Beeson Podcast, Episode #69
J. I. Packer
Feb. 14, 2012

>>Announcer: 


Welcome to the Beeson podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. Now your host, Timothy George. 


>>Timothy George:


Well, today’s Beeson Podcast offers a lecture, actually a talk by Dr. J I Packer. One of the great voices among evangelicals worldwide over the past generations. This took place at Beeson Divinity School in the context of a conference that we held called, “J I Packer and the Evangelical Future.” It also coincided with Dr. Packer’s 80th birthday. So, who is J I Packer? 

James Innell Packer, born July 22, 1926 in Gloucestershire. He was the son of a great western railway worker. And he grew up very bright, precocious, sent off to Oxford University where he heard the famous Christian apologist, C S Lewis, and was influenced by a number of Lewis’ writings, “The Screwtape Letters,” and “Mere Christianity.” But it was through the work of a student ministry known as, OICU, which stands for Oxford Intercollegiate Christian Union that Jim Packer came into a living relationship with Jesus Christ and committed himself to full time Christian service. 

He became a teacher, a theologian, a theological educator, serving a number of different schools in Great Britain, and really became known in the Christian world through his association with Dr. David Martin Lloyd Jones, the great pastor of Westminster Chapel in London for many years. They used to put on together Puritan studies conferences. 

In 1979 Dr. Packer moved to Canada, to Vancouver, to join the faculty of Regent College, where he remains today. His ministry of writing is really a global phenomenon. His book, “Knowing God,” is perhaps one of the greatest contributions from an evangelical theologian to the literature of Christian nurture over the past one hundred years. Translated to many, many languages of the world. 

Well, I’ve had the privilege to know and work closely with Dr. J I Packer in a number of different settings, including Christianity Today, a movement known as Evangelicals and Catholics Together, and it was a great pleasure to welcome him to Beeson on this occasion to celebrate his 80th birthday. And to ask him to think with us about the evangelical future. And that’s what he does in this talk. 

One of the things you’ll want to listen to is his passion for catechesis, for teaching the Christian faith in an understandable way so that God’s people can know and learn and grow in their relationship to Christ. He also talks about evangelicalism, not so much as a movement as simply movement – that is, a living, vital force within the world of Christian faith. 

You might be surprised he speaks with great affection about John Wesley, even though J I Packer is well known as a reformed theologian. He talks about Wesley and his death and how he died with faith, trusting in Christ, in a very moving kind of way. And then near the end he looks to the future. He says the four areas where the evangelical faith will need to interact and think deeply are its connection to liberalism, pluralism, ecumenism, and secularism. 

This is a great talk by one of the finest leaders in the world evangelical movement today. A person from whom almost all of us have learned so much. I think you’re going to enjoy listening to Dr. J I Packer as he talks with us about the evangelical future.


>>J I Packer:


Thank you so much, Christian friends, for a welcome like that. It’s hard, actually, to know how to begin. This is a personal statement. That is what is asked for. And you’ll understand that I speak to you from notes, because it was only as this conference unfolded that I could finally decide what I ought to say and how I ought to say it. So, that’s how it will come to you. My response and my reflection to the really overwhelming goodwill that you’ve shown me thus far. It does take my breath away and just for once leaves me almost speechless. 

You really are paying me a huge compliment by organizing a conference of this kind. Let me say next, however, that the conference so far has given me enormous pleasure. Indeed, to put it in the world’s language. I found it great fun. A man, they say, is known by his friends. What friends I have!

I’ve spoken already of little George and now I think of Maid Marian Humphrey, who described me in the course of her very friendly talk as a “doctrinal watchdog.” Things like that have been said of me before. I was described in TIME magazine as a “theological traffic cop.” I’ve been tagged as an “evangelical border guard,” all that sort of thing. Well, I’m thankful to know, or at least to be told, that it’s true. And I trust it will go on being true as long as I’m able to form any judgment on matters theological at all. 

Well, as I said, it’s a compliment and it’s a great pleasure, but it forces me to do as David did on one occasion, and in the presence of God, like David, going and sitting before the Lord before the arc, I suppose, and he said, “Who am I, O Lord God? What is my house that you have brought me thus far?” I find myself asking myself before the Lord, who am I that you have brought me thus far?

