Robert Brow is right on a number of points. Evangelicals are experiencing the dizzy ferment of theological change they thought happened only to liberals. It is the price we pay for our success, I suppose. Once we move out of the ghetto into the limelight, the pressure to clarify our thought increases, as does the willingness (stemming from a feeling of self-confidence) to reconsider traditional opinions.
Brow is also right in observing that there is no one brand of “evangelical” theology and there never has been, despite the myth generated by neofundamentalists in North America that there is a single orthodox type. There have always been Calvinist, Lutheran, and Wesleyan hermeneutics, to name but a few, with each group reading the Scriptures in the light of their traditional convictions. Evangelicals do not interpret the Bible with complete objectivity, whatever they may think. No one does.
But has a new-model evangelical theology really come upon us without our being aware, one that has not yet been clearly articulated? Brow is onto something but needs a little help from his friends to describe the intuition more accurately. For this “new” thinking is not all that new.
The larger issue can be formulated this way: “Is God an absolute monarch who always gets his way, or a loving parent who is sensitive to our needs even when we disappoint him and frustrate some of his plans?” Old evangelical thinking liked to portray God as the all-determining power who gets glory even from the damnation of sinners, while the new thinking sees in God a compassionate lover who enters into the struggles of his creatures and does not push people around. The “new” thinking holds that God not only acts but reacts; not only influences events but is influenced by them; not only has plans for history but is flexible enough to incorporate into his plans the decisions that human beings make.
Brow’s “new” evangelical thinking is really the old Arminian or non-Augustinian thinking. You see that in his examples—he says that hell is a fate freely chosen, for example. What is new is that the dominance of Calvinist thinking in evangelical theology is being challenged by a wave of Arminian thinking breaking on its shores. So the real issue is one of control: Will the Augustinian old guard that dominates the structure of official evangelicalism gracefully surrender some of its power to a resurgent wave of Arminian thinking? Or will it fight to retain control?
This struggle for control will coalesce around the definition of evangelical. With the growing prominence of non-Augustinian interpretations within the evangelical camp, how will the “powers that be” respond? Politically, evangelicals prefer democratic pluralism, but it remains to be seen if they will exhibit tolerance toward this new diversity in the forefront of their ranks.
By Clark H. Pinnock, professor of theology, McMaster Divinity College, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
