If one examines closely the actions of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) in the United States (US) over the first decade of the twenty-first century, there can be little doubt that significant changes have taken place.Footnote 1 The most recent catalyst for change began in the 1990s, when Clark Pinnock and John Sanders introduced open theism into the ETS as an evangelical alternative to both Calvinism and Arminianism. This introduction set off a severe debate, which resulted in the ETS putting forth a resolution which allowed for the possible expulsion of both Sanders and Pinnock based upon the premise that certain entailments of open theism led to the conclusion that scripture was not inerrant,Footnote 2 which is one of the two doctrines one must agree with in order to be a member of the ETS.Footnote 3 Neither Sanders nor Pinnock were ultimately expelled from the society, but open theism was formally denounced, and a resolution passed which allowed the ‘Chicago Statement on Inerrancy’ of 1978 to become the authoritative guideline for deciding whether or not a society member's biblical and theological viewpoint upheld the ETS position on inerrancy.Footnote 4 The resultant actions of the ETS were as follows: (1) although Sanders and Pinnock could continue to be ETS members, their ability to speak on behalf of open theism was silenced and (2) by defining inerrancy through the lens of the Chicago Statement, a warning was sent out to everyone that there a zero tolerance policy was in place for those attempting to reform the generally accepted traditional doctrines of the ETS.
Based upon these recent actions by the ETS, an interest arose to try and identify the culture of the society, in terms of describing the values around which it structures itself. The thesis of this article is that the values the ETS structures itself around demonstrate that the culture the ETS accommodates to is modernism. But, by embracing modernity, it shuns two important cultures. The first is the pre-modern Christian culture, whose confessional nature was the core value and foundation which motivated Christian faith and practice until the sixteenth century. The second is the non-Christian culture comprised of those who currently live in our contemporary, post-modern world. This second culture suffers the most at the hands of modern conservative evangelicalism, as it is excluded from hearing the good news of the Gospel in ways which make sense to it.
In order to support this thesis, the structure of this article will be as follows. First, it will define the term ‘culture’ in a context suitable for this discussion. Second, it will describe the values which characterise the culture of the ETS. Third, it will discuss the history of how and why the current values of the ETS came to be, by presenting a brief history of the development of modernism, as well as the conservative evangelical response to it. Fourth, this article will discuss the following problems with the assimilation of conservative evangelicalism into the modern culture: (1) it has excluded the pre-modern cultural understanding of Christianity, namely that humans understand the truth of God's revelation by following in the way of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit rather than through any form of modern thinking (i.e. objective truth, rationalism, doctrine, etc.), and (2) it has excluded the non-Christian, post-modern culture, which is why the US church has declined so severely over the last forty to fifty years.Footnote 5 Finally, this article will propose a way forward for the conservative evangelicalism of the ETS.
Defining the culture of the ETS
The term ‘culture’ carries with it a tremendous burden in that it has numerous definitions depending upon the context in which it is used. For the purpose of this article, Kevin Vanhoozer offers the following helpful guideline for defining culture. He states: ‘A culture expresses the totality of what a group of humans value’, in terms of what they believe is most important and around which this group orders itself.Footnote 6
What are the values around which the ETS structures itself? Roger Olson offers significant insight in helping to answer this question. He proposes that conservative evangelicals, who comprise the vast majority of the ETS, structure themselves around five major values.Footnote 7
First, Olson says conservatives tend to believe that the fundamental nature of Christianity is found in the formation of and simple belief in correct doctrine. Second, the phenomenon of God's revelation to humanity is understood primarily in terms of propositions.Footnote 8 Third, conservatives believe traditional orthodox theology should be highly esteemed.Footnote 9 Fourth, conservatives tend to dislike both modernism and post-modernism. Finally, traditional evangelicals typically believe theology can be done free from the constraints of historical and cultural influences.Footnote 10 Consequently, conservatives believe that the truth of theology is objective, as well as singular, meaning that there is only one way in which to understand what is true.
Modernism and the conservative evangelicalism of the ETS
Simply describing the cultural values which structure the conservative evangelicalism of the ETS, however, gives little insight as to why the society decided to adopt the values which have historically characterised it and which currently define it. Therefore, discussing the major historical event which helped shape the current values of conservative evangelicals is crucial to understanding why the ETS culture is the way it is.
