Three Anglican Traditions
1 THE POWER OF THE GOSPEL
A Leader's Life
A young Englishman knelt at his bedside in a dormitory in Rugby School one Sunday night in February 1938. He later recalled his silent prayer. 'In a simple, matter-of-fact but definite way he told Christ that he had made rather a mess of his life so far; he confessed his sins; he thanked Christ for dying for him; and he asked him to come into his life.' Next day he wrote in his diary: 'He has come into my house and now rules in it.'
John Stott was then aged seventeen. He had been impressed by an evangelist visiting the Christian Union in his school, Eric Nash. During the next fifty years he became a loved and trusted leader, teacher and spokesman of the world-wide Evangelical movement - and apart from William Temple (who died as Archbishop of Canterbury in 1944) the most influential clergyman in the Church of England during the twentieth century. The author of more than twenty books, he told the story of his conversion as a schoolboy in Basic Christianity (BC1, p. 128). That book has sold more than a million copies in thirty-six languages.
He earned this influence by building up a spectacularly effective parish church and preaching centre. Bom in 1921, he was the son of a leading physician, Sir Arnold Stott, who practised in Harley Street in London's West End. He grew up in the geographical parish of All Souls, Langham Place, near the BBC's Broadcasting House and the famous shops of Oxford Street. Having left London during the war years, he returned to that parish as a curate in 1945 after completing his education in Cambridge (at Trinity College and Ridley Hall). He became Rector in 1950. So began a triumph, drawing congregations which were very large by British standards (about a thousand on an average Sunday) but also reaching out to the geographical parish (which had about nine thousand inhabitants) and influencing many visitors who did not go to All Souls regularly. This church became, more than any other in Britain, the shop window of the conservative Evangelical revival - which became, more than any other religious movement in Britain since the second world war, a success. Many students in Christian Unions and other Evangelical societies across Britain listened eagerly to John Stott as a guest speaker and university missioner, as did thousands of young Americans, particularly in the great student missionary conferences in Urbana, Illinois. Contacts with African, Asian and other students in London made him compare All Souls church with the international transit lounge of an airport and gradually made him an airport figure himself, with many journeys at the invitation of friends. This growing international work as a speaker and writer persuaded him to hand over the leadership of All Souls as Vicar to Michael Baughen (later Bishop of Chester) in 1970. He remained 'Rector' then and became 'Rector Emeritus' five years later. Most of those who knew him well thought this a sensible decision, for back in Cambridge in the 1940s he had been exempted from time-consuming attendance at the committee meetings of the Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union in order that he might 'get on with the evangelistic and pastoral work in which he was exercising an outstanding ministry'. (That story was told in Oliver Barclay's book about the CICCU, Whatever Happened to the Jesus Lane Lot?, 1977, p. 111.) But he has continued to keep a foot in London both as a frequent preacher in the church he had revitalised and as an animating teacher in the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity, which he and his friends founded in 1982 with a home in the nearby church of St Peter, Vere Street. He has been appointed by the Queen an Honorary Chaplain and by the Archbishop of Canterbury a Lambeth Doctor of Divinity.
One reason why he has been admired and honoured in the Church of England is that he has remained loyal to it. His public disagreement with Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones at a meeting of the Evangelical Alliance in 1966 was a turning point. Lloyd-Jones, often regarded as the greatest preacher of his age, urged Evangelicals to come out of their denominations and together form their own new association, if not an actual church; and John Stott, who was in the chair, resolutely opposed him. His chairmanship of the National Evangelical Anglican Congresses at Keele in 1967 and at Nottingham in 1977 was the most influential centre of advocacy of the alternative to separation - and that, too, brought him some criticism. There and later he urged the development of an Evangelicalism actively participating in church life at every level, in touch with the scholarship and culture of the day, in dialogue with other Christians of all sorts, determined to make the Christian gospel heard by youth and others unfamiliar with the conventional language of the churches, determined also to be thoroughly involved in discussion and action responding to contemporary social problems. As he summed it up while introducing the three pre-Nottingham books on Obeying Christ in a Changing World (1977), 'we publicly repented of that withdrawal from the visible Church and secular world which is often termed "pietism"'. And this development in England has had an impact on Evangelicals in many other nations. Around the world, the name of John Stott has been associated not only with the conservative Evangelical revival but also with some definite and creative answers to the growing problem of Evangelical identity.
Although Billy Graham was the host, John Stott has often been regarded as a key figure in the historic Lausanne Congress on World Evangelisation in 1974. He was chairman of the group which drafted the Lausanne Covenant. He wrote the official commentary on that agreed statement and chaired several international conferences developing its insights. Essentially what happened at Lausanne was that world-wide Evangelicalism publicly ceased to be identified with the culture of conservative, English-speaking Protestantism. Billy Graham, the most famous spokesman and symbol of American Evangelicalism since the second world war, himself pleaded for the distinction between that one culture and the everlasting, universal gospel. The cultures of Latin America, Africa, Asia and other regions were seen to be clothing in which a dynamically alive Christianity must advance into the twenty-first century. The social problems of what is best called the 'Two Thirds World' were seen to occupy by right a high position in the Church's agenda. Those problems, Lausanne demonstrated, are a matter of life or death to Christians in those regions and no Christian anywhere should be aloof. And this awareness of the cultures and problems of all the continents encouraged a much greater sensitivity to the fact that the Bible, too, belongs to a culture - in its case, to a Middle Eastern or Mediterranean culture which has been dead for many centuries. So Evangelicals took up the task of proclaiming the Bible's message to the individual and to society in ways which would be understood to the ends of the earth. In so doing they began to face the questions about the Bible's truth which had been asked most insistently in John Stott's own continent, Europe, as well as in the USA. 'Sensitivity to the real questions of the modem world/ he wrote in 1985, 'is essential to Christian maturity. And evangelism is impossible without it. We shall not win people to Christ by ignoring their problems' (AJ, p. 15).
This is the great teacher of the Church with whom I am entering into dialogue. I am honoured that he has consented to reply to the comments I shall submit. But since I am in every way his junior (in age, by eight years) I had better say why I hope for a fruitful conversation.
For all our differences John Stott and I ought to be able to understand each other. We are fellow-Anglicans, fellow-Englishmen, fellow-Londoners. We are fellow-priests of the Church of England and fellow-writers of popular theology whose writing has had to be done in the intervals of pastoral work or administration. My journey through life has not been totally different, although I have never belonged to an exclusively Evangelical fellowship. I knew Cambridge as a theological student and as Dean of King's College and a lecturer (in chinch history). I knew students elsewhere while Editor or General Secretary of the Student Christian Movement. I know central London, having spent many years as a curate of St Martin-in-the-Fields, as a canon of Westminster Abbey and now as Provost of Southwark Cathedral. And I have had to keep up with the life of the Church of England, partly because I am a weekly contributor to its leading newspaper, the Church Times. I have also done some international travelling and listening. For example, I remember John Stott's brave protest against the neglect of the biblical call to evangelism at the Assembly of the World Council of Chinches in Uppsala in 1966.
In many ways I am by conviction a 'liberal'. I accept such science as I know. I am indebted to critical scholars for much of such understanding of the Bible as I have. I do not believe that the Bible provides a complete system of theology which all Christians ought to accept, or a comprehensive guide to how all Christians ought to believe and behave. The first person who tried to teach me theology was Professor Leonard Hodgson, whose key question has often been quoted: 'What must the truth have been if it appeared like this to men who thought like that?' I believe that as they answer that question Christians are given freedom to make up their own minds on many matters in the light of the vision or principle, taught by the Bible - and are given reason and conscience to help them. And I think that God, who has a parent-like mercy for all humanity, has given many good gifts to all (not only to Christians) in order that everyone may choose to know his love, do his will and enter the joy of his salvation. His light shines on everyone in the world.
