Chapter 2

                     The Long Decline of Evangelical Faith

A lesson from the past

Driven from their homeland by persecution, Christians proclaimed the gospel in the foreign land where they fled.  The Lord was with them, a strong church grew up, and their missionaries evangelized the world.  They gained political power, and lost spiritual power. Eventually they were overcome by their adversaries, who tolerated them but drove their faith out of public life.  Isolated in their own distinctive subculture, they gradually wasted away.

This is the church at Antioch, where the disciples were first called Christians, the church which sent Paul, Barnabas and Silas to the entire Roman world with the gospel (Acts 11:19-26, 13:1-3).

Eventually Antioch was conquered by the Muslims, but remnants of the church survived.  Its churches in the United States are growing, but more by receiving dissatisfied Protestants and other Christians than by proclaiming the gospel to the unbelievers, as their fathers did so effectively.

The best known descendants of Antioch are the Maronite Christians of Lebanon, now in union with Rome.  What does the world learn about Jesus Christ from the "Christian" militias of Lebanon?  During the civil war that began in 1975, they acted just like all the other parties to the conflict.  They are best remembered for slaughtering hundreds of unarmed civilians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps during the Israeli invasion in 1982.  The world sees nothing distinctively Christian about them except the non-essentials of liturgy and culture.  Their glory has largely departed.

Wasting away in the Christian ghetto

Can American evangelicals afford to ignore the lessons taught by the decline of Antioch?  We ourselves have been made aliens in a land we thought was our own.  We form an insular subculture whose values and language are unintelligible to the surrounding culture. Only a few years after his conversion, the average American Christian has no non-Christian friends, although the friends of Paul the apostle in Ephesus included "Asiarchs," who were officials of the Roman Empire (Acts 19:31).  It is perfectly obvious to the world that our churches grow, not by bringing to them or each other the good news of God, but by competing with one another for the "religious market," just like the merchants of the earth.

The world doesn't understand our subculture or our mannerisms and jargon, but how we act is no mystery.  Outsiders expect from us just what they get from any other men of the world (1 Corinthians 3:1-3). When we approach them, is it not just another sales call?  When the political consultants, fundraisers, and market researchers of the world come to us, do they meet anything inexplicable, transcendent, holy?

Talking to ourselves in our Christian lingo, which makes sense to no one else, we do protect ourselves from uncomfortable challenges to our faith, even as we keep ourselves - and the gospel - out of the world.  But has any of this kept us from the evil that is in the world?  Indeed not!  The walls we have built have kept out many who want to get into God's kingdom, but what wickedness have they kept us out of?  The lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and especially the pride of life are just as commonplace among us as anywhere else.

The apostles were well aware of these dangers, and warned us against them.

Paul wrote to the Christians in Corinth, "If therefore the whole church should assemble together and all speak in tongues, and ungifted men or unbelievers enter, will they not say you are mad?" (1 Corinthians 14:23).  The immediate issue is speaking in tongues, but Paul's principle is more basic.  Instead of speaking in tongues all at once, what if they had balanced broomsticks on their noses?  In that case, Paul might well have written, "If the whole church should assemble together and balance broomsticks on their noses, and ungifted men or unbelievers enter, will they not say you are crazy?"

They may put it more politely, but we often give outsiders good cause to think we're crazy.  Properly proclaimed, the gospel is authoritative everywhere and commends itself to each person's conscience (Matthew 28:20, 2 Corinthians 4:2).  In contrast, a lot of what we say means nothing outside our Christian subculture - often even outside the speaker's particular tradition.

When we make no sense to outsiders, we may excuse ourselves by recalling that "our gospel is veiled to those who are perishing" because Satan has blinded the minds of the unbelieving (2 Corinthians 4:3-4).  But "our gospel" means the gospel Paul was preaching - "not walking in craftiness or adulterating the word of God but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God" (2 Corinthians 4:2).  If we are being crafty, manipulative, and slick - manifesting not truth but a salesman's cunning - is the problem in our hearers or in ourselves?

If our gospel is to commend itself to every man's conscience, as the real gospel surely does, its precepts have to be firmly based on the truth which is already known to every person, not simply asserted as axioms acceptable only to those who already want to believe these things.