Recall that part of the fourth value, which Olson says defines conservative evangelicalism, is a dislike for the methods and ethos of modernism. This dislike is based upon the third cultural value, namely the conviction that traditional, orthodox theology is the actual foundation upon which conservatives stand. But does this conviction faithfully represent the culture of the ETS? Many evangelicals claim it does not, arguing that the values conservatives currently hold onto are a product of modernism.Footnote 11 To support this claim, these evangelicals look to the history of the relationship between conservatives and modernism. Exploring this history is where attention will now be turned.
A brief history of modernism and its impact on Christianity
The beginning of modernism or the Enlightenment arose out of the context of the Protestant Reformation, which had witnessed the weakening of the powerful and unified authority of the Catholic Church. The split between Protestants and Catholics meant there was no longer a single authoritative voice speaking on behalf of the universal church, as well as the wider culture at large. Consequently, ‘questions about religion and morality could no longer be settled by appeal to a commonly acknowledged tradition’.Footnote 12 From within this context, the work of Rene Descartes arose. The date 1637 is one of the most important in the history of Western civilisation, because it was in this year that Descartes, who is now called the father of modern philosophy, wrote his famous work The Discourse on Method. The purpose of this treatise was to ground the foundation of human knowledge on some type of certainty which could not be questioned. In the end, Descartes proposed that certainty could only be found in the human ability to reason, and he was convinced that knowledge gained through reason was ‘culture- and tradition-free, universal, and reflective of a reality that exists outside the mind’.Footnote 13 In other words, humans could have objective and true knowledge of the world which was not influenced by subjectivism.Footnote 14
Descartes had little idea of how devastating his philosophy of human reason would be on Christianity,Footnote 15 as it was not long before the philosophy of the Enlightenment challenged the traditional authority of the church.Footnote 16 But this was the point of the entire modern project, namely to challenge the validity and trustworthiness of any and all authoritative institutions, whose ethos relied solely upon confession.Footnote 17 Therefore, the idea ‘that we understand nature and humanity best through the use of our natural faculties’ ultimately led to ‘the rejection of revelation, tradition or divine illumination as the surest guide for human beings’.Footnote 18 Consequently, human reason and experience rather than God became the supreme authority for how the world should be understood, and by the end of the eighteenth century in Europe, ‘the church had been marginalized, theology dethroned . . . and the Christian worldview reduced to a fading memory’.Footnote 19
The conservative evangelical response to modernism in the US: assimilation
Observing the marginalisation of the European church, many conservative evangelicals in the US did not want to inherit the same fate. Instead, they wanted the Christian church and its theology to be recognised as a legitimate authority which at least equalled that of science. The only way for theology to receive such recognition, however, was for it to become a science. The burden of formulating a scientific theology fell to a now famous group of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century theologians (i.e. Charles Hodge, A. A. Hodge, Benjamin Warfield and J. Gresham Machen), who comprised what is currently known as the ‘Old Princeton School’.
The primary goal of these theologians was to prove scripture was trustworthy through the use of reason or sensory experience and therefore could meet the criteria of certainty that modernism imposed upon all things which claimed to be authoritative. In order to meet such criteria, Charles Hodge proposed that scripture was ‘infallible, and of divine authority . . . and consequently free from all error whether of doctrine, fact, or precept’.Footnote 20 An objection, however, was already in place to this proposal. The discipline of textual criticism had already demonstrated that errors did in fact exist in scripture, especially in the New Testament where several manuscripts revealed there were variations in many passages. A. A. Hodge, the son of Charles Hodge, responded to this objection by saying that it was only the original documents of the biblical writers which were error-free. Thus, he explained: ‘The Church has never held the verbal infallibility of our translations, nor the perfect accuracy of the copies of the original Hebrew and Greek Scriptures now possessed by us’, but they have always ‘asserted absolute infallibility . . . of the original autograph copies of the Scripture, as they came from the hands of their inspired writers’.Footnote 21
This beginning formulation of the doctrine of inerrancy by Charles Hodge and his son continued in the writing of Benjamin Warfield, who became ‘the church's leading proponent of [the] perfect inerrancy doctrine’.Footnote 22 Like both Hodges, he supported plenary, verbal inerrancy, stating: ‘A proved error in Scripture contradicts not only our doctrine, but the Scripture claims and, therefore, its inspiration in making those claims.’Footnote 23 Warfield's successor, J. Gresham Machen, likewise affirmed the inerrancy of scripture saying:
[T]he doctrine of plenary inspiration does not deny the individuality of the Biblical writers; it does not ignore their use of ordinary means for acquiring information; it does not involve any lack of interest in the historical situation which gave rise to the Biblical books. What it does deny is the presence of error in the Bible.Footnote 24
Gary Dorrien explains what inspiration meant to Machen and emphasises its importance stating: ‘The doctrine of inspiration proposes that the guiding presence of the Holy Spirit in their writing saved the biblical writers from any kind of error.’Footnote 25 The significance of Machen's declaration was that it claimed scripture could, in theory at least, be given the status of certain authority which modernism required.
