Evangelical Theology

Evangelical Theology

By I. S. Rennie

Contemporary evangelical theology has long and deep roots. Some consider that it was primarily formed by reaction to theological liberalism, and while it is no doubt true that this conflict has frequently introduced a certain complexion to evangelical theology, its basic substance is drawn from the heritage of orthodox Christian theological formation. Evangelical theology in essence stands in the great Christian theological tradition.

Evangelical theology goes back to the creeds of the first centuries of the Christian era, in which the early church sought to correlate the teaching of Scripture, penetrate its meaning and defend it. In concert with the thought of this period, evangelical theology affirms that: the Bible is the truthful revelation of God and through it the life-giving voice of God speaks; God is the almighty creator and we are his dependent creation; God has entered history redemptively in the incarnation of Jesus Christ; God’s nature exists in Trinitarian expression; Jesus Christ is fully divine and fully human; the power and judgment of sin is a reality for all humanity; God graciously takes the initiative in coming to us savingly in Jesus Christ and by the Holy Spirit; Jesus Christ is building his church; and the consummation of history will be expressed in the second advent of Jesus Christ, the general resurrection, the final judgment, heaven and hell.

Evangelical theology also has strong links with the early medieval church. It draws heavily upon the satisfaction view of the atonement enunciated by Anselm of Canterbury and shares the concomitant stress upon the passion of Jesus Christ expressed by no-one more fully than Bernard of Clairvaux.

Evangelical theology has particular ties with the distinctives of the Protestant Reformation. It is deeply committed to the centrality of the Bible, to its power by the Holy Spirit with special reference to preaching, to its final authority in all matters of doctrine and life, and to the necessity of interpreting it as naturally as possible and disseminating it widely in the vernacular. It is equally committed to justification by faith in which acceptance with God is received by trusting his loving self-disclosure and not by any human accomplishment. It also readily confesses that the church is composed of all believers who have thus been incorporated by the Holy Spirit, and who have direct, personal and constant access to their heavenly Father.

The Reformation expressed itself in various institutional structures, frequently the result of nationalistic impulse, and in these entities many of the diversities within evangelical theology arose. There were differences in understanding the nature of the sacraments, the place of the divine decrees in relation to personal salvation, the time of the millennium, the form of church government, the precise nature of biblical inspiration, the way to arrive at Christian assurance and the relation of the church to culture and the state -- most of which would be considered by evangelicals today as matters of somewhat secondary importance.

Evangelical theology is also deeply indebted to the series of evangelical awakenings which began about the middle of the 18th century. Here the tendency was to reaffirm the theology of the great and received tradition, and to lay special emphasis on the theology of the Christian life. The nature of saving faith, or conversion, was continually to the fore, as was the consciousness of the love of God in Christ and the change of disposition which accompanied it, although there might be differences about the instantaneousness of conversion. The means and possibilities of sanctification were also emphasized, while once again there could be some disagreement over timing and possible achievement. The theology of corporate spiritual life was also stressed, assigning special consideration to the renewing of the church, the evangelizing of the world and the improving of society.

By the third decade of the 19th century there is evidence that evangelical theology was about to break out of its preoccupation with the theology of the Christian life, and through serious exegetical work and reflective thought once again make the orthodox theological heritage a vibrant option as had been done in the early Middle Ages and at the Reformation. Unfortunately for evangelical theology it was hit just at this time with the full force of theological liberalism, which combined the older Enlightenment rationalism with the post-Kantian stress on the human consciousness as the bridge to the knowledge of God -- which was singularly appealing to a Romantic age. Amid such a scene, evangelical theology tended to move either into enervating accommodation with the new views or retreat into a ghetto, defending the received deposit and shooting at almost anything that moved. While such ‘confessionalists’ did yeoman service in upholding the essentials of orthodox theology, they frequently did so in a way that dismissed much of their contemporary world of thought out of hand, played down the distinctive evangelical emphases on the theology of the Christian life, and gave the impression that the final formulation of all theology was imbedded in the confessions of the Reformation period.

One glimmer of what evangelical theology might have been was the Dutch school that emerged later in the century around Abraham Kuyper. Their genius was able to affirm the orthodox tradition, have a profound sense of the importance of a theology of the Christian life in all its ramifications, and at the same time be sensitive to many of the issues and approaches being raised by the world in which they lived.

In the late 19th century, as the pressure of theological liberalism continued to intensify and evangelicalism weakened, an even more defensive evangelical theology arose in the form of fundamentalism. Its key bulwark was an extreme millenarianism which affirmed that the church and society were hurtling into irremediable ruin. Christianity had nothing to say to the issues of the ‘now’; it was all in the ‘not yet’.

From the middle of the 20th century, a revitalization has been taking place within evangelical theology. British scholars have contributed a serious and scholarly exegetical approach; Americans have been hard at work in areas of systematic theology and its adjunct disciplines such as apologetics and ethics; the Dutch and the Mennonites have been developing theologies of social action from significantly diverse starting-points, and the Pentecostal/charismatic movement has been enunciating a theology of the Holy Spirit which insists that God is powerfully and miraculously present through the church to minister to the needs of mankind.

Finally, it should be emphasized that evangelical theology is what might be termed a spiritual theology. It has a way of doing theology which is again part of the great theological tradition. It is ‘live’ orthodoxy. The Bible is not only central to the theological enterprise, but it is meditated upon and prayed over as well as studied. The goal of theological work is not so much to know theology as to know God; the temptations of academic pride must be mortified, theology must be done within a community of love and out of love for others, and in the awareness that the return of Jesus Christ and the day of accounting is near. Thus the whole of the evangelical theological enterprise is for the glory of God.

Bibliography

D. G. Bloesch, The Evangelical Renaissance (Grand Rapids, MI, 1973); idem, the Future of Evangelical Christianity: A Call for Unity Amid Diversity (New York, 1983); G. W. Bromiley, Historical Theology: An Introduction (Grand Rapids, MI, 1978); E. J. Carnell, The Case for Biblical Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI, 1968); C. F. H. Henry (ed.), Christian Faith and Modern Theology (New York, 1964); E. Jay, The Religion of the Heart: Anglican Evangelicalism and the Nineteenth-Century Novel (Oxford, 1979); G. M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth Century Evangelicalism 1870–1925 (New York, 1980); Mark A. Noll, Between Faith and Criticism: Evangelicals, Scholarship, and the Bible in America (San Francisco, CA, 1987); B. L. Ramm, The Evangelical Heritage (Waco, TX, 1973); idem, After Fundamentalism: The Future of Evangelical Theology (San Francisco, CA, 1985); E. R. Sandeen, The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millenarianism 1800–1930 (Chicago, 1970); J. D. Woodbridge et al., The Gospel in America: Themes in the Story of America’s Evangelicals (Grand Rapids, MI, 1979).

Source: Ferguson, S. B., et al., editors. 1988. New Dictionary of Theology. Electronic edition. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press. As found in The Essential IVP Reference Collection. 2001. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Electronic Publishing.