What English Bible translation should I use?  This is a perennial question, so I’m posting my thoughts at the present time, and I’ll update them as they change.   The question has to be answered with questions.  For what use?  And who is asking?

Two Basic Uses

There is spiritual (“devotional”) reading, and there is study.  The line between the two is fuzzy—should be fuzzy; study is also a spiritual discipline.  But there is no doubt that there are different kinds of reading.  Readings practiced primarily for encounter with God, well-known among them lectio divina, are in practice very distinct from those intended for textual analysis.

Spiritual Reading

Spiritual reading calls for a translation that best communicates without the need for careful study.  Spiritual reading practices often focus on a single word or phrase, so the issue is not simply that many people take in large sections of text in their daily reading, thereby precluding detailed examination.  Rather, the issue is that some translations are not made for readability, which aims to reduce distance and noise between reader and text.  If a translation succeeds at making the text highly readable, the reader can focus on communion with God (listening) instead of on understanding word choices and syntax (scrutinizing).  Another important dynamic of spiritual reading is textual aesthetics (verbal beauty).  Though some conservative Christians are prone to be overly cognitive, the communicative power of a beautiful or evocative turn of phrase cannot be overestimated.  Herein lies the enduring strength of the KJV.  Archaic though it may be, the poetry of the translation is not lost even on modern English speakers.  Here, though, the question of the original text’s aesthetics should be an issue for translators, and this is where one might wish for “dynamic equivalent” translations to live up to their own ideals.  Dynamic equivalence is often described as a “though-for-thought” translation, over against verbal equivalence, which is supposedly “word-for-word.”  This is simplistic, however.  Dynamic equivalence actually aims for precisely what the name suggest: for the equivalence between original and translation to be that of their dynamic.  This means the effect produced in the reader should be the same.  And the point for spiritual reading is that it is difficult to produce the same effect or dynamic if the aesthetics of the text are not comparable.  We face a huge hurdle here, because aesthetics vary so greatly from culture to culture.  For example, it is impossible for me as a twenty-first century American to savor parallelism as an ancient Hebrew would have done.  Likewise, there are many dimensions of the New Testament revealed by rhetorical analysis that are lost on readers of other cultures.  But we have to admit that beauty is an important facet of spirituality, and we would do well to read translations that attempt to represent the beauty of the originals, especially when it comes to submitting ourselves to the total impact of the reading.

Study

By “study” I mean analysis of the words of the text to understand their range of meaning.  We may spiritually discern meaning from the text through prayer, mediation, and other spiritual disciplines, but it is also true that God spoke through the human languages of human authors and, in that sense, put limits on the meaning conveyed by the text per se.  This invites massive discussions about how we make meaning from texts (hermeneutics), but for the purpose of this post I simply mean to indicate that study is concerned with the meaning of the biblical text’s words, which their historical-cultural context determines.  To really study such meaning, the analysis of the original texts in their original languages is non-negotiable.  But this kind of study is not the role or responsibility of every church member.  Nonetheless, when it comes to Bible study in one’s own language, translations that leave interpretive decisions to the student are best.  While a dynamic equivalent translation may put a phrase into one’s own idiom, and in so doing make an interpretive decision, a verbal equivalent translation will tend to leave a phrase in more culturally (linguistically) unintelligible terms.  A simple example of this is the value of money.  Consider the following differences between the New American Standard Bible, the New International Version, and the Easy-to-Read Version:

NASB	NIV	ERV
Mark 6:37
But He answered them, “You give them something to eat!” And they *said to Him, “Shall we go and spend two hundred [t]denarii on bread and give them something to eat?” [t. The denarius was equivalent to one day’s wage]	But he answered, “You give them something to eat.” They said to him, “That would take more than half a year’s wages[e]! Are we to go and spend that much on bread and give it to them to eat?” [e. Greek take two hundred denarii]	But Jesus answered, “You give them some food to eat.” They said to Jesus, “We can’t buy enough bread to feed all these people. We would all have to work a month to earn enough to buy that much bread!”
Mark 12:15–16
Shall we pay or shall we not pay?” But He, knowing their hypocrisy, said to them, “Why are you testing Me? Bring Me a [g]denarius to look at.” They brought one. And He *said to them, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?” And they said to Him, “Caesar’s.” [g. The denarius was a day’s wages]	Should we pay or shouldn’t we?” But Jesus knew their hypocrisy. “Why are you trying to trap me?” he asked. “Bring me a denarius and let me look at it.” They brought the coin, and he asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?”	But Jesus knew that these men were really trying to trick him. He said, “Why are you trying to catch me saying something wrong? Bring me a silver coin. Let me see it.” They gave Jesus a coin and he asked, “Whose picture is on the coin? And whose name is written on it?” They answered, “It is Caesar’s picture and Caesar’s name.”

I reiterate that this is a simple example that illustrates the way translations handle cultural distance.  For readers unfamiliar with the NASB, a couple of clarifications are necessary.  First, in the NASB italics indicate words supplied in English that do not appear in the original language.  Second, the asterisk indicates past tense in English that is actually in the present tense in the Greek (because the present can be used as past).  As these editorial decisions indicate, the NASB is concerned with as “literal” a representation of the original language as possible.  The NASB and the NIV both use short notes to further qualify or clarify their translations. In Mark 6:37 the NASB opts for a direct rendering of the Greek term for the coins in question (denarii), adds a note that gives the value of the denarius, and leaves extrapolation to the reader.  The NIV takes the opposite approach, attempting to give an equivalent sense of the cost (more than half a year’s wages), and adds a note that mentions the original.  The ERV takes an equivalency approach similar to the NIV but foregoes the note (notes are not especially easy to read . . .).  All of them convey the idea of great cost in their own way, but the point in regard to study is that a so-called verbal equivalent translation gives the reader the chance to study what the text means by analyzing what it says, whereas a so-called dynamic equivalent takes that opportunity away from the reader by trying to provide a meaning already.

Interestingly, in Mark 12:15–16, the NIV uses the word denarius, supplies the word coin as its interpretive clue, and adds no note about its value, because that is not at issue in the story. The ERV also ignores its value but continues to avoid the foreign word denarius, calling it instead a “silver coin.”  The NASB again uses the Greek word and adds the same note about its value, and where the NIV adds “coin” the NASB adds the vague “one,”  leaving the reader to infer or learn elsewhere that it is a coin. If these examples have served my purpose, it should be clear that many times a less interpretive translation will be of value to the student who wants to examine a version that more closely represents the wording of the Greek text, even if this means it will often be awkward and obscure in English (as the NASB tends to be).  I say “less interpretive” instead of “more literal,” because the word literal is fraught with difficulty.  For example, we can talk about literal wording in the NASB but perhaps literal meaning in the NIV.  Every translation is an interpretation, and the claim to represent the Greek more faithfully by not interpreting certain aspects of the original language can be completely false.  On the whole, though, by comparing verbal and dynamic equivalent translations, verbal equivalence tends to point my study in the direction of questions I would not know to ask if I relied on a dynamic equivalent.