After establishing the authority of scripture through the doctrine of inerrancy, conservative evangelicals turned their attention to assimilating Christian theology into the modern project. In order to do this, Charles Hodge looked to the ‘Scottish “common sense” philosophy pioneered by [the empirical philosopher] Thomas Reid’.Footnote 26 So, according to Hodge, ‘the Christian worldview necessarily assumes the real existence of objects of knowledge perceived by the human senses’.Footnote 27 Therefore, based upon this modern empiricism, Hodge argued the following: (1) ‘the doctrine of biblical infallibility cannot keep theology true if one does not assume the correspondence theory of truth . . . and the possibility that God's revelation to humanity has been given in propositional form’, and (2) scripture is a collection of facts and as such it can be studied using the same methods as any scientist would use to study the natural world.Footnote 28
In contrast to Hodge, who laid the foundation for conservative evangelicalism through modern empiricism, Carl F. Henry, who became the voice for conservatives in the middle of the twentieth century, relied upon the legacy of modern rationalism to demonstrate that Christian theology could be declared certain and authoritative by modernist standards. Henry rejected empiricism as being too subjective. Consequently, because he claimed that the foundation of human knowledge was objective and rational, divine revelation was as well: ‘Divine revelation is the source of all truth, the truth of Christianity included; reason is the instrument for recognizing it; Scripture is its verifying principle’.Footnote 29 For Henry, ‘[d]ivine revelation is a mental activity’ which provided ‘intelligible disclosure’,Footnote 30 which could not only be used to formulate universally true doctrines from scripture, but could consequently be interpreted in a scientifically rational manner. Therefore, he claimed that ‘[t]he truth claims of Christianity are as open to rational inquiry as are the claims of chemistry or sociology’.Footnote 31
On the subject of inerrancy, Henry was adamant that scripture could have no authority nor be inspired by God, if errors were present within it.Footnote 32 According to Dorrien, Henry and Warfield shared a commonality in that both ‘believed . . . biblical inspiration necessarily implied inerrancy, and that orthodoxy could be sustained only by refusing to retreat from strict inerrancy’.Footnote 33 Henry believed that if conservatives ever did abandon inerrancy, evangelicalism would be defenceless, because it ‘would have no principled basis on which to resist aggressive forms of biblical criticism’ and therefore ‘would quickly degenerate into religious liberalism’,Footnote 34 to which Henry felt many evangelicals had already fallen prey.
According to John Perry, the idea that inerrancy was the only orthodox view of scripture for conservative evangelicals ‘became increasingly clear as the debate moved into its height in the late 1970s’.Footnote 35 At this time, a group of conservative evangelicals (i.e. Carl F. Henry, J. I. Packer and Norman Geisler) formed a committee called the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy (ICBI). This council produced a document known as the ‘Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy’ in 1978 in order to provide conservatives with guidelines on how inerrancy should be defined, as well as on how to respond to the many evangelicals who were turning against the doctrine.Footnote 36
Since the ICBI and the development of the Chicago Statement, the ETS has done little to hinder the continued influence of modernism in its culture. In fact, it has only worsened as the ETS just recently embraced the Chicago Statement as a standard for judging those who sign the society's doctrinal statement to determine if a particular member's scholarship does in fact conform to the ETS understanding of inerrancy. By continuing to embrace this culture of modernism, however, the ETS has essentially excluded all evangelicals who still conform to a pre-modern standard of biblical faith and confession, as well as those who have found comfort in the postmodern culture and its understanding of scripture. But if the ETS is going to insist on supporting modern culture in their doctrine, they bear the burden of proof to demonstrate that using a modern approach to interpret scripture is in fact biblical. Therefore, the purpose of the following section is to examine whether or not the modern presuppositions the ETS has relied upon in formulating their cultural values are supported by scripture as well as traditional Christian orthodoxy.