The things of the Spirit are foolishness to the unspiritual because they are spiritually discerned (1 Corinthians 2:14), but does it follow that our foolishness is of the Spirit?  Clearly not, because in the same letter, Paul requires us to act and speak so that outsiders should have no cause to say that we are crazy (1 Corinthians 14:23).

For instance, when we assert as an axiom that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, offering no proof in terms that the outsider can in good conscience accept, can we ask him to bet his life on it?  Are we making any more sense than the Corinthian Christians who all spoke together in unknown languages at the same time, expecting outsiders to understand that they were spiritual men?

The Bible agrees with the common experience of mankind that if we isolate ourselves, avoiding challenges from those outside, we will certainly fall into deception. The cross is God’s way to separate us from the world, and He accepts no substitutes.  How does God free us from this trap, and how do some of our cherished traditions serve to keep us in bondage?

God sends our opponents to free us from error

Jesus said, "I will give you a mouth and wisdom which none of your opponents will be able to resist or refute" (Luke 21:15).

Jesus by this statement gives a simple way to test what we believe - if those outside the church, or opponents within, are able to resist or refute it, there is something wrong with it.  This is not to say that if our doctrine is really right they will accept it and be saved.  Many heard Jesus and failed to believe in him or follow Him, but they could neither stand against his words, nor find fault with his deeds.  When Jesus challenged Annas to show where he was wrong, Annas found nothing to say and sent him to Caiaphas - and Caiaphas in turn could give no answer to Pilate (John 18:19-24, 18:28-30).

How can we become like Jesus in this way?  "The first in his plea seems just, until his neighbor comes and examines him" (Proverbs 18:17).  We all deceive ourselves, because each of us is first in his plea in his own heart.  God rescues us by sending neighbors to examine us.  In particular, God has ordained the unbeliever to search out the believer's doctrine and make him come to his senses. This path entails humility because we come face up with our own foolishness, and that is seldom a pleasure.  But Paul was right - we must become fools to become wise (1 Corinthians 3:18).  God used his opponents to put Jesus on the cross, so he could destroy death by raising Him from the dead.  To know God ourselves and make him known, we need for him to do this for us too, daily, just as He taught.

We bob and weave through the Bible, church traditions, or whatever, to argue with one another and seek to persuade those outside.  But no matter what we say, can we evade the standard Jesus set?  Can our opponents still resist and refute us?

The will of God is that by doing right we should silence the ignorance of foolish men (1 Peter 2:15).  If instead of silencing them, we convince them of our folly and their own good sense, can we possibly be doing right?

We so often play the fool, disgracing the gospel in the world, because we treasure our illusions.  The Bible commands us to give each person who asks (politely or not) a satisfactory defense of the hope that we have (1 Peter 3:15).  By doing that we learn just how sound our treasured beliefs really are, just as I learn how great my programs really are when they run on the customer's computer.

Your beliefs about the Bible and divine revelation may play well in your own church, with those who share your preconceptions.  Test your doctrine against an atheist or a Muslim, a secular scientist or a Hindu!  The Bible is clear.  If your doctrine doesn't close his mouth in the same way that the wisdom of Solomon left the queen of Sheba speechless, or as Jesus left his opponents with nothing to say, what you teach is in some way defective.

The way of Jeroboam

Jeroboam, the first king of the northern kingdom of Israel, feared that truth would bring about his death, so he made his own doctrine and system of worship (1 Kings 12:26-33).  Count how often "made" occurs in the passage - although unfortunately some translations obscure the writer’s point by using different English words for the same Hebrew term.

Jeroboam said in his heart, "Now the kingdom will return to the house of David.  If this people go up to offer sacrifices in the house of the Lord at Jerusalem, then the heart of this people will return to their Lord, to Rehoboam king of Judah; and they will kill me and return to Rehoboam king of Judah." . . . And Jeroboam made a feast in the eighth month on the fifteenth day of the month, like the feast which is in Judah, and he went up to the altar; thus he did in Bethel, sacrificing to the calves which he had made.  And he stationed in Bethel the priests of the high places which he had made.  Then he went up to the altar which he had made in Bethel on the fifteenth day of the eighth month, even in the month which he had made from his own heart; and he made a feast for the sons of Israel, and went up to the altar to burn incense.