Well, let me tell you then one or two things about myself so that you will know how, in the Lord’s presence, that question, it seems to me, should be answered. 

I am, to start with, the product, let me say, of a fairly sudden conversion. I am a sinner, saved by grace – and friends, don’t ever forget it. The conversation itself took about three minutes, but it followed three years of softening up from the Lord. It was a very ordinary conversation. We were singing the hymn that Charlotte Elliott composed after Caesar [Milan 00:07:37] had dealt with her about her soul. You know the hymn as well as now I do, “Just As I Am.” By the end of the singing of that hymn, which I had never sung before, I knew that I was a Christian now. And life, in a real sense, was beginning again. 

The poet, John Masefield, wrote a long narrative poem in the first person singular. The utterer of the poem is a person with a symbolical name of Saul Cain and it’s the narrative of his conversion. There’s six lines in that poem which when I found them years after my conversation became precious to me because they expressed so completely what happened to me on that momentous evening in 1944. Maybe you know the lines yourselves. 

I did not speak.
I did not strive.
The deep peace burned me alive.

I think that’s a wonderful line. 

The bolted door had broken in.
I knew that I had done with sin.
I knew that I was brought to birth,
To brother every soul on earth.

So, it goes on. 

Well, that’s what conversion meant for me back 62 years ago, as it was. And I would like you to know that my sense of vocation has been very steady, pretty steady since early on in my Christian life I had been blessed with the same sort of theological consistency as you see in people like Calvin and Charles Spurgeon. Right from the start they were clear in their minds about the truth of the gospel and they never saw reason to change their opinions, or convictions. They were sovereign grace men and by the grace of God, so am I. 

Early on in my Christian life I realized that I was being called to become a shepherd, a shepherd of God’s flock. Soon, it became apparent that right at the heart of my shepherding ministry should be seminary teaching whereby one seeks to shape the shepherds of tomorrow. I have been in seminary work for more than half my life. 

As a writer, that came later – but as a writer, right from the start I was writing for the shepherds as well as for the sheep and for the sheep as well as for the shepherds. You may have noticed in the little bit about me that’s in the program that Alistair McGrath wasn’t sure whether to call me a theologian but said for sure this man, Packer, is a theologizer. Well, I’m not too sorry that he hesitates to call me a theologian, though he concedes that some do give me that name, and perhaps in my sense of the word I can qualify for the title. 

But nowadays it is true, isn’t it, that the word “theologian” very often signifies a certain intellectualist cast of mind. It doesn’t suggest a primary interest in pastoral matters. It does suggest a primary interest in pushing out the walls of detailed knowledge concerning the scriptures or the church’s history of thought and the church’s experiences down the centuries. 

It’s a perfectly valid vocation for those who are called to focus in their life and their work. But Alistair is quite right to suppose that that isn’t quite what is central in my understanding of what I am called to do. He calls me a “theologizer.” Fair enough. I call myself a catechist. An adult catechist. 

A person, therefore, who stands in the succession of people like [inaudible 00:12:23], Sorrell of Jerusalem, Augustine, Luther, and Calvin, and indeed all the magisterial reformers, and the Puritans, whom I love so much. Especially Richard Baxter, who of all of them is closest to my heart, just as John Owen is closest to my head. 

Maybe you have never thought to call these folks, “Catechists.” But that is how they would have described themselves. Each single one of them, if you’d asked them. The Puritans were catechetical preachers. If you’ve tried to read Puritan sermons you may wonder why there’s such a plethora of headings and subheadings. Well, it’s for the pastoral purpose of making the sermon memorable. The Puritans encouraged their hearers to take notes and to memorize the headings. And then to go home and spend the rest of the week remembering the sermon, discussing it with other members of the family, praying over the various points that had been made, and not forgetting any of the things that had been said.

Well, I stand with the Puritans, having the same concern. I am a catechist before the Lord and a minister, yes, but whereas the word “theologian” might suggest a minister who is first and foremost a professional scholar, I’m a minister who resonates with the title of one of John Piper’s books, “Brothers, We Are Not Professionals.” I am in the business of providing as best I can truth for people. Which is what the Christian ministry at all levels is about. 