It is worth mentioning here that even very interpretive translations can be marketed as “Study Bibles.”  What “Study Bible” usually means is that the edition includes study notes.  The nature of these notes may vary widely, though often they are commentary of a more theological bent.  That is, they provide additional interpretation.  The quality and usefulness of interpretive study notes depends completely on the calibre of the interpreter who writes them.  Some are outstanding, some are not.  In the former case, they are obviously helpful, but I would just as soon have trustworthy full commentaries close to hand, because even the best study notes are truncated to save space.  Furthermore, I prefer study notes that serve to enlighten the translation.  These may be more or less theological, but they tend to focus on the historical-cultural factors that give sense to the text, in addition to syntactical, lexical, or stylistic concerns that translation can obscure.

Kinds of Readers

Reading Levels

The differences between reading levels are a real consideration.  If the Bible were translated to represent reading levels in the original languages, there would be quite a variety among its books.  Some are high art or the eloquent prose of the scholarly class and others are down-to-earth and colloquial.  It is exceedingly difficult to represent such diversity, and translations generally flatten the canon to a single reading level.  Aside from difficulty, though, there is another important motivation: translators and publishers want the text to be accessible, and this means aiming for a particular reading level.  And the issue is not just reading ability: while many of us can read at a high school level with relative ease, the fact is that many of us also prefer to read at an easier level.  And broadly, Protestant Bible translation is committed to encouraging Bible reading among the whole priesthood of believers.  We can note objectively that the NIV, a middle-school-level translation, continues to be the bestselling translation in the US.  Of course, reading level alone doesn’t account for this statistic, but it is worth noting nonetheless when 87.65% of Americans have at least a high school education (US Census Bureau). Reading level essentially has to do with vocabulary and the complexity of sentences.  Even good collegiate-level style will  break  complex (grammatically sound) sentences into simpler ones for the sake of clarity, but translation is beholden to the original text, which is sometimes very complex, even convoluted.  The issue is the need to maintain syntactical connections, which can be obscured by breaking up an original sentence.  Connotation and verbal nuance are also an important dimension of higher reading levels.  Uncommon English vocabulary may best communicate the connotation of a biblical word.  The original biblical languages contain words for which English does not have a close lexical equivalent.  In these cases, translation requires additional words or phrases.  A well-know example is the translation of the Hebrew word ḥesed: “loving kindness” or “unfailing love” are typical translations.  It is not sufficient to say “love” or “kindness,” and even “unfailing loving kindness” does not necessarily capture it.  But at lower reading levels, even English words that might serve at times become expanded for the sake of using common vocabulary.  This is not a criticism but a reality of translation.

Personalities

Another, often overlooked factor for selecting a translation is personality.  By this I mean that one dimension of personality is the way a person processes information.  To draw an aesthetic analogy, people process information as differently as the way a realist and an impressionist paint the same subject matter—or on two extremes, the way a hyperrealist and an abstractionist do.  One popular theory of these differences is the Sensing and Intuition measures of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.  There is no need to overstate the impact of personality.  Some people live on the extremes, but the rule is that everyone can and must process information in multiple ways.  Still, an important aspect of choosing a translation is how likely you are to read it.  Those who naturally approach Scripture in terms of concrete details are more likely to feel drawn to read a translation on the “verbal equivalent” end of the spectrum.  Those who naturally approach Scripture in terms of broad strokes will prefer to read a “dynamic equivalent” translation.  This is not a matter of good or bad.  Translation comparison is always indispensable, so there is no question of neglect in these preferences.  Altogether, readers need the specifics and the big picture.  But where one starts and what encourages reading in the first place are important considerations if we are asking about how to select translations.

Choose from Contemporary Translations

The Problem with Older Translations

Simply stated, the problem with older translations is that progress in biblical and  translation studies is real.  The KJV is case in point.  The field of text criticism has come a long way.  Even if one chooses to let four hundred-year-old English obscure the text’s meaning, the more fundamental issue is that the Textus Receptus (the source text underlying the KJV) is not our best text (see Fee 1978 and Wallace 2004).  On this point, the NKJV’s stubborn use of the Textus Receptus is  mind boggling to me.  Somewhat updating the English of the KJV does not count as making a contemporary translation.  Contemporary scholarship—that is to say, our best knowledge at present—is an essential aspect of responsible translation.  So let me say unequivocally: I recommend that you not use the KJV or the NKJV.  They are not your best access to Scripture.

Likewise, progress in our understanding of translation is significant.  The proliferation of dynamic equivalent translations is a recent phenomenon, even if significant parts of its wisdom are ancient.  This is because we have progressed in our understanding of how best to convey meaning in translation and recognize the need to do so for the contemporary reader.  Recent verbal equivalent translations still tend toward the same cumbersome English as older translations, but even they make concessions to the overturn of the myth of total verbal equivalency.  I’m not claiming flatly that newer is better; bad new translations are possible.  But the traditionalist impulse of churches tends to obscure the data that compels hundreds of scholars to continue to work on new translations.

Some Good Options

I’ve adapted a number of sources to put together this chart, which places some commendable translations on the typical continuum of formal–functional (verbal–dynamic) equivalency, in relation to their approximate reading levels.  The continuum is not to scale: the translations are simply placed along the continuum to indicate relative equivalency.  The basic trend is that translations are more difficult to read the more verbally equivalent they are, and vice versa.  Again, part of the issue is that verbal equivalence can produce bad English, which requires more inferential reasoning to decipher, and part of the issue is that the motivation of dynamic equivalence includes the desire to make the text accessible to the “typical” reader.

A Little More On “Equivalence”

The notion of equivalence—verbal or dynamic—is questionable, but a discussion of linguistic theory is beyond the scope of this post.  Suffice it to say that the equivalence continuum is conventional and represents a real phenomenon in Bible translation, even if the theory behind that phenomenon needs continual probing.  The important point is to understand what translators are really after: all the way along the continuum the goal is faithfulness to the original text.  This entails, in one way or another, a representation—re-presentation—of the original text in a way that communicates to some intended (imaginary) audience.  The process always establishes priorities, which are varied and complex.  When all is said and done, we can be thankful for the diversity that the spectrum exhibits.  If translation cannot achieve equivalency, at least it can quite practically produce a range of interpretive strategies that together give us more access to the originals.

Always Compare Translations

While almost everyone ends up with a primary translation, the question “Which Bible translation should I use?” begins with the wrong assumption.  The question should be, “Which translations should I use?”  Hopefully this post has made it clear that different translations have their strengths and weaknesses.  No one should be a “literal translation” person or an “NIV person.”  This kind of narrowness is pointless, and it fails to see the need for comparison.  My primary translation is the NRSV.  I like the  more verbal equivalent approach for my personal reading, and I think the NRSV’s prose tends to be more elegant at times than the NIV, which I grew up reading.  In practice, I do read the NRSV more than others, but when it comes to really exploring a passage (whether in spiritual reflection or study), I would never limit myself to just one version.  In fact, the more dynamic translations are of great interest, because the translators have already done painstaking work to understand the way English speakers tend to hear a passage’s ideas.  That interpretive insight is invaluable.