The way of Jeroboam consists of making our own system of beliefs and worship in order to serve God in our own way, instead of actually obeying the word of God.  Its underlying motive is self-preservation, but the end result is destruction (1 Kings 12:26-28).  In Jeroboam we see what it is to be an enemy of the cross of Christ.  As we avoid the cross, we always follow Jeroboam.  It is the broad way leading to destruction, fulfilling the proverb, "A way seems right to a man, but it ends in death" (Prov. 14:12).

Jesus showed that the Pharisees walked in the way of Jeroboam, because like Jeroboam, they invalidated the word of God for the sake of their own tradition (Matt. 15:3-9, Mark 7:6-13).  Although the Pharisees did not sacrifice to golden calves, didn't they walk in the way of Jeroboam by worshipping the traditions that they themselves had made about the word of God?

The Pharisees illustrate a vital point about the way of Jeroboam - its worthlessness is obvious to non-participants, but to those entangled in it, its doctrines and practices actually seem essential to their faith in God.

The way of Jeroboam, over many years, became an unquestioned feature of the northern kingdom's religion.  Even Jehu, a real reformer, obeyed God in a number of things but would not abandon the way of Jeroboam (2 Kings 10:30-31).  Haven't we evangelicals also made our own doctrines, clinging to our own inventions for hundreds of years as did the northern tribes?

The failure of evangelical doctrine

On his way to the cross, Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit would convict the world of sin because they do not believe in him - that is, the Holy Spirit would expose how wrong the world is not to believe what Jesus says (John 16:8-9).  The gospels demonstrate this in Jesus - how often his enemies were left with no excuse to disbelieve Him!

A cardinal tenet of evangelical faith is the belief that the Bible is the word of God, the only supreme authority - this is the doctrine of "Scripture Alone" asserted by the Reformers. As we commonly state it, does this doctrine silence the unbelieving world as the words of Jesus did?

Far from feeling uncomfortable about their unbelief, outsiders commonly find our belief in the Bible to be a quaint "religious" persuasion held only by those who want to believe it no matter what.  To them it seems like an irrational dogma unfit for anyone willing to follow truth wherever it leads, empty and hypocritical in their sight because if Jesus were the Truth we would be confident that all truth leads to Jesus.  Sometimes, we must admit, their objections have left us speechless. So what's the problem?  Let's take a brief look at what has happened since Martin Luther.

The Roman Catholic Church claimed that the Church, through its hierarchy, was anointed by God with a teaching office.  When the Church spoke through the Pope or its councils, it was giving God's judgment, and so whether it made sense or not to the hearers, it had to be right.  Luther asserted that the Bible alone is authoritative, and that each man must read it for himself in order to correctly judge all other things. [1]

In this Luther agreed with the apostles.  Paul wrote,  "Even though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach a gospel contrary to that which we have preached to you, let him be accursed.  As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to that which you received, let him be accursed" (Galatians 1:8-9).

Paul is affirming that even the teaching of the apostles - including his own - is to be judged by the gospel they proclaimed in the first place.  How much more, then, the words of anyone that should follow!   The plain meaning is that anyone who receives the gospel is required by God to make this determination concerning whatever he hears, no matter who is speaking.

There were a couple of problems, however, and both these weaknesses have dogged Reformed Christianity in all its variations ever since.

In the first place, Luther begged the question of how we can know that the Bible is authoritative.  Perhaps it seemed to him beyond question, just as we all agree that water is wet.  Although Luther explicitly denied that tradition is authoritative and did reject Roman Catholic tradition concerning the Apocrypha, his doctrine of "Scripture alone" does rest on the church tradition that determined what the Scriptures consist of.

Church tradition, of course, was precisely how the Roman Catholic Church determined authority.  At the most crucial point, the authority of the word of God, Luther did the same.  Luther consequently shared with Roman Catholicism the tendency to cover weakness with dogmatic assertions.  Erasmus objected to Luther's doctrine of predestination as follows: "Does the righteous Lord deplore the death of His people which He Himself works in them?  This is too ridiculous."  Luther took refuge, rather truculently, in a secret will of God that we know nothing about, asserting that our only proper response is to adore. [2]  One already convinced may endure such a reply, but this is not what Peter had in mind when he said, "Be ready with a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you."  Could we expect any unbeliever to tolerate Luther's response?

