Am I Still A Thinking Evangelical?

If you have a look at the first post on this blog you’ll see I defined what I thought thinking evangelical was and why I thought of myself as one.  The question I ask myself today is, can I still define myself in that way and do I want to?

To recap, I defined the thinking evangelical as:

1.   Somebody who is basically still faithful to the word of God as revealed in scripture.

2.   Somebody who recognises that those who wrote scripture were inspired by God, but they were also human with human limitations and so we cannot claim that every single thing they wrote is from God himself.  The Holy Spirit had to work through the filter of their understanding.

3.   Somebody who reads scripture through the filter of the latest Biblical scholarship and scientific and cultural understandings.

4.   Somebody who does not necessarily hold the classical evangelical views on things like the leadership of women in the church.

I certainly still do all I can to remain faithful to the word of God as revealed in Scripture.  That is not to say I worship the scriptures or that I consider them to effectively be a fourth person of the Trinity, which I definitely do not; but I do view the scriptures as God’s revealed word to us.  It may be seen by some as self-referential, but I do hold to the truth of 2 Timothy 3:16, “All scripture is God breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”

In light of this I no longer place so great a weight on the human limitations of those who wrote down the words of our Scriptures.  Yes, they had cultural and scientific limitations but the God who inspired them did not and has no such limitations.  When considering Christian faith according to the classic Methodist quadrilateral I give Scripture the significant and overwhelming primary position whilst still considering reason, tradition and experience: which inform and guide but are subsidiary to scripture itself.

Again I have somewhat modified my view concerning the latest Biblical scholarship.  Just because something is new does not make it correct!  I am now coming to the conclusion that some of the latest scholarship whilst well intentioned is misleading; particularly that emanating from the Liberal scholars.  Whilst reading John’s epistles recently God brought to my attention the following, “many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world.” (2 John 1:7) and “Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God.  This is the spirit of the antichrist.” (1 John 4:2-3)  Whilst the emphasis is on denying Jesus was a man the point is that the incarnated Jesus was fully human and fully divine; something many modern liberal Christians deny.

I am now much more cautious about changing the understood meaning of a scripture or scriptural principle just because it does not lie easily with the latest Biblical scholarship or the latest scientific understandings or the cultural norms of society.  I hear it frequently said and see it in Christian books and magazine that the church must change its doctrines to become culturally relevant; which is nonsense because the church, like our master Jesus, is often counter-cultural and should be leading the way rather than settling for the lowest common denominator.

I have changed my position because I have seen the negative results of some of this liberal approach to the Bible, including shrinking congregations, the shattering of personal integrity and even Christian lives and marriages by saying that such and such a scriptural principle doesn’t apply anymore because we have a different understanding now and comments seen on both the internet and heard in conversations that if even Christians don’t take their faith seriously why should anybody else.

Am I still a thinking evangelical?  I am certainly an evangelical Christian and I still think deeply about matters of life and faith; but I would no longer define myself by the criteria I laid down back in March 2012.

What has changed?  I think greater faith in God and in his power, greater faith that he can and did and does ensure that the words we read in the scriptures are indeed “God breathed and useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”