I believe that there is a gap, as a matter of fact, at this point in the resources that we have available and that we make available for each other in the evangelical circles in which we move. We have plenty of printed literature that covers that ABC of the faith and Christian life. We have plenty of textbooks written up in most cases very obviously written up out of lectures which teachers of theology have been giving during their active life. When they retire they write up the lectures and they become a textbook and the textbook is there in the shops for us.

Well, very good for folks who are preparing for MDiv examinations. Very good as reference works on pastor’s shelves. But somewhat above the head of ordinary adult believers in the pew. And you will recall that Spurgeon once said we are sent, we ministers, to feed the Lord’s sheep, not his giraffes. Between the ABC books and the technical theological textbooks there’s a gap. We have very few books of what you might call higher catechism quality with a purpose of taking adult believers, lay folk, on from the ABC to what more they need to know, what next they need to master, in order to be fully fashioned Christians.

It was not always so. In the 16th century when the Church of England prayer book was produced with an eight page children’s catechism Alexander Knowles, Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, produced a 450 page question and answer catechism for adults who had got beyond the children’s catechism. In those days Anglicans knew what I’m afraid Anglicans have largely forgotten since, that all Christians are called to be lifelong learners. And Knowles catechism contained the material that folks should move onto after they’ve mastered what the children’s catechism prepared for confirmation candidates had told them.

In some sections of the church adult catechesis has been a significant thing until quite recent times. If you know, for instance, the book by A A Hodge, titled, “Outlines of Theology,” that’s a question and answer book produced towards the end of the 19th century for adult catechism classes. It’s very obvious from the way that its put together. Let me say I see [Alpha 00:17:34] as, I have to say, an accidental re-inventing of adult catechism. At least in its early stages. I don’t think the Alpha people have any idea that this is what, in the providence of God, they’ve been led to do. But that’s how I understand what they actually have done.

And, please God, adult catechism will come back as a big thing in the next generation for all sorts and conditions of Christians. Already in the Roman Catholic Church much is being made of adult catechizing and I look to see the same thing happening in evangelical circles. I look to see higher catechism material becoming more and more available and being used more and more for the purpose of taking lay folk on from the ABC.

Certainly, when somebody writes at the level of higher catechism people lap it up and they realize that they have been very hungry for this sort of thing for a long time. As C S Lewis found with his own apologetic writings, which are properly to be classed as higher catechism material because they’re expounding the faith to adults, and looking back over the last 30 years I realize that this is something that I found, which I was privileged to discover, when I produced the book, titled, “Knowing God.” It hadn’t occurred to me that I should be writing at this higher catechism level, but in fact that’s what I was doing and God has given the book an amazingly wide ministry and consequence.

Well, this is how I see it. And how I see myself. And as a catechist I seek to be a teacher and discipler who specializes in the truths that people live by and in presenting those truths to people as an agenda for living. An adult catechist has to be a theological generalist, rather than a specialist. And so over the years I have sought to be. I have an introductory lecture, which I give to as many theology classes as I can, as I can get to, right at the outset. This introductory lecture tells folks, beginning the study of theology, that there are ten disciplines that they’ve got to get on top of. 

The ten disciplines together make up the organism or encyclopedia of theology in its fullness, as a discipline and as a means of grace to the Church. There’s exegesis, and there’s secondly biblical theology where the fruit of exegesis is synthesized. Thirdly, there’s historical theology as you review the questions that the Church has asked and has been asked and the answers that have been given. And with the material of exegesis and biblical theology and historical theology brought together there is the discipline variously called systematic or dogmatic theology. Systematic because it syncs things together and dogmatic because it seeks to express the faith of the Church. And this discipline of systematic or dogmatic theology seeks to present a full statement of the faith adapted for use at the present time. And then the other six disciplines take this material and use it.

Ethics, for the fixing of standards. Spirituality, for understanding communion with God and all its aspects. Apologetics, maintaining the wisdom of the faith in face of the suspicions that many express that there’s no wisdom in this at all, no truth. Missiology, which as I understand it covers not only the practicalities of worldwide evangelism and church planting, but also the demands of encountering in one’s Christian identity the culture of the places where the gospel is going to be preached and seeking to re-shape those cultures for Christ. Then there’s liturgy, the study of worship. And there’s ministry in the broad practical sense of dealing with souls by preaching, by teaching, by walking with them, by the various forms of crisis counseling, and the ongoing reality of shepherdly care. 

