TMSJ 32/1 (Spring 2021) 131–156 CONTENDING FOR DOCTRINAL LANGUAGE IN MISSIONS: WHY IMPUTATION AND SOLA FIDE ARE GOOD NEWS FOR KARMA-BACKGROUND CHRISTIANS1 E. D. Burns Ph.D., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary Director of Master of Arts in Global Leadership Studies Western Seminary * * * * * The frontlines of missions are where theological error has a tendency to fester. New missional movements draw distinctions between the helpfulness of the Bible and theology, affirming the former and disregarding the latter. The mission field has become a place of embarrassment regarding many of the doctrines that the church fathers lived and died over. Specifically, the doctrine of imputation has been practically neglected amongst many of the frontline missional efforts. And the consequences are and will continue to be devastating. This article is a call for missionaries to reach the unreached with the beautiful and historic doctrines of the Christian faith. * * * * * “We don’t want to impose our white Western cultural interpretations upon their theology.” These are sentiments I hear frequently from missionaries who have undergone years of derisive ‘white-shaming’ for the eighteenth–to–twentieth centuries’ excesses of colonialization and Western theological imperialism. A consequent mixture of doctrinal confusion, embarrassment, and hesitancy plague many missionaries from traditionally missionary-sending Euro-American countries. So, to prevent future failure and humiliation, some popularly overemphasized, hyper- contextualization practices encourage theological or doctrinal deconstruction. They encourage local Christians in a target culture to liberate themselves from imperialistic Western theology and thus to interpret Scripture according to what they value in their 1 This essay is an abbreviated synthesis of chapters 4-5 in the forthcoming book: E. D. Burns, Ancient Gospel, Brave New World: Jesus Still Saves Sinners in Cultures of Shame, Fear, Bondage, and Weakness (Cape Coral, FL: Founders Press, 2021). 131 132 | Doctrinal Language in Missions own cultural orientation. This is a tendency in the movement towards contextual theology, ahistorical indigenous theology, and standpoint self-theologizing.2 So, they ask the Christians of the target culture, “How do you understand this biblical passage?” And when the indigenous Christians, being respectful of their teachers, turn the open-ended question back to the missionaries, if the missionaries are ungrounded in doctrine and historical theology, they will often employ a method devoid of doctrine (because in their mind, Bible = good; doctrine = bad). So, what is one essential doctrine that missionaries tend to sideline more than others? That Jesus died for the forgiveness of sins? That God is Creator? That there is a heaven and a hell? Those are still, nevertheless, central themes that many missionaries treasure. Yet, one key doctrine that most overlook, and some even outright reject, is the glorious truth of justification, specifically imputation. If missionaries do, however, claim to uphold the doctrine of justification, the way they might describe it is as though it were synonymous with pardon and forgiveness—not a small oversight. The implications of neglecting the doctrine of Christ’s imputed righteousness through faith alone have eternal consequences, and for those in merit- based, karmic cultures, this doctrine is eminently relevant. One common example on the mission field of this anti-doctrinal approach is putting a Bible into the hands of new believers and asking them how they interpret it and plan to apply it. Errors abound, then, especially in terms of confusing achieved personal righteousness with received alien righteousness. This is especially true for those people who view reality through a meritorious system that they believe secures favor with spirits, gods, ancestors, Allah, etc. If the missionary doesn’t contend for the centrality of justification through faith alone, errors of works-righteousness will inevitably creep in unnoticed. Consequently, the local Christians’ hermeneutical grid, worship, discipleship, and assurance suffer. Bible-Only Language Versus Doctrinal Assertions These kinds of fallacies abound in missions networks where the needs of the unreached are staggering, progress has been slow and discouraging, theological precision and exactitude are disparaged, and listening for the Holy Spirit’s secret, extrabiblical words is regularly practiced. And the Bible becomes a mystical book, quoted out of historical and doctrinal context, but quoted nonetheless as the basis for their ministry practices and conclusions. If there is any pushback, anti-doctrinal missionaries might claim, “I’m just doing what the Bible says”; “The Bible is my creed”; “I’m just listening to the Spirit”; or “I’m just following the way of Jesus.” This distinction between using Bible-only language as definitive versus employing doctrinal formulations might seem hair-splitting and pedantic. That’s an understandable assessment. Nevertheless, this issue is worthy of our attention as missionaries. It has eternal ramifications. 