I am also, I believe, a 'Catholic' although many Roman and other Catholics would suspect or exclude me. As a priest of the Church of England I am conscious day by day of the Catholic heritage. I have been conscious of that heritage ever since I was a schoolboy - even before I went to a school in the shadow of Canterbury Cathedral. That inspired me to write the three volumes of my history of Christian England while I was Dean of Norwich and I am nowadays glad that the church where I serve is one of the oldest in London. Baptism means much to me and it is almost true to say that the Eucharist means everything. I am sure that church buildings, the sacraments and liturgical worship which they house, and above all the personalities of the saints, can speak to the soul. They have spoken to me about Christ.
But in common with many 'liberal' and 'Catholic' Christians I should also like to be treated as an Evangelical if by 'Evangelical' is meant one who believes the gospel revealed in the Bible. With all my heart and mind I believe that the eternal God has communicated with us - has 'acted' and 'spoken', to use traditional language - supremely and uniquely in Jesus Christ. This was necessary because so much ignorance and so much evil are parts of the human situation, along with the human glories. I agree completely with John Stott when he writes in Basic Christianity:
The history of the last hundred years or so has convinced many people that the problem of evil is located in man himself, not merely his society . . . We need more than an example; we need a Saviour. An example can stir our imagination, kindle our idealism and strengthen our resolve, but it cannot cleanse the defilement of our past sins, bring peace to our troubled conscience or reconcile us to God ... No religious observances or good deeds of ours could ever earn our forgiveness. (BC1, pp. 61,89,96)
The gospel which I believe is the good news that in Jesus humanity has a Saviour, who lived and died for us all, delivering us from ignorance and evil, enabling us to know, love and obey God as our Father, releasing the divine Spirit to be our comfort, our teacher and our guide. Yes, I question and I criticise - but I, too, believe in basic Christianity. I, too, have been converted and in my weakness I have received the Holy Spirit (although my youthful religious awakening had no moment of crisis that I can recall apart from my confirmation by a bishop who undramatically admitted me to receive Holy Communion). I confess my sins. I thank Christ for dying for me and all sinners. I accept him as my Lord and Saviour and I ask him to rule in my life.
I have not undergone a recent conversion to being polite about conservative Evangelicals. Reviewing a book about The Evangelicals by John Ring, I wrote in the Church Times in 1969:
In an age of widespread nihilism, they have a burning and shining sense of mission. In an age of religious famine, they know God through Christ. In an age of the unhappy cult of fun (or, to be franker, lust), their lives are given a shape by their prayers and the purity and joy of their homes are conspicuous. In an age of selfishness, they care. In an age of mass entertainment, they think. In an age of brash vulgarity, they are in touch with the great tradition of the life of the Spirit, which is the true glory of man. They actually read the Bible. In an age when so many softer options are available, many of them are Willing to spend and be spent throughout their adult lives in the work of the sacred ministry. If laymen, they do go to church. They appeal to the young in considerable numbers.
The Evangelical Success
Among the Evangelicals whom I know, John Stott has for many years been a hero to me. Of course I recognise that the exact nature of his success has been due to factors which can be analysed sociologically, psychologically and even genetically. Bom into the English upper middle class, he started with an able mind which was developed by an excellent education. He won first class honours in his Cambridge examinations in modem languages and theology, during years when the lives of many men of his age were being laid waste by the war. After ordination he has always been encouraged to study, reflect and express himself copiously by the spoken and written word. He has been provided with eager young study assistants and skilled and devoted secretarial help. He has a remote country cottage (in Pembrokeshire in South-West Wales) where he can get peace. To these privileges has been added the incalculable asset of a calm and sunny temperament, and his confidence in his own mission has been combined with the courtesy of a diplomat. Not for nothing was it his father's hope that he might enter the British diplomatic service.
Instead he has become an ambassador for Christ. But he has not had to minister or teach in a strange and hostile environment, except perhaps among critical students during university missions. It is extraordinary that as child, curate, rector and rector emeritus he has always been based on the same London parish. It is also notable that although some of the parish consists of a multiracial, working-class overspill from Soho, this is a largely 'professional' or 'residential' neighbourhood, the nearest approach to industry being the great department stores. When he opened a parochial community centre in 1958, with a full range of clubs for all ages but with the emphasis on young people, this church-sponsored clubhouse received a good and continuing response. When he began the annual Training School at All Souls in 1950, it was in order to recruit and equip 'commissioned workers' who, going out two by two, could be lay evangelists in house-to-house visitation and other activities in the parish. He was able to insist that they should attend twelve lectures (half on theology and half on evangelism) and pass a written examination in addition to a personal interview at the end, returning for three or four meetings a year. An average of forty-three a year were commissioned. Their purpose was defined 'almost exclusively in terms of witness', we are told, concentrating on the spoken word about Jesus Christ, although these visitors always tried to lend a helping hand in situations of social need and their responsibility in that field was 'clarified' in the late 1960s (OP, p. 65).
Sometimes a city district like his parish still presents great problems to a clergyman. Most of those who work there commute from homes which are far distant and most of those who live there are either temporary residents or else rich enough to afford to be 'out of town' during the weekend. And those have been problems for All Souls, Langham Place. But the church is strategically placed. Designed by John Nash as the focal point of Regent Street in the 1820s, it is a landmark surrounded by other well-known buildings and by heavily used transport routes. Just as the nearby stores are the Mecca of shoppers in London, so this elegant church could quite easily become a magnet to churchgoers visiting London or coming into the centre from all over the metropolis. It seems that while John Stott was Rector many of the commissioned workers and other active laity at All Souls did not live in the geographical parish and that most of the congregation on a Sunday would not have been there had they gone to their parish churches. In particular All Souls attracted overseas students (of whom there were then large numbers in London) recommended by Evangelicals. John Stott explained in 1968: 'Being a London church, we receive a steady stream of letters from all over the world, from grannies and aunties, parents and cousins, clergy and friends, telling us that someone is arriving in London and asking us if we will make contact with them.' But that is not true of the average London church! In my mind I compare John Stott's ministry at All Souls with that of another Evangelical, Dick Lucas, in St Helen, Bishopsgate, in recent years; or with that of the liberal preacher and pastor, Dick Sheppard, at St Martin-in-the-Fields in Trafalgar Square in the 1920s (not forgetting his successors); or with that of a radical activist, Donald Reeves, at St James, Piccadilly, in the 1980s; or with the Anglo-Catholic ministry of successive vicars at All Saints, Margaret Street; or with the preachers to great congregations of tourists in St Paul's Cathedral and Westminster
Abbey; or with the pulpit eminence of famous Methodists in Westminster Central Hall or of famous conservative Evangelicals in the Free Church tradition in Westminster Chapel; or with the influence of the Roman Catholic priests of Westminster Cathedral or the Brompton Oratory. All these men have been given great opportunities in strategically placed London churches - opportunities not given to clergymen in more normal situations. I am not saying that no clergyman can be a 'success' outside London. The name of David Watson, who was based on York, is one of those that immediately spring to the mind. But London is London.
We may ask why John Stott's brand of Anglican Evangelicalism has had the power to draw crowds and to win a great number of committed adherents, remembering that even in the parish of All Souls, Langham Place, the clearest impression gained by the commissioned workers in their house-to-house visitation was 'the size of the gulf in contemporary England which separates the masses from the Church' (OP, p. 66). I believe that we have to remember also the date and character of his own conversion. Europe was about to be devastated by the Second World War, and although a schoolboy in February 1938 was presumably not a close student of international politics the young John Stott must have sensed that there was a widespread sense of insecurity. Many people felt, however dimly, that the Utopian optimism which had launched the League of Nations had led only to economic recession, to the rise of Communism, Nazism and Fascism, and to the return of the horrors of total war. There was no brave new world—only a world where science was not a credible saviour; where bourgeois respectability was not a strong enough moral code; where liberalism was worm-eaten; where the waste land seemed near. In such a world many turned to a political gospel for salvation. If neither the Left nor the Right offered enough to feed their souls, many found the answer in a religious movement which offered a revealed certainty and authoritative guidance. This was the time of the Catholicism of Pius ΧΠ and, among Protestants in Continental Europe, of the 'crisis theology' and 'neoorthodoxy' associated with Karl Barth. In England these were the years when C. S. Lewis had a large audience for his defence of what he called 'mere' (in practice, a largely conservative version of) Christianity. In 1943 the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, was encouraged by the Church Assembly's recognition of 'the urgent necessity for definite action' to appoint an impressive Commission which two years later produced a report, Towards the Conversion of England.
