Charles Simeon on Gospel Charity

Charles Simeon was known as the Prince of Evangelicals. Converted during his undergraduate years at Cambridge through reading the Book of Common Prayer's Holy Communion service, Simeonplayed a significant role in the late 18th, and early 19th centuries - in what David Bebbington describes as one of two great waves of evangelicalism. 

Simeon was a thorough going evangelical of Calvinist persuasion. But Simeon was not factional;at a time when English evangelicals were divided over Calvinist and Arminian theologies, he had no time for those who lacked generosity and charitable in their dealings towards others outside their own tribe.. On the key doctrine of election from Romans 9 Simeon preached:

Many there are who cannot see these truths [the doctrines of God's sovereignty], who yet are in a state truly pleasing to God; yea many, at whose feet the best of us may be glad to be found in heaven. It is a great evil, when these doctrines are made a ground of separation one from another, and when the advocates of different systems anathematize each other... In reference to truths which are involved in so much obscurity as those which relate to the sovereignty of God mutual kindness and concession are far better than vehement argumentation and uncharitable discussion (Horae Homileticae, Vol. 15, 357).

One example of this attitude at work in Simeon's life comes from a conversation between (the Calvinist) Simeon and an elderly (Arminian) John Wesley:

Sir, I understand that you are called an Arminian; and I have been sometimes called a Calvinist; and therefore I suppose we are to draw daggers. But before I consent to begin the combat, with your permission I will ask you a few questions. Pray, Sir, do you feel yourself a depraved creature, so depraved that you would never have thought of turning to God, if God had not first put it into your heart?

Yes, I do indeed.

And do you utterly despair of recommending yourself to God by anything you can do; and look for salvation solely through the blood and righteousness of Christ?

Yes, solely through Christ.

But, Sir, supposing you were at first saved by Christ, are you not somehow or other to save yourself afterwards by your own works?

No, I must be saved by Christ from first to last. 

Allowing, then, that you were first turned by the grace of God, are you not in some way or other to keep yourself by your own power?

No.

What then, are you to be upheld every hour and every moment by God, as much as an infant in its mother's arms?

Yes, altogether.

And is all your hope in the grace and mercy of God to preserve you unto His heavenly kingdom?

Yes, I have no hope but in Him.

Then, Sir, with your leave I will put up my dagger again; for this is all my Calvinism; this is my election, my justification by faith, my final perseverance: it is in substance all that I hold, and as I hold it; and therefore, if you please, instead of searching out terms and phrases to be a ground of contention between us, we will cordially unite in those things wherein we agree. (H.C.G. Moule, Charles Simeon, London: InterVarsity, 1948, 79ff.) 

May God raise up more men and women like Simeon who make every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

How to Guard the Gospel

The gospel of the crucified, risen and ascended Messiah - Jesus - is a precious gift from God. As Paul explains to Timothy, it is a deposit that it to be unashamedly guarded:

Follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you. - 2 Timothy 1:13-14.

The truth entrusted is to be guarded against erroneous and strange doctrines. According to Paul's instruction to Timothy, the gospel is something that is to be suffered for (1:8, 12). It is something that is to be proclaimed, and therefore taught and preached without embarrassment (1.11). And finally it is something to be guarded from unsound teaching. It is to be held fast too, without variation or departure.     

But there is a particular shape to guarding the gospel. That is, Paul not only gives Timothy instructions on what to do - guard the gospel, but how to do it. Verse 13 says "in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus." Timothy's theological convictions and catechism of others is, even in the context of the hostility outlined in verses 15-18, to be done in faith and love.

Amongst evangelicals, one of the most frequent rallying cries is: "Guard the gospel!" We talk about the ease of losing the gospel, of generational change and slippery slopes. So we want to guard the good deposit, fight the good fight, and entrust the gospel. But I am not sure if I have ever heard the connection explicitly drawn between guarding the gospel, and doing so "in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus". Without this link, defending the gospel quickly descends into a climate of bullying, group-think and uniformity.

