For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind. The standing grain has no heads, it shall yield no meal; if it were to yield, aliens would devour it. [Hosea 8:7. RSV]
Many modern evangelical churches have foolishly sown to the wind and are reaping a whirlwind. As a result, many of their once faithful members are abandoning evangelicalism and seeking solace elsewhere, having found that much (though not all) of modern evangelicalism is merely a confused and pitiful shadow of the once stalwart champion and defender of New Testament Christianity but which now has little to offer other than what the world already has given. The abandonment of evangelical New Testament Christianity in America is being hastened by two significant occurrences—one of recent emergence and the other having been active since the beginning of the church. The first is the rise of the emergent church and the second is doctrinal decay in evangelical churches because of its wavering on inerrancy of the Bible.
Emergent church
One of those aliens is post-modern evangelicalism and is called the Emergent church. Gary Gilley wrote that the rise of the emergent church in America was generated by a void in evangelicalism as a result of the dominating presence of the Church Growth movement during the latter half of the twentieth century.
The emergent church has largely been a backlash against the seeker-sensitive movement, with its slick programs, high-octane entertainment and superficial worship. The postmodern generation wants something more authentic, something with substance, even something that is other-worldly. Whereas the seeker-sensitive movement attempted to make the church look like the world, emergent youth want a sense of the sacred. Where the seekers wanted to offer everything the world offered in purified form, the emergents want unique experiences the world does not have and cannot give. Where the seekers repudiated church history and behaved as though the church was born yesterday, the emergents want not only a link to the past but a return to the past.[1] [emphasis added]
Notice that the young emergents were said to be in search of “unique experiences” as opposed to searching for God. The young emergents and their parents have been well indoctrinated by decades of humanistic emphasis on experience as the sole basis of truth. However, the experiences sought by emergents are not the same experiences sought by the evangelicals in the first two Great Awakenings and thereafter. We must remember that the primary goal of the Awakenings was to rouse the faithful from their spiritual lethargy characterized by coldness and indifference and not so much on the making of new converts. The faithful had to be revived not through their head knowledge but through their hearts. The evangelicals were not against intellectual knowledge of God, but they saw the heart-felt conversion experience as necessary to counter the coldness and indifference that permeated the Reformation church.[2] To be converted, mere intellectual assent had to be replaced by New Testament notions of a “new birth,” and as any mother will attest, the birthing process is an emotional experience felt by both mother and child. The conversion experience is also dependent on heeding the message of the cross as discussed in Chapter 29. For men who choose Christ, of necessity, must choose death to self and sin for they cannot otherwise follow Him.
To provide these unique experiences to the young emergents, a number of leaders in the emergent church adopted themes surrounding the Ancient-Future faith movement (hereafter called “A-F”) founded in 1977 and 1978 following the publication of two best-selling books: Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth by Richard Foster and Robert Webber’s Common Roots: A Call to Evangelical Maturity. A-F classifies church history as having six periods: “primitive (first century); ancient or classical (100-600); medieval (600-1500); Reformation (1500-1750); modern (1750-1980); and postmodern (1980 to the present).” A-F adherents believe that the solution for the future of the postmodern church is to model it on the ancient or classical traditions of the church (100-600). The younger evangelicals want to encounter God beyond emphasis on doctrinal matters such as conversion and self-denial as professed by traditional evangelicals. They also reject the shallow, pragmatic ministry-driven programs of the Church Growth movement. Young emergents see these two forms of Christianity subsiding as the emergent evangelicals begin to dominate Christianity during the twenty-first century.[3]
It is important to note that the emergent church looks to the ancient-classical period as its source for molding Christianity as opposed to the apostles and New Testament church of the first century. Emergents deem the rich traditions developed in the classical period of church history (100-600) to be superior. As a result, emergents have adopted much of Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox dogma and practices. (see Chapters 3 and 4 for a discussion of these beliefs and practices).[4]
But emergents do not stop there. They believe that the Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox traditions can be united if doctrinal distinctives are subordinated to ancient practices and creeds. Emergents consider the Reformation as being “an unnecessary schism perpetrated by Protestants” and reject the Reformers’ sola Scriptura in favor of Rome’s view that the church presides over scripture and final authority rests in the church.[5]
How is it that emergent evangelicals (in name only) could have sat in evangelical churches for any length of time and subsequently have bought into the absurd beliefs and teachings of the emergent church? The answer is that for over a half century they have warmed the pews of thousands of churches in America that forsook the pristine doctrines, power, and authority of the New Testament that once marked the character and demeanor of evangelical churches. Also, they resembled the Hebrews who were immature in their knowledge of the Bible (see Chapter 26 for a discussion of biblical illiteracy). In the apostle’s letter to the Hebrews (believed to have been Paul) he wrote of those immature believers who were dull of hearing.