The young John Stott encountered conservative Evangelicalism in the small Christian Union in his school - and when he went on to Cambridge and back to London he met the fellowship and loving friendship of many who also gained spiritual strength from this source. In Christopher Catherwood's Five Evangelical Leaders (1984) it is on record that the young man rebelled against the science-based agnosticism of his father and for many years had a spiritual director (although that term is too Catholic to be fully appropriate here) in the shape of the evangelist to whom, humanly speaking, he owed his conversion. This second father, Eric Nash, was known as 'Bash' to generations of schoolboys. For about five years he wrote to John Stott with advice every week. He specialised in that kind of ministry to boys in England's top public schools ('key boys in key schools' was his unofficial motto). And he kept in touch with them in the universities or elsewhere. Many of the prominent men in the Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union at that time were, like John Stott, 'Bash campers'; they shared with Nash in the leadership of camps where the Evangelical influence on these boys could be strengthened. Christopher Catherwood speculates that it was partly Nash's untrammelled dedication to Christian service that encouraged John Stott to remain a bachelor, but that he deviated from Nash's style by becoming a scholar. At any rate his background in Cambridge Evangelicalism, and his continuing contacts with other Christian Unions of students, do something to explain his success in London. The monthly 'guest services' which he instituted in order to attract newcomers to All Souls (and to much more) were modelled on the challenging evangelistic services of the CICCU and probably most of those attending would not have felt ill at ease sitting among Cambridge University students. Many of the 'commissioned workers' who acted as counsellors when enquirers stayed behind in church after the main 'guest services' had been drawn to All Souls by John Stott's fame in student Evangelical circles.
However, it is obviously not the case that the appeal of conservative Evangelicalism has been confined either to the world of the 1940s or to elite English circles. On the contrary, Evangelical movements founded in the 1940s in the USA have flourished in very different periods since then and have fed a massively popular revival of this form of Christianity, organised in the World Evangelical Fellowship since 1951. The numbers of Americans who assure pollsters that they have been 'bom again', and who have welcomed the public piety of Presidents Carter and Reagan, demonstrate conclusively that here is a phenomenon at the centre of American life. Much of this phenomenon is continuous with the old fundamentalism but many American Evangelicals occupy a position close to, or identical with, John Stott's - a position at home in the historic denominations and in touch both with biblical scholarship and with the big moral and social issues of the day. That is why many Americans have been enthusiastic in their welcome to his visits and initiatives.
Partly because of the emotional and financial strength of these Americans, the Evangelical movement is now powerfully at work in all the continents. It flourishes in Australia and elsewhere in the old Commonwealth. In Latin America and Africa it has swept through the historic Protestant denominations and the newer Pentecostal churches alike, and has brought many who were previously nominal Catholics or non-Christians into a living faith. It is less numerous in Asia, but in centres of capitalism on the rim of that continent - in Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea - it has achieved much and it is certainly present in India, Indonesia, China and Japan. The worldwide Evangelical movement should not be thought of as being entirely dependent on English-speaking leadership. No such leadership has been decisive for the Evangelicals who have vigorously survived persecution within Communist China and the Soviet Union - or who have revitalised the old Protestant traditions of Scandinavia, Germany and other European countries. The emerging Evangelical leaders of Third World churches, anxious to affirm their national cultures, have felt more free than did their predecessors to be independent - and even critical - of the West. But the kind of Evangelicalism for which John Stott is a spokesman is clearly acceptable internationally.
The sociological explanation of this influence is, I suggest, that the impact of modernity on these societies (which are of course very different from each other) has produced sizeable numbers of people who are able to read the Christian Bible for themselves and who are potentially interested in a teaching which constantly refers to the Bible. Ceremonies performed by priests cannot satisfy them - not even when the priests are Christians. These people are often also aware of the intellectual and social questions of our age. Indeed, they are often deeply aware of the disintegration of their traditional cultures, leaving a spiritual vacuum. The second world war has receded into history, but the feeling of insecurity has not gone away. Economic progress has in some places brought a 'postmodern' technology but has not diminished the modem problems - the breakdown of family life, unemployment, urban stress, the addictions to the various drugs, the fear of nuclear war. Elsewhere the end of the European empires has not ended oppression, poverty and the fear of famine. And the political creeds of the 1940s - Communism as well as Nazism and Fascism - are discredited. Ί sometimes wonder', John Stott wrote in 1979, 'if good and thoughtful people have ever been more depressed about the human predicament than they are today' (GNS, p. 69). In many places around this unhappy globe the kind of faith and fellowship that appealed to John Stott in Rugby School and Cambridge University in the 1940s have (if adapted locally) much to offer. They attract not only simple 'Bible believers' but also literate, educated and sensitive people, uneasily aware that they live amid many revolutions and many anxieties yet need to build the house of life on rock.
It is also, I believe, possible to explain sociologically why English-speaking leadership has been more acceptable in international Evangelicalism than in any other world-wide Christian movement. The contrast is great with the recent history of the World Council of Churches, for example. There it would be difficult, or even impossible, for an Englishman, or even an American, to be the main spokesman. This is because the protests and hopes of the Two Thirds World dominate the agenda. In the churches of the Southern hemisphere and Asia the official and intellectual leadership, although often still indebted to American or European encouragement, is vocally determined to end anything that smacks of control by missionaries, of the old European imperialism or of the economic neocolonialism which has its centre in the USA. Those whose mother tongue is English are therefore heard with difficulty unless they loudly denounce the sins of their own peoples. For much the same reason it is highly unlikely that the Roman Catholic Church would choose a Pope with English as his mother tongue. And these pressures are felt in the worldwide Evangelical movement, as the proceedings of many conferences show. In his contribution to The New Face of Evangelicalism (1976) edited by C. Rene Padilla after the Lausanne Congress of 1974, John Stott remarked:
Those of us who come from the West assume too readily that the best teachers in the Church are westerners. But the bubble of our arrogant assumption is easily pricked when we are exposed to the openness and integrity of the brother from the East African revival area, or the mystical mind of a Chinese expositor, or the imagination and enthusiasm of a Latin American Christian, (p. 46)
However, Evangelicalism depends on the Bible and it requires and reveres speakers who have become in one sense masters, and in another sense, servants of the Bible. Most of the leading speakers in this category have so far come from the English-speaking world. That fact explains why at the popular level Billy Graham and other evangelists from the USA have been given an international hearing. It also does much to explain the more scholarly influence of John Stott, reaching out from his base near the old headquarters of the BBC.
However, when all such explanations of the Evangelical success have been given they remain unable to account for all John Stott's effectiveness. I am sure that many elements in his ministry would have made a deep impression on those in contact with him, even under conditions less favourable to numerical success and international influence. For there are things about him which appeal in all times and places - and which appeal to many people who are repelled by the kind of fundamentalism that owes its success and influence to quite different characteristics.
