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Bible League Quarterly Bible League Quarterly October - December 2012 Issue no. 451 The Bible League Trust Registered Charity No. 281867 | Instituted May 3rd 1892 Object of the Bible League To promote the reverent study of the Holy Scriptures and to resist the varied attacks upon their inspiration, infallibility and sole sufficiency as the Word of God. Website: www.bibleleaguetrust.org The Trustees Chairman of the Trust: Malcolm H Watts Editor of the Quarterly: John P Thackway Other council members: David J Butler, Francis J Harris, Aaron J Lewis, Pooyan Mehrshahi, David Oldham, Neil Pfeiffer, Stephen A Toms, Thomas R. Yates Contact our Secretary Mrs Ruth Ward, 46 Bulbrige Road, Wilton, Salisbury SP2 0LE Email: [email protected] Telephone: 01722 742270 Contact our Editor Rev. John Thackway, Fairlea, From Park Road, Holywell CH8 7SP Email: [email protected] Telephone: 01352 714879 Subscriptions The annual subscription to the Quarterly is £8 in the UK and £12.50 overseas, including postage of the four issues each year. You can subscribe online to our Quarterly here. We thank all our subscribers for their generous financial support, particularly friends who send more than their subscription in the form of donations. The latter can be Gift Aided - please contact our secretary for a declaration form. Such gifts enable us to continue publishing the Quarterly and our other literature, which is so needed in these days. In this Issue A REAL CHRISTIAN 4 THE CHANGING FACE OF EVANGELICALISM 5 CHOICE SAYINGS 14 CONTINUED FIEC COOPERATION WITH POLISH ECUMENISTS 16 HOW DO WE MAINTAIN A SPIRITUAL FRAME OF MIND IN A TIME OF DECLENSION WITHIN THE VISIBLE CHURCH ? 22 ALL THE BIBLE! 23 A PUBLICATION FOR OUR TIME 26 GOD’S GOOD HAND 31 BOOK REVIEWS 34 A REAL CHRISTIAN James Smith “Things that accompany salvation” Hebrews 6:9 Let us inquire. What are they? Do we possess them? Spiritual life, evidenced by convictions of sin; hatred to sin; crying to God for deliverance from sin; groaning under the weight of the body of sin and death; a tender conscience, which trembles at sin, and feels deeply for God’s glory; a filial fear of God, lest we should dishonour His name, disgrace His cause, and grieve His love; an anxiety and deep-rooted concern for holiness, both in the heart and the life; contrition or brokenness of heart for sin, accompanied with holy mourning before God; fervour in devotion, earnestly breathing out the desires of the heart before God, or grieving when it is not so; a jealousy of self, as to our sincerity and uprightness of intention, lest we should be led astray by the corruptions which are within; a chaste conversation coupled with fear; diligence in the means of grace; searching the scriptures, to ascertain our real state and condition. What is the Lord’s will and our duty? An increasing discovery of our own weakness, imperfection, and misery. He that hath these things shall never finally fall. O, give me, Saviour, give me still My poverty to know; Increase my faith; each day in grace And knowledge may I grow: Unfold the glories of Thy cross, For which I count all else as loss. THE CHANGING FACE OF EVANGELICALISM From the address at the 120th Anniversary meeting of the Bible League in London, Saturday 23 June 2012. Dr. Alan Cairns “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek” (Romans 1:16). This is the testimony of every true evangelical, a term that is not easy to define. I think none of us would disagree with what Dr. Lloyd Jones said in 1971: “The situation today is such that we must not take this term ‘evangelical’ for granted. We must rediscover its meaning. We must define it again. And we must be ready to fight for it and defend it.” Nor would we disagree with what J. I. Packer said in 1978: “What makes an evangelical will be that which in the eyes of the New Testament writers makes a Christian.” Or with D. A. Carson’s assessment: “Evangelicalism, at its best, is the locus of where the gospel is defended and proclaimed.” In Romans 1, we have a classic statement of what in the eyes of the apostles made a Christian. Here we have the gospel clearly stated, proclaimed and defended. In summarizing Paul’s teaching in this chapter and indeed this epistle, we may broadly define the gospel as the divine revelation of God’s way of salvation from sin, death and hell into a right relationship with God through the sole merits of the Lord Jesus Christ, provided to us by grace alone and received by faith alone. This is New Testament Christianity. This is true evangelicalism. If we are genuinely unashamed of the gospel — if we are true evangelicals — we will demonstrate our faith in,, and faithfulness to, the gospel by declaring it with great clarity, confidence and courage. Here are the classic elements of