I stand within a tradition that has gallantly guarded the gospel: within the cloisters of the university, within our para-church organizations, within denominations, and within parishes and churches. It is a heritage that has done much to preserve the faith once for all delivered to the saints from erroneous and strange doctrine.

Yet my observation is that other motivations besides guarding the gospel creep into people's behaviour - especially when the guarding is divorced from the faith and love of Jesus.

In seeking to guard the gospel, we forget to guard our own hearts. We are  motivated by a fear of change and difference; or an immaturity to rest confidently in what Paul says in verse 12 God is able to do. As I've observed this, I've noticed that guarding the gospel without faith and love isbeen characterised by:

• A lack of theological depth in being able to handle both the unity and diversity of the body of Christ. This is particularly evidenced in people only reading books that they will agree with.
• A lack of epistemic humility is the consequence; an inability to understand difference and relate generously to those who are different to you as your brothers and sisters in Christ.
• This is followed by tribalism, as we draw ever smaller and smaller circles around who is 'in' and 'one of us', and who is 'out' and suspicious.

This runs something like 'we need to guard the gospel, otherwise the church/institution will slide into error. And we cannot be gracious in the way that we deal with this, because being gracious and generous is part of the problem.' Except that to some extent, if you guard the gospel without being gracious, you have in effect lost the gospel (see for example, 1 Corinthians 13). Because it matters how you guard the gospel. The combination of these characteristics seems to allow for Christians to act like jerks in their ministry. That is, they are pastors who hurt people by justifying ungodly practices.

Graciously guarding the gospel fits with the New Testament trajectory of not arrogance, but humility and gentleness, patience and kindness, love, joy, peace and self-control. Graciousness is not the slippery slope that will lead to, say liberalism (cf. The Dying of the Light by James T Burtchaell). Graciousness is the fulfillment of guarding the gospel in the faith and love in Christ. This is not laying down the gospel and leaving it open for attack. Instead, this is resting humbly but confidently in the gospel. This confidence in the gospel allows you, in the power of the Holy Spirit, to get on with the business of guarding the gospel. Carson describes it in this way:

"You do not finally guard the gospel by raising the mote, circling the wagons, going into defensive mode alone, so as not to be contaminated by the interaction with the world. You preserve the gospel by gospelizing. That’s why any form of apologetics that becomes primarily defensive is finally spelling its own demise." - Don Carson

The way to get on with guarding the gospel in faith and love is not through closed sets, but through proclamation and training. Through passing on the good deposit, growing people in the gospel of Jesus Christ, and confidently proclaiming it. As Carson puts it, you guard the gospel by giving it away, by training people in it. This means neither denying or hiding the gospel, or making everything the gospel, but confidently holding to the core. Graciously guarding the gospel likes this does not create a culture of fear that exists around the slippery slope to liberalism. Graciously guarding the gospel likes this is confident that Christ will build his church. Hence graciously guarding the gospel like this allows you to (with thanks to Byron Smith):

• Recognize differences between Christians without declaring everyone who disagrees with you to be an enemy of the gospel.
• Avoids an anti-intellectualism that assumes that others - even those I disagree with - have nothing to teach me.
• This leads to a hermeneutic of trust. That is, generosity to all others who call on the name of the Lord - our first move is towards them, rather than suspicion or distancing yourself from them.
• Avoids tribalism; guru-ising those we agree with and demonizing those with don't.
• Prevents an arrogance that assumes that 'God is lucky to have us'.

Graciously guarding the gospel is the refusal to use power in a way that subverts the gospel. It's the refusal to resort to ungodly patterns of relationships, but seeks to be above reproach as the word of Christ is taught and dwelt richly in.  Now that is guarding the gospel in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.

IFES and Evangelicalism

Several church history books I've read recently have commented on the remarkable resilience of the worldwide evangelical movement. The notice that evangelicalism was particularly strong following World War Two, but was predicted to die out by the 1980's with the rise of western/liberal culture. Instead, evangelicalism seems to have grown and strengthened. The historical commentators usually give several reasons for this, but one that is often overlooked is IFES, the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students.