A Man of God
He has been a man of God, able to draw others into God's presence. I need quote only two passages from his books which are all the more suggestive for being modest sidelights. In his exposition Only One Way: The Message of Galatians he mentioned that some difficult verses 'concern the central issue of religion, which is how to come into a right relationship with God' (OOW, p. 77). And when discussing the Holy Spirit in Christian experience he wrote that sometimes we experience a quickening of our spiritual pulse, a leaping of our heart, a kindling of our love of God and man, a pervading sense of peace and well-being. Sometimes in the dignified reverence of public worship, or in the spontaneous fellowship of a home meeting, or at the Lord's Table, or in private prayer, invisible reality overwhelms us. Time stands still. We step into a new dimension of eternity. We become still and know that God is God. We fall down before him and worship. (BF, p. 69)
He has had a vision of the Church as it should be and deep down is. At the end of a book based on sermons on the letters of another John, to the seven churches of Asia, he summed up the marks of the Church - 'love for Christ and willingness to suffer for him, truth of doctrine and holiness of life, inward reality and an evangelistic outreach to others, with an uncompromising wholeheartedness in everything' (WCTC, p. 127). And he has been enabled by experience to describe the 'fruit of the Spirit' in the lives of Christians - 'love, joy, peace' because of our relationship with God; 'patience, kindness, goodness' in our relationship with others; 'trustworthiness, gentleness, self-control' in our relationship with ourselves (BF, pp. 76-85). He described the ground out of which that harvest grows in his Focus on Christ, sermons delivered in All Souls church in 1978. He presented the Christian life as life 'through, on, in, under, for, with, unto and like' Christ.
In accordance with the whole tradition of healthy Christianity, he gives the spiritual and the moral priority over the intellectual. But it has been one of his great strengths that he has consistently taught a religion which claims to be true and not merely enjoyable or useful; which asks people to think, not merely to tremble or glow; which bases itself on a book which can be argued about, not on 'experience' which convinces only the individual who has had it. In a booklet published in 1972 he reminded his fellow-Evangelicals that Your Mind Matters. He regretted that 'the spirit of anti-intellectualism is prevalent today' - and he diplomatically softened any criticism of his audience by pointing out the dangers of the Catholic emphasis on ritual, the 'radical' Christian emphasis on social and political action and the Pentecostal or charismatic tendency to make another kind of 'experience the major criterion of truth'. These, he said, are 'escape routes by which to avoid our God-given responsibility to use our minds Christianly' (YMM, pp. 7-10).
He has used his mind in the work that properly belongs to an ordained minister. In The New Face of Evangelicalism he urged fellow-Evangelicals to spare no pains to study Scripture in order to expound it accurately and meaningfully. This calls for a greater measure of integrity than we often display. If the Bible is God's Word written, we must pray over it and pore over it until it yields its message. We have no liberty to falsify the Word of God, twisting it to suit our prejudice or to conceal our laziness. (P 42)
He has been the New Testament editor of and a fertile contributor to the series The Bible Speaks Today published by the Inter-Varsity Press - a series which shows what message Bible study has yielded to him. And in I Believe in Preaching he has given us glimpses of the trouble which he has himself taken to be a faithful preacher of the Bible's message. He tells us that he reads four chapters of Scripture every day but has no time for a daily newspaper (although he does attend to broadcast news and read the weekly Guardian). He advises people beginning to preach to spend ten to twelve hours on the preparation of every sermon. Even 'experienced preachers are not likely to reduce this to less than half' (IBP, p. 259). Still more impressive is the fact that he sounds convincing as he writes about the sincerity and earnestness, courage and humility, which must mark the preacher and pastor.
I am impressed in particular by his humility. Quite apart from some American TV evangelists who are sensationally ego-publicists, it is not unknown for preachers who are sincere, earnest and courageous to be also arrogant. Somehow there has been a failure to learn from the Bible to be sensitive to other people's sincerities, earnest about their importance rather than the preacher's, and courageous in serving their interests - although I am not surprised, since these are problems for me. I am struck by the emphasis on humility in John Stott's collection of New Testament word studies, The Preacher's Portrait:
I cannot help wondering why there are so few preachers whom God is using today. There are plenty of popular preachers, but not many powerful ones, who preach in the power of the Spirit. Is it because the cost of such preaching is too great? It seems that the only preaching God honours, through which his wisdom and power are expressed, is the preaching of a man who is willing in himself to be both a weakling and a fool. (PP, p. 122)
In his chapter called Ά Father' he renounces a father's authority, rejecting the whole massive tradition - as much Protestant or Pentecostal as Catholic - which makes a congregation too dependent on an authoritarian pastor. But he advocates for the pastor paternal affection, understanding, gentleness, simplicity, personal example and conscientious prayers. It must be a self-portrait. I find it very attractive. It is all the more attractive because here we do not meet the humility of a weak personality. Here is a man whom other men follow and even imitate. In David Watson: A Portrait by His Friends, which Edward England edited in 1985, David Machines refers to the custom of hero-copying, strong among conservative Evangelicals:
It used to be said of All Souls, Langham Place, during the fifties, that on any Sunday you liked you could hear the famous rector, John Stott, conducting the service, John Stott reading the lesson, John Stott leading the prayers, John Stott preaching, while John Stott was actually conducting a mission in Canada, having left all in the hands of his curates! (pp. 18-19)
I am struck also by John Stott's humility which enables him to see new light 'break forth from God's Holy Word', just as Pastor John Robinson promised the Mayflower pilgrims. As I read or hear about the Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union in the 1940s, I am appalled by its insensitivity to most of the movements which were to shape the post-war world. For example, its historian Oliver Barclay has recorded (p. 119) that its senior counsellor, Basil Atkinson, who was on the staff of the University Library, discouraged social work or a keen interest in politics. In 1933 Atkinson had edited and reissued Old Paths in Perilous Times, a booklet already twenty years old, justifying the separate existence of the CICCU. In the very year when the times had become more 'perilous' through Hitler's entry into power in Germany, he had added these words:
While believing that it is always a part of Christian duty to ameliorate distress, the CICCU cannot be enthusiastic about schemes for bringing world peace by means of political bodies such as the League of Nations, or social uplift by methods of reform. It holds that in the Gospel of Christ alone lies the only hope for the world by the regeneration of the individual. All else consists merely of dead works without permanent value before God and may be written down as 'vanity7.
How large is the contrast with the mature John Stott!
In I Believe in Preaching he has painted another self-portrait. We can see it in his words about John the goldenmouthed (Chrysostomos), preacher to Antioch and Constantinople at the turn of the fourth and fifth centuries: 'He was biblical. . . His interpretation of the Scriptures was simple and straightforward .. . His moral applications were down to earth ... He was fearless in his condemnations' (IBP, p. 21). Ά man of the Word and a man of the world' is a tribute to John Chrysostom (IBP, p. 147) which applies equally well to John Stott. He loves the image of the preacher as pontifex, 'bridge-builder'. He has praised Max Warren's definition of communication as a preacher: 'Thinking out what I have to say, then thinking out how the other man will understand what I say, and then re-thinking what I have to say, so that, when I say it, he will think what I am thinking' (IBP, p. 64).
In particular he has been sensitive to the problems of communicating as a Bible-based preacher. He asks: 'How can I, who have been brought up in one culture, take a particular biblical text which was given in a second culture, and expound it to people who belong to a third culture, without either falsifying the message or rendering it unintelligible?' (IBP, p. 185). And he has graciously indicated regret that this was not always his attitude. 'Although I hope that in recent years I have begun to mend my ways', he has written, 'yet previously both my theory and my practice were to expound the biblical text and leave the application largely to the Holy Spirit' (IBP, p. 141). He has been helped by watching contemporary films and plays, although previously he was one of those who 'received their spiritual nurture in a Christian subculture which frowns on the cinema and the theatre' (IBP, p. 193). He has come to see that 'in comparison with the big moral and social issues of the day', questions of smoking, drinking, clothing, coiffure and cosmetics are 'minuscule'. These questions are important but nowadays he thinks it pitiful that 'there is an Evangelical subculture which is obsessed' by them (IBP, pp. 155-6). Those are the words of a Bible-rooted man with the courage to be humble and therefore to grow.
