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It seems to me that confessions are saying to us today that we, in the last 50 years, have been following a traditional sequence of ordering Christian doctrine.

Packer: During the last 50 years, the matter has become higher profile and the debate perhaps sharper than it used to be simply because it's liberals that we're up against. Liberal epistemology starts from the affirmation that the world has the wisdom and what the church believes has to be relativized to what the world is saying at the moment.

Encountering that, all these statements of faith have appreciated that you have to start with your epistemological basis. You get your knowledge of the truth of God from the Bible. And so, before you go any further, you have to make an affirmation about the Bible as a fit source to consult for sure knowledge about God.

Some evangelicals put the Bible in a different place. But whenever that's done, it seems to me that it produces more inconveniences than it removes. I'm thinking, for instance, of a systematic theology textbook that makes the Bible part of the doctrine of the church because the Bible is God's means of grace to the church. Well, epistemologically, that leaves you with enormous unsolved problems. It's the kind of thing that a Roman Catholic who believes in infallibility in and given to the church could say quite happily. But for an evangelical to leave the doctrine of Scripture so late is problematic.

Your book presents an interesting balance between doctrinal belief and concerns for mission and service in the world. That second element would distinguish a lot of evangelical faith statements from the classic creeds. What does that tell us about evangelicals?

Oden: The Great Commission and world mission are absolutely central to evangelical integrity and consciousness. We have not gone very much into moral and social questions, although there are two chapters, one on religious pluralism and the uniqueness of Christ, and the other on Christian social responsibility. But those are only two chapters out of sixteen. And in those cases, the views that are expressed are really very traditional views.

Statements like the Amsterdam Declaration, the Manila Manifesto, the Lausanne Covenant, and the Willowbank Declaration are all mission oriented. They're not simply doctrinal statements.

Packer: Yes they are. That's because evangelicalism as a form of Christianity is mission oriented. Always has been, and please God, always will be. This is something that it's right should be there.

Copyright © 2004 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

J.I. Packer and Thomas C. Oden's One Faith: The Evangelical Consensus is this month's selection for CT's Editor's Bookshelf. Elsewhere on our site you can:

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Read an extended interview with the authors

The publisher is taking pre-orders of One Faith and has more information on its web site.

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January (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48