About this we have much to say which is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need some one to teach you again the first principles of God’s word. You need milk, not solid food; for every one who lives on milk is unskilled in the world of righteousness, for he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their faculties trained by practice to distinguish good from evil. [Hebrews 5:11-14. RSV]
The Church Growth movement is partially responsible for this general immaturity and shallowness which is aggravated by its methods and through its incessant spoon-feeding milk to seekers while neglecting provision of solid food for mature Christians. They justify themselves by wrongly asserting that the more mature on the spiritual growth continuum are responsible for their own spiritual growth and not the church. This error arises because of a basic misconception as to the purpose of the local church. The existence of this misconception is confirmed by the great discontent of the more mature Christians in churches of the Church Growth movement and especially the Willow Creek and Purpose Driven models of doing church (see Chapter 31). It is also confirmed by the general defection of younger evangelicals to the emergent churches for they are children who cannot distinguish good from evil.
Doctrinal decay – evangelical wavering on inerrancy of the Bible
If one imagines a raindrop falling somewhere in North America, its location in relation to the continental divide will ultimately determine whether the little drop will eventually become a part of the Atlantic or the Pacific Ocean. Unlike our little raindrop, Christians may choose which side of the theological divide they will inhabit with regard to the question of biblical inerrancy. But their choice, one way or the other, will have consequences for virtually all of their beliefs about God, the Bible, Creation, mankind, and a host of other theological issues, questions, interpretations, and worldview.
Those that reject inerrancy of the Bible fall into the trap of focusing on the particulars to justify their less authoritative view of the Bible. An analogy of two puzzle boxes will illustrate the fallacy of using particulars to dismiss the inerrant view of the Bible. The boxes are identical and each contains a lifetime’s supply of puzzle pieces to be sorted and arranged in such a manner to make sense of the mess man inherited from his ancestors.
One box is held by the forces of humanism. They claim that by man’s efforts alone the pieces can be sorted and arranged to supply the understanding and satisfactions that man so desperately seeks. No help from the outside is needed, thank you, for everything required is contained in the box. Through science and reason they proceed to examine each piece (the particulars) and arrange them in all sorts of configurations, but all of their efforts are of no avail. Frustrated with their elders’ failure, each succeeding generation applies their new, better, and more progressive ideas to solve the puzzle of life, but without God they fail to find cohesive answers to the pervasive disorder and mystery of evil.
Christians hold the other box. Unlike the humanists, they look outside the box and beyond the confines of nature. They discover a picture that reveals the truth of the universe and all therein. It contains all that man needs to understand the mess he has made and as well as instructions for putting the pieces back together to match God’s plan for mankind. That picture is the unchanging, eternal, and inerrant Truth revealed by the Bible. And from that man finds truth, not in the particulars but the grand meta-narrative of creation, the Fall, and redemption.
Here we see a fundamental distinction between humanism and Christianity. To discover truth, humanists dismiss the supernatural. There is no God. All is material and found in the physical confines of the universe—the puzzle box. By reducing everything to their most basic elements (the puzzle pieces, i.e., the particulars), they seek to discover the scientists’ coveted “theory of everything” from which they will fashion answers to alleviate the chaos of life in which man finds himself mired. For those Christians that reject inerrancy of the Bible, they too have chosen to follow humanistic methods by examining the particulars and discarding those portions of the Bible which they have determined are not truth.
The defense of inerrancy is not the same as an apologetic or defense of the faith as Peter commanded. “…Always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and reverence.” [1 Peter 3:15b. RSV] Rather, it is a polemical defense of inerrancy against those in doctrinal error within the faith as opposed to an apologetic defense of the faith to those primarily found outside the faith.