Technological Considerations

The NET Bible

One of the most overlooked major translations in existence is the NET Bible.  Aside from being a solid committee translation right in the middle range of the spectrum, it is very important for three reasons.  First, it is primarily a digital Bible (its name is New English Translation, which in abbreviated form plays on the word net in reference to the internet).  It can be purchased in hard copy, but it was made in order to be free on the internet.  I think the leadership at bible.org that commissioned the NET for this purpose was visionary.  In addition to the fact that the Bible should be free, the internet has taken publishing toward open access in a way that could barely be foreseen in 1995 (see more about the NET’s story in its Preface).

Two, the people behind the NET recognized the opportunity that an internet format would afford: no space restrictions on notes.  This could have gone many directions in term of content, but to my mind they made the most important contribution to English Bible translations in recent history.  Instead of theological or “application” notes, the NET features extensive translation notes that allow the reader to “look over the translator’s shoulder at the very process of translation.”  Whatever translation you choose, you will want to reference these notes.

Three, in the spirit of bible.org’s early perceptiveness about the internet, the NET’s user interface has constantly evolved.  While http://bible.org is a pretty decent website, and the NET’s informational website http://netbible.com is fairly mediocre, the translation’s actual user interface is a gorgeous web 2.0 experience.  It is in its third major iteration and so far evinces the design responsiveness we could hope for from a translation that exists to make the most of the ever-changing internet.  Try it out at http://lumina.bible.org and create a user account to get the most out of the experience.

If the NET is so extraordinary, why has it been overlooked?  I think a major reason is that it doesn’t make much money from publication, so it doesn’t spend money on marketing.  I also suspect that many people who are exploring Bible translations are looking to purchase something they can hold in their hands and take to church.  The NET has a significant web presence, and information about it is easy to find, but you have to be interested in a digital version to pay attention.  I believe the NET will become increasingly influential, and I pray that its assumptions will become even more so.  This should be the future of Bible translation.

Sites and Apps

The best site for accessing and comparing multiple translations is http://biblegateway.com.  Though their interface is relatively unattractive (and littered with Zionist ads), they have a wide range of translations, and they provide a way to view multiple translations in parallel.  BibleGateway also has mobile and Kindle apps (http://biblegateway.com/app) with the option to sync user data across multiple mobile devices.  Unfortunately, the website itself does not include a user account, so personalized study is limited to the app.

Another good option is http://bible.com.  It’s interface is much more attractive, and it is built around a user account that syncs with its mobile app (https://bible.com/app), meaning notes, bookmarks, etc. are available on your computer (in-browser) as well as your mobile device or tablet.  It does not have as many versions as BibleGateway, however, and it only allows two versions in parallel at once.

Finally, consider more advanced Bible study software.  If you want to invest in serious Bible study software, the standards are http://logos.com and http://accordancebible.com.  Once built for Windows and Mac respectively, they have entered the cross-platform age and now compete for all kinds of users.  Logos is integrated with http://biblia.com, a beta site very similar to bible.com.  A less sophisticated option is  http://olivetree.com, though if you are going to start building on a platform, the smart long-term investment is one of the other two.

Restoration

What Should “Restoration” Mean?

I address in this post what restoration should mean, rather than what it does mean, because the diversity of its meaning is well established.  Furthermore, I have Churches of Christ in mind when I ask the question, for whom restoration has often meant something that proved unprofitable.  That historical fact does not, in my mind, bring final judgement on the restoration ideal of the early Stone-Campbell Movement, because it was distorted and misrepresented over the course of time.  I would add that it was never a pure ideal somehow formulated outside of imperfect people’s imperfect understanding:

Alexander Campbell affirmed that piety required believers to conform to the measure of knowledge they possessed.  Indeed, whenever discipleship leads to greater understanding on the will of God as set forth in Scripture, piety requires believers to conform to that new knowledge.  Restoration, therefore, could never be a wooden concept or a mechanical process.  It entailed dynamic engagement with, and maturing understanding of, the scriptural Word. (Fife, 638–39)

Yet, while freely admitting its limitations, I am convinced that the restoration ideal continues to be important for the global church.

Many churches outside the Restoration Movement are still considered restorationist in a general sense.  As Richard Hughes says, “The restoration ideal—also known quite often as ‘Christian primitivism’—is an old and venerable theme in the history of Christianity.  At its core, this vision seeks to correct faults or deficiencies by appealing to the primitive church as normative model” (Hughes, EotSCM, 635).  Hughes asserts correctly that “the fundamental question is this: What dimension of the golden age does the restoration hope to find and restore?”  He goes on to delineate four kinds of restorationism: ecclesiastical primitivism, ethical primitivism, experiential primitivism, and gospel primitivism.  Hughes’s particular preference is for ethical primitivism, which he advocates in the form of the “apocalyptic worldview” that I have questioned in this series.

The original impulse of the Restoration Movement, however, was restoration of the early church for purposes far greater than correcting deficiencies.  Robert O. Fife puts is succinctly: “Barton W. Stone, Thomas Campbell, and Alexander Campbell generally viewed restoration as the reformation of the church in terms of its origin, mission, and hope as set forth in the apostolic writings of the New Testament” (Fife, 638).  There is no doubt that Campbell’s “canon-within-the-canon” (Boring, 69–79) limited the influence of the Gospels in the movement, but there is also no doubt that Campbell’s hermeneutical assumptions are a very significant part of what the church was free to grow out of in its quest for restoration.  Thus, I think Fife is right to generalize the founders’ understanding of restoration as he does.

The immediate purpose of restoration was unity.  Restoration was about a search for common ground between the many denominations that were sprouting up across the American frontier.  Yet, the ultimate purpose of restoration—the purpose that unity meant to serve—was the evangelization of the world.  Alexander Campbell put it this way:

It will be confessed, without argument to prove, that the conversion of men, or of the world, and the unity, purity, and happiness of the disciples of the Messiah, were the sublime subjects of his humiliation to death. For this he prayed in language never heard on earth before, in words which not only expressed the ardency of his desires, but at the same time unfolded the plan in which his benevolence and philanthropy were to be triumphant.

The words to which we refer express one petition of that prayer recorded by the apostle John, commonly styled his intercessory prayer. With his eyes raised to heaven, he says;–“Holy Father–now, I do not pray for these only (for the unity and success of the apostles) but for those also who shall believe in me through, or by means of their word–that they all may be one,–that the world may believe that you have sent me.” Who does not see in this petition, that the words or testimony of the apostles, the unity of the disciples, and the conviction of the world are bound together by the wisdom and the love of the Father, by the devotion and philanthropy of the Son. The order of heaven, the plan of the Great King, his throne and government, are here unfolded in full splendor to our view. The words of the apostles are laid as the basis, the unity of the disciples the glorious result, and the only successful means of converting the world to the acknowledgment, that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah or the Son of the Blessed, the only Saviour of men. (Campbell, 135.)

