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Certainly evangelicals affirm that Jesus had to live a life of perfect righteous ness if he was to qualify as the bearer of our sins. But the demand that Jesus' life of perfect righteousness prior to his death constitutes an indispensable part of the righteousness that "Celebration" presents as imputed to sinners who believe in him puts on "Celebration" a Reformed stamp that many evangelicals cannot knowingly endorse. For they believe that reconciliation and justification derive from Jesus' "one act of righteousness," which contrasts with Adam's "one transgression" (to use the phraseology in Rom. 5:18) and therefore refers solely to Jesus' propitiatory death on the cross. So a legitimate question arises: Does the wording of "Celebration" keep such evangelicals outside the fold?
The strongly Reformed tone of "Celebration" next led me to interpret "fruit" in the statement that "our faith … is itself the fruit of God's grace" (p. 53, col. 1) as a figure of speech for "gift"—this in the framework of a Calvinistic doctrine of more-than-prevenient, irresistible grace—so as to rule out the Arminian doctrine of faith as an exercise of free will by human beings.
To be sure, Arminians as well as Calvinists trace their roots back to the Protestant Reformation and can speak of faith as the fruit or gift of God's grace in the sense that he gives human beings opportunity to believe and by his Spirit prompts them to do so by an act of their own free will. But context rules good interpretation, so that the strongly Re formed tone of "Celebration" raises further legitimate questions: Does the wording of "Celebration" rule out Arminians? If so, does it not redefine evangelicalism more narrowly than in the past rather than reaffirming its broader past tradition? And does not the followup, "Faith … involves an acknowledgement that we have no merit of our own, it is confessedly not a meritorious work" (p. 53, col. 1; see also p. 55, col. 2, point 16), satisfy the legitimate Calvinistic fear of works-salvation well enough to make unnecessary a denial of evangelical citizenship to free-willers?
Arminian evangelicals often fall in to the camps of Pentecostalists, other charismatics, and the Holiness movement. Those who belong to these camps, along with whatever current heirs there may be of the likes of A. J. Gordon (founder of the college and seminary bearing his name) and R. A. Torrey (founder of Biola), believe that empowerment for Christian life and witness requires a work of the Holy Spirit above and beyond justification by faith and that not all Christians have experienced this further work, perhaps even that most Christians have not experienced it.
Not that these Arminians deny the work of the Holy Spirit in believers' lives from justification onward. Of course not. And they would gladly accept the statement in "Celebration" about Christians' "looking to him ['their risen Lord'] in repentance and hope for empowering through the Holy Spirit" (p. 53, col. 1). But on face value the stronger statement, "the Gospel assures us that all who have entrusted their lives to Jesus Christ are born again … [and] empowered … by the Holy Spirit" (p. 53, col. 1), presents empowerment by the Holy Spirit as an accomplished fact, just as rebirth is, in all Christian believers—the very doctrine that Pentecostalists, other charismatics, members of the Holiness movement, and A. J. Gordon- and R. A. Torrey-types have traditionally denied, and against that doctrine have expended great effort in urging merely justified Christians to "pray through" till they receive empowerment for Christian life and witness by way of a usually delayed baptism in the Holy Spirit or "entire sanctification" by "a second work of grace" ("that second rest" for which Charles Wesley prayed to "take away our bent to sinning"). So a still further question: Does the wording of "Celebration" outlaw evangelicals who do not believe that such empowerment necessarily occurs at the point of justification?
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