Wednesday, May 26, 2004 AD
Losing the Plot Message?
This month's E-N also contains a suitably withering review of a book by Steve Chalke (a well known "evangelical" author in the UK) entitled The Lost Message of Jesus
This book seems to have caused considerable disquiet when it was published at "Word Alive!" earlier this year, because (as the reviewers put it), the book "attacks the heart of biblical Christianity, and offers instead a 'lost message' which is really no gospel at all". They highlight the book's:
Does that sound too cynical? I suppose my own experience in "open evangelicalism" leads me to be thoroughly unsurprised by all this (Chalke sounds uncannily like the vicar at our old Anglican church which we left around three years ago). Chalke denies virtually every one of the cardinal points of evangelical theology but wishes to continue to be treated as an evangelical in good standing, a wish that appears to have been granted:
Perhaps I'm just feeling a bit resentful at being made to feel at times in the past couple of weeks like I've apostasised from evangelical Christianity because I've joined a church in which one finds a liturgy, clerical vestments, the sign of the cross, the word "altar", and people taking Christ at His Word when it comes to the sacraments. But all this seems a good illustration of the point made in the excellent Bo Giertz passage posted by Revd Brondos the other day:
This book seems to have caused considerable disquiet when it was published at "Word Alive!" earlier this year, because (as the reviewers put it), the book "attacks the heart of biblical Christianity, and offers instead a 'lost message' which is really no gospel at all". They highlight the book's:
- wrong view of God ("the Bible never defines [God] as anything other than love", writes Chalke);
- wrong view of man ("Jesus believed in original goodness! ... all we need is to be given a chance by someone who believes in us"); and thus, inevitably
- wrong view of the cross (substitutionary atonement being "a form of cosmic child abuse - a vengeful Father, punishing his Son for an offence he has not even committed, morally dubious in total contradiction to the statement 'God is love'").
Does that sound too cynical? I suppose my own experience in "open evangelicalism" leads me to be thoroughly unsurprised by all this (Chalke sounds uncannily like the vicar at our old Anglican church which we left around three years ago). Chalke denies virtually every one of the cardinal points of evangelical theology but wishes to continue to be treated as an evangelical in good standing, a wish that appears to have been granted:
...the Word Alive leadership were made aware of [the book's] contents, [but] it was not withdrawn from sale, nor was any statement made, and the author himself stood up to give the main Big Top address the following evening.Part of the problem is that "evangelical" is increasingly defined in non-doctrinal (even anti-doctrinal) terms, and one's status as an "evangelical" is measured according to very superficial criteria - so that, for example, an "evangelical" is someone who prefers an informal, breezy, contemporary worship style, as opposed to "dead liturgy".
Perhaps I'm just feeling a bit resentful at being made to feel at times in the past couple of weeks like I've apostasised from evangelical Christianity because I've joined a church in which one finds a liturgy, clerical vestments, the sign of the cross, the word "altar", and people taking Christ at His Word when it comes to the sacraments. But all this seems a good illustration of the point made in the excellent Bo Giertz passage posted by Revd Brondos the other day:
Such external things as confession, bowing our knees, making the sign of the cross mark no distinction between Protestants and Roman Catholics ... The deciding factor is something entirely different. It is the doctrine of justification by faith. He alone is an evangelical Christian who possesses the secret of faith in his heart, so that he believes in the forgiveness of sins for the sake of Christ’s atonement and through that faith is united with his Saviour.Amen.