Moreover, the Reformers themselves also continued to add their own doctrines to the Scriptures, just like the Roman Catholics.  When the Roman Catholics relied on James to refute Luther's doctrine of justification by faith alone, Luther did not rest his case on the Scriptures.  Luther could have shown that James indeed does teach that we are justified by faith alone: since living faith always expresses itself in the good works which God requires, nothing more needs to be added to it.  Faith alone saves because faith alone really works!

Instead, in his introduction to the German New Testament, Luther called James "an epistle of straw," and based his doctrine on a system of interpretation invented by himself that gave some books in Scripture more authority than others in order to prove what he wished.  He did not find this scheme in Scripture - like Jeroboam the son of Nebat, he invented it to suit himself.  To this day, evangelicals continue to subordinate the Bible to such man-made systems of interpretation, although finding fault with exactly the same practice in those, like the Jehovah's Witnesses, that we accuse of being cults. [3]  The Reformers needed to show the Church how to escape from both the bondage of human tradition and the anarchy of private interpretation.  From Luther on up, we have failed to deliver.  Hesitating between these errors, we often fall into both.

The Reformers taught people to put all things to the test, just as the apostles taught, but men arose who put them to the test in unforeseen ways.  When they got into trouble, they too often retreated into obscurantism, as Luther did in these instances.  They scoffed at human reason when they should have sought God for reasonable answers.  They failed to keep in mind that Jesus and the apostles replied to every question in a reasonable way and never dodged with authority arguments and attacks on reason.

For Jesus and the apostles, faith was reasonable, not founded on human will but on understanding given by God. In its essential nature, the wisdom of God is reasonable (James 3:17). To Paul, offering our bodies as a living sacrifice is a reasonable service (Romans 12:1).  In all this they agreed with Isaiah, who wrote, "'Come let us reason together,' says the Lord.  'Though your sins are as scarlet, they will be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they will be like wool'" (Isaiah 1:18).

An interesting point in this connection is Luther's use of Paul's retort in Romans 9:20 - "Who are you, O man, who answers back to God?" - to justify his own refusal to answer adequately [4].  But Paul was not refusing to answer the backtalker's question.  On the contrary, he was answering the question by using the example of the backtalker himself to show that he can be resisting God, even though it is the will of God Himself that His will should encounter this resistance.  In Romans 9:22, what is God enduring with much patience in "vessels of wrath," if not resistance to His will?

Well then, it was God's will to make a world where He doesn't always get His way, as becomes clear when we consider that God ordained from the foundation of the world that Christ should die for acts of disobedience to come.  Even human parents, when they start a family, are starting something in which they know their will is going to be often resisted, and it's their will to do it anyway.  What is so unbelievable about any of this?

But I digress.  Like Jehu the son of Nimshi, who obliterated the house of Ahab and eradicated Baal from Samaria, the Reformers cleared away much that was bad and restored much.  Like Jehu, who did not depart from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, the Reformers at crucial points continued in the sins of their opponents.  And like Jehu, they soon fell prey to their enemies, who began whittling them down in just the same way (2 Kings 10:29-33).

The failure of evangelical witness to the world

The core of irrationality in Reformed theology gave place to the enemies of reason.  If we trust in the Bible through an irrational leap of faith, in one breath denying the authority of tradition while relying on it to determine our ultimate authority, how can we credibly refute other irrational beliefs?

When both parties to an argument are being irrational, things seldom work out!  It's no surprise that the Reformers and the Roman Catholics were unable to resolve their differences, eventually coming to blows in the manner James described (James 4:1-2).

The outcome is no surprise either.  The contenders persuaded the watching world that the Christian faith is fundamentally irrational.  Rightly concluding that irrationality leads to senseless violence, and weary of religious war, Western civilization was prepared by our conduct for the idea that human reason rather than the gospel would give peace.

Increasingly since that time, rationalism has ravaged the church.  Having experienced all it wanted of our irrational dogmatism and its consequences, Western civilization grew determined to never again let religious dogma determine public policy.  This trauma is clearly at the root of modern secularism, which is a major hindrance to proclaiming the gospel today, especially in the Western world.