The problems of modernism for conservative evangelicalism
The section will assess critically each of the values Olson says characterise conservative evangelicals and therefore the ETS. The first part, on the modern problem of knowledge, will critique the ideas that the truth of Christianity is obtained through propositions, correct doctrine, objectivity and rationalism. The second part, on what influential pre-modern theologians believed about the doctrine of inerrancy, will show that the ETS is not as faithful to traditional Christian orthodoxy as they claim, as it will propose that the ETS actually esteems modernism more than tradition because of their belief in the Old Princeton School idea of inerrancy. The third part, on the problem of cultural influence, evaluates critically the ETS value which proposes theology can be done in a non-cultural environment. The last part, the problem of success in modern conservative evangelicalism, critiques the conservative dislike for post-modernism by pointing out that modernism has done nothing but alienate conservatives from those they are called to evangelise, namely the unchurched culture in which we now live.
The modern problem of knowledge
Recall that the modern theory of human knowledge was based upon the premise that, either through the use of reason or the senses, one could have objectively true knowledge of the world. The way in which knowledge was expressed was through the use of propositions which could be deemed as being either true or false by determining whether or not a particular proposition accurately corresponded to the state of affairs it was meant to describe. One major problem of this modern theory was that truth could only be expressed and understood using literal language. Consequently, metaphorical language was considered a deviant, non-conventional linguistic device which could have no bearing on how humans truly understood the world,Footnote 37 but was merely a poetic, rhetorical or literary figure of speech used for emphasis or to stir the emotions of those with whom one was communicating. Over the last three decades, however, these modern assumptions concerning literal and metaphorical language have been proven false, which has tremendous implications for the modern presuppositions of the ETS that truth is objective and propositional, as this article will now demonstrate.
Conceptual metaphor
In their seminal work, Metaphors we Live by, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson critiqued the modern presupposition about literal and metaphorical language by examining linguistic expressions which, when put together, formed what they have named ‘conceptual metaphor’. A conceptual metaphor is defined as the ability to conceptualise (i.e. provide meaning to) one type of thing (i.e. abstract concept, event, action, etc.) in terms of conventional experiences.Footnote 38 As an example of conceptual metaphor, they used the following linguistic expressions which comprise the ARGUMENT IS WAR metaphor:Footnote 39
1. Your claims cannot be defended.
2. He attacked every weak point in my argument.
3. His criticisms were right on target.
4. I demolished his argument.
5. I've never won an argument with him.
6. If you use that strategy in your debate, he'll wipe you out.
7. He shot down all the points in my proposal.Footnote 40
Lakoff and Johnson interpret the meaning of this conceptual metaphor as follows:
It is important to see that we don't just talk about arguments in terms of war. We can actually win or lose arguments. We see the person we are arguing with as an opponent. We attack his positions and we defend our own. We gain and lose ground. We plan and use strategies. If we find a position indefensible, we can abandon it and take a new line of attack. Many things we do in arguing are partially structured by the concept of war. Though there is no physical battle, there is a verbal battle, and the structure of an argument – attack, defense, counterattack, etc. – reflects this. It is in this sense that the ARGUMENT IS WAR metaphor is one that we live by [as] . . . it structures the actions we perform in arguing . . .Footnote 41 Moreover, this is the ordinary way of having an argument and talking about one . . . Our conventional ways of talking about arguments presuppose a metaphor we are hardly ever conscious of. The metaphor is not merely in the words we use – it is in our very concept of an argument. The language of argument is not poetic, fanciful, or rhetorical . . . We talk about arguments that way because we conceive of them that way.Footnote 42
There are three major points Lakoff and Johnson discuss in their explanation of the ARGUMENT IS WAR metaphor which are keys to critiquing the idea that literal and metaphorical language are separate. First, the language used in metaphorical expressions is conventional rather than deviant. Second, because metaphorical language is conventional, there is no distinction between literal and metaphorical language. Third, since there is no literal–metaphorical dichotomy, metaphors make truth claims.