Anselm was a great Christian thinker of the eleventh century whose words capture the essence of a Christian’s understanding of truth through faith. “For I do not seek to understand so that I may believe; but I believe so that I may understand.”[6] Truth resides in the biblical revelation to mankind, the grand mural painted by God of as opposed to the mundane particulars of creation. In an article titled “On the Origin and Nature of Things,” A. W. Tozer adds to our understanding of the puzzle box analogy and the meaning of Anselm’s profound statement regarding the means by which Christians receive truth.
Such truths as men discover in the earth beneath and in the astronomic heavens above are properly not truths but facts. We call them truths, as I do here, but they are no more than parts of the jigsaw puzzle of the universe, and when correctly fitted together they provide at least a hint of what the vaster picture is like. But I repeat: They are not truth, and more important, they are not the truth. Were every missing piece discovered and laid in place we would still not have the truth, for the truth is not a composite of thoughts and things. The truth should be spelled with a capital T for it is nothing less than the Son of God, the Second Person of the blessed Godhead. [emphasis in original]
The human mind requires an answer to the question concerning the origin and nature of things. The world as we find it must be accounted for in some way. Philosophers and scientists sought to account for it, the one by speculation, the other by observation, and in their labors they have come upon many useful and inspiring facts. But they have not found the final truth. That comes by revelation and illumination.[7] [emphasis added]
Here Tozer gives us a clue as to why the non-Christian cannot see truth and why a Christian can. Final truth comes by revelation and illumination. Illumination comes by faith as the apostle tells us in Hebrews. “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.” [Hebrews 11:3. KJV] But where does the Christian get the requisite faith spoken of by the apostle? Faith is a gift of God. It is a work wrought in the Christian by the work of the Holy Spirit.
Now we return to the question of inerrancy. If the Bible is truth, then by inference it must be inerrant. To say otherwise is to say that truth is not truth. J. I. Packer assists with our understanding of this concept.
If the words of Scripture are God breathed, it is almost blasphemy to deny that it is free from error in that which it is intended to teach and infallible in the guidance it gives. Inerrancy and infallibility cannot be proved (nor, let us note, disproved) by argument. Both are articles of faith.[8]
Francis Schaeffer sums up the concept of biblical inerrancy.
Christianity is not a series of truths in the plural, but rather truth spelled with a capital “T.” Truth about total reality, not just about religious things. Biblical Christianity is Truth concerning total reality—and the intellectual hold of that total Truth and then living in the light of that Truth.[9]
Inerrancy of the Bible has been the defining mark of evangelical orthodoxy since the beginnings of evangelicalism in the early 1700s to the 1960s. However, in the early 1960s through the late 1980s, American evangelicalism became caught up in a series of controversies that eventually focused on “whether the adoption by evangelical scholars of modern critical approaches to biblical studies could be reconciled with traditional views of the authority of Scripture.”[10]
These modern critical approaches of critiquing the authority of the Bible varied in the degree of their departure from inerrancy. Some called for retention of the concept of inerrancy but with room to explain or define it in such a way as to allow for intellectual examination and probing. At the other extreme some evangelicals believed that inerrancy and infallibility with regard to the spheres of science and history could not be maintained. In their view, Scripture was infallible only as it applied to its divinely intended purpose.[11]
One recent example of the slippery slope of modern critical approaches to reconcile biblical inerrancy with humanistic science is the BioLogos Foundation’s promotion of a significant and well-funded effort to “…change the way Christians understand Genesis and the origin of man.”[12] For those in agreement with the core beliefs of BioLogos Foundation, creative evolution is an established or accepted fact (as we are frequently reminded by evolutionists of all stripes). For BioLogosians, all other truths and interpretations must bow to the absolute truth of creative evolution when studying the natural world and the Bible.[13]
But man’s effort to explain the nature of God and His creation through creative evolution is both unnecessary and impossible. It is unnecessary because God’s invisible nature is already plainly understood by man’s perception of the things He created (see Romans 1:20). It is impossible because imperfect Nature cannot add clarity to the picture of divine reality as revealed by the Bible. The biblical record brought clarity to nature, not the other way around. This is the fundamental error of BioLogos when it attempts to humanize religion by embracing creative evolution in order to give a better understanding of divine reality through the workings of imperfect Nature.[14]
