipline. A refusal to fight over the meaning of words betrays, ultimately, a contempt for the Savior. Of course, we need fewer church fights over the replacement of the choir director or the color of the carpet in the fellowship hall. But we need more church fights over the meaning of some precious and important words.

Douglas Wilson is pastor of Community Evangelical Fellowship in Moscow, Idaho.