IFES is the global association of national movements which in turn are constituted by groups like the EU. IFES was formed by 10 national movements in 1947; it now has more than 150 national members. According to Billy Graham:

"Everywhere I go I meet Christian leaders whose lives have been touched by IFES' emphasis on biblical evangelism and discipleship.”

I've been preparing a prayer meeting for IFES at AnCon. The more I've read about IFES, the more I've realised that they have a strong claim for a growing and influential evangelical movement. There are over 500,000 students connected to IFES groups. According to the 2008 IFES Annual Report:

World Vision estimates that up to 90% of their leaders worldwide have been formed through an IFES affiliated movement. In some countries in French speaking Africa, for example, up to 80% of church leaders say the same.

If you want to know more about IFES, I recommend you read the short and accessible book by Lindsay Brown, Shining Like Stars.

I am the Very Model of a Modern Evangelical

I've been waiting for this for a long time. Thanks to my friend James, I finally have the words to "I am the very model of a modern evangelical". This was produced by some EUers in 2002 for Annual Conference and later for the AFES National Training Event.

If you try and sing, keep in mind that's it intended to be sung by two people. And although it is written to Gilbert and Sullivans "I am the very model of a modern Major-General", the words don't fit the music. There may also be longer versions out there, somewhere.

I am the very model of a modern evangelical

I am the very model of a modern evangelical

I have a Bible knowledge which is really quite incredible

I know my Stott and Carson, and I keep a copy by my bed,

Of Calvin's Insitutes, which I have not ... well which I might have read.

I keep all of my sermon tapes in order of chronology,

They help me with my grasp of all that Biblical theology

I have a Koorong discount ard, and so it isn't hard to tell...

That... I'm the very model of a modern evangelical...

(He is the very model of a modern evangelical x3)

I have been to KYC, Kyckstart, KYLC and MKC

And KEC and OKC, my favourite: WKC!

KYLC a few more times, but never will again, you see—

Because it falls far short of that eternal triumph... NTE

Well, I'm at Sydney Uni, ipso facto I am in EU,

I go to public meetings twice a week and every BBQ,

I lead a dozen small groups and I'm on a score of student teams,

I sometimes go to classes where I go to sleep and EU-dream...

I wait all year for NTE and for our Annual Conference,

But this I must submit to you in every bit of confidence,

That this guy here does more than me and so I guess I ought to tell...

That he is the very model of a modern evangelical!

(He is the very model of a modern evangelical x3)

I've had ninety seven girlfriends since I came to Christ three months ago

I had a few engagements and because the girls would come to know,

That I'm too old— I guess I very slowly had to come and see,

That evangelicals must marry off before they're twenty three...

Missions and Empire

A common complaint of Christian mission is that it has often been a compliant agent of European imperialism. Although there is some truth in that at times, it is by no means a defining characterization of Christian mission. According to David Bebbington argues that the overriding result of global Christian missions was not the growth of empire but the implanting of Christian faith in fresh lands, often not through the missionaries themselves but local indigenous Christians. He argues:

"One of the misrepresentations of Livingstone in later legend was that he was an advocate of the type of empire that emerged in the last third of the nineteenth century. The belief is part of a broader association of the missionary enterprise with the spread of the British Empire that has become a commonplace. It is held that missions were the ideological arm of territorial expansion in the period. Certainly evangelicals saw imperial advance as an opportunity for the gospel. British Wesleyans, for instance, applauded their Australian co-religionists [sic] in 1860 for 'laying foundations of a great Protestant empire'. Furthermore, the protection of indigenous peoples from the slave trade and other forms of oppression could seem a worthy humanitarian motive for annexation. Yet there was no simple correlation between missions and empire. Sometimes, as in Nigeria at the end of the century, the British authorities discouraged evangelistic effort since it might cause public disorder. Missionaries themselves were often wary of the colonial authorities because they might do as much to corrupt the peoples under their care as to protect them. Within British territory, the advance of evangelical usually owed little or nothing to government patronage, which in a forml sense had all but disappeared by the middle of the [19th] century. There are instances, conversley, where British Christians established flourishing missions outside British territory and even outside British sphere of influence. The Baptist mission in the Congo, which became the personal apanage of the King of the Belgians, is a case in point. There was a marked difference between Anglicans, who rarely saw drawbacks to the expanison of empire, and Nonconformists, who leant to a pacific policy abroad and so commonly opposed imperial wars. Thus slaughter on the north-west frontier of India was denounced by the Nonconformist newspaper the Christian World in 1897 as 'A National Crime'. Although the distinction between the two parties within evangelicalism was eroded in the last few years of the century, when many Nonconformists were caught up in the popular imperialism of the times, here remained among them vestiges of resistance to the growth of empire. Consequently, the relationship between missions and empire is much more ambigous than it is usually supposed to be. Evangelicals were by no means consisten apologists for painting the map red." - David Bebbington, The Dominance of Evangelicalism, 2005, pp. 106-107.

