Protestants: Defenders of the Faith

At most theological conferences these days, shoptalk is likely to center on such modern themes as “the death of God,” Tillich’s “ultimate concern,” Bonhoeffer’s “religionless” Christianity. Last week, in the spartan setting of Nashville’s tiny Free Will Baptist Bible College, more than 200 Protestant thinkers met for clear, serious and certain discussions about some traditional concepts: grace, sin, faith and, above all, the inerrancy of the Bible.

Close to Billy. The participants belonged to the 17-year-old Evangelical Theological Society, whose 750 members are divided about equally between mainstream Protestants and adherents of such sects as the Wesleyan Methodist Church. Speaking for an intellectual conservatism within U.S. Protestantism, Evangelicals shun the label—and company—of fundamentalists who would insist that every comma in the Bible is divinely inspired, stand closest theologically to Billy Graham. The leading Evangelical theologians include Dr. Carl Henry, editor of Christianity Today, Cornelius Van Til of Westminster Theological Seminary, and Dean Kenneth S. Kantzer of the Trinity Evangelical School at Deerfield, Ill. They use the tools of modern Biblical scholarship, and read such progressive theologians as Rudolf Bultmann and Reinhold Niebuhr. But the Evangelicals insist that nothing is outdated about the traditional theological language of the church, or about belief in the Bible as the inspired word of God. “Once a person begins to doubt the accuracy of the Bible,” says Kantzer, “he is on his way toward becoming a liberal and probably an agnostic or atheist.”

Evangelical thinkers take an enlightened view of scriptural inerrancy. They concede the need for textual criticism, admit that many passages must be interpreted symbolically rather than literally. But they also argue that the Bible as a whole is of divine authority and cannot teach falsehood. Belief in its infallibility, therefore, is an essential of consistent Christianity, a test of all orthodoxy—and, above all, a commandment of the Lord.

Far from Ecumenism. Most Evangelicals are highly suspicious of modern doctrinal statements by mainstream churches—such as the United Presbyterians’ proposed “Confession of 1967,” which, they claim, reduces the Bible to a vehicle of God’s Word rather than the Word itself. They are equally wary of ecumenism, on the ground that churches should be united by a fellowship of faith rather than by organizational merger. Even more abhorrent are the radical ideas of the “death of God” thinkers which, they say, seek to make God acceptable to man rather than try to bring man back to God. “We are not ready to be His pallbearers yet,” snaps Dr. Merrill Chapin Tenney, dean of the graduate school of Illinois’ Wheaton College.

Although membership of the society has doubled since 1955, Evangelical theologians sometimes admit that they feel like voices crying in the wilderness. “Never has theology stood in more public disrepute than it does today,” laments Carl Henry. “The ecumenical dialogue accords a prominent platform to all sorts of theologians—secular, linguistic, dialectical, existentialist—while the theology of historic Protestantism is seemingly boycotted as if it were a heresy, and the only heresy at that.” Nonetheless, Evangelicals remain confident that their belief in God’s infallible word is the only way for Protestantism to remain true to its history and spiritual heritage.