The Western world did not solve its problems by marginalizing the gospel.  Senseless violence continued and even increased, and has now reached the point where many are not safe even in their own homes.  Beginning with the Armenian genocide of 1915 by the Westernizing "Young Turks," Western culture has in the past century made routine the annihilation of whole classes of human beings by the millions. Sometimes this is justified by insane but pseudo-rational explanations that the victims are not really human, manifest today in the ideology of abortion.  Sometimes the excuse is the need to accomplish some worthy purpose, as in Stalin's annihilation of the "kulaks" or the American genocide by embargo against the children of Iraq from 1991 up to the American invasion. [5]  Sometimes it's a mixture of both, as in the Nazi annihilation of the Jews.

Trusting in reason does not lead to reasonable thinking and conduct, because rationalism is itself an irrational belief.  It is not reasonable in light of the evidence to think that human reason leads unfailingly to truth.  When people want to avoid truth, reason just enables them to avoid it all the better.  The world takes note of this in its use of the word "rationalize."  George Orwell, an intellectual himself, rightly testified, "Some ideas are so absurd that only an intellectual can believe them."

Because we cling to our irrationality, appealing to Scripture such as 1 Corinthians 1:18-25 to excuse it, the world is used to thinking that faith is opposed to reason, but this is highly abnormal where the gospel of Jesus Christ is concerned.  Unlike us, the apostles always remembered that no one ever went away from Jesus thinking he had gotten the better of his logic, and the apostles recognized their duty to walk in his steps. The apostolic gospel prevailed in the Greek world because Christians were reasonable instead of trusting in reason, just as it prevailed among the Jews because Christians obeyed the Law instead of relying on it.

Christians today, on the contrary, have little credibility among those who value straight thinking.  This arises from no defect in the gospel, but from the distortions which we have received from our fathers or invented ourselves.  How long will we cling to these inventions of men posing as God's truth, as the people of Samaria clung to the inventions of Jeroboam the son of Nebat until they went into exile (1 Kings 12:27-33)?

The failure of evangelical church life

Although Jesus sent his apostles as sheep among wolves and they prevailed through nothing but the word of God which they proclaimed, the Reformation never took root without the protection of secular power.  Wherever the Roman Catholics prevailed militarily - notably France, Poland, and Hungary - the Reformation was rooted out.  Both Protestants and Catholics have relied on the armies of worldly kingdoms to smooth their way.  We no longer see Roman Catholics using the state to back up their missions work, but American evangelical missionary organizations today were licking their chops over Iraq and Afghanistan until things didn’t work out so well.  They do not even hide their anticipation of even more opportunities from today's American drive to subdue Muslim countries, which they warmly support in the same way that their fathers greedily desired the war against the Philippines in 1899, hoping thereby to save the souls of Filipino Catholics and Muslims when the American forces were done killing them.

What do you think?  Does the world see sheep sent among wolves by Jesus, or jackals and vultures feeding on the scraps flung to them by the wolves in exchange for services rendered?

As paganism has returned to power in the West, the church has simply collapsed, especially in the former strongholds of the Reformation - what would Luther or Calvin think of Sweden or the Netherlands as we see them today?

Moreover, the attack on the Bible which began with the humanism of the Renaissance actually gained momentum from the Protestant Reformation.  The Reformers successfully attacked arbitrary human authority in Roman Catholicism, but because they too, and we their children, have also relied on arbitrary human authority as I've explained here, we have fallen prey to the same attack.

In spite of our shortcomings, the gospel works better than anything else, because it really is true.  It gave prosperity, order, and liberty to the nations of northern Europe which learned it from the Reformers, just as it does to each individual that receives it.  But as the Christian world-view faded in the West after 1600, we became increasingly unable to give a reasonable defense for our faith, and so we tended more and more to retreat from reason and to rely on the traditions of Christian orthodoxy and on emotional appeals to the unlearned.  We found ourselves defending old ideas and traditional values, instead of confronting the dead traditions of the world with the good news of Life, as the early church had done.

The developing disaster became increasingly obvious in the 19th century.  Even as the great missionary movement of those days brought the gospel to China, Africa, and other places where it has now sunk deep roots, the nations of Europe were quickly turning away from it.  The same pattern appears among Christians individually even today - we can bring the gospel to poor people in Mexico, but we lose our own children in college, or even in high school, because they need answers that make sense and we are not providing them.