No Sense of Community

"Evangelicals have nothing to say about community." This is what I was told in a seminar on the rise and fall of liberal theology that I attended last week. Evangelicals are so concerned about the atonement, that they have nothing to add to current debates about community. If you were to classify all the great Christian doctrines, they would fit into three categories: 1. The doctrine of God; 2. The doctrine of Salvation; and 3. The doctrine of the church. And I was told that evangelicals, for the sake of being able to get along with each other, neglect the first and third doctrines and concentrate solely on the second category. (With the effect that the first category has become the domain of Romans and Greeks, and the third category is becoming the domain Pentecostals).

Why is this a problem? Well, with the decline of liberalism and modernity (and it's quest for epistemology) post modern concerns are becoming more and more prevalent. These concerns are not so much about authority (as modernism has been), but a desire for justice, authenticity, and community. And evangelicalism, as a cultural and historical product of modernism, has little to say to these postmodern concerns.

Part of our problem, as I see it, as the way we think of church. In reaction against high churchman-ship, and in order to support fellow evangelicals from variant ecclesiology, we are willing to label almost anything as a church if it has more than one person and a bible involved. I can be sitting in a cafe with a friend, one of us pulls out a bible and - BAM - we've turned into church. It is just too reductionist.

I've felt the solid boot to the head from this reductionism this week as debate as swirled around about the up coming CMS Summer School (start here, then go here).* You see, for two nights there will be a speaker with over 30 of mission experience giving talks on the current state of world mission. Although the bible may be refereed to - these aren't bible talks, John Woodhouse will be giving those in he mornings. The problem of course is that the speaker is female, and if you reduce everything to church, then heaven forbid that you should have a women teaching in a mixed congregation.

From what I understand, CMS, Summer School, Eu et al aren't churches in and of themselves. Although they may have the same essence as a Church (presence of our Lord Jesus Christ through the ministry of Word and Spirit), they have a different purpose. And may I add, that it would be a pretty lousy church that met only once a year. no, there is much more that could be said about this. What I want to know is can evangelicalism have something to say about authenticity community and justice? I would have thought that a biblically robust doctrine of the atonement would have something to say ie welcome one another as Christ welcomed you etc. Or is evangelicalism as the cultural and historical movement that has existed for the past two centuries doomed to die with the great beast of modernism. I for one, certainly hope not.**


* These link from Craig's blog are only intended to be an example of the type of debate that is currently happening, and are not a comment on Craig himself, who has received several personal attacks over his views this week.

**Although I have to admit that I would like to see reform in several areas of evangelicalism - hence this post.

Going Beyond Evangelicalism (part 1 of 2)

This interview with John Stott was originally published in 'Working
Together', the magazine of the Australian Evangelical Alliance. The
second half will be included in the May 2007 issue of Oz-e-Con.



QUESTION (TIM STAFFORD): AS YOU SEE IT, WHAT IS EVANGELICALISM, AND
WHY DOES IT MATTER?