This expectation was couched in Campbell’s postmillennialism.  Jess O. Hale, Jr., summarizes: “For Alexander Campbell and others, unity based on the scriptural pattern would lead to the evangelization of the world, and this unity could usher in the millennium” (Hale, 598).  We have already seen how important the disparity of eschatologies in the movement proved to be, and I will spend part of this post finally describing the weakness of the Stoneite “apocalyptic worldview” when it attempts to stand apart from the Campbellite perspective that balances it.  For now, in terms of stating what restoration should be, I restate my belief that in the compromise between postmillennial and premillennial eschatologies we find a more biblical alternative.  Restoration should continue to be keyed to eschatology, but not to either Campbell’s extreme or Stone’s, not to either liberal Protestantism’s optimism or fundamentalist Evangelicalism’s pessimism.

The more general point of this eschatological orientation is that restoration is not rightly defined for Churches of Christ only in terms of the historical means—principally the hermeneutics—that restorationists have employed.  Our historical focus in Churches of Christ on ecclesiological forms amounts to a loss of understanding of restoration.  What began as a construal of how we might build a platform for unity and thus for mission eventually took the place of the mission.  Those (I’ve read or talked with) who argue that restoration is a defunct ideology usually are not referring to the definition I’m working with but rather impute the historical hermeneutics of patternism and legalism to the concept of restoration.  Yet, “restoration is not limited to forms, but to the recapturing of the love, vitality, compassion, and mission of the early church” (Thompson, 37).  “The task of restoration is not the reproduction of the historic practice of the early church but the reapplication of its theology—as discerned through its narratives and letters—in our own context” (Hicks, Melton, and Valentine, 156).

If it seems that these goals would not be foreign to most Christian denominations, I reiterate that most churches from the Reformation on have been restorationist to some extent, with differing modes of operation and priorities.  The difference between them can be found in the degree of commitment to letting the early church be the standard and therefore provoke ecclesiological change.  The means to the Restoration Movement’s ends, therefore, was to find a way to allow Scripture to operate authoritatively such that the early church could be the norm rather than an evolutionary point of departure or an idea to be abstracted and applied with little continuity.  The question of how Scripture’s authority functions is the primary concern of biblical hermeneutics.  This is why the Restoration Movement has been so trenchantly focused on a particular hermeneutics and why its particular hermeneutics has been so easily confused with the real heart of restoration.

So what is the real heart of restoration?  In the Restoration Movement, at least, I believe its three essential dimensions are Scripture, unity, and mission.  First, we have a relentless commitment to keeping Scripture at the center of our ecclesiology.  We have struggled with a stagnant hermeneutics that proved destructive, but at heart—and I deeply respect this intention in all of the Churches of Christ who still cling to the old hermeneutics—the desire is to let Scripture have the final say about our life together.  Restoration should continue to be about the search for and the continual development of a hermeneutics that allows ecclesiology to be always renewed by the church’s submission to God’s Spirit at work through Scripture.  Second, our plea for the renewal of ecclesiologies throughout the global Christian family is made in the service of Christian unity.  Some of us lost sight of this purpose along the way, and some of us embraced it utterly at the expense of Scripture’s role.  There is a middle way that holds the normativeness of the New Testament for ecclesiology in tension with the goal of overcoming division.  But I am clear about this: a hermeneutics that does not serve this end is not restorationist.  Third, the ultimate priority of restoration, for which the church unified by the Spirit exists, is the mission of God.  We have mistaken the restoration of the church for the mission of God, and we must repent.  Our care for ecclesiological renewal and unity must be in the interest of God’s mission, or else it leads to a false ecclesiology and an empty togetherness.  This is what restoration should be: ongoing ecclesiological renewal through submission to the authority of God in Scripture, for the sake of Christian unity in the Spirit of God, in service of the mission of God.

Is Ecclesiology Too Narrow?  What About Ethics?

Ecclesiology would be too narrow a concern if I were saying that restoration takes it as the only important thing.  But of course it does not.  Rather, restoration recognizes ecclesiology as an important theological focus, within a broad commitment to the authority of God in Scripture, because of the historically divisive state of the church and its effect on the church’s participation in God’s mission.  Moreover, ecclesiology is among the broadest theological categories, not to be confused with mere church forms or organizational structures.  It encompasses the purpose and nature of the church, which necessarily implies a great deal about how we live together—our ethics.  Thus, I find Hughes’s emphasis on the importance of ethical primitivism in the form of Stone’s apocalyptic worldview to be a positive re-appropriation but potentially also an overemphasis on a single dimension of ecclesiology. Moreover, to articulate at last the need for a less completely Stoneite eschatology, I think the ethics that needs to be restored to the church is part of an eschatology that is more correctly described as a missional worldview than an apocalyptic one.  That is to say, I don’t think Stone quite represents the early church’s eschatology, which is what restoration is actually interested in.  But there is an interesting opportunity to discern between the extremes of Stone and Campbell, in the midst of their shared passion for the church’s role in the eschatological consummation of the kingdom, the worldview that exists properly in the tension of the already and the not yet.

There are those who would claim precisely that already-not-yet worldview for the Stoneite tradition.  In order to explain why that is not the case—why Stone’s apocalyptic worldview is inadequate by itself—I will engage at length with John Mark Hicks and Bobby Valentine’s book Kingdom Come: Embracing the Spiritual Legacy of David Lipscomb and James Harding.  Lipscomb and Harding were the heirs apparent of Stone’s apocalyptic worldview, a category that Hicks and Valentine also take up to describe the outlook of these Restoration Movement leaders.

This book is a great resource.  It uses historical reflection to commend a wonderful spiritual legacy.  I am in favor virtually everything it advocates, and I’m impressed by the engaging way that it does so.  In fact, I should state at the outset that I have long been on the side of the  “Nashville Bible School Tradition” rather than the “Texas Tradition” as they call them, even though I’ve spent most of my formative years in Texas Tradition churches.  For example, I’ve never voted, if not for precisely the same reasons that Lipscomb and Harding were nonparticipants, then for very similar ones.  I hold to a non-violent, peace-making theology and have a “resident aliens” understanding of the church similar to the one described in Kingdom Come.  The list goes on.  I’m even more agreeable as a reader because the authors use a great deal of the language found in the missional church literature that has formed my thinking.  But it is here that the problem arises, because I get the feeling—though I’m truly not the expert that the authors are—that Hicks and Valentine tend to attribute more to Harding and Lipscomb than their theology actually contains.

From the preface on Hicks and Valentine offer Lipscomb and Harding’s “kingdom themes and practices” in order that that the church might “more fully participate in the emerging kingdom of God” (Hicks and Valentine, 10).

“Kingdom Come” refers to the hopeful expectation that the kingdom of God will break into the world, defeat the present darkness, and transform the fallen cosmos into a new heaven and new earth.  We pray “thy kingdom come” as we groan for the redemption of the kingdom of God reloaded.

This was the kingdom vision of David Lipscomb and James A. Harding—and their spiritual legacy, as the title of the book suggests.  Their spiritual vision invites us to participate in the kingdom of God as it breaks into the present darkness.  Lipscomb and Harding lived with a future-orientation—they yearned for the coming of God’s kingdom in its fullness.  They envisioned a kingdom reloaded where God would restore what he originally created by making this world heaven on earth.  But this restoration is a progressive in-breaking.  As disciples progressively follow Jesus and are made like him, the kingdom of God will defeat the powers that enslave and delude humanity.