This courage has made him an enthusiast about the place of the laity in the Church and - what is even more remarkable in so successful a clergyman - a great advertiser of the achievements of his successors at All Souls in training and releasing the laity. In 1968 he delivered lectures in Durham University on the 'theology of the laity'. Fourteen years later he updated them. The book was called People. It insisted that 'the true and proper relationship of clergy to laity is a serving relationship', that 'it is not the clergyman who is the really important person and the lay person a rather inferior brand of churchman, but the other way round' (OP, pp. 19,51). This was no new idea. (Archbishop William Temple said that 'the main duty of the clergy must be to train the lay members of the congregation in their work of witness'.) But John Stott found it necessary to confess that 'there must be many of us in the Church, both clergy and laity, who need to perform a complete mental somersault' - and he also found it possible to proclaim that 'the real reason for expecting the laity to be responsible, active and constructive church members is biblical not pragmatic, grounded on theological principle not expediency' (OP, pp. 51,18). It was submission to the Bible that inspired him to believe that the laity must not be asked to submit to a dictator in the pulpit. He has quoted Calvin: 'If ministers wish to do any good, let them labour to form christ, not to form themselves, in their hearers' (OOW, p. 118). And at this John Stott has been rather more successful than was John Calvin.
With this firm belief in the laity he made experiments in All Souls which were very unusual at that time. Not only did he start the scheme for commissioned workers. He also made the church council a spiritual fellowship, where 'our policy has been to go on talking and praying together until we reach agreement rather than to act precipitately and force division' (OP, p. 38). In 1965 this council decided to replace the weekly Hour of Prayer in the church with fortnightly Fellowship Groups in different homes and (in the alternate weeks) Parish Evenings to which the groups would be urged to come together. These groups studied the Bible and offered intercessions in accordance with a parish plan. Once a year they celebrated Holy Communion in the room where they normally met (the minister not being robed and using a simplified service), and once a year they went away together to a spiritual conference.
Even more unusual is the graciousness with which John Stott paid tributes to his successors in the 1982 edition of One People. The numbers of laity involved in the life of All Souls church have grown and he gladly gave the enlarged figures. His successors have managed also to intensify the proceedings to which they invite busy laity. Thus the training for commissioned workers now lasts for thirty evenings, although it no longer consists mainly of lectures
and there is homework instead of a written examination. And the fellowship groups meet for three hours an evening and much more attention is given to the pastoral care of their leaders. Rejoicing in these advances after his own achievements, John Stott has been able to show us why his successors were able to raise nearly a million pounds for the improvement of audibility and visibility in this historic church and for the construction and equipment of meeting rooms under it.
Such a man of God with a strong vision of the Church, an honest labourer in the pulpit but humble enough to grow in understanding of the laity's world and in the willingness to serve the laity, and generous enough to praise his successors, would eventually be loved and heard in any situation. In those respects the unique life of John Stott provides a model for all ministers - indeed, for all followers - of Christ. All of us are challenged by words near the end of his book on Our Guilty Silence:
Our motive must be concern for the glory of God, not the glory of the Church or our own glory. Our message must be the gospel of God, as given by Christ and his apostles, not the traditions of men or our own opinions. Our manpower must be the Church of God, and every member of it, not a privileged few who want to retain evangelism as their own prerogative. Our dynamic must be the Spirit of God, not the power of human personality, organisation or eloquence. (OGS, pp. 117-18)
What is Essential?
It is, however, not my sole purpose to pay compliments! I want to offer a critical commentary on the key themes in John Stott's teaching. I am trying to write on behalf of those who, while rejoicing that the power of the gospel of Christ has been displayed in his ministry, have not been willing or able to identify themselves completely with those who have heard him most gladly. For I want to argue that conservative Evangelicals do not monopolise the understanding of the Christian gospel. John Stott has himself criticised the exclusive claims of some Christians who are not conservative Evangelicals - and in the course of dialogue with them has grown in understanding of their positions. I believe that this shows that dialogue, if conducted with honesty and humility, is spiritually creative.
He has often criticised the exclusive claims of the Roman Catholic Church and of the Anglo-Catholic movement in the Church of England. He has attacked some of their traditional teachings as being false to the Church's only proper message, which is the message of the Bible. In Confess Your Sins, published for the Evangelical Fellowship in the Anglican Communion in 1964, he criticised the practice of 'auricular' confession of sins in private to a priest. He claimed that such a practice 'is neither recognised nor recommended in Scripture', which teaches that a sin against a person must be confessed to that person; 'if the sin has been committed against God it should be confessed to God secretly; if it has been committed against the Church it should be confessed to the Church publicly'. And he demonstrated the danger of making a penitent unhealthily dependent on a priest. These points will seem valid to many Christians - including the many Roman Catholics who in the years immediately after the publication of Confess Your Sins, the years of the Second Vatican Council and its turbulent aftermath, widely abandoned this practice. But it is significant that in 1964 John Stott saw no need to enter into any real dialogue with Roman Catholics or with Catholic-minded fellow-Anglicans. To him someone who had not been personally offended was simply 'not in a position to forgive the sin' and confessing sins against God and the Church to a priest 'is not right' (CYS, p. 84). He mentioned but did not stress the provision for the relief of a troubled conscience by confession to a priest made by (for example) the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England in its service for the visitation of the sick. While of course accepting occasional consultation with a pastor, he showed little understanding of the motives which have led many Christians seeking holiness to make regular use of private confession and spiritual direction. As late as 1970 he wrote: Ί find it distressing to see Protestants and Roman Catholics united in some common acts of worship and witness. Why? Because it gives outsiders the impression that their disagreements are virtually over' (CtC, p. 22). He then protested against the Credo of the People of God issued by Pope Paul VI in 1968. This insisted on the perpetual virginity, immaculate conception and bodily assumption of Mary, the mother of Jesus and the mother of the Church; on the infallibility of the Pope and other bishops when teaching ex cathedra; and on the Mass which renders the Sacrifice of Calvary 'sacramentally present7 and which makes the bread and wine cease to exist in 'reality' after the Consecration. He called for 'candid and serious dialogue' about such dogmas, but also described them as 'entirely unbiblical'.
John Stott has, however, patiently taken part in a number of careful theological discussions with Catholic-minded Christians of the Roman and Anglican communions during the 1970s and 1980s. In 1987 he was joint editor of the report of The Evangelical-Roman Catholic Dialogue on Mission and one of the contributors to Stepping Stones (edited by Christina Baxter), a book of essays which resulted from the dialogues of a group of Anglican Catholics and Evangelicals which he had jointly convened; he wrote on 'Mission Agenda for the People of God'. He drafted the Anglican Evangelical response which, while still criticising, warmly welcomed the progress in mutual understanding embodied in the reports of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission. This progress has been achieved largely as a result of willingness to go together to the Bible. Not all disagreements are over even now-but the change since the 1960s, at least at this high theological level, has been dramatic. The reason why I do not dwell on it in this book (I discussed it in my The Futures of Christianity, 1987) is that Dr Stott has not so far written extensively under his own name in this field which many others are currently exploring.
With the charismatics - the advocates of a 'second blessing' bestowed by the 'baptism of the Spirit' - he has had a relationship which has to some extent been similar to his dialogue with the Catholics. He has condemned their exclusive claims - but has not been afraid to grow in his appreciation of their virtues. His own church saw some of the beginnings of the current charismatic revival in England. Michael Harper, who went on to become a charismatic leader, was a curate of All Souls asked to specialise in a chaplaincy to the Oxford Street stores. He found himself involved more and more deeply in the charismatic movement and he resigned his curacy to become Director of the Fountain Trust. That was in 1964. But the charismatics' challenge to the conservative Evangelical tradition did not go away when Michael Harper left John Stott's staff. Considerable numbers of Christians who had been attracted to that tradition now became critical of it. In their shining eyes the 'new wine' offered by the charismatics demanded new wineskins. In the new movement they found most or all of the Evangelical doctrines but in addition a quality of spiritual life to which John Stott paid tribute in the Preface to the 1975 edition of his Baptism and Fullness. 'Many Christians', he wrote,
testify to having experienced a new liberty and love, an inward release from the bondage of inhibitions, an overflowing joy and peace in believing, a warmth of Christian fellowship unknown before, and a fresh zeal for evangelism. The movement constitutes a healthy challenge to all mediocre Christian living and all stuffy church life.