Ten disciplines. And I tell my students, “Now, you need to have at least a nodding acquaintance with all ten.” They’re oft to be founded on the authority of scripture, which in my book requires a clear commitment to the total truthfulness of the Bible, its inerrancy if you want to use that word, to the extent to which you allow that there are mistakes, small mistakes, medium sized mistakes, in the Bible. To that extent you are undermining the authority of scripture and putting yourself in the position of the Dutch boy, who realizing that the water was about to break through the dyke, shoved his finger and then his hand then the whole of his arm into the hole that the water, as it worked, was making and still couldn’t stop it coming through. Well, this is what I tell them, and this is the route that I have sought to travel myself. 

The task for the catechist, the adult discipler is, as you see, communication and application of God’s revealed truth for the formation of Christians in the image of Christ their savior. The sort of Christians that I seek to shape by the kind of material that I give to the world are Christians whose lives are marked by four qualities. Doxology to start with. They will always be praising and thanking God for his goodness. Humility, in the second place, for they will know that it’s only by the sovereign grace of God that they are, as my Welsh friends love to say, “in the life.” By intensity, let me underline that ... I seek to help people beyond what I call “euphoric sloth,” or laziness, whereby you’re so glad to be a Christian and so glad to be happy all the day, but you just swan your way along without any great effort, believing that the very reality of sovereign grace means that effort is unimportant. 

Dear friends, in the Christian life we are called to race. Paul is very explicit about that. He models it himself. In the world of horse racing they put blinders on the horses to make sure that their vision will be narrow as they race, because horses get very easily distracted if they see too much to the right or the left of them, and then they stop running straight. 

I want to see Christians racing without blinders. I want to see bred for vision as part of their Christian maturity. But I sure don’t want to see them trotting where they ought to be racing. And sloth, one of the seven deadly sins, is as far as I’m concerned, one of the great enemies of Christianity in our time. Not usually recognized as an enemy creeping in and undermining the impact that we make in the world, simply because we don’t work hard enough. I hope that any Christians who use my stuff for their help will meet and accept and acknowledge and embrace Packer’s insistence on a thoroughgoing intensity as integral to discipleship.

And with that intensity I seek to shape disciples in solidarity with the Church and the rest of the Christian world and with their heritage in Christ, the heritage, I mean, of wisdom from ... well, ideally, from the fathers and from the medievalist and from the reformers and from the Puritans, and from many moderns all rolled together in a single glorious ball. And I seek to ensure that folks who have found the Lord and are rejoicing in the life don’t get betrayed into the kind of individualism which weakens the Church and makes their own contribution insignificant. 

You recognize this, of course, as the reformational, or should I say the reformed vision of spiritual formation as modeled by, well, here are the heroes whose statues could stand on my mantelpiece: John Calvin, Richard Baxter, George Whitfield, Charles Spurgeon, J C Ryle, D Martin Lloyd Jones. You ask what is the syllabus which is a catechist I seek to instill in order to achieve the effect that I want? Well, it so happens that last Saturday morning I was at the cathedral and speaking in effect to this question. Speaking to a title that they’d given me, “Theology is for Everyone.” 

I didn’t tell them that I was a catechist. I didn’t tell them that what I was presenting to them was the basic material in which adults need to be catechized and to review and deepened their understanding regularly as a life project. But here’s my list of ten topics. You may like to hear them. One, the authority of the Bible as the infallible Word of God to be interpreted canonically of course in terms of its inner unity. Second, the sovereignty of God, in creation, providence, and grace. Thirdly, the reality of the Trinity, the holy team, the three persons who work together as a team for your salvation and mine – and who in the unity of their being constitute the ultimate eternal fact: here before the world was, here before you and I were, and here for all eternity. As I say, the ultimate eternal fact. The triunity of God. 