Consequently, Harding described Christian existence in the fallen world as that of a “foreigner.”  We think he was correct.  But he also knew that God would one day make this world his home and that God created the cosmos as our home.  So, for now, we are “foreigners at home.”  When God reloads his kingdom in its fullness, we will be truly at home in this world and no longer foreigners.

Disciples, therefore, live both in anticipation of the fullness of the kingdom at the second coming of Jesus and in the present power of the Spirit as they participate in the in-breaking of that kingdom. (Hicks and Valentine, 14)

In this introductory explanation are present the major elements of the principal problem that I wish to address.  Lipscomb and Harding’s theology was every bit as kingdom-oriented as the authors assert, but it seems to me far less participatory and far more anticipatory, far less progressive and far more abrupt.  The key to seeing this is the authors’ appropriation of apocalyptic worldview as Hughes formulated it: “Stone understood the ancient Christian faith in light of the kingdom of God that would triumph over all the earth in the final days.  Accordingly, he sought to live his life as if the final rule the kingdom of God were present even in the here and now” (Hughes, EotSCM, 636; emphasis original).  Accordingly, Hicks and Valentine write:

This tradition took seriously the biblical notion that Christians live in the shadow of the second coming—to live their lives as if God’s will was being done on earth as it is in heaven.  It lived in anticipation of the fullness of God’s reign.  The looming shadows of the reign of God fill the NBST with a powerful ethical vision. (Hicks and Valentine, 30; emphasis added)

The life of faith, life in the kingdom, is a life lived in the shadows of the second coming.  To live in the shadows is to live in anticipation of God’s ultimate victory.  It is characterized by supreme hope in the reality of God’s kingdom.  We live our lives in the present age knowing things are not as they should be but with the expectation of what they will be.  Biblical faith is lived as if the “heavenly” city has been planted on earth.  We live as if the future is already present. (Hicks and Valentine, 35; emphasis added)

The “as if” of this formulation is correctly stated: Lipscomb and Harding, like Stone, did not imagine themselves to participate in the kingdom already breaking in but rather only to live as if it had already broken in.  Their view of the kingdom was essentially anticipatory, not participatory—clearly focused on the not yet rather than the already.  This is natural for a premillennialist such as Harding—the entire outlook emerges from a deep pessimism about the present age and the need for and expectation of a radically discontinuous new age, not a progressively inbreaking one.  Progress is too optimistic for a premillennial theology.

Yet, Hicks and Valentine assert that despite Harding’s premillennialism, “premillennialism was not the substance of his kingdom vision.”  Instead, they say, “the kingdom of God, conceived as the progressive reign of God ultimately restoring the cosmos under the full rule of God, is the structural principle of NBST eschatology” (180).  This is the crux.  Less the word “progressive,” they make a good point.  The restoration of the cosmos is the substantive theological contribution.  It is not, however, possible for God’s reign to be progressive in a premillennial scheme.  And, indeed, it was not progressive for Harding.

Hicks and Valentine grant that “Harding’s apocalyptic worldview held a grave sense of failure before God and a relatively pessimistic understanding of human moral ability” (Hicks and Valentine, 63–63), which strikes me as something of an understatement.  Harding’s theology seems as thoroughly eschatological as the authors suggest, but his premillennial eschatology is structured around the tenet that “mankind became servants of Satan, and thus turned over the dominion of the earth to him” (Harding, “Man,” 8).  This establishes the essentially antagonistic character of his kingdom theology and his understanding of mission.  “Christ came into this world to establish a kingdom which is antagonistic to all human authority, to all the governments of the earth. Its mission is to break down and destroy them all” (Harding, “The Kingdom,” 930).  This conflictual framework results in a sectarian withdrawal from society (identical to that which Lipscomb more famously advocates in Civil Government):

Every government on this earth is in the hands of wicked men. The government of Christ is at war with every one of them; but the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, not of the flesh, though they are “mighty before God to the casting down of strongholds.” If every responsible human being were a Christian, and such a Christian as every one of them ought to be, there would be no government in the earth but that of Christ; no law but that of the New Testament; no courts but the churches of God. This is the ideal state toward which every Christian should look, and for which he should work and pray.

Brother Lawrence says: “It should be our ambition to place good men at the head of the nation.” I believe it should be our ambition to so live and teach as induce every one we can to forsake the governments of this world and to devote himself wholly to the kingdom of Christ. We should have nothing to do with appointing or electing officers for the governments of Satan. We ought not to have any kind of partnership with him. (Harding, “The Kingdom,” 931)

“This dualism dominates Harding’s theology and it is the fundamental ground for his sense that the church is a community of resident aliens in the fallen world,” write Hicks and Valentine (181).  Yet, Harding’s sense of heavenly citizenship and participation in the kingdom is future-oriented:

I have seen numbers of Christians who did not seem to realize that they were in training, being prepared for citizenship in the heavenly Jerusalem, and for a rulership how vast, how extensive and important we know not; they seem not to realize at all that every opportunity should be improved, every moment utilized with all diligence in this preparation. (Harding, “For What,” 1042)

Though in his anti-government exposition Harding quotes “our citizenship is in heaven” directly in order to establish his separatist position, here Christians are in training for citizenship rather than currently existing as citizens in resident alien status.  This is a revealing nuance that has everything to do with his premillennial view of the kingdom.

Harding’s principle paradigm for humankind’s relationship to the kingdom—what we might call participation in his theology—is reigning with Christ as co-heirs, which is the result of the redemption of the image of God in humans, who where made to rule before they turned over the kingdom to Satan (Harding, “Man,” 8–9).  This co-regency is not present, however: as the previous quote states, Christians are in preparation for a future rulership.  This is because the kingdom is essentially a future reality for Harding, not a present one.  Certainly the kingdom is “established” already by Christ—the present antagonism of the church is established—but the expectation of difference or transformation in the world is future:

We read that when Christ comes again, at which time all of the righteous dead will be raised (1 Cor. xv. 22, 23; 1 Thess. iv. 13-18), and all the righteous living will be changed, immortalized in a moment of time (1 Cor. xv. 51-54), it is said of all these redeemed ones: “Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: over these the second death hath no power; but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years” (Rev. xx. 6). Then will God’s purpose be fulfilled in regard to man’s reigning over the earth. During the last thousand years of time, Christ and his saints shall reign unimpeded in the earth. Then the meek shall inherit the earth, the knowledge of God shall fill the earth as the waters fill the seas, and the will of God shall be done on earth as it is in heaven. (Harding, “Man,” 8; emphasis added)

Only with the second coming of Christ will humankind’s participation in the kingdom become a reality.  The substance of the “kingdom come” theology—that the will of God be done on earth as in heaven—is relegated to then for Harding.  There is undoubtedly present devotion to the kingdom in Harding’s mind, but it is as future-oriented and ultimately escapist as we should naturally expect a premillennialist theology to be:

We ought to have no part nor lot with those who lie in the wicked one. Let them run their own governments till Christ shall destroy them all. Let us devote all our energies, powers and possessions to the kingdom of Christ which during that last thousand years will fill the whole earth. Then shall the earth be “full of the knowledge of Jehovah, as the waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11:9); then shall the will of God be done, “as in heaven, so on earth” (Matthew 6:10); “then shall the meek [the gentle] inherit the earth.” (Harding, “The Kingdom,” 931; emphasis added)

