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I had an uncomfortable feeling after reading Mark Galli's article "Saint Nasty" in the June 17 issue. While I cannot disagree that former saints were not always the type of people we would want for neighbors, I feel several red flags need to go up for any aspiring saint who wishes to follow their example.

Most of us have met self-appointed saints who, by their abrasive approach, have driven people away from Christianity--I actually heard one such Elijah brag that his message was so strong that few could accept it.

So I propose two caveats: First, be sure you are a saint before you begin using the methods mentioned. Second, take time to talk with and listen to the Lord, for if love does not back up our approach to soul-winning, we're not on the road to sainthood.

- Eugene Lincoln

Hagerstown, Md.

* I appreciate Galli's point that sometimes "saints" must lack patience because of a passion for God's righteousness. However, his examples betray a corresponding lack of humility in many of these same "saints." While I agree that we Christians cannot always be "nice," I believe we must always be humble. Before we get tough with others, we must be tough on ourselves. Paul spoke of "speaking the truth" but doing it "in love." Many Christians have a tendency to speak out against a variety of issues without the humble spirit that should characterize a true saint. We have taken Rush Limbaugh as our model rather than Jesus or the apostle Paul.

- Drick Boyd

Broomall, Pa.

Timothy George's editorial ("Promoting Renewal, Not Tribalism," June 17), which reports on the founding of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals (ACE), is in need of some correction.

First, he argues that the theological boundaries of the Cambridge Declaration, which ACE issued, are too narrow because, he suggests, this was mainly the work of Presbyterians. In actual fact, ACE was attempting to recapture the kind of Augustinian piety that was at the heart of all three traditions of the magisterial Reformation: the Reformed, Lutheran, and Anglican (representatives of which are on the ACE Council).

Second, the boundaries themselves are those prescribed by the five solas that summed up the heart of Reformation theology. The purpose of ACE is to recapture and reassert this theology in our contemporary context where it faces new challenges. The fact that George finds these beliefs too narrow is evidence of how far the evangelical world has drifted, for these solas were once the common property of most evangelicals and not simply of one of its "tribes."

Third, he chides ACE for its stance on justification because it has not followed Evangelicals and Catholics Together (ECT) into ecumenical dialogue with Catholics. The declaration, however, was dealing with matters of doctrinal belief, not of dialogue. It said that those "who claim that evangelicals and Roman Catholics are one in Jesus Christ even where the biblical doctrine of justification is not believed" are mistaken. What ECT did, and George endorsed, was to agree to an unacceptable view of justification that omitted the fact that it is by grace alone through faith alone, and the evangelicals who signed onto ECT agreed that Catholics would not be evangelized. Refusing to take this path is not a vice, as George thinks, but a virtue that places ACE in the company of the great theologians of the Reformation.

Finally, at the time of the April meeting ACE was in its infancy. Its founding members are not its council, and the alliance itself is presently being formed. The evangelical world must find a way out of its present muddled thinking and recover what has made Christianity deep and powerful in the past. In this new quest, ACE welcomes all those who wish to identify with its goals regardless of their denomination.

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August 12 1996, Vol. 40, No. 9