Fourth item in the syllabus, the checklist of themes, the tragedy of humanity. The reality and depth of sin and the misery of human dignity ruined by sin in the way that the abbeys of England were ruined by demolition and neglect from the 16th century onwards. 

Fifth theme, the glory of the incarnation, the creator becomes human within his own creation without in the least diminishing his own divinity. This is the second person of the godhead showing us what God is like, showing us what human life ought to be in the unity of a single life lived for 30 years in Palestine. 

Sixth theme, the majesty of mediation. The great exchange whereby Christ takes our place under judgment and takes our sin on his own shoulders to atone for it and sits on our shoulders in its place the reality of his righteousness imputed. The privilege of sonship with him, adoptive sonship, in the family of God, and the glory of being an heir of the glory which he already enjoys at the father’s right hand. The majesty of mediation through Christ. And that leads on, of course, to the propriety of Christ being central in life and thought and filling the horizon of all his people so that they never settle anything in their minds by way of a judgment or a plan or a vision of what might be or a strategy for doing anything without reference to him. 

Then seventh, the necessity of faith. You can fill that in without my saying anything. Remember only, I ask, that faith has a three-fold object. Yes, it’s the living Christ who is the object of faith, but yes it is also the promises that the Father has given and that Christ himself has given, faith in the promises, as is fundamental in the New Testament as faith in the living Christ and faith in God the Father from whom both the promises and the Savior have come. That, too, belongs to the object of faith and faith is necessary, ah yes, for reasons which you know very well. 

Eighth truth, the centrality of the Church. In God’s plan the focus is on the creating of a new humanity. We’re, none of us, the only pebbles on God’s beach. God is creating a community – the Body of Christ. A family of his children. And the Church is central in all his ongoing plans, purposes, we are privileged to be part of that.

Ninth agenda item, the circuitry of communion. Or, to use the old phrase, the study of the means of grace whereby we seek the Lord and the Lord comes to us and communion is established. Through the Bible. Through prayer. Through Christian fellowship. Through togetherness in the sacraments. Means of grace are such because God, in his mercy, makes them means to faith. And through faith the Lord is sought, the circuit is complete, for the Lord comes and blesses where faith is exercised.

And the tenth and last agenda item, you expected it and here it comes. The ultimacy of doxology, the glory of God, as the goal of everything. And as the fulfillment of our humanity. We are never so fully human as when we are engaged in bringing glory to God. 

Well, this is the material with which J I Packer, the catechist, has been concerned over the years. And part of the story has been that I have sought, quietly but continually, to remind people that we are on a journey, we are traveling home, and just as we think constantly and joyfully about the Christian life, so we need to think responsibly, still joyfully, about the Christian death. 

We are so concerned these days, it seems to me, about the blessings of this life that we don’t think anything like as much as we should do about the effect that ultimately we leave this world for a more glorious one. Christians in days past were different from us at that point. My hope is that my material will help people both to live usefully and to face death, how shall I say it ... gracefully, as did John Wesley. I haven’t brought him in, yet, but you should know that he is another of the men whom I greatly admire and he comes in well at this point.

John Wesley was the man who said of the members of the Methodist Societies, “our people die well.” And John Wesley set a wonderful example of dying well himself. He died of old age, you remember, at 88. He knew he was dying on the day when he asked them to take him out of the bed and put him on a chair and summoning the little strength that remained to him from the chair he sang, Isaac Watts, “I’ll praise my maker while I’ve breath, and when my voice is lost in death praise shall employ my nobler powers. My days of praise shall n’er be past while life and thought and being lost, or immortality endures.” And during the night that followed when he was back in bed, he tried to go on singing it and it couldn’t. His strength was ebbing away. But the words, “I’ll praise,” were on his lips time and time again as he tried. His last words, as I expect you know, were “the best of all is God is with us, a graceful death.” 

Charles Wesley put this into his hymns. “Happy if with my latest breath I may but gasp his name.” This is the name of Jesus. “Preach him to all and cry in death, ‘Behold! Behold The Lamb.’” You know those words, the great words. John Newton followed in the same track. “When I see thee as thou art, I’ll praise thee as I ought. Till then I would thou love proclaim with every fleeting breath. May the music of thy name refresh my soul in death.”