In the same Preface, however, he confessed 'my own immaturity both in having been too negative towards the charismatic movement and in having been too reluctant to meet its leaders and talk with them'. Such hesitations no doubt deserved this very gracious apology, but they arose out of what was perceived as the charismatics' own tendency to exclusiveness. 'Some Christians', he wrote, 'give the impression that they hold a kind of "Jesus plus" doctrine, namely, "You have come to Jesus, which is fine; but now you need something extra to complete your initiation"' (BF, p. 10). He replied: 'Growth in Christ, yes! Additions to Christ, never!' (BF, p. 46). He insisted that according to the New Testament 'the gift of the Holy Spirit is a universal Christian experience because it is an initial Christian experience. All Christians receive the Spirit at the very beginning of their Christian life' (BF, p. 96). So he firmly associated the gift of the Spirit with conversion to Christ, of which the sacrament or sign is baptism by water. With equal firmness he denied that the gifts of tongue-speaking, miraculous healing and 'prophecy' which claimed to be directly inspired by God were essential to receiving the Spirit fully at, or after, water baptism. 'What worries me,' he wrote, 'is the wooden stereotype which a few zealous souls try to impose on everybody, when they insist on a so-called "baptism of the Spirit" subsequent to conversion, which must take a certain shape and be accompanied, or followed, by certain signs' (BF, p. 71). Pastoral experience had taught him that 'both those who claim exciting spiritual experiences and those who do not can fail in moral duties, in honesty, purity and unselfishness' (BF, p. 66). It had also shown him that God 'has made an almost endless variety of fascinating creatures, and among human beings there is an intricate pattern of racial and temperamental types' (BF, p. 89). Amid this variety, the often slow growth of the moral 'fruit of the Spirit' is far more important than any excitements. And such growth in its various forms can be expected, as baptised Christians are increasingly filled with the Spirit, for their various responsibilities. 'The fact that every Christian has a gift and therefore a responsibility, and that no Christian is passed by and left without endowment, is fundamental to the New Testament doctrine of the Church' (BF, p. 105).
To me, the condemnation of exclusiveness and divisiveness is very welcome. I cannot, however, accept all John Stott's criticisms of the charismatic movement. I do not feel that he quite answers the point which he makes himself: 'If all Christians have been baptised with the Spirit, the majority do not appear to have been! Some Christians claim to have received a further and distinct experience of the Holy Spirit, and their claim does appear to be true!' (BP, p. 63). In this movement, no less than in conservative Evangelicalism, I see the work of God, on a large scale, giving love amid lukewarmness, joy amid secular despair and peace amid the endless discussion of problems and dangers. In particular I do not think that John Stott has quite done justice to the experience of 'speaking in tongues' (in Greek glossolalia).
I have never had this experience of ecstatic utterance, babbling or singing uncensored by the conscious mind, and I do not want to have it, being far more interested in the struggles to be rational and to communicate intelligibly. But I gather that some good Christians have found this experience decisive in their entry to the new liberty and love which John Stott has finely described. Both Paul's letters and the Acts of the Apostles (10:46; 19:6) show that it was an experience common in the early Church, so common that it did not need to be explained. It seems certain that Paul gave instructions about the danger of disorder connected with it (1 Corinthians 14) and highly probable that this was the experience which new converts in Samaria lacked before Peter and John laid their hands on them (Acts 8:14-17) and the experience at the heart of Luke's story of the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:1-13). James Dunn analysed these texts persuasively in his Jesus and the Spirit (1975). In contrast, Dr Stott insists that because Luke explains the glossolalia on the day of Pentecost as the miraculous speaking of foreign languages, this is likely to have been the case in Corinth also (BF, p. 112). Nowhere in the New Testament, however, are we given a clear example of a Christian communicating in another person's language without learning that language, apart from this Acts story of Pentecost. The true explanation of the story may be that Luke composed it freely in order to make the theological point that the Holy Spirit has removed the curse of 'Babel' of divided languages (Genesis 11:1-9). Or he may have accepted as history a tradition which had been begun in order to make this point by a legend. Or the explanation may be that suggested by Professor Cyril Williams in the symposium Strange Gifts? edited by David Martin and Peter Mullen (1984), which incidentally contains a good bibliography of many years of British discussion of the charismatic movement:
Some of the sounds may have evoked memories of words in known languages or dialects identified by some listeners as languages of their homeland. In the ecstatic atmosphere such claims multiplied and the miracle was enlarged. We must not forget, however, those who were not so impressed and heard only the babblings of drunken persons, (p. 79)
I am aware that it has been claimed that miraculous speaking in unlearned foreign languages has been experienced in the twentieth century, but I am unconvinced. What I am sure of is that the ecstasy otglossolalia has been experienced. It has had parallels in non-Christian environments, where excitements of this sort have frequently occurred and have been prized highly. For Christians who have had this experience after baptism in infancy and after many years when their religion was superficial or formal, joyless or loveless, glossolalia certainly has been a 'second blessing'. But I am equally clear that those charismatics who have claimed that only those who have 'received the Spirit' in that particular way have received it 'fully' are open to John Stott's criticism. They are being more exclusive than the New Testament. Many charismatic teachers (Michael Harper among them) have not made this mistake but have had a truly biblical understanding of the diversity of the Spirit's gifts.
On many occasions John Stott has also taken 'liberal' or 'radical' Christians to task. For example, in 1970 he wrote:
The Evangelical quarrel with the modem fashion of radical theology, which boasts of a 'new Reformation', a 'new' theology, a 'new morality', even a 'new Christianity', is precisely that, alas, it is what it claims to be! It is 'new'. It is not a legitimate reinterpretation of old first-century Christianity, for from this it deviates at many vital points. (CtC, p. 41)
And I have to admit that a good many criticisms are justified. Too often the 'liberal· Christian's enthusiasm has been for political or social movements which were naively identified with the kingdom of God before they brought disillusionment. The religion of any 'new Reformation' which may have appeared in the twentieth century has often been shallow in comparison with the gospel of the grace of God proclaimed by the great Reformers of the sixteenth. The 'new7 theology of our age has often taken up old positions which in their time proved to be intellectually very questionable and religiously sterile, for example the belief in a non-interventionist Creator or Supreme Being of the eighteenth-century Deists. And the 'new7 morality, when it has not been a cloak for the old immorality, has had to come to terms with the necessity of 'law' if 'love' is to seek the welfare of the other in any profound and permanent way. In comparison 'biblical· Christianity can be presented as a deeply spiritual love for God and man, 'new' in the sense that it - or, rather, its Saviour - is perennially able to make new men and women with a new love, joy and peace. At any rate it is clear that 'liberal' or 'radical' Christians cannot justify any claim to be the only real Christians. Indeed, it is to be hoped that very few have ever made any such claim, so alien is it to the liberal temperament.
