April 2005

For most of the 1990s I habitually denied I was an Evangelical. "I used to be an Evangelical," I would say, "but now I'm just a fundamentalist." Or later, "I used to be an Evangelical, but now I'm Reformed.... Yeah, I grew up in an interdenominational Evangelical church in Wheaton, but I'm no longer an Evangelical."

Of course, that was when Evangelicalism still had a center, loosely defined by a variety of parachurch organizations such as Christianity Today, Wheaton College, Campus Crusade/InterVarsity, Christian publishers, Focus on the Family....

My rejection of Evangelicalism was never a repudiation of all things evangelical. The term "evangelical" had been applied to the Reformed faith for centuries prior to Harold Ockenga's appropriation of the term to distinguish non-fundamentalist conservative Protestantism from fundamentalism in the 1930s.

The Reformed faith was "evangelical" before it was "Reformed." The Protestant Reformation was utterly evangelical in its return to the euaggelion, or gospel, of salvation by faith, not works. Luther himself claimed to be "evangelical" before the world knew him as "Reformed". Luther named the church he founded in Germany the Evangelische Kirke, or "Evangelical Church."

Within the English-speaking world, the evangelical faith in the 1600s included the Puritans, the English separatists, the Presbyterians. In the 1700s the evangelical faith included Wesley, Whitefield and Edwards: the wonder of the Great Awakening. In the 1800s evangelical faith produced the Second Great Awakening, Princeton's theology, men like Dabney, Hodge, Alexander.

All these strains fed into 20th century American Evangelicalism. By claiming no longer to be "Evangelical" I was stating my departure from the 20th century American branch of Protestantism known as "Evangelicalism," not the glorious theology of the evangelical Church of the Reformation. I was reacting against Evangelicalism's parachurch focus, its loose (and increasingly Arminian) theology, its woeful sexual ethics and theology, its pride and wealth, its celebrity culture. I considered myself Reformed, outside the orbit of Evangelicalism.

It was fairly easy to live outside Evangelicalism in the Toledo I moved to in 1988. With several exceptions (FNBS and several godly CMA churches) Evangelicalism bypassed Toledo on its trans-continental trek from Philadelphia through Wheaton to California (and back to Colorado Springs). We didn't have to worry about the increasing heterodoxy of InterVarsity nationally in Toledo. The local InterVarsity chapter died about the time I arrived. We didn't have to oppose the "Botany-Geography" seeker church scourge. Toledo didn't get a proper creek until six years ago.

I was simply Reformed. I identified more with Doug Wilson and Moscow, Idaho, than Wheaton; with Banner of Truth and Martyn Lloyd-Jones more than Tyndale House or Bill Hybels.

And now, in 2005 at age 46, for reasons I will explain shortly, I want to revisit Evangelicalism. But to my horror I find my childhood home destroyed. All Evangelicalism's children have despised her, fleeing her for Orthodoxy, for Roman Catholicism, for Anglicanism, for Willow Creeks and Cedar Hills, for Reformed churches and Lutheranism.

If the original Hebrew and Greek contains a male semantic meaning component, who's in a position to say "Here it matters" or "Here it doesn't?" It is not the job of a translator to decide the relative importance of semantic meaning components, aiming at carrying through into the receptor language only those he deems "significant" while in the interest of simplicity and clarity leaving the rest behind. (Footnote 1)

Yet that is precisely what has happened with the NLT and the TNIV. The translators of these versions have decided not to carry into English the male semantic meaning component of thousands of occurrences of words such as 'adam' and 'ish.'

Genesis 5:2
NASB: "...and He blessed them and named them 'Man' (Hebrew, adam)..."
TNIV: "And when they were created, he called them 'human beings.'"

Isaiah 53:3
NASB: "He was despised and forsaken of men (Hebrew ishim),..."
TNIV: "He was despised and rejected by others,..."

The translators of the TNIV might object to the above line of reasoning, saying "You accuse us of leaving behind the male semantic meaning components but we accuse you of leaving behind the inclusive semantic meaning components." This sounds good until one realizes that, for centuries, both the male and the inclusive meaning components of 'man' were clear in English usage. So what's going on?