My dear Puritan friend, Richard Baxter, poetizing a covenant with God, which the lady who later became his wife drew up when she thought she was on her deathbed at the age of 19. Baxter produced the hymn that begins, I’m sure you know it, “Lord, it belongs not to my care whether I die or live.” And it ends with lovely words about the life to come, which is the hope of us all. “My knowledge of that life is small, the eye of faith is dim, but it’s enough that Christ knows all and I shall be with him. Forever with the Lord.” And I think a mature adult disciple will think about these things as I find myself obliged to do more and more, being 80 years old. I think one should start long before one is 80 years old, frankly. And that, I believe, is part of the Christian maturity to which the catechist must seek to lead those to whom he’s privileged to minister.

Now, under the name of J I Packer, on the program, come the words, “And the evangelical future,” and I’m going now to say something about evangelicalism, as I understand it, and the future that we should see for it. Straightaway I want to say you won’t get a good handle on the future of evangelicalism or anything else unless or until you know something about its past, its track record, and have formed an opinion about its present condition. In light of the track record lose your memory and you become shortsighted as you look into the future. 

Well, this is a historical age as we have already said to each other and there are lots of people who are shortsighted, simply because they have lost their memory or have never had a clear memory about the heritage to which, as evangelicals, they have become possessed. So, let me ask and try to answer some questions. 

What is this evangelicalism that we’re talking about? How you answer that question is decisive for everything else that I’m going to discuss. Who are we? It’s a question for each single one of us. Well, I don’t know how you answer the question, but this is how I answer it. Evangelicalism, to start with, is a word, so is the adjective “evangelical” a word that has been common in the west since the middle of the 19th century when the evangelical alliance was formed in Britain. It wasn’t so common beforehand. But it has become increasingly a key word to describe what? Well, a style. 

Not, I urge, a party. Not, I urge, a sect. Not, I urge, the true church. But a style. A style of Christianity with its own perspectives and emphasizes. 

What sort of a style is this? We can begin to approach it through the lens of the professional historians you will know, I expect, that Scottish professor, David Bebbington, has popularized an account of the evangelical style of Christianity based on the supposition that it all began in the 18th century. Now, as a Puritan addict I challenge that. So, I can’t pretend that I regard David Bebbington’s account as the last word, but it’s certainly the first word. Bebbington, generalizing from what happened in the 18th century and what has happened since, speaks of the evangelical style of Christianity as having four qualities. It’s bible-based, it’s cross centered, it’s conversion oriented, and it’s outreach focused. And it’s a movement, he says, which has these four qualities. 

My comment, simply from the historical point of view, is that four more qualities ought to be mentioned, and this description from Bebbington is incomplete until they are mentioned. Evangelicalism focuses on holiness as the goal in this life. Evangelicalism, historically has always focused at least when it’s been in good health, on the hope of glory of which I was speaking a moment ago. There’s holiness and there’s hope in the evangelical style of Christianity. In that style, too, there has historically been a stress, when evangelicalism has been in good health, on the household, the household of faith. 

Perhaps you remember the title of the late Lesslie Newbigin’s first book, “On the Nature of the Church?” Yes, evangelicalism in health has always been church centered. And it focuses, fourthly, on humanness and humanism. Now, granted, evangelicalism hasn’t always been in good health. Go back to the 18th century, Bebbington’s stamping ground, John Wesley, bring him in again, was a great teacher of humanness to the members of his Methodist societies; going through the whole range of human obligations and drilling people who had come to know the Lord in the observance of those obligations – that’s humanness. And I think of Abraham Kuyper, the Dutch evangelical, who outlined in a very full way, in the late 19th and early 20th century the [lineaments 00:44:43] of a Christian humanism. 

There’s already been reference made in this conference to the fact that Tom Howard and I produced a book called, “Christianity, the True Humanism.” Christians weren’t interested in reading it. It bombed in the shops. But nonetheless it expresses something which is important to me and I think has been important to evangelicals generally when they’ve been in good spiritual health.

But all of this is external description, historian’s description. Let me move now to a theological description of evangelicalism. Evangelicalism as a style of Christianity, viewed from the inside, in a way which will show what makes it tick. Check, friends, whether your evangelicalism matches my evangelicalism at this point. 