But I base my hope of a fruitful dialogue in this field chiefly on John Stott's own generous commitment. In I Believe in Preaching (1982) he has written that 'one of the greatest tragedies of our time' is the contrast that 'conservatives are biblical but not contemporary while liberals and radicals are contemporary but not biblical·. 'Why', he asks, 'must we polarise in this naive way?' He regrets that those of us who criticise and condemn liberal theologians for their abandonment of historic Christianity do not always honour their motivation or give them credit for what they are trying to do. The heart of their concern is not destruction but reconstruction. They know that large numbers of their contemporaries are contemptuously dismissive of Christianity, because they find its beliefs untenable, its formulations archaic and its vocabulary meaningless. This fact causes the best liberals profound pain, and it is this which lies behind their theologising. They are anxious to restate the Christian faith in terms which are intelligible, meaningful and credible to their secular colleagues and friends. All honour to them in so far as they are genuinely wrestling with the need to discover the modem gospel for the modem world. I wish we conservatives shared this incentive, and were ourselves neither so entrenched in antique elides, nor so offensively complacent about our failure to communicate. (IBP, pp. 143-4)
The questions and criticisms which I shall submit as a contribution to this dialogue will boil down to the suggestion that there are some conservative Evangelical ideas which, whether or not they are valid, are not essential if one is to believe the gospel revealed in the Bible. Obviously these ideas are much more important than the old Evangelical traditions which, for example, frowned on the cinema and the theatre. They are religious convictions which have often been thought to be the 'God-breathed' truth and to be absolutely essential, fundamental, 'non-negotiable' in any dialogue. When I explore them, I hope I shall be sensitive enough to realise that I am treading on sacred ground. These convictions, I feel, are in John Stott's mind when he passionately defends
the contemporary Evangelical emphasis on the Bible and the cross, and on the finality of both. It is not because we are ultra-conservative, or obscurantist, or reactionary or other horrid things we are sometimes said to be. It is because we love Jesus Christ and are determined, God helping us, to bear witness to his unique glory and absolute sufficiency. (FC, p. 32)
Nevertheless, I am compelled to ask whether the insistence on these ideas has not become a handicap in the communication of the gospel. Rightly or wrongly, these ideas are widely believed to belong not to the gospel itself, not to Christ's glory and sufficiency, but to a dead or dying culture. I long to persuade conservative Evangelicals that if only they can regard these ideas as optional (not necessarily as wrong) they will find that they can communicate the biblical gospel in terms which are far more intelligible, meaningful and credible. They can build bridges between the word and the world, so that their hearers, who at present are puzzled or repelled, will think what in their hearts Evangelicals are thinking about God, Jesus and the human situation. Evangelicals have the spiritual strength to do this, with very great benefit to the Church and the world. They have the holiness, the determination and the energy which we liberals often lack; we are better at criticising.
Yes, a great sacrifice will be required, for the ideas which I shall criticise are very dear to many conservatives. I shall be asking whether the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures are infallible or inerrant; whether Christ died in order to propitiate the wrath of God by enduring as a substitute for us the punishment we deserved; whether in order to believe in God as a Christian it is necessary to believe in all the miracles reported in the Bible; whether the Bible authoritatively offers us detailed teaching about our behaviour or about the future; and whether it is necessary to respond to the Christian gospel before death in order to be saved by God. That is asking a lot! But if this sacrifice of some ideas is seen to be for the sake of evangelism, I hope to appeal to Evangelicals. I echo Donald Bloesch: 'It is my position that the future belongs to that branch of Christendom that is willing to make itself expendable for the sake of the evangelisation of the world to the greater glory of God' (The Future of Evangelical Christianity, 1983, p. 7).
JOHN STOTT'S RESPONSE TO CHAPTER 1
My dear David,
I hope you will not mind if my response to each of your chapters is couched in direct speech. It seems to me that it will help to ensure that our hearts and minds engage with one another. It may also help our readers to be drawn into the dialogue between us.
But first I want to thank you for having undertaken the task of wading through so many of my books in order to ask your important question, what is essential for Evangelicals? You will remember my embarrassed incredulity when you first approached me with your idea. For, although you describe yourself as my 'junior', I have never thought of you thus, except in years. On the contrary, I have always admired your scholarly brilliance as an author. I read your Religion and Change when it was published in 1967, and fully agreed with Bishop (now Lord) Michael Ramsey, who reviewed it in Frontier, that it is an outstanding assessment of modernity's challenge to all ancient religions. Your The Futures of Christianity, published earlier this year, is another tour de force, revealing your phenomenal range of reading and understanding, while your three-volume Christian England has confirmed your reputation as an extremely able church historian. Every week I read your latest book review in the Church Times and wonder how on earth you manage to keep it up. In all your writings, what impresses me most is your combination of gifts - the breadth of your learning, your recall of earlier views and events which lesser mortals would long since have forgotten, your tolerant and appreciative spirit (not least in relation to Evangelicals) and your sharp, critical judgement. Often I find myself in agreement with your comments. But now you turn your great intellectual powers on me! I tremble, even wince. The prospect of having my published works scrutinised by your penetrating mind alarms me. It is not that I think you have combed through my books merely in order to find sticks to beat me with. Yet I hope you have recognised that my writing has spanned more than thirty years and that during this period my mind has not stood still. True, you begin with flattery (not intentionally, I'm sure, although that's how it sounds to me), but it is only the prelude to your wide-ranging critique. First the butter; then the dagger! Still, I am grateful. For you open up a liberal-Evangehcal dialogue which, at the very least, will increase our mutual understanding and respect.
Methodology
There are two aspects of the way this book has been conceived and brought to birth, to which I feel the need to draw attention.
First, you ask: What is essential for Evangelicals?, but confine your text to a critical evaluation of my books. To be sure, sometimes (especially in chapter 2 on Scripture and chapter 4 on miracles) you do not seem to be engaging with me so much as with what you perceive to be characteristic of Evangelicalism. On that account, I occasionally feel that what you are attacking is not the real me, but a very inflammable straw man of your own creation! Generally speaking, however, you stick to what I have written. That is, you treat me as a (even the) representative of the contemporary Evangelical movement. I tried to persuade you (remember?) to choose somebody else as your target, and went on to make a suggestion or two. But you insisted, and I gave in. Yet no one person can represent the full spectrum of Evangelical thought and life. I think it was Colin Craston who first remarked (at or after the 1977 Nottingham Congress) that the Evangelical Anglican constituency was now 'more a coalition than a party'. He was right. It is even more evident today than yesterday, and outside the Church of England than in it. I fear, therefore, that many Evangelical Anglicans will not be at all pleased to have me appointed as their voice. Some on the right wing have already dismissed me as a quasi-liberal (though you may be astonished to hear it!), while others to the left of me regard me as much too conservative for their liking. I often find myself caught in the cross-fire between these groupings. As I respond to you I shall endeavour to remember the breadth of contemporary Evangelicalism, not only in the Church of England, but in the Free Churches too. In the end, however, I can speak only for myself.1
Secondly, I honour you for having striven to be scrupulously fair to me by reading and quoting what I have written. And you have succeeded remarkably well. Nevertheless, what our readers are given are your selections and summaries, with my responses to these; most will not have read the originals. Sometimes, and inevitably so because of shortage of space, I feel that your presentation has not done full justice to what I have written. This is specially apparent in your third chapter, in which you evaluate Cross of Christ. In addition, this way of developing our dialogue casts me in a defensive role, reacting to your criticisms. It will be easy for people to forget that I began with a positive witness to different aspects of Evangelical faith and life, and that it is to your reactions that I am now reacting. I do not labour the point, and I am not complaining, but the methodology puts me at a disadvantage, which I hope our readers may remember. You may of course retort that it is you who have the disadvantage because you have no chance to respond to my responses. Perhaps after all, then, we are quits, since, if I have the last word, you have the first!
'The Evangelical Success'
You were generous in the appreciation of Evangelicals which you expressed in your review of the symposium John King edited, The Evangelicals (1969), and you have been much too generous to me. I have been particularly interested to read your analysis of the causes of what you call 'the Evangelical success'. You are entirely right to draw attention to the privileges which I have personally enjoyed in terms of endowment and temperament, upbringing and education, friends and assistants, early training in Christian service (especially in evangelism) at both 'Bash camps' and Cambridge, and the strategic situation of All Souls church. I fully recognise these initial advantages and am very grateful for them. At the same time, I think you paint rather too rosy a picture of my early life. Perhaps I may be allowed to mention (since you do not) that during the war my father, who was a Major-General in the Army Medical Service, declined to speak to me for two years, because he could not come to terms with my conviction that my call to the pastorate overrode even my duty to fight; that during three years of reading theology at Cambridge I wrestled painfully with the challenges of liberalism; that I struggled with the rival claims of marriage and singleness, of an academic life and a pastoral ministry; and that, after my ordination in 1945, the Evangelicals to whom I belonged were a small and despised minority.