As we abandon reason, substituting for it blind belief, we are reduced to trolling for those who don't care about truth, and so we increasingly use the sort of bait such fish will bite - entertainment, pleasant half-truths, simplistic answers, appeals to guilt and pride.

Those that insist upon truth, who want straight answers, evangelicals commonly throw back because they are too much trouble.  But Jesus said, "Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice" (John 18:37).  Evangelicals as well as other Christians have pursued precisely the wrong fish and thrown back those that Jesus sent us to catch, and we have reaped the consequences.  In just 450 years Western civilization was lost to the Christian faith, a greater disaster than the Muslim conquest of North Africa and Asia Minor.

We often try to console ourselves for our losses in the Western world by noting how the gospel is advancing in many Third World countries and in places like the former Soviet Union, but these successes are taking place where the triumph of modern Western culture is not yet complete.  If Jesus has been given all authority in heaven and on earth, how can we settle for evading the challenge of modern secularism by just preaching our gospel successfully somewhere else?

Even within the church we have been powerless to resist both theological and ethical apostasy of the worst kind.  Sexual immorality is commonplace in "Bible believing" churches, and divorce is routine, contrary to the plain teaching of Jesus, to whom we say continually, "Lord, Lord!"  One out of six women obtaining abortions in America call themselves Bible believing, "born again" Christians, [6] slaughtering their children for their own convenience or to remove an obstacle to worldly success, just as the disciples of Molech used to do.   Almost without exception, our "leaders" and "pastors" do anything to avoid confronting this wickedness and restoring those that have become entangled in it, because they fear controversy and the loss of members and revenue that might result.  Indeed Isaiah described them well:  "All of them are dumb dogs unable to bark" (Isaiah 56:10).

We tolerate financial impropriety that no outsider can stomach - this is the reason they most often give for staying away from our churches - and our fundraising is the stuff of standup comedy.  Our "revivals" are pep rallies and Hollywood entertainment - just as it is written, "The people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play" (Exodus 32:6).

Jesus said that the tree is known by its fruit.  Shall we call all this the fruit of "a mouth and wisdom which none of your opponents will be able to resist or refute?"

True doctrine - straight thinking from a renewed mind

Since Jesus said, "The tree is known by its fruit," we may judge any belief by what it does to the thinking of those who believe it. If what we believe is good and true - the word of God - it will make us into disciples of Jesus, people of truth (John 8:31-32).  On the other hand, a belief that leads to irrational thinking or crooked behavior is certainly not truth.

Jesus and the apostles treated the Scriptures as God's authoritative revelation.  If evangelicals really agreed with them, would we not believe what the Bible says and learn to do the things that it teaches?  Instead, like the Pharisees, we have majored on believing the doctrine that the Bible is the word of God while often neglecting to believe and do what the Bible actually says.  Ever since the Reformation, we have commonly placed more emphasis on our doctrine about the Bible than on anything the Bible teaches!

From this wrong emphasis, which is at the root of our theology, the evangelical church reaps the fruit of bad behavior.  John Perkins describes the evangelical church well:  "It tries to protect itself, distancing itself from others, rather than living its message.  If liberals don't believe that Scripture really makes a difference in the world today, Evangelicals don't live like it makes a difference in the world." [7]

How we live, not what we say, is our message to the world.  Is filling the air with gospel talk while acting like it isn't true really evangelism?  Paul calls this "having a form of godliness, but denying its power" (2 Timothy 3:5 NKJV), and he tells his readers to turn away from such people.  Are those who hear us wrong then to take his advice and turn away from us when we act this way?  Are we showing those who hate us, those who want to drive us out of public life, that we love them?  Have we even begun to do and to teach them the word of Him who said, "Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you?"  If we don't believe in Jesus enough to do as Jesus says, why should they?

Evangelicals can easily trace the weaknesses of others, like Roman Catholics, to fundamental defects in doctrine.  But like the Pharisees and Jeroboam the son of Nebat, evangelicals seldom consider the possibility that their weaknesses, too, might arise from fundamental defects in doctrine.