This must be the case for Harding, because of his conflictual framework.  The kingdom of God is not about the redemption of the kingdoms of the world but their destruction.  It is geared to the sectarian spirituality: “the collecting of his people out of the kingdoms of the earth” (Harding, “The Kingdom,” 930) rather than incarnation and service among them for their blessing.  Thus, while I am deeply in favor of the “incarnational spirituality” that Hicks and Valentine promote (Hicks and Valentine, 196), I find it very difficult to attribute it to Harding and Lipscomb.  And this is not to deny their profoundly Christlike ethical vision regarding nonviolence, care for the poor, and the rest.  I take no issue with the authors’ portrayal of these virtues.  Rather, I find incarnational, missional theology to be at odds with some of Harding and Lipscomb’s most foundational eschatological assumptions.  Their worldview is too antagonistic, too much in the not yet.  It does not expect progress, renewal, and continuity but interruption, destruction, and discontinuity.

Furthermore, the theological corollary of this eschatology is an anthropology that undermines the church’s missional participation in the kingdom progressively breaking into the world.  In Harding’s thinking, the destruction of the kingdom of Satan (the kingdoms of the world) will return to humankind the possibility of ruling according the image in which we were created.  This refers to what is known as the cultural mandate of Gen 1:26–28.  For Harding, the point of the contraposition of God’s kingdom completely and totally against the kingdoms of the world is that humankind abdicated the image of God absolutely, therefore there is no aspect of the kingdoms of the world that is not of Satan.  This is most evident in the Harding-Lipscomb view of human government, which is a major aspect of the cultural mandate by virtually any current theological accounting.  But it also encompasses the another major aspect of the cultural mandate: economics.

It is as plain as light that we should let no earthly pleasure, no fleshly love, no temporal connection interfere with our race toward the eternal goal. Should a man that is a christian go into a partnership with one who is not? Certainly not: for the sinner is traveling the wrong way, is governed by wrong principles, and he can not but be a hindrance to the Christian, who for a million dollars ought not to encumber and hinder himself in the least in running this race. To take upon himself knowingly any burden that operates against his success is a plain mark of lack of faith, of appreciation of the prize, of worldly-mindedness. (Harding, “For What,” 1042)

Not only do Christians withdraw from politics but also from full participation in the economy, because partnership with “the sinner” inevitably contaminates the Christian and interferes with the “race toward the eternal goal.”  The imagery is of the church running away from the world toward a future disconnected from the worldly preset.  Harding cannot fathom engaging a “sinner” in business for any motive other than economic gain; there is no vision of Christians redemptively engaging the economic systems of their society.  This makes even clearer the extent to which Harding assumes a rejection of human culture, rooted in a doctrine of the absolute loss of the image of God and therefore of the capacity to act creatively and benevolently according the character of the Creator.  Although Hicks and Valentine generously construe Harding and Lipscomb’s extractionist church as a “colonial outpost” of the kingdom that serves as a “witness, in the present, of things to come” (Hicks and Valentine, 70; also 32–34; 113; 139) and Christians as “instruments of the kingdom presence in the world” (Hicks and Valentine, 116; also 190), the church would need to engage the world incarnationally—in the world’s terms and within the world’s systems—in order to serve these functions.  Instead, Harding envisions an abandonment and a waiting for apocalyptic destruction of the very systems that need to be redeemed.  The kingdom does not break in here; the future does not grace the present; the leaven does not work through the dough but stays separate from it.

This is the opposite of missional participation, which seeks to engage culture critically on the assumption that the image of God is not completely lost—that human culture including government and business is in part a godly expression of creativity, righteous rule, and fruitfulness.  The missional church seeks to meet God where he is already at work in cultures, in order to participate in his kingdom’s inbreaking.  This is both eucharistic—giving him thanks for the good that exists before the church by grace—and sacrificial—offering him the transformation of that which must be redeemed by grace.  Although there is the expectation of ultimate purgative judgement, a truly progressive eschatological vision of the kingdom’s inbreaking cannot coexist with Harding’s radical pessimism about the cultures of God’s world.  These cultures’ systems are broken and in need of redemption, not abandonment and destruction.  Christ will not gather the church out of these kingdoms but will meet the church amidst them for the consummation of redemption and renewal.  This is for me the most curious aspect of Harding’s theology: he is able to envision the renewed earth but not the renewal of the cultures of the earth.  The “counter-cultural” (Hicks and Valentine, 18, 20, 32) dimension of Harding and Lipscomb’s theology is overweening and ultimately anti-missional.

With this in mind, it is most evident to me that Hicks and Valentine are giving Harding and Lipscomb too much credit when they write: “Rather than withdrawing from the world, disciples follow the Lamb’s conquering methodology to love and serve the world.  We can do this on many levels.  One level could be working for legislation that cultivates peace” (Hicks and Valentine, 159).  At which point Harding and Lipscomb roll over in their respective graves.  The spiritual heritage of Harding and Lipscomb is deep and rich.  I was personally humbled and inspired by their lives of devotion.  But the fact is, their eschatology cannot uphold the kingdom theology that Hicks and Valentine—and I—want to advocate.  It is a powerful contributor, but by itself it is inadequate.  What we gain in ethics we lose in transformative mission.

Interestingly, it is no mystery where in the Restoration Movement to find the eschatological progressivism that has no home among Harding and Lipscomb’s pessimistic antagonism toward the present age.  Richard Hughes popularized the apocalyptic worldview precisely in contradistinction from the excesses and inconsistencies of Alexander Campbell’s “rational progressive primitivism” (Hughes, Reviving, 29–30).  The answer to the inadequacy of the  apocalyptic worldview, of course, is not to return to the excesses of a Campbellite postmillennialism.  Let us consider those lessons well learned.  But the swing of the pendulum seems all too predictable at this point.  I return to my argument early in this series, that there is not really a Stoneite apocalyptic worldview and a Campbellite rational progressive primitivist worldview.  Understood more broadly, the American Protestant worldview encompasses a good deal of diversity, including theologies and zeitgeists.  And an important—vitally important—aspect of this diversity is the tensive eschatological whole, encompassing the already emphasis of the postmillennialists and the not yet of the premillennialists.  For my part, I’m content that we have in Churches of Christ shed the need to quibble over the millennial details.  But settling into amillennial apathy is a terrible loss when our tradition gifts us the eschatological tension that belonged to the theology of very New Testament church we wish to restore.  Why not receive the radical kingdom orientation of Stone and let the participatory optimism of Campbell keep it from devolving into anti-missional sectarianism.  Why not take the progressive, missional impulse of Campbell and let the deeply grace-dependent spirituality of Harding temper its triumphalistic tendency?

Between them, we find the truly missional common ground of restorationism:

Lipscomb and Harding, along with Alexander Campbell, Tolbert Fanning, and Robert Milligan among others, believed that God would reign with his people on a renewed earth forever.  When Jesus returns “again to earth,” according to Lipscomb, he will accomplish the “restoration of all things to their original relation to God” in a new heaven and new earth. (Hicks and Valentine, 180)

Restoration attuned to the restoration of all things in the kingdom’s consummation is about calling the church to continual renewal and unity in its life between the already and the not yet, participating in the kingdom of God as it breaks into the present and praying together for its advance on earth.