2 This is not to say that seeking to apply Scripture to a local, indigenous context is unwarranted. Indeed, we should duly encourage it. For instance, teaching a theology of vocation and work has many different applications: where one people group might corporately struggle with sloth and idleness, another people group might corporately err on the side of being worried busybodies and vainly self- sufficient. Both need a theology of vocation and work under God’s natural and providential decrees, but such theology will be uniquely applicable and meaningful depending upon the context. The Master’s Seminary Journal | 133 The history of false teaching and heresy records the practice of using the Bible’s language to affirm imprecise doctrine or to suggest patently false doctrines. Saying, “I’m a Jesus-follower” and refusing to clarify what one believes to be true about Christ’s identity and Christ’s work is a pious distraction clouded by sentimental, hazy, and “authentic” language. The follow-up question, then, is, “Who is Jesus and what did He do?” Well, which Jesus? Muslims have a Jesus. Mormons have a Jesus. Secular elites have a Jesus. The Word of Faith movement and the New Apostolic Reformation have a Jesus. In claiming that doctrine is divisive and that “the world will know we are Christians by our love,” propositional truth becomes not only extraneous but sometimes even a perceived threat to true spirituality. All that matters, then, is a “pure and simple devotion to Jesus,” not proactively teaching truth claims of the history and doctrine of Christ. In other words, some big-hearted, undiscerning missionaries improperly use the Bible’s own language in a way that sounds sincere and pure-hearted, but in the end, such solo scriptura (not sola scriptura) obfuscates well-crafted creeds and doctrines that discriminate between orthodoxy and heterodoxy. To put it bluntly, each person’s eternity is on the line in knowing, assenting, and trusting propositional truths that rightly cut between truth and falsehood. Heaven and hell hang in the balance. And one iota can tip the scale one way or the other. This is why missionaries and translators, of all people, need to handle language with painstaking attentiveness. Irreversible syncretism can sneak in through a negligence of theological and transcendent categories, embracing the target culture’s value systems, adopting their standpoints, and not redefining common-sounding categories with biblical truths. As dogmatic theologian, Gilles Emery, describes Thomas Aquinas’s (1225–1274) tenacity for exacting theological language, missionaries and translators should take note: “St. Thomas is constantly working at the purification of our language, in order to make it appropriate for a correct understanding of the faith.”3 Words have meaning, and theological ideas have generational and eternal consequences. No concealed missiological conspiracy likely exists to “dumb down” theological tradition and doctrinal standards. Yet, as in psychological warfare where radical ideologues employ disinformation campaigns, so demonic powers and the spirit of the age all practice biblical disinformation tactics to blur, deviate, and pollute doctrinal truth. Believers are engaged in a truth war, and maybe no other arena suffers more blitzkrieg than the frontlines among the least-reached language groups. Ever since biblical times and especially throughout church history, the doctrines of demons have threatened to infiltrate the ranks of God’s elect. Commonly the enemy has done this through undiscerning, and occasionally even devious, leaders in the church who promote biblical-sounding terminology with doctrineless or twisted doctrinal definitions. 3 Gilles Emery, “Central Aristotelian Themes in Aquinas’s Trinitarian Theology,” in Aristotle in Aquinas’s Theology, ed. Gilles Emery and Matthew Levering (Oxford University Press, 2015), 21. 134 | Doctrinal Language in Missions Athanasius, Doctrinal Language, and Righteousness in Christ One classic example of anti-doctrinal solo scriptura was the controversy over the nature of Christ between Athanasius (300–373) and Arius (250–336) in the fourth century. Arius and his followers’ denial of the divinity and eternality of Christ was the locus of the controversy, but because they were using biblical verses and language to prooftext their arguments, this issue was unusually complex to unravel. Historian, Mark Noll,