Theological description, then, of evangelicalism. It’s an ethos of convertedness within the larger ethos of catholicity. It is a style within the one Church, the Body of Christ. There are two uses of the word “church” in the New Testament, as the Sherriff of Nottingham reminded us, the universal church on the one hand and the local church on the other. Yes, all local congregations are meant to be samples, specimens of what the one Church universal is, because they are outcrops of it. And so demonstrations of its life. That’s the connection.

Well now, what is this ethos of convertedness that I’m talking about? Within the ethos of catholicity that is the acknowledgement of the fact that there is one Church to which, by grace, all who are born again belong. My answer is the ethos is precisely the ethos of newness and difference. New birth, new creation, new life in Christ. And the difference and the contrast between that new life in Christ and the way of the world and the way of the Church, if the Church gets out of sorts. That’s the ethos of convertedness within the ethos of catholicity. 

Let me go deeper in my theological description. This is as integral an account of the nature of evangelicalism as I can produce. I put it to you. Evangelicalism is a process. A pneumatic process of which you must give a pneumaticalogical account, or you will sell it short. It is a happening. It is something that takes place, or not, within the Church. It is a divine dynamic. It’s an energy from the Word and the Spirit, blessed by God. It is movement. I’m not saying, now, that it is a movement. I’m saying that in itself it is movement generated by an understanding of the gospel. Having the nature of an awakening and a renewing of piety and devotion and life and thus a reviving of religion. 

It is a form of life. My picture for it is that it is the flowing of a main stream in a river like the Mississippi where the main stream flows in the middle of a very broad expanse and at the edges of the expanse of water you have bayous and mud flats and you have reed beds. The important thing for us about the bayous and the mud flats and the reed beds is that the water is stagnant there. The main stream is not flowing there. Oh yes, there’s an organic link with the main stream and these features of the river’s course are fed by the main stream. But bayous, mud flats, reed beds – these stagnate. 

Now, how does my illustration illustrate? Well, as I say, there is a main stream in the middle where the water is moving. It’s flowing. And there are creeds and confessions, which mark the channel along which the current flows. And there are boats carried by the current, not becalmed at the edges, but carried along by the current. This is a picture of the flowing of life. 

What is it that is being renewed constantly as the life flows in the main stream? Answer: faith and repentance and worship and good works and Christian fellowship in the church community and personal communion with God in holiness and service. These realities are being renewed all the time. So, what I’m urging is that evangelicalism is mainstream Christianity wherever it’s found. And this is its ecumenical quality. It is a world church reality where the Word and the Spirit are working together. Where the gospel is being received in the power of the Spirit, there evangelical life is happening. 

So, what’s the future of evangelicalism? I’m not futurologist. Time is gone. I must be brief here. Four points, very quickly. First of all, understand that the life which evangelicals enjoy and celebrate is the gift of God and depends on the faithfulness of God. It can’t be generated by programs and by human effort apart from the blessing of God and we need to realize that. Nothing happens, save, as the Spirit of God makes it happen. Now, four interfaces to all of which this principle applies. 

Evangelicalism and liberalism. Well, we’ve been reminded that liberalism is [inaudible 00:51:50] within Protestantism produced by the impact of the enlightenment on the culture around. It’s rationalistic, it’s a distinct religion from evangelicalism. It de-supernaturalizes the faith. It’s a cuckoo in the nest within the churches. It’s poison. Our task as evangelicals must be to get rid of it from the Church by whatever means we can. 

Second, evangelicalism and church divisions. The deepest church divisions, I believe, have to do with what, to me, from the scriptures seems to be a mistake that is the idea that the church at heart is a God given ministerial structure to which all the faithful are called to adhere and it’s that ministerial structure that guarantees to us the grace of the sacraments. That, of course, is so briefly stated as to be a cartoon, but that’s the basic idea of what the Body of Christ is. And the alternative idea is what Charles Hodge called “the spiritual idea of the church.” Of course, there’s a claim there which we might wish to challenge, but that’s what he called it, the spiritual is distinct from the structural idea of what the Body of Christ is. 