I have no difficulty with your psychological and sociological explanations. For God surely works through -and not in spite of - social trends. Why, for example, has church growth among Kampucheans in Thailand far exceeded the slow advance of the gospel in Kampuchea itself? Is it not because these refugees, uprooted from their ancestral home and culture, are open as never before to finding new roots in Christ? I agree, therefore, that the widespread disillusionment with the liberal optimism of the 1920s and 1930s, the realisation that radical evils like war demand a radical remedy, the prevailing sense of insecurity, and the impact of modernity with its consequent intellectual and spiritual vacuum, all contributed to a fertile soil ready to receive the gospel.
What I miss in your reconstruction, however, is any reference to the attractiveness of Jesus Christ himself. Even self-conscious human needs cannot account for conversions to Christ unless he is clearly and persuasively presented as the fulfilment of all human aspirations. Basic Christianity begins with the words 'hostile to the church, friendly to Jesus Christ'. I still believe that this describes many people today. I have spoken over the years with large numbers of university students. In these conversations I have encountered severe, even bitter, criticism of the Church; but I have yet to hear any criticism of Christ. 'For one thing, he was himself an anti-establishment figure, and some of his words had revolutionary overtones. His ideals appear to have been incorruptible. He breathed love and peace wherever he went. And, for another thing, he invariably practised what he preached' (BC1, p. 7). So let's agree that, although personal privileges and social circumstances were on my side, yet these things only prepared the way. The decisive factor was the magnetism of Jesus Christ.
Three Anglican Traditions
Near the beginning of your first chapter you mention the three traditional streams of Anglicanism - liberal, Catholic and Evangelical - and claim to belong to all three simultaneously. I could advance the same claim. It all depends on definitions.
If 'liberal' means respect for the scientific enterprise, the development of a critical judgement, an emphasis on the importance of reason and conscience, freedom to make up our minds in the light of Scripture, and belief in the mercy of God, whose light shines on all humankind, then emphatically I too could be called a liberal. Like yourself, I do not believe that the Bible provides 'a complete system of theology' or 'a comprehensive guide' to ethics. Systematic theology is certainly a legitimate and even necessary academic discipline, but God did not choose to reveal himself in systematic form, and all systems are exposed to the same temptation, namely to trim God's revelation to fit our system instead of adapting our system to accommodate his revelation. 'Beware of the systematizers of religion!' wrote Charles Simeon of Cambridge, one of my heroes. I agree with him. The same caution should apply to the systematizers of ethics. The Bible contains ample ethical instruction (in principle, precept and pattern), but it could not be called 'a comprehensive guide', not least because there are numerous complex modem issues to which it does not directly address itself.
But is yours a complete account of 'liberalism'? The liberalism which I feel obliged to reject lies under the surface of your definition. I too am grateful to critical scholars who have helped me to understand the Bible, but not to those who have encouraged me to reject its teaching. I too insist on our God-given freedom to make up our own minds, but only 'in the light of the vision or principle taught by the Bible', as you say. For freedom to disagree with the Bible is an illusory freedom; in reality it is bondage to falsehood. I too rejoice in God's mercy, and in his eternal Logos who is both the life and the light of human beings and 'the true light', coming into the world and giving light to everybody (John 1:4,9). But the John who expressed these sublime truths was himself not a universalist; he later wrote both that the light causes shadows as well as illumination, because sinners prefer darkness to light (3:19-21), and that judging and life-giving are alike characteristic activities of the Son of God (5:21-23).
If 'Catholic' merely describes those who value the Christian tradition as a precious heritage, who have a high view of the Church and its two gospel sacraments, and who find that the externals of architecture and liturgy, as well as the example of the saints, speak helpfully to them, then again I take my place beside you as a Catholic. But would Catholics (whether Anglican or Roman) accept your definition as adequate? Confining myself now to the Anglican Church, the Catholicism which I cannot myself accept, and which is still held by many, teaches (for example) that the historic episcopate is indispensable to a true Church; that Scripture is neither supreme in its authority nor sufficient for salvation, since it needs to be supplemented by tradition; that a baptism is a 'christening' since it makes people Christian irrespective of their repentance and faith; that the 'inner reality' of the bread and wine is changed into Christ's body and blood, and that therefore Christ is in some sense contained and localised in the consecrated elements; and that in the Eucharist we share in the sacrifice of Christ, meaning not that we share in its benefits and offer ourselves to him in humble gratitude (our sacrifice being a response to his), but that we share in the actual offering of it (our sacrifice blending with his). Such things cannot be proved from Scripture; Evangelicals believe that Scripture rather excludes them.
So when the definitions of 'liberal' and 'Catholic' are made a little more precise, I cannot call myself either. Can you, then, David, be called an Evangelical? Well, if an Evangelical is 'one who believes the gospel revealed in the Bible', who believes that God has acted and spoken 'supremely and uniquely in Jesus Christ', that because of endemic evil human beings need a Saviour, that Jesus Christ is that Saviour, who lived and died for us, and gives us his Spirit, and that we need to accept him as our Lord and Saviour - then you too are an Evangelical. I am very thankful that you can affirm what you do. I certainly agree that no conscious, crisis conversion experience is necessary. As Jim Packer has put it, 'the only proof of past conversion is present convertedness' (Keep Step with the Spirit, 1984, p. 70).
But has your definition done justice to the historic understanding of Evangelical belief since the Reformation? I do not want to exclude you. Nor is it my intention deliberately to define 'Evangelical' in such a way as to do so. But words are slippery things and need to be firmly grasped. I want to answer your question about Evangelical essentials with integrity, according to both the history of the word and our contemporary Evangelical self-understanding. Although I shall respond to you more fully chapter by chapter, as you press your questions upon me, and although I shall want to be as flexible as possible in terms of the formulation of Evangelical doctrines, I think I must make a preliminary statement now. Evangelicals regard it as essential to believe not just 'the gospel revealed in the Bible', but the full revelation of the Bible; not just that 'Christ died for us' but that he died 'for our sins', in some sense 'bearing' them objectively in our place, so that in holy love God can forgive penitent believers; not just that we receive the Spirit, but that he does a supernatural work in us, variously portrayed in the New Testament as 'regeneration', 'resurrection' and 're-creation'.
Here are three aspects of the divine initiative - God revealing himself in Christ and in the total biblical witness to Christ, God redeeming the world through Christ, who became sin and a curse for us, and God radically transforming sinners by the inward operation of his Spirit. Thus stated, the Evangelical faith is historic, mainline, trinitarian Christianity, not an eccentric deviation from it. For we do not see ourselves as offering a new Christianity, but as recalling the Church to original Christianity. You ask at the end of your chapter what Evangelicals are prepared to give up. Would it not be self-contradictory to sacrifice the evangel for the sake of evangelism? But are not such truths as these, you ask, a handicap to contemporary communication? Not in our experience. On the contrary, they communicate powerfully to men and women who are conscious of their alienation. Besides, the truth of the finality of God's revelation and redemption in Christ, and so of the Bible and the cross, does not (we believe) belong to 'a dead or dying culture' but to the everlasting gospel which, though we struggle to communicate it in modem idiom, we have no liberty to compromise. It may be possible to be saved with only a limited grasp of the truth (who can claim more?). In this sense it can be argued that some truth is not 'essential'. To concede this, however, does not imply that it is 'optional'. Whatever is truth from God demands our assent.
I fear this will bring you an initial disappointment, but let's continue our dialogue.
Yours ever,
John