This is who I believe Churches of Christ should be.  It is true to the genius of our restoration heritage while incorporating the lessons of our history.  I’ve obviously already pointed in a missional direction.  In the next post I will consider the missional way forward, which I believe we share with evangelicalism, because the unique emphases of our Restoration Movement identity do not in any way run against our basic cultural, historical, and theological evangelicalism.

Boring, M. Eugene. Disciples and the Bible: A History of Disciples Biblical Interpretation in North America (St. Louis: Chalice, 1997).

Campbell, Alexander. “A Restoration of the Ancient Order of Things No. II,” The Christian Baptist, (March 7, 1825): 135.

Hale, Jess O., Jr. “‘Plea,’ The.” In The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement, 598–99.  Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004.

Fife, Robert O. “‘Restoration,’ Meanings of Within the Movement.” In The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement, 638–42.  Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004.

Harding, James A. “For What Are We Here?” The Way 5, no. 33 (December 3, 1903): 1041-43.

________. “The Kingdom of Christ Vs. The Kingdom of Satan.” The Way 5, no. 26 (October 15, 1903): 929-31.

________. “Man Was Created to Reign for Ever and Ever.” The Christian Leader and the Way 19, no. 23 (June 6, 1905): 8-9.

Hicks, John Mark, and Bobby Valentine. Kingdom Come: Embracing the Spiritual Legacy of David Lipscomb and James Harding (Abilene, TX: Leafwood, 2006).

Hicks, John Mark, Johnny Melton, and Bobby Valentine. A Gathered People: Revisioning the Assembly as Transforming Encounter (Abilene, TX: Leafwood, 2007).

Hughes, Richard T. “Restoration, Historical Models of.” In The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement, 635–38.  Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004.

________. Reviving the Ancient Faith: The Story of Churches of Christ in America. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996.

Thompson, James. “What is Church of Christ Scholarship?” Restoration Quarterly 49, no. 1 (2007): 33-38.

What Does “Evangelical” Mean?

I’m going to begin with Scott Moreau’s understanding of evangelical in Contextualization in World Missions, because it is both concise and missiologically attuned.  Moreau begins with David Bebbington’s well known “quadrilateral”: conversion, activism, biblicism, and crucicentrism (Moreau, 19).  To this he adds “the common theological frame that characterizes evangelicals,” borrowing from John Stott.  A helpful table results (Moreau, 55):

Finally, Moreau states that “if there is one defining characteristic of evangelical models [of contextualization], it is the normative nature of the Bible (Lausanne 1978) in the contextualizing process” (Moreau, 57).  Though biblicism is already listed among the chief characteristics of evangelicals and reiterated in Stott’s description of the gospel, it is only right to state clearly and directly that the normativeness of the Bible is the most important issue when evangelicals work out how to be evangelical cross-culturally—that is, in contextualization.

Roger Olson, in dialogue with whom I began this series, adds an interesting dimension to Bebbington’s quadrilateral: “respect for the Great Tradition of Christian doctrine” (24).  I want to give this consideration for two reasons: (1) Olson’s book How to Be Evangelical without Being Conservative, as well as his leadership in postconservative theology in general, has much to contribute to Churches of Christ theology and (2) this fifth marker of evangelicalism might put Churches of Christ at significantly more technical (i.e., doctrinal) distance from evangelicalism than I have contended exists.

Interestingly, Olson expands on respect for the great tradition in his chapter “Being Biblical without Orthodoxy,” in which he desires to free evangelicalism from its tendency to creedalism:

Written creeds and statements of faith have a way of giving rise to inquisitions, and they often become authorities functionally equal with Scripture — even among Baptists and other free church Protestants who claim to be “non-creedal”! This tendency should be resisted by evangelicals, but that requires the courage to challenge and press for change (Olson, 38-39).

This is the orthodoxy that Olson believes postconservative evangelicalism can do without, and it seems highly amenable to historical Restorationism.  It is in this context that he speaks about the great tradition.  A member of traditional Churches of Christ must hear his words as nearly prophetic:

Those who ignore history or expel tradition are doomed to repeat its mistakes and reinvent the wheel. We all inherit some tradition and there is no such thing as traditionless interpretation of Scripture or worship or ethics. Every project of inquiry and investigation into truth works from within some tradition of values and beliefs. It is impossible to step out of tradition and community into some ethereal place where we take a look from nowhere. The view from nowhere does not exist (Olson, 41).

He continues:

Why not embrace tradition while critically reflecting on it from within? That’s what I recommend to young evangelicals who may be tempted to throw the baby of Christian tradition out with the bathwater of dead orthodoxy. . . . I recommend that every evangelical read a good book of church history that includes as plain and straightforward an account of the development of Christian doctrines as possible. There is no such thing as the “unvarnished truth,” but objectivity is a good ideal to strive for. Find as objective an account of historical theology — the great tradition of Christian belief and teaching — as possible and immerse yourself in it. Before questioning doctrines, make sure you understand them. People who express doubts about the doctrine of the Trinity look foolish if they have never studied it and don’t know what it really is. For example, the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity is not that God is “one in three and three in one.” That’s a contradiction. The classical doctrine carved out by the early church fathers over nearly a century is that God is one substance and three persons or, to put it in a more contemporary expression — one what and three whos. It’s perfectly alright to question that so long as one knows what it is. (Olson, 41–2).

This is a very apt example for my purposes because of Stone and Campbell’s profound disagreement about the nature of the Trinity.  Ultimately, Campbell acquiesced to Stone’s insistence on using only Bible words to talk about the Son’s relationship to the Father.  This was the final and most significant hurdle for the unification of the two movements, thus the Stone-Campbell movement is, in a very important sense, built on an agreement not to acknowledge, much less respect, the great tradition.  Growing up in various Churches of Christ and attending a Churches of Christ university, I’ve never heard a single sermon or Bible class on the Trinity.  Granted that others have other experiences, I believe they would be out of the norm.  I was taught from a very early age that we use “Bible words for Bible things,” and “Trinity” is one of those “unbiblical” words.  Of course, the anti-creedalism of the Restoration Movement is well known.  Yet, my point is that if it is an essential component of restoration per se, and if Olson is right about his additional characteristic of evangelicalism, then we have a fairly clear answer to the question.  While Churches of Christ meet Bebbington’s criteria quite neatly, they cannot live up to “respect for the great tradition.”  For many Churches of Christ, there is no such thing as a good tradition, much less a great tradition.

Nonetheless, I find in Olson’s treatment of the issue a clue that suggests an alternative conclusion.  His postconservative disposition is undoubtedly critical of traditions and creeds and open to questioning even the great tradition.  I find here no hint of a dogmatic confessional requirement of, say, the Nicene Creed.  Quite the contrary, he tends toward an undogmatic respect for the history of Christian teaching, which I also learned in a Churches of Christ graduate program.  Granted, I could not have learned that respect in my childhood churches.  But there is nothing inherently contrary to respect for the great tradition in most of the twenty-first century Churches of Christ with which I am familiar, and the “young” evangelicalism to which Olson refers bears nothing inherently creedal or traditionalist when it comes to the great tradition.