God-given faith in the Christ of the gospel resulting in our union with the Christ of the gospel creates the Church. The Church is like the spokes of the wheel, all linked to the hub, and therefore able to work together to give the wheel strength and keep it going. Within this fellowship of new life in union with the Savior there emerges ministry, established ministry according to gifts, and a practice of the sacraments, which the Savior instituted. And we face these two different ways of understanding the Church as we think about evangelicalism in relation to church divisions.

Well, the big point that I want to leave with you here is that evangelicalism is spiritual movement and in that sense it is ecumenical in its character, that is, it is reality for the world Church and it’s our privilege to make it happen throughout the world Church as God gives us opportunity. And the question of bringing Church structures into line with each other become secondary rather than primary. 

And you ask me, am I saying that there can be such a reality as evangelicalism within the Orthodox communion, within the Roman Catholic communion, and my answer is, yes, absolutely. And then evangelicalism and other faiths, well, there is such a thing as general revelation. Romans 1 and other scriptures confront us with that. And our business, it seems to me, in encounter with other religions is first and foremost out of respect, ultimately for God, and for general revelation, to seek ... I mean, to look for and celebrate any truths that you discern in these non Christian religions and you claim them and diagnose them as the fruit of revelation from God. But then with that to try to show non Christian faiths what they lack in the way of love and hope through lack in Christ. And you labor to share the knowledge of Christ and you go on from there. That is the evangelical way in encounter with other faiths. As increasingly, of course, we have to do, living here in North America today. 

Evangelicalism and western secularism, post Christianity, as you may call it ... Francis Schaefer seems to me to be the wisest of all the folks who have spoken to this in my lifetime. And he had two principles which I embrace wholeheartedly. They are principles which enable one, straightaway, to make significant dialogical contact with folks who are not Christians, and post Christians, and are hostile to Christianity as an atavistic legacy of the past. All right. Francis Schaefer calls on us to do two things to practice “taking the roof off,” as he calls it, that is showing the person who is trying to live without the knowledge of God, that the Christian has, that he or she cannot be sure of anything. Solipsistic skepticism about everything lies at the end of whatever road this person is following. And Schaefer had his technique from taking the roof off and making people thoroughly uncomfortable by showing them that rationally.

Then the other Schaefer principle is tell them the whole story. Start with creation and explain all that the Christian believes about the plan of God for his world. At the heart of which, of course, stands the incarnation, the mediation of Christ, the Kingdom of Christ, and the reality of the Church. But tell the whole story. And keep holding the other guy to the point that what he or she must be testing, partly by asking what evidence there is for it, and partly by asking what experience Christians are actually having of it, what this post Christian must be testing is the whole story as such.

I had to say that in a hurry, because I have gone over time and I apologize for that. Where do we finish? I finish at the end of sharing these personal perceptions with you by remembering the occasion when Jesus, in real perplexity and tension of mind, beginning I think to feel in advance the agony of Gethsemane, said, “What shall I say? Father, save me from this hour. No, that’s the wrong thing to say. For this purpose I’ve come to this hour. So, this is what I shall say, Father, glorify your name.” And then a voice came from Heaven, “I have glorified it and I will glorify it again.” 

I didn’t ask anymore than you have asked, to be born at the latter years of the 20th century to live through the first part of the 21st. It isn’t comfortable and it won’t be comfortable, that’s guaranteed. But the proper prayer for us at each turn of the road is the Savior’s prayer, never mind the personal discomfort and difficulty and tension and anxiety. “Father, glorify they name.” May there be evangelical movement in our midst. For that’s what really matters as world history continues. That there should be evangelical movement, evangelicalism as a reality in our midst. And we do well to remember that when Jesus prayed, “Father, glorify they name,” the answer was, “I have glorified it in the past and I will glorify it again.” 

My hope, your hope, our prayer, I guess so. And so it should be. 

Thank you very much for listening. 


>>Announcer:


You’ve been listening to the Beeson podcast with host, Timothy George. You can subscribe to the Beeson Podcast at our website, www.BeesonDivinity.com. Beeson Divinity School is an interdenominational evangelical divinity school, training men and women in the service of Jesus Christ. We pray that this podcast will aid and encourage your work and we hope you will listen to each upcoming addition of the Beeson Podcast.