Critiquing the objective-truth-literal paradigm of modernism
Based upon conceptual metaphorical theory, Ken McElhanon set out to prove two points. First, the modern presupposition that truth is objective as well as literal is false. Second, the concept of truth in the New Testament is not primarily based upon the principle of objectivity, propositions, doctrinal correctness or rationalism.
To demonstrate his first point, McElhanon gathered together a variety of linguistic expressions English speakers use in understanding the concept of truth. In examining these expressions, he noticed that all of them had a common feature, namely they expressed the conceptual metaphor TRUTH IS AN OBJECT. The following linguistic expressions demonstrate this metaphor:
1. They are consistently hiding the truth.
2. It is possible that we may never discover the truth.
3. He has always been suspected of covering up the truth.
4. There are many people who will attempt to sweep aside the truth.
5. You can't handle the truth.
6. She always seems to twist the truth in her favour.
7. The truth will be exposed.
8. We will not allow them to bury the truth.
9. Even though the truth is right in front of him, he can't see it.
10. The truth will come out.
11. You will find the truth, if you look hard enough for it.
12. We can't allow her to distort the truth.
13. They have a tendency to stretch the truth a little.
14. I'll give you the truth.Footnote 43
Although space does not allow for a comprehensive listing of all the expressions which demonstrate the TRUTH IS AN OBJECT metaphor, ‘it is important to note that this is the default conceptual metaphor for truth in English’.Footnote 44 Consequently, the modernist belief that truth is objective and therefore literal cannot be supported based upon the linguistic evidence. Truth is very much a metaphorical concept and the truth-object metaphor is the predominant one used by all modern thinkers, including conservative evangelicals.
In contrast to the truth-object metaphor, the New Testament perceives of truth in terms of moving along a path. In other words, the New Testament writers understood the concept of truth using the TRUTH IS A PATH metaphor. For example, Jesus refers to himself as ‘the way of truth’ in John 14:6. Matthew 7:13–14 reveals that there are two paths a person can follow in life. One path is wide, leads to destruction, and many will follow it. Anyone who walks down this path is walking according to the flesh (Rom 8:4). The other path, however, is narrow, few follow it, but it leads to life.Footnote 45 Those following this path flee evil in order to walk in a life of righteousness, faith, love and peace (2 Tim 2:22). Christ encourages his followers to help those who have made an error, by following a path that leads to sin and death, to find the path back to him (Jam 5:1–20).Footnote 46 Other examples of the truth-journey metaphor include:
1. 3 John 1:4 ‘walk in the truth’.
2. 2 Timothy 2:18 ‘wander away from the truth’.
3. James 5:19 ‘turn away from the truth’.
4. John 16:13 ‘the Spirit of truth . . . will guide you into all truth’.Footnote 47
Although much of the New Testament evidence indicates that truth involves walking down the path of Christ (i.e. following one road rather than another), McElhanon states: ‘There is overwhelming evidence that most, if not all translators of the NT into English have unwittingly substituted the English metaphor TRUTH IS AN OBJECT for the Greek TRUTH IS A ROAD.’Footnote 48 For example, Ephesians 4:15 has been translated traditionally as ‘speak the truth in love’. The problem with this translation is that ‘truth’ is not a noun in this phrase nor does the Greek word for ‘speak’ appear here. In this passage, ‘truth’ is a participle. Therefore, a more correct rendering of the phrase would be ‘act in truthful ways that demonstrate your love’, which falls much more in line with the truth-journey metaphor. Unfortunately, because the truth-object metaphor is so prevalent and the belief that truth is propositional so strong, the idea that truth was meant to be a verb rather than a noun in this verse is simply inconceivable to the translators.Footnote 49 McElhanon goes on to analyse several more significant instances where translators of the NIV replaced the truth-journey metaphor with the truth-object metaphor.Footnote 50 The point of his analysis is to ‘call . . . into question the [modern] notion that the truth of the Gospel consists mainly of what we know . . . rather than in a way of living that reflects the character of God and Christ’.Footnote 51
In summary, the importance of McElhanon's findings cannot be understated as he convincingly demonstrates that the modern belief of the ETS, namely that the fundamental nature of Christianity is found in the pursuit of rational, objective truth which results in doctrinal correctness (i.e. what we know) through the analysis of propositions, is simply not biblical. The primary goal of the New Testament writers was to put people on the path of truth, which they defined as a way of living by the principles of Jesus Christ.