So, on one hand, although there are streams of evangelicalism presently looking to ancient creeds as the only ground for Christian unity, that is not a characteristic of evangelicalism.  On the other hand, one notes the difference between evangelicalism and Churches of Christ when it comes to evangelical appeals to Reformation theologians.  Part of Churches of Christ’s anti-creedalism was the tossing of “doctrines of men” to the rubbish heap, which meant rejecting out of hand references to Luther’s or Calvin’s teachings.  This did not equate to a rejection of Reformation doctrines per se.  In fact, part of the Restoration plea was to finish what the Reformers rightly began but failed to accomplish—in particular, to take sola scriptura to its logical conclusion.  And as I said before, I would expect to find affirmation of both sola fide and sola gratia in most churches of Christ, though the sticking point in the discussion is usually whether our view of baptismal generation is compatible with these doctrines.  On this point, as I’ve said before, it depends on which Churches of Christ you are talking to, because there was never only one understanding of baptism’s role in conversion and salvation.  For my part, I believe that the majority view, when clearly articulated, is not at any point contrary to salvation by faith alone or equivalent to the “works” salvation to which Reformation doctrine is so sensitive.  (I believe that is the case mostly because the biblical teaching about baptism does not have Luther’s concerns in view.  See my post on baptism for much more detail.)

In summary, I think Olson is right to add respect for the great tradition, especially because evangelical adversity to works righteousness has become an essential corollary to evangelical crucicentrism—solus Christus is inseparable from sola gratia and sola fide.  These are, of course, broadly Protestant doctrines, but it does bear saying that evangelicals are theologically centered in these doctrines, and those who undervalue them cannot be considered evangelical.  This added dimension makes the question of Churches of Christ’s relationship to evangelicalism more nuanced, but ultimately it does not establish a essential difference (given my understanding of our doctrine of baptism).  In any event, Olson’s fifth criterion is part of what I mean by evangelical.

David Fitch, in The End of Evangelicalism?, collapses “Bebbington’s two emphases on conversion and the substitutionary atonement theory into one—the conversion experience based upon faith in the substitutionary work of Christ on the cross” (Fitch, Kindle loc. 682), which I find to be a very reasonable move.  I will return to Fitch’s appropriation of Slavoj Žižek’s philosophy for an “evangelical political philosophy.”  For now, it is sufficient to note his thesis, “that evangelicalism has become an ’empty politic’ driven by what we are against instead of what we are for” (Fitch, Kindle loc. 189).  This is a strikingly familiar statement for a member of the Churches of Christ.  And Fitch is seeking a direction similar to mine:

My objective, however, is not to dismantle or bring an “end” to this version of evangelicalism. Rather, I seek to provide an opening for evangelicalism to be renewed and to flourish into the missional calling that lies before us in the new post-Christendom West. I do not discredit the value that lies behind these three evangelical historical commitments. Some may find these traditional evangelical beliefs archaic. I am not so sure. I suggest that the commitments to the authority of Scripture, a conversionist salvation, and an activist evangelistic stance of the church in the world, which these beliefs attest to, are essential to a vibrant Christian faith in North America (Fitch, Kindle loc. 215).

Like Olson, who seeks a postconservative rather than a postevangelical path, Fitch is able to affirm the essence of evangelicalism while radically critiquing current evangelicalism’s “life together in the world.”  Similarly, I am interested in a renewed restorationism, not a postrestorationism, more on which later.  So my understanding of evangelicalism is charitable, as I would hope evangelicals would be charitable to the Churches of Christ: I affirm Fitch’s critique, but I do not confuse the critique of what evangelicalism often is with what evangelicalism is supposed to be.

Finally, considering what evangelicalism is supposed to be, I look to Soong-Chan Rah’s The Next Evangelicalism for vital insight.   There are a number of other characteristics that one might point out in the description of de facto evangelicalism.  Many of these characteristics are what Rah calls “Western, white cultural captivity.”  I need not list here all of Rah’s incisive observations.  Many aspects of evangelicalism have been culturally Western and white.  In describing a historical movement such as evangelicalism, it is inevitably a culturally determined description.  While evangelicals would continue to affirm their quadrilateral, as well as some other aspects of their theology, on the grounds that they are universally right—as all of us who are not despairing relativists must do—there is no doubt that even these core elements developed in Western, white culture and have been identified by Western, white scholars.  Therefore, putting aside some of the other dimensions that evangelicalism factually comprises, the question is: What aspects of the quadrilateral, the evangelical articulation of the gospel, and respect for the great tradition should be viewed as culturally relative and therefore not actually inherent in global evangelicalism?

The answer to this question brings us back to Moreau’s book on contextualization.  It is cross-cultural mission that ultimately places historically particular movements under scrutiny.  The question is not ultimately what evangelicals have been or are but what happens when evangelicals sow the euangelion in foreign soil and allow the context to shape what grows rather than imposing Western, white culture upon it.  Rah writes:

In order to break off the shackles of the Western, white captivity of the church, each culture and people group must be willing to take on the task of translating the gospel message for their own unique language and cultural context. To translate the message, therefore, becomes a reliving of the incarnation and the powerful theological work of living out the gospel message for all races and cultures. Furthermore, this translation should lead to all expressions of the gospel message being embraced by the church worldwide, recognizing that our theology and our understanding of the gospel message are incomplete until we hear from all voices (Rah, Kindle locs. 2339-2343).

The implication is that, because the gospel is presumed to be a part of the quadrilateral and the great tradition, it is impossible for Western, white Christianity to have said definitively what evangelicalism is.  And global evangelicalism has already made evident at least one revision to evangelical identity.  It is the deletion of the phrase “especially evangelism and missionary work” under Activism.  Or, better yet, it is the addition of “holistic” to “The Gospel is Christological, biblical, historical, theological, apostolic and personal”—a redefinition of the gospel that consequently redefines evangelism and precludes the spiritualistic understanding of “evangelism and missionary work” that has long been dominant in Western, white evangelicalism (Rah, ch. 8).

The discussion of cultural captivity is of utmost importance for the present discussion of Churches of Christ’s relationship to evangelicalism, because I’m contending the sameness of the two groups is ultimately to be understood on the level of worldview and because I’m contending that the direction for both groups on the basis of their sameness is a missional one, which leads us to cross-cultural encounters and, in regard to a common theological direction, contextualization.

To conclude this post about what I mean by evangelicalism, I synthesize the various points I’ve mentioned in this way:

Fitch, David E. The End of Evangelicalism? Discerning a New Faithfulness for Mission: Toward an Evangelical Political Theology. Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2011.

Moreau, A. Scott. Contextualization in World Missions: Mapping and Assessing Evangelical Models. Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2012.

Olson, Roger E. How to Be Evangelical without Being Conservative. Kindle edition. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009.

Rah, Soong-Chan. The Next Evangelicalism: Releasing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity. Kindle edition. Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2009.