Evangelicals without Theology

The days around Christmas may be the busiest time of the year for many a pastor and church. But thoughtlessness would be the worst evil to befall Christmastide. The Church from the early days has given prominence in the preparation of Christmas to John the Baptist and his call to “prepare the way of the Lord, and make his paths straight.” The eve of Christmas is as good a time as any to survey and mend one’s ways in the light not only of the first, but also of the second Coming.

In today’s evangelical churches one of the deepest needs is the need for biblically committed theology. A few months ago CHRISTIANITY TODAY carried an article by Rene Padilla on “A Church Without Theology.” He was speaking of the church in Latin America. But with evangelicals this calamity seems to be global.

In his opening address to the Lausanne congress, Billy Graham traced the change of direction in the missionary movement of the twentieth century back to “certain theological changes, subtly infiltrating Christian youth movements, causing some to weaken their ties to orthodox faith.” This is true. But it is not confined to the early part of the century. It is still going on.

This certainly holds true for the German scene. Much of its theology today is not of the kind that would awaken or strengthen a living relationship with God. The severe language of the Frankfurt and Berlin declarations on mission and ecumenism may be much better understood against the background of the effects of almost forty years of lack of evangelical theology, roughly since the deaths of Adolf Schlatter and Wilhelm Lütgert. Among these adverse effects are the general weakness of articulation of the evangelical stance and its consequent irrelevance in the public arena, especially the media, except in paid-for broadcasting time. These effects are also felt when evangelicals try to establish their own theological academies in order to remedy the situation, but find it difficult to staff them adequately with indigenous teachers.

Once the chain of tradition of biblical theology is broken one finds it very hard to connect again. As Ortega has said: Put your hands into the lap for one moment, and the jungle proceeds. How much more in forty years!

The worst outcome of this deficiency, though, is the loss of not a few gifted young men and women who, coming from evangelical homes, begin to study theology and end up as sidesmen of secularism or as propagandists of Marxist revolution, because no alternative way of thinking seemed available.

Some say that a similar weakness of evangelicalism may now be observed in Africa. At Lausanne, Gottfried Osei-Mensah, speaking of the future prospects of Christianity in that continent, said: “The phenomenal growth of the African independent churches shows syncretistic signs, perhaps unintentionally at present, but due to lack of biblical teaching.” Although the majority of African churches are said to be evangelical, there is at this moment no evangelical seminary leading to higher theological degrees. Efforts to get such an institution started at least for the French-speaking area do not as yet receive all the encouragement from evangelical quarters that they should get. So the best young men may again grow into theological liberalism, for there is in Africa a strong urge to learn.

In Asia, too, we hear of difficulties with young churches wherever there has been much emphasis on evangelism and very little on subsequent instruction. Where this is lacking churches are vulnerable to breakdown or to conquest by secularism and syncretism.

In the United States, though, evangelical Christians may think that all this is certainly not their problem and that they have all the theology they need. This may be a serious temptation to self-deceit. It may understandably arise from the fact that U. S. evangelicals often have their own church life and educational institutions right through all levels and so can afford something like a separate Christian culture.

But there are questions that keep coming up. Princeton once was a fortress of orthodoxy. What does it teach today? What happened to the World Student Christian Federation and International Missionary Council? Weren’t they both originally alive with evangelical conviction? Why do so many evangelical foundations after some time go the way of disease and decay? Some of the large denominations in the United States now have these problems.

The truth is that no one can simply keep out alien ideas from college or church in the long run. We are living in an age of almost atmospheric atheism, and seminaries cannot be turned into airtight tanks. There is ever that inborn tendency inside man toward moral autonomy and secularism. The challenge cannot be ignored; it must be answered, and that is part of the task of theology. A church is out-thought before it is out-fought.

Of course there is today much substantial teaching and literature in the field of evangelical Bible exegesis. There is conspicuously less in dogmatics and ethics. But systematic theology has the habit of setting the tone for theology and the church. The many reprints of older works of systematic theology in the United States, grateful as we are for them, nevertheless signal a serious lack and the dire need for an up-to-date presentation of biblical truths. As long as there is no public, living, evangelical alternative in theology, evangelical churches may win new believers, but they will continue to lose some of the best of their own sons and daughters. A Christian’s head cannot remain empty.

All those who are committed to Holy Scripture and will seek their answers there must quickly find their way back to full theological consciousness. We need an equilibrium of evangelism and teaching. Especially those working in the field of mission and evangelism are duty-bound to see that those who have found faith will also receive further instruction.

A church without theology has no answer to the challenge of today’s ideologies, to Marxism, Freudianism, secular humanism, and a host of others. Such a church will surely come to see the sad moment of mourning: “Those that I have swaddled and brought up hath mine enemy consumed” (Lam. 2:22). Some of the theological educators at Lausanne who proudly pronounced they were mainly interested in methodology might well ponder their purposes again, not just their means.

This is, moreover, a strange moment of stillness in the torrents of theology. The great teachers of a past generation have gone, and it is not yet decided which turn theology will take. Here, too, there are large opportunities before us. There could indeed come a renaissance of evangelical theology. But it will certainly take hard work and the combined efforts of all who see the task set before them.—KLAUS BOCKMÜHL, professor at the St. Chrischona Pastors’ Training Institute, Basel, Switzerland.

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