 Theologian: Evangelical movements are helping church find its way home By Parker T. Williamson The Layman Volume 37, Number 2 Posted June 2, 2004 CHARLOTTE – Widely acclaimed as one of the leading contemporary evangelical scholars, Dr. Thomas C. Oden addressed a gathering of students, faculty and area ministers on the Charlotte campus of Reformed Theological Seminary, April 20. In three lectures during the day-long event, Oden previewed the contents of a soon to be released book which he co-authored with his evangelical colleague, Dr. J. I. Packer. The book, One Faith: Charting the Evangelical Consensus, is published by Intervarsity Press and will be available in mid-summer, Oden said.
Oden, formerly professor of theology and ethics at Drew University, and Packer, professor of theology at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, serve as editors of Christianity Today and have collaborated on many scholarly projects over the years, including the drafting of several evangelical affirmations. Their review of evangelical affirmations from every continent led them to conclude that a compilation would provide a rich resource for contemporary Christians and a valuable insight into the Holy Spirit’s movement in our time.
Evangelicals are often characterized as independents, infighters, separatists and anti-ecumenists, said Oden. But a study of their declarations, from gatherings in Amsterdam, Iguassu, Manila, Berlin, Chicago, Willowbank, Seoul and other places where evangelicals have coalesced to express their faith, tells a very different story. What we have here, said Oden, “is a growing sense of urgency among evangelicals to state the essentials” in a time when acculturated denominations have blurred Christian distinctiveness. “Of course, there are different perspectives among the evangelicals,” said Oden, “but there is an amazing degree of unity. They are clearly affirming one faith.” Selecting the statements that would be included in their book was a major challenge for Oden and Packer. “There were many excellent declarations,” said Oden. “Early on, we decided to stay away from documents that were primarily the work of one author. We wanted to focus on statements that emerged from dialogue and serious corporate engagement,” said Oden. “We were looking for evangelical consensus that has received the consent of Christian communities.” ‘True ecumenism’ Common to the statements that Oden and Packer chose for analysis is their “commitment to two millennia of Christian confession.” The fact that these statements are self-consciously anchored in Scripture and the historic faith of the church, dating back to the writings of the ancient patristics, is the key source of their unity, said Oden. It is this grounding in the consentium fidelium that makes these confessions truly ecumenical, Oden emphasized. He contrasted this “true ecumenism” with the false unity that is promoted by the World Council of Churches and other ecumenical organizations. “The liberals franchised the word ‘ecumenical’ in 1948,” he said. They gave a radically different meaning to a perfectly good word, said Oden. For centuries, the church’s understanding of its unity was “founded on patristic exegesis and classical Christian faith,” he said. But when liberals abandoned theology for politics, they co-opted the ecumenical movement, and evangelicals would have nothing to do with anything that was labeled “ecumenical.” “Now, what we have with these evangelical confessional statements, is something that people are calling ‘the new ecumenism,’ but the irony is that the ‘new ecumenism’ is actually the ‘old ecumenism,’ because it represents what the church has historically meant by unity. The evangelicals are reclaiming the meaning of ecumenism – they are reclaiming a very good word – and this movement toward true unity is clearly the work of the Holy Spirit,” he said. Spirit-led innovations The same spirit that is moving para-church groups publicly to declare the essentials of the faith is giving birth to growing institutional forms, Oden said. Such evangelical organizations as World Vision and World Relief dwarf the humanitarian efforts of mainline denominations. Evangelicals have cornered the market in the publishing industry with a commanding presence in book, magazine and online media. Evangelicals have established structures through which missionaries who raise their own financial support can be dispatched throughout the world. The number of these independent missionaries dwarfs the declining mission forces of mainline denominations. “The people who are making these confessional declarations are doing the work of the church,” Oden observed. “This could only be the result of the Holy Spirit’s work, and it is huge,” he said. Reformed Theological Seminary, on whose Charlotte campus Oden delivered his lectures, offers a graphic example of evangelical innovation and growth. Organized and governed by lay people, the seminary has developed campuses in Jackson, Miss., Orlando and Charlotte and is nesting new seminary communities in Atlanta and Washington, D.C., churches. Additionally, the seminary is leading theological education into cyberspace with its “virtual campus” that offers a fully accredited masters degree. Oden’s lectures were streamed “live” to thirty sites in various countries. When questions were asked during the discussion period, a computer operator typed the question onto the computer screen. Participants in other countries were invited to participate in the discussion by typing questions into their computers. Oden gave them a live response. Finding the way back home Oden sees a connection between the evangelical affirmations that he and Packer have analyzed and burgeoning confessing church movements in the Presbyterian, United Methodist, Episcopalian and other mainline denominations. The strong sense of urgency that led to the Lausanne, Manila, Berlin, Amsterdam and other, primarily para-church statements of faith can clearly be seen in confessing church movements that are surfacing inside mainline denominations, said Oden. Oden hopes that One Faith: Charting the Evangelical Consensus will help dispel the myth that evangelicalism represents a “fringe of Christianity.” He said that when he and Packer began to review the evangelical declarations, they discovered a “Gestalt,” a pattern. “It was something like viewing the tesserai, individual colored stones that, when configured into a mosaic or an icon, create a pattern,” he said. Evangelicals have often been characterized by our culture as strange or bizarre, Oden observed, but the fact is that their statements of faith show a consensus and convergence that fits the pattern of the classical Christian tradition. In essence, he concluded, the evangelicals are helping a church that itself has been out on the fringe, find its way back home. |
||||
| Theology
that Matters index Respond to this article |
||||
| Home
· News
· PLC
Publications ·
The
Presbyterian Layman Online Reviews · Archives · History of the Lay Committee · Feedback · Links |
||||