The problem of inerrancy: what influential pre-modern theologians believed
According to Dorrien, both Luther and Calvin understood scripture to be authoritative and infallible, ‘but for them the attribution of infallibility to scripture referred to its trustworthiness in all things necessary for salvation, not the precise accuracy of its historical . . . accounts’. They also agreed that in some way a unity existed between the Spirit and scripture, as well as shared the conviction that faith always took priority over reason.Footnote 52
Luther's opinion was that errors and inconsistencies existed throughout the Bible. For example, he believed many of the prophets gave incorrect prophecies, he said the Gospels were not consistent in their record of Christ's Passion, and he found that certain books of the Old Testament and New Testament should have never been considered a part of the canon.Footnote 53 But Luther never weakened in his conviction that scripture was first and foremost a book for teaching the spirit of humanity in the way of God through Christ. Therefore, he judged the biblical text ‘by the relative force and directness of their witness to Christ’, by examining how well the texts told the story of how faith in Christ conquered the power of sin and death in order to give humanity life and salvation.Footnote 54
In contrast to Luther, Calvin was more respectful of scripture and towards those who helped produce the canon. With Luther, however, he agreed ‘that the biblical writers were not strongly concerned with precise accuracy and that their worldview often prevented them from making accurate statements’.Footnote 55 For example, Calvin pointed out that Genesis described the moon as being bigger than Saturn, and that the writers of the Gospels had little regard for presenting the events of Christ's life in a chronological order. Calvin believed, however, that such historical accuracy was not the goal of the biblical writers. Their primary purpose in writing was spiritual not factual.Footnote 56 According to Dorrien, ‘Calvin urged that it was pointless to quibble over the details of scriptural texts or to treat the Bible as a sourcebook for rational proofs or arguments.’Footnote 57 Instead, Calvin believed the work of the Holy Spirit should be viewed as more effective than any form of human rationality.Footnote 58
In summary, according to Steven Studebaker, many ETS conservatives, who currently uphold the doctrine of plenary, verbal inerrancy, have defended this doctrine on the grounds that it ‘is the traditional understanding [of the church] before the modern period’.Footnote 59 Such a claim is dubious at best for two reasons. First, the historical data seem to indicate that this doctrine is relatively young in comparison to the entire history of the church's theological tradition, as the formation of plenary, verbal inerrancy did not develop until the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.Footnote 60 Second, neither Luther nor Calvin, who not only predate the modern period but are also two of the most influential theologians in Christian orthodoxy, ever supported the Old Princeton School doctrine of inerrancy. For Luther and Calvin,
[W]hat was crucial in scriptural narrative was not its precise facticity or its rational persuasiveness but its capacity to convey the significance of Jesus Christ faithful reading illuminated by the movement of the Holy Spirit. This capacity to bring faithful readers to saving knowledge of Christ was, to them, the heart of what it means to affirm that scripture is God's infallible word.Footnote 61
Therefore, as much as the ETS says it highly esteems tradition, it actually excludes the traditional ethos of two of the most influential thinkers of Christian history by disregarding Luther and Calvin's belief that confessional faith in the power of the Holy Spirit is what makes scripture authoritative and infallible, rather than the modern doctrine of inerrancy currently upheld by the ETS.
The problem of cultural influence
Recall that one of the characteristics Olson says conservative evangelicals value is the belief that theology can be formulated in a culture-free environment. In other words, theology is not produced to address the needs of culture, as this would imply that theological truth is not objective or universal. But an examination of history does not seem to support the idea that theology is free from cultural influence, as the following three examples will illustrate.