The push for relaxation of evangelicalism’s staunch support of biblical inerrancy arose as a result of cultural pressures to succumb to what seemingly appeared to be a widening gulf between biblical inerrancy and the presumed superiority of scientific evidence to the contrary. However, humanists and others inappropriately interchange the usage of “literal” and “inerrant.” The meaning of “literal” implies a concern mainly with facts, and for the humanist that means facts that can be scientifically validated. But the Bible is a book of history, poetry, prophecy, parable, and allegory. All are part of the inerrant word picture that God used to reveal His character and nature and His relationship with man. The point is that humanists and Christians pursuing modern critical methods attempt to force the Bible into a laboratory test tube to prove or disprove its claims, but as previously stated the Bible deals with the non-material things that are outside the capabilities of science to decipher but are just as real in our human understanding and experience as any scientifically-proven hypothesis.[15]
Does this seeming disconnection between science and the Bible mean that the evangelical must surrender inerrancy on issues such as the six-day creation, dispensationalism, and other presumed contradictions with science? Absolutely not! What it does mean is that there is a gap between scientific “facts” and what the Bible says. Christians must begin with an unfailing belief in the inerrancy of the Bible, but they must also recognize that if certain scientific facts are correct, then a gap exists in their knowledge which prevents them from reconciling the two.
There are many things God has chosen not to reveal at this point in man’s history and may never reveal this side of eternity. But we know He is God, that He created the universe, and that He has the answers to fill in the knowledge gaps. The humanist attempts to fill in the knowledge gaps by separating reason from faith which artificially separates scientific truth from religious truth. But reason and faith are inseparable allies. Therefore, Christian faith is not a “blind faith.” Reason is important in our journey to the door of faith, but we enter the door of faith through the inerrant revelation from God and the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit within.
______
As stated at the beginning of this chapter, much of the modern evangelical church has foolishly sown to the wind and is reaping a whirlwind. Hosea’s prophecy revealed sin and pronounced judgements on a people that would not be reformed and had become apostatized over several generations.[16] But whirlwinds need not be followed by obituaries. God is ready to redeem returning sinners and restore relationship with Him.
Larry G. Johnson
Sources:
[1] Dr. Gary E. Gilley with Jay Wegter, This little church had none, (Carlisle, Pennsylvania: EP Books, 2009), p. 37.
[2] Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth, (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2004, 2005), pp. 269-270.
[3] Gilley, This little Church had none, pp. 39-41.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid., pp. 43, 59.
[6] Anselm, a quotation from Chapter 1 of the Proslogion, published in The City, VIII, no. 2 (Winter 2015): 1.
[7] A. W. Tozer, Man—The Dwelling Place of God, (Camp Hill, Pennsylvania: WingSpread Publishers, 1966, 1997), pp. 19-20.
[8] James I. Packer quoted by Roger Nicole, “James I. Packer’s Contribution to the Doctrine of the Inerrancy of Scripture,” Doing Theology for the People of God, Eds. Donald Lewis & Alister McGrath, (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1996), p. 176.
[9] Pearcey, Total Truth, p. 15. Quoting Francis Schaeffer’s address at the University of Notre Dame, April 1981.
[10] Brian Stanley, The Global Diffusion of Evangelicalism, (Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Academic, 2013), pp. 105-106.
[11] Ibid., pp. 107-108.
[12] Daniel James Devine, “Interpretive dance,” World, November 29, 2014, 35.
[13] Larry G. Johnson, “Creative evolution – Screwtape’s science for Christians – Part I,” CultureWarrior.net, January16, 2015. https://www.culturewarrior.net/2015/01/16/creative-evolution-screwtapes-science-for-christians-part-i/
[14] Larry G. Johnson, “Creative evolution – Screwtape’s science for Christians – Part II,” CultureWarrior.net, January23, 2015. https://www.culturewarrior.net/2015/01/23/creative-evolution-screwtapes-science-for-christians-part-ii/
[15] Larry G. Johnson, Ye shall be as gods – Humanism and Christianity – The Battle for Supremacy in the American Cultural Vision, (Owasso, Oklahoma: Anvil House Publishers, 2011), p. 177.
[16] Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1961), p. 1105