evangelicalism. Historically evangelicals have differed on many things, but on these they were united. But not any longer. Once, despite their differences, we had “evangelicals.” Today we have a bewildering array of people claiming the name: New Evangelical, Conservative Evangelicals; Post-conservative Evangelicals, Young Evangelical, Radical Evangelicals, Worldly Evangelicals, Liberal Evangelicals, and even Roman Catholic Evangelicals. Just to list such groupings of professed evangelicals gives us a broad hint as to the changing face of evangelicalism. I suggest three basic areas where we see disturbing trends: CONFUSING THE IDENTITY OF EVANGELICALS A few years ago, a Canadian company, The Angus Reid Group, did a survey of people in 33 countries to discover the varying identities of evangelicals. They formulated their questions around British historian David Bebbington’s four identifying beliefs of evangelicals: the centrality of (1) the Cross; (2) the Bible; (3) conversion; and (4) evangelism. In this survey, a person qualified as an evangelical if he could strongly agree with these four statements: “Through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, God provided a way for the forgiveness of my sins.” “The Bible is the inspired word of God” — or to whatever degree, “The Bible is God’s word and is to be taken literally, word for word.” “I have committed my life to Christ and consider myself to be a converted Christian.” “It is important to encourage non-Christians to become Christians.” The problem with this approach is that the questions posed do not probe the identity of a true evangelical. They are deliberately vague where historically evangelicalism has been explicit and definitive. Thus, it is not much wonder that, as New Evangelical historian Mark Noll said, “The distribution of beliefs and practices traditionally known as ‘evangelical’ is surprisingly wide.” This is the kind of grab-bag definition of evangelicalism being used by many of today’s evangelicals. On this basis, we learn that a Roman Catholic who believes all his church’s dogmas may really be an evangelical. In fact, according Billy Graham, Pope John Paul II was the greatest evangelist of the 20th century. This vague way of identifying an evangelical is the basis for the late Chuck Colson’s argument for Evangelical-Roman Catholic togetherness: He argued that we face a common enemy, secular humanism, and there are just too many Roman Catholics in the world for us to leave them out of our reckoning. They are true Christians and thus our fellow soldiers in the cause of Christ. Using the same indefinite way of identifying evangelicals, we now have Oneness Pentecostalists such as T.D. Jakes and word of faith prosperity preachers welcomed as evangelicals. By today’s confusing standards, evangelicalism has become a very big tent that houses all sorts of deviant beliefs and practices. REVISING THEOLOGY Albert Mohler has observed, “A good many who claim to be evangelicals now want to affirm something other than evangelical theology.” He is right. For some years now, many professed evangelicals have been plotting a radically different theological course from historic evangelicalism. Roger Olson, a New Evangelical historian, listed the trends he saw in those evangelicals who are “shedding theological conservatism.” In his list were eagerness to engage in ecumenical dialogue; refusing to be limited to the Bible as the source of their theology; adopting an “open” view of God in which He no longer is the omniscient Sovereign Lord who works all things according to the counsel of His will, but is rather a “risk taker” for whom the future is hidden, because it depends on the free choices of His creatures; and acceptance of some form of universalism. Thus, at the most vital points in the doctrinal beliefs of evangelicalism, many modern professed evangelicals have adopted heretical views. We will consider two major theological shifts: with regard to Scripture, and Salvation. Scripture The gospel is a divine revelation, conveyed to us by and in the inspired and infallible Word of God, the Bible. Historically, you could never be considered an evangelical if you did not believe this. However, today many professed evangelicals no longer hold this view of Scripture. Some have adopted what is known as modified inerrancy. According to this, the Bible contains a variety of errors, especially in the areas of history and science, and records a number of conversations and events that probably never actually took place. Yet, they insist, the Bible is without error in all that it “intends” to teach. Other “evangelicals” go even further. They propose the theory of limited infallibility — that is, the Bible claims to be an infallible guide only in matters of faith and practice.
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