The first example deals with the formation of the New Testament canon of scripture. Although many early church leaders suggested that there was a collection of writings by the apostles which was authoritative for Christian faith and practice, ‘no officially recognized or unanimously agreed upon Christian equivalent to the Hebrew Bible yet existed’.Footnote 62 Marcion, a Christian who converted to the heretical cultural influence of Gnosticism, wanted to discover the actual teachings of Christ. To do this, Marcion removed any hint of Judaism from the Christian message, as he believed the God of the Old Testament ‘was more demonic than divine’.Footnote 63 The result of Marcion's effort was an anti-Jewish New Testament ‘canon’ which became popular in some areas in Rome and Carthage. In response to Marcion, the church set its attention to developing a proper canon which reached its final form by 397. Although Marcion was eventually excommunicated because of his Gnostic beliefs, it is generally agreed that ‘the church owes a great debt to a heretic’.Footnote 64
The second example comes from the context of the Protestant Reformation. One of the reasons Martin Luther developed the doctrine of justification by faith was to curtail the political corruption and greed of the Catholic Church. During his time the church was promoting the idea that people could buy forgiveness of their sins by purchasing indulgences. Luther countered this idea by claiming that forgiveness was a free gift from God because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Accordingly, all who demonstrated faith in God through what Christ had done on the cross were justified because they believed.
Finally, there is the example given in this article, namely how the ETS has been influenced by the modern culture. Enlightenment rationalism, the need for coercive objective truth and certainty, and the belief that correct doctrine is the core of what Christianity is are all examples of conservative evangelical accommodation to modern culture.
The point of these examples is to highlight that culture influences human understanding of the world and God. It is not possible to overcome or remove ourselves from the culture and history in which we are so immersed. But our being culturally and historically situated does not mean that Christians should cease their pursuits of understanding biblical, theological or spiritual truth. What it does mean is that we humbly accept human limitations and rely upon faith and the work of the Holy Spirit more than reason alone in seeking knowledge from scripture and theological understanding.
The problem of success in modern conservative evangelicalism
Conservative evangelicalism was attempting to join modernism at the height of its success. Although science and technology was replacing the Christian faith as the dominant ethos in Europe, it was bringing significantly positive aspects to society. Longer life, economic prosperity and better education were all a part of the promise modernism made to the world. It was this positive momentum of the Enlightenment into which conservatives hoped to tap in order to stave off the marginalisation of Christianity in the US.
Human confidence in the modern promise that reason, science and technology would create a utopian society, however, came to an end with the onslaught of two World Wars, which killed millions. In the US, an anti-modern revolution began in the 1960s as a result of the Vietnam War. At this time, people began to realise that they had allowed modernism to strip away their spiritual being and replace it with empty promises which could no longer be fulfilled. Unfortunately, this reawakening of the spiritual quest did not lead many back to Christianity, as people became aware of other religious options which promoted spirituality as a way of life rather than merely as a system of belief.
This beginning of the post-modern ethos, however, did not cause conservative evangelicalism to re-examine its allegiance to modernism. As a result, the US church has continued to lose its influence since the 1960s. According to James Emery White, a twenty-year study conducted between 1965 and 1985 revealed that the vast majority of US denominations were in serious decline. The last decade of the twentieth century did not see this pattern change ‘with the Presbyterian Church (USA) losing close to 100,000 members in 1995 alone . . . all while the US population increased by 13 percent’.Footnote 65 More recent figures from 2002 showed that ‘no more than 42 percent of Americans were present at a church service’,Footnote 66 and the number of unchurched adults rose to 34 per cent from 24 per cent in 1991.Footnote 67 Based upon these data, it seems that the conservative evangelical embrace of modern culture has excluded the majority of the now post-modern US culture from the Gospel of God through Christ, as our contemporary culture no longer thinks or acts in modern ways in the context of spirituality.
