I thought it would be helpful following the recent announcement of TGC UK (The Gospel Coalition) to say a little bit more about what Evsngelical Unity is and isn’t.
I’m not intending to comment specifically about TGC, my concerns were well documented when it was first set up as has been my more recent response to ill advised attacks on those involved. Rather I want to focus more on what being Evangelical is about and what that means for unity.
David Bebbington of course famously defined Evangelicalism in terms of Biblical, crucicentrism, conversionism and activism. On other words, Evangelicals believe that the Bible is God’s, word, that Jesus’death on the cross is central and essential to our relationship with God and that therefore people should hear and respond to the good news of the Gospel leading to transformed lives.
At one level that leaves things rather broad. Indeed, Evangelicalism has historically included Baptists and paedobaptists, Presbyterians, congregationalists and episcopalians, Reformed and Arminian. However there are surely implicit limits to that breadth and unity.
It’s the commitment to the Bible that sets those parameters. First that it means that Scripture is our sole authority for faith. We cannot add requirements to what is in it, nor can we take away from it. With that comes an expectation that we approach Scripture as God’s inspired word in a certain way. There are rules of interpretation (hermeneutics). The idea of Evangelical hermeneutics is worth a few articles in its own right but I think we can sum up a few things here. First that you treat the text responsibly respecting genre. Second that we seek to exegete out not eisegite in. Third that we look for the plain meaning. Fourth that we read it in context.
Additionally, it means that we need to say things that Bebbington is silent on. There is an implicit expectation that Evangelicalism holds to the classical doctrine of God including the Doctrine of the Trinity. This means accepting the creeds, not because they are creeds agreed by church tradition but because they align with Scripture. Arianism, Unitarianism, the Social Trinity, Modalism and open theism are ruled out of court for example.
It also means that our commitment to the Cross as central is shaped by what Scripture teaches about the atonement and therefore about sin and redemption too. That is why Evangelicals rightly argued in the early noughties that Steve Chalke’s downgrading of sin and denial of penal substitution, narrowing his focus onto one convenient element of atonement was a departure from Evangelicalism.
What this gives us is a group of doctrines that we can describe as essential and central, or first order. This becomes the basis for Evsngelical unity. It is right to insist both that we should not include those who deny these beliefs and we should not exclude those who affirm them.
Below this are second order matters. This might include use of gifts, when baptism in the spirit happens, baptism, polity and of course complementarianism. The last provides two instructive lessons. The first being that it is possibly to argue on a second order matter in a way that makes it first order. If you argue from extra biblical reasoning for your position then you are moving outside of an evsngelical approach. In the same way as some complementarians and some egalitarians undermine Scripture, some paedobaptists can rely on confessions in a way that does the same or undermine a commitment to conversion.
The other lesson is that sometimes we are actually arguing over third order issues such as which specific strand of complementarianism do we hold to.
It should be possible to recognise from this two things. First that it may be necessary in practice for local churches, networks and groupings to reach agreement on second order issues. Secondly that we can still recognize a high degree of Evangelical unity whilst disagreeing passionately on those second order matters.
Faithroots 