Consequently, most renewal movements in evangelicalism are making the same mistake as the Brethren of the Common Life and other unsuccessful renewal movements in Roman Catholicism in the years before the Reformation.  Like them, we forget that deficiencies in life and behavior are always rooted in theological error - a failure to know God as He is.  As John expressed it, the one who does not love does not know God (1 John 4:8), which is to say that if we do know God we will be like Him and behave like Him (1 John 3:2).

Like those forgotten movements before us, we are insuring eventual failure by supposing that we can have real renewal of church life without radical reformation of the defective theology which lies at the root of the problem.

Arrogance and timidity, the fruit of human tradition

As Roman Catholics and others have pointed out, Protestants who claim to hold to the Bible alone are themselves actually subjecting Scripture to tradition, just as the Catholics do, because they rely on tradition to determine what Holy Scripture is.  Our foundational belief that God's word consists of the 39 books of the Old Testament and the 27 books of the New Testament is found nowhere in those 66 books of the Bible which we acknowledge to be our only authority - it is an extra-Biblical tradition.

Appealing to a tradition outside and beyond the canon of Scripture to decide what belongs in the Bible amounts to treating that tradition as canonical.

You can't have it both ways.  If the Scriptures alone are authoritative, we have nothing to tell us what is Holy Scripture except the standard of measure given by the Scriptures themselves. If we appoint human tradition to judge just what the Scriptures consist of, we've added that tradition to the Scriptures, although the Scripture says to all throughout the ages, "Do not add to His words, lest He reprove you, and you be found a liar" (Proverbs 30:6).

If we calmly base foundational doctrine on such blatant self-contradiction, we're swallowing not a gnat but a camel, and by swallowing one camel, we stretch our throats to swallow others.

But someone will protest, "Since you yourself acknowledge that the Bible is the word of God, why make such a big deal of how we come to that belief, since it's true?"  If we realize that the Bible is the word of God, does it really matter how we arrive at that understanding?  How does Paul reply (1 Corinthians. 2.1-5)?

When I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God.  For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.  And I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling.  And my word and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not rest in the wisdom of men but on the power of God.

Consider what Paul endured, not to establish the content of our faith, but to give it the right foundation.  Why we believe is crucial.  When we base even correct doctrines on human inventions, we are made stupid, as Jesus said, quoting Isaiah (Matthew 15:8-9):

This people honors me with their lips,
But their heart is far away from me.
But in vain do they worship me,
Teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.

Such worship is vain because the "wisdom of their wise men shall perish" (Isaiah 29:14).  We make even our wisdom look stupid, so that it loses credibility with others and even with ourselves.

Disdaining to be instructed by the Bible, which plainly teaches otherwise, we have commonly asserted on the basis of tradition that only the Bible is the word of God.  This belief leads easily to the conclusion that there is no reliable truth to be found outside the Bible.

Consequently, instead of allowing all of God's truth to corroborate the Bible and to correct our own mistaken ideas about it, we often assert the inerrancy of the Bible as an irrational dogma.  In this we are without excuse, because we know and even tell others that irrational assertion is the last resort of those who can find no support in the truth.  By denying that God does speak outside Scripture in the way the Bible teaches, we deny ourselves God's provision for distinguishing between Scripture and our own understanding of it, and so we often confuse the Bible with our own traditions.

These traditions get us into stupid quarrels with outsiders.  When we prove mistaken, it shakes us up, and so we hide from those who put us to shame.  Asserting that there is nothing trustworthy outside the Bible, we easily rationalize such hiding by telling ourselves that those outside the church who do not believe the Bible have nothing to tell us which we need to hear. [8]

But it is written concerning the holy city, "They shall bring the glory and honor of the nations into it" (Revelation 21:26).  What is this honor and glory?  Since the holy city is enriched by this honor and glory, and does not impoverish the nations by receiving it, it is certainly not perishable gold.  Is it not the word of God deposited among them but not yet received by the church?  In the new heavens and new earth, what glory and honor will there be, except for the truth of God?

The common teaching among evangelicals that only the Bible is the word of God actually trains us to be spiritually arrogant - even against our hearts' desires - and supplies a doctrinal imperative for the evangelical Christian ghetto.  We lose power to escape its bondage even when we know from its consequences that we're doing something wrong.

One such futile effort to break free is the current fad of "seeker's services," designed to appeal to those alienated from our religious "stuff."  The more I understand how hard it is to make the word of truth simple while keeping it really true, the more I see why this is tried.