A way forward
The modernism of the ETS is a failure for three main reasons. First, it has not prevented the marginalisation of the church from continuing in the US, but has isolated conservative evangelicals from a culture in which they have an obligation to live out and proclaim the Gospel. Second, it has caused a schism between modern and post-modern evangelicals by using modern cultural values to divide rather than unite.Footnote 68 Third, although the ETS claims to value pre-modern Christian orthodoxy, it has, in reality, transformed this tradition into an unbiblical modernism which would be unrecognisable to the majority of church fathers and early Reformers, as they were first and foremost confessional. For them, the truth of Christianity was found through faith in God through the life, death and resurrection of Christ. This confession, which was revealed by the power of the Holy Spirit and confirmed as truth by those who believe, should represent the core of ETS doctrine, because it allows evangelicals freedom to experience the truth of Christianity rather than simply learn of it through rational means. So Karen Ward, who speaks on behalf of the post-modern emergent church, testifies:
Christian truth takes flesh in the person of Christ, who in the name of the Father and in the power of the Spirit, leads Christian communities into truth and into him, as he is truth. And regarding the authority of truth and Christ, I do not see proof resting in Scripture alone, but in Jesus himself . . . as reflected upon, wrestled with, and discerned within Christian community by the leading of the Spirit.Footnote 69
Admittedly, taking a confessional stance towards doctrine does open up the possibly that all who are allowed to become members of the ETS do not follow the way of Christ which they profess. In response, it is important to point out three things. First, the ETS currently has no doctrinal statement which actually addresses the need for its members to be followers of Christ, which begs the question: why is it more important for the ETS to have a statement on inerrancy, but not one dealing with salvation? It is possible the ETS merely assumes its members are Christ-followers, or it may be that the ETS rationalises that, if one believes in the modern understanding of inerrancy, that person is automatically a Christian. Either way, it seems the ETS is not significantly interested in question of whether its members are actively following the path of Christ. Second, no one lives up to the standard Christ set out for us to follow, which is why grace and forgiveness play a central role in any Christian confession of faith. Third, if it is found that a particular member or members of the ETS are not Christ-followers or have started to follow a different path, the society has an obligation to help them find their way back before the ETS attempts to remove them from their fellowship (Jas 5:1–20). Helping those who have wandered from the path of Christ find their way back to the right path, however, requires that the ETS be willing to submit to scripture and show patient, kind, accepting and forgiving love to all of its members, accepting them as sinners as well as saints.
Therefore, based upon the idea that confession is the core value of Christian practice and faith, this article proposes four doctrines the ETS should consider adopting. First, the doctrine of plenary, verbal inerrancy should be replaced by a doctrine which simply makes scripture the authoritative standard for Christian life. Second, there needs to be a statement about salvation, namely that conversion is a necessary step for becoming a Christ-follower and therefore a member of the ETS. Third, the ETS doctrinal basis needs a statement which addresses the atoning work of Christ on the cross. Finally, there should be a doctrinal belief which focuses on ‘the imperative of evangelism’, which is actively following the way of Christ and testifying to that way as the truth for non-Christians. According to Kenneth Collins, ‘each of these four themes [is] . . . integral to any assessment of the evangelical ethos’ and they ‘are broad enough to account for evangelical pluralism and yet particular enough to define evangelical self-understanding’.Footnote 70
Conclusion
It is difficult not to sympathise with the ETS. There is no question that it wants to uphold biblical truth. Many of its members are respected scholars, pastors and professors. Unfortunately, the power of modernism is not easily broken. The purpose of this article has been to demonstrate that the ETS embraces the culture of modernism in its values and doctrine. Such an embrace started out innocently, as conservative evangelicals wanted to prevent the church from becoming marginalised in the US. But by assimilating itself into modernity, it lost its confessional roots, as well as its ability to speak to the non-Christian culture as our society has transitioned into post-modernism. Equally important, however, the ETS has lost its ability to treat its own members with respect, charity, love, grace and forgiveness in its pursuit of the modern concept of truth. In so doing, it has forgotten what it means to be truly Christian, which is properly defined as following the way of Christ.Footnote 71
Fortunately, there is a better way. This is the way of confession and forming doctrine through such confession by finding those elements which unite evangelicals rather than divide them. Such uniting features include: the authority of scripture, the atonement, salvation and evangelism. All these beliefs allow the ETS to hold onto its self-identity and respect but, at the same time, allow a variety of Christians to participate in the ETS so that different perspectives can be learned, new friendships formed and the society positively enhanced.
It is true that using a confessional approach to change the culture and doctrine of the ETS is risky, as there can never be certainty that all members live out what they confess. But most things worth doing are risky and they teach us more and more what it is like to walk by faith and in fellowship with Christ and each other. Therefore, this article encourages all ETS members who read it to consider laying aside modernism in favour of confession so that the society may once again reclaim a biblical ethos.Footnote 72