JOHN STOTT: An evangelical is a plain, ordinary Christian standing in
the mainstream of historic, orthodox, biblical Christianity. So we can
recite the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed without crossing our
fingers. We believe in God the Father and in Jesus Christ and in the
Holy Spirit. Having said that, there are two particular things we like
to emphasise: the concern for authority on the one hand and salvation
on the other.



For evangelical people, our authority is the God who has spoken
supremely in Jesus Christ. And that is equally true of redemption or
salvation. God has acted in and through Jesus Christ for the salvation
of sinners.



What God has SAID in Christ and in the biblical witness to Christ, and
what God has DONE in and through Christ, are both, to use the Greek
word, 'hapax', meaning once and for all. There is a finality about
God's word in Christ, and there is a finality about God's work in
Christ. To imagine that we could add a word to his word or add a work
to his work is extremely derogatory to the unique glory of our Lord
Jesus Christ.



YOU DIDN'T MENTION THE BIBLE, WHICH WOULD SURPRISE SOME PEOPLE.



STOTT: I did actually but you didn't notice it. I said Christ and the
biblical witness to Christ. But the really distinctive emphasis is on
Christ. I want to shift conviction from a book, if you like, to a
person. As Jesus himself said, the Scriptures bear witness to me.
Their main function is to witness to Christ.



PART OF YOUR IMPLICATION IS THAT EVANGELICALS ARE NOT TO BE A
NEGATIVELY INSPIRED PEOPLE. OUR REAL FOCUS OUGHT TO BE THE GLORY OF
CHRIST.



STOTT: I believe that very strongly. We believe in the authority of
the Bible because

Christ has endorsed its authority. He stands between the two
testaments. As we look back to the Old Testament, he has endorsed it.
As we look forward to the New Testament, we accept it because of the
apostolic witness to Christ. He deliberately chose and appointed and
prepared the apostles, in order that they might have their unique
apostolic witness to him. I like to see Christ in the middle,
endorsing the old, preparing for the new. Although the question of the
New Testament canon is complicated, in general we are able to say that
canonicity is apostolicity.



HOW HAS THE POSITION OF EVANGELICALS CHANGED DURING YOUR YEARS OF MINISTRY?



STOTT: I look back – it's been sixty-one years since I was ordained –
and when I was ordained in the Church of England, evangelicals in that
church were a despised and rejected minority. The bishops lost no
opportunity to ridicule us. Over the intervening sixty years, I've
seen the evangelical movement in England grow in size, in maturity,
and certainly in scholarship, and therefore I think in influence and
impact. We went from a ghetto to being on the ascendancy, which is a
very dangerous place to be.



CAN YOU COMMENT ON THE DANGERS?



STOTT: Pride is the ever-present danger that faces all of us. In many
ways it is good for us to be despised and rejected. I think of Jesus'
words, 'Woe unto you when all men speak well of you.' Going back to
the 'hapax', it's a very humbling concept. The essence of
evangelicalism is very humbling. You have William Temple saying, 'The
only thing of my very own which I contribute to redemption is the sin
from which I need to be redeemed.'



WE HAVE ALSO SEEN AN IMMENSE GROWTH OF THE CHURCH WORLDWIDE, LARGELY
AMONG EVANGELICAL LINES. WHAT DO YOU SEE AS ITS SIGNIFICANCE?



STOTT: This enormous growth is a fulfilment of God's promise to
Abraham in Genesis 12:1-4. God promised Abraham not only to bless him,
not only to bless his family or his posterity, but through his
posterity to bless all the families of the earth. Whenever we look at
a multi-ethnic congregation, we are seeing a fulfilment of that
amazing promise of God. A promise made by God to Abraham 4,000 years
ago is being fulfilled right before our very eyes today.



YOU KNOW THIS GROWING CHURCH PROBABLY AS WELL AS ANY WESTERNER DOES.
I WONDER HOW YOU EVALUATE IT.



STOTT: The answer is 'growth without depth'. None of us wants to
dispute the extraordinary growth of the church. But it has been
largely numerical and statistical growth. And there has not been
sufficient growth in discipleship that is comparable to the growth in
numbers.