Those who hate the fatherhood of God and man have mounted an attack upon the inclusive semantic meaning component of English words like 'man.' Angrily they demanded, at first, that it be removed. Now years later, they act as if it simply doesn't exist...

There seems to be an increasing trend of Truly Reformed families intentionally gathering in remote, bucolic communities to lead separated lives.

Is this modern-day Plymouth Rock pilgrimaging or something else?

Though this has been a matter of personal observation in recent years, I find my personal thoughts somewhat confirmed by this response to a person expressing a desire to move to Moscow, Idaho, in a comment on WORLD's main blog:

A reader asks:

As a Catholic I don't feel as if my will is sovereign _at all_. I'm so finite and wretched, just a dust mote in God's Creation. How could my will be sovereign compared to Our Lord's will and the fiery love of the Holy Spirit? At the center of everything is Jesus Christ, radiating out His Divine love and mercy. My greatest hope is to die to my own self and be filled to the brim by God, so that in every action performed I do His will. Even if it breaks my human body, so be it, as long I am His little child.

And of course, from what our friend writes, it appears she has at least a partial sense of the Biblical doctrine of Divine sovereignty.

At root, the test of sovereignty is simple. A sovereign rules. A sovereign is king. He acts. He governs. Others in his kingdom have wills as well. But his will rules. Their lives reflect his will.

Reformed Christians declare God to be solely sovereign in salvation. In claiming this we do not deny the wills of the governed. The king's subjects have wills. But sovereignty is not the mere possession of a will. It is possession of power and authority to enact your will. And in this sense, sovereignty in salvation is clear: God's will rules, God's will governs, God's will is the prime mover. God acts, men react.

Reformation soteriology (teaching on salvation) is "monergistic" (teaches that there is only one power at work in salvation). It teaches that God works salvation without prior human action or agency. Man responds to God's grace in regeneration with faith and repentance. Faith and repentance are fruits of regeneration, not its cause.

Conversely, Roman Catholicism and much of modern Protestantism hold to a "synergistic" (cooperative, two workers aiding each other) view of salvation in which God and man work together to effect regeneration.

Erasmus, the Roman Catholic counter-Reformation scholar and champion of the synergistic view of salvation tells the story of a father leading a toddler to an apple. He says the child, like the sinner with God, does very little:

Back Row: Matthew Miklovic, Benjamin James III, Lawrence Howell, David Canfield, Timothy Bayly, Wayne Huck, Stephen Baker, David Bayly, Robert Forney
Kneeling: Timothy Wegener, Andrew Folley, Michael Vrlenich, Michael Ahrendt, Jamie Thornton, David Curell, Andrew Dionne

The churches Tim and I serve, Christ the Word (CTW) in Toledo, Ohio and Church of the Good Shepherd (CGS) in Bloomington, Indiana, are joining forces to sponsor the Reformed Evangelical Pastors College. We'll share more about our goals for this work in days to come, but last weekend was the first formal meeting of the college board. Board members of the college are Rev. David Curell (CGS), Andrew Folley, M.D. (CTW), Ben James (CTW), Matt Miklovic (CTW) and Tim Wegener (CGS). Rev. Stephen Baker is the college's principal.

Shown are members of the CTW and CGS elder boards at a joint meeting held at the conclusion of a joint men's retreat last weekend in Fort Wayne, IN.

Pray with us that this endeavor is blessed by God with godly students, accomplished and spiritual faculty, and logistical success.

Deficient pastoral training is the primary reason the Evangelical Church has lost her way over the last century: as the training the Evangelical church has given her pastors has grown more academic and less pastoral, her pastors have become more pragmatic and less principled. Ironically, the academic trend in pastoral training and the professionalization of the ministerial office has led to men (and, tragically, women) vested with pastoral titles and roles who are neither committed theologically nor principled practically.

Iain Murray's Evangelicalism Divided describes this trend in greater detail for those who'd like to read more.