But does this resemble in any way the gospel Jesus preached?  Jesus is not churchy, but he does call people to some hard things, like the cross, which today's Gospel Lite goes very light on.  This new gospel is in truth no gospel at all, because the gospel is, if nothing else, "the word of the cross" (1 Corinthians 1:18).  If we have to leave the gospel behind in order to break out of our ghetto, are we really becoming free?  To really escape from our religious trap is not so easy as it looks.

When we give up God's truth that sets us free, God gives us up into bondage.  No device or wisdom of our own can repeal this decree, because God will frustrate any plan against His purpose (Psalm 33:10-11).  The only way for us to get free indeed is to learn to abide in His word, and if we're not becoming free it can only mean we are not really abiding in His word (John 8:31-32).

What does the Bible itself say about what the word of God consists of, and how do we recognize the truth in all of its messengers, including outsiders?  We now turn to these questions.

Notes

1.  Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will, Translated by James I. Packer and O. R. Johnson (Old Tappan: Revell, 1957 by James Clarke & Co. Ltd.), 123-124.

2.  Luther, 169-171.

3.  Examples include the commonly taught "principles" that the Old Testament must be interpreted by the New Testament (in effect, by how we understand the New Testament) and that anything taught in Acts must be interpreted by the epistles (in effect, by how we understand the epistles).   Does any New Testament writer suggest that the Law and the Prophets are to be interpreted by his own writings?  Could the apostles have argued that way with the
Pharisees and other contemporary opponents?

4. Luther, 171.

5.  Lesley Stahl: "We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And - and you know, is the price worth it?"
Madeleine Albright (US Ambassador to the UN): "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price - we think the price is worth it."

CBS "Sixty Minutes" (Air date May 12, 1996)

Six months later, Albright was unanimously confirmed as Secretary of State by the United States Senate, thereby ratifying Albright's explicitly stated policy of genocide.

6.  Eloise Salholz and Ann McDaniel, "The Battle Over Abortion," Newsweek (May 1, 1989): 31.

7.  John Perkins quoted in Gordon D. Aeschliman, John Perkins: Land Where My Father Died (Ventura: Regal Books, 1987), 31, 33.

8. The notion that we need to listen only to ourselves in the church goes back a long way.  Consider the following from Irenaeus in the 2nd century, which has been quoted to me in defense of this attitude:

"We ought not to seek among others the truth, which we may have for asking from the Church.  For in her, as in a rich treasure house, the Apostles have laid up in its fullness all that pertains to the truth, so that whoever seeks may receive from her the food of life. She is the door of life."

Even if Irenaeus is right, the truth laid up by the apostles includes "taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ" (2 Corinthians 10:5), and that certainly includes bringing every truth in the world into the Church and understanding its right relationship to the truth about Jesus Christ.

When Paul told the Corinthians not to associate with immoral people, he expected them to understand his outwardly unconditional statement in conformity with the rest of apostolic teaching (1 Corinthians 5:9-10).  Irenaeus certainly knew that Paul preached truth from the Hellenistic playwright Menander, expecting his readers to be familiar with it and to heed its instruction (1 Corinthians 15:33).  And did Irenaeus not know that Paul preached in Athens from Greek poets or in Lystra from the truth in Greek paganism that their gods had not made the world?

If Irenaeus knew these things, did he mean for sure that we need no truth that those outside the church possess?  Paul's example clearly teaches us to incorporate all such truth into the church as we find it, because being God's, it's ours (1 Corinthians 3:21-23).

In the spirit of divination speaking in the slave girl at Philippi, we see what Irenaeus warned us against.  The demon wanted to force the hearers to choose either to reject the truth it was speaking or to receive that truth as the demon's, making the apostles indebted to the demon for that truth.  The Church, being the Lord's body, certainly has no need to be instructed by the world on its own terms.  By saving the girl from the demon, Paul proved that the apostles were indeed preaching the way of salvation, but not because the demon said so!

The demon tried through the slave girl to use truth to further the kingdom of darkness; the apostolic doctrine frees whatever truth exists in the world from its usurpers, so that it can bear witness to its Author, the God of truth.

Return to Table of Contents

Return to Home Page