Chapter 6: The Evangelical Tradition: Discovering the Word-Centered Life

Chapter 6

The Evangelical Tradition: Discovering the Word-Centered Life

Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”

—John 11:25-26

The monument I want after I am dead is a monument with two legs going around the world — a saved sinner telling about the salvation of Jesus Christ.

—D. L. Moody

6

THE WORK OF SOCIAL JUSTICE is most complete when it is intricately connected to authentic evangelical witness. These two Traditions — the Social Justice Tradition and the Evangelical Tradition — are at their best when they function together. The Evangelical Tradition of Christian life and faith focuses upon the proclamation of the evangel, the good news of the gospel. We are enabled by the power of God to take the word of the gospel into our hearts in such a transforming way that others, seeing this, want it for themselves. This faith stream addresses the crying need for people to see the good news lived and hear the good news proclaimed.

SEEKINC A HISTORICAL PARADICM

When, in The Waste Land, T. S. Eliot writes, “To Carthage then I came / Burning burning burning burning …,”¹ he is alluding to the person who is my number-one choice as a paradigm for the Evangelical Tradition: Aurelius. Aurelius was a North African, born Sunday, 13 November A.D. 354, in Thagaste (modern-day Souk Ahras, in eastern Algeria), a city bounded by the Mediterranean to the north and the Sahara to the south. Eliot’s mention of Carthage refers to Aurelius’s years of academic training there. In Carthage, by his own admission, Aurelius was thrust into “a hissing cauldron of lust.”² Longing for genuine love but unable to separate it from lust, he dipped into this cauldron more than once: “I polluted … the stream of friendship with the foulness of lust, and clouded its purity with the dark hell of illicit desire.”³ During those years Aurelius took to himself a concubine, and she bore them a son, Adeodatus.

An Arduous Search

But that Carthage period was not all “a whole frying-pan of wicked loves,”⁴ for through his studies the teenage Aurelius discovered Cicero and his Hortensius. This was the beginning of a long and arduous search for the good, the true, the beautiful — indeed, the search for God. The writings of Cicero were a fortunate initial discovery, for they aroused in Aurelius a love of wisdom and an ardent pursuit after truth: “That book inflamed me with the love of wisdom. … I was not encouraged by this work of Cicero’s to join this or that sect; instead I was urged on and inflamed with a passionate zeal to love and seek and obtain and embrace and hold fast wisdom itself, whatever it might be.”⁵ And so, at the very time he was “sinking down to the depths” of the “lower beauties” of sexual promiscuity, he continued to be drawn to the higher beauties of virtue and justice.

Now, Cicero was not a Christian — he did not have the full revelation of God in the face of Jesus Christ — but his writing did serve as a vital pre-evangelism for Aurelius. In fact, Cicero’s penetrating questions on life actually turned Aurelius to the Bible to see what answers he could find there. Unfortunately, the only Bible available to him at the time was a badly flawed Latin translation with inept style. “To me,” he said, the Scriptures “seemed quite unworthy of comparison with the stately prose of Cicero.”⁶

Rejecting the Bible, Aurelius turned to the raging intellectual fad of the day, Manichaeism, a philosophy that postulated an absolute dualism of good and evil. (This viewpoint is quite popular today, incidentally. The Star Wars movie trilogy, for example, is decidedly Manichaean in its presentation of good and evil.) Aurelius was enthralled with Manichaeism for some time, but eventually he began to see through its obvious intellectual weaknesses. His disillusionment with Manichaean philosophy was all but sealed when he met its chief spokesman — one Faustus — whom Aurelius described as a “wordy dish” (that is, a person who has nothing at all to say but can say it extremely well).

For a time Aurelius was attracted to “the Academics,” a group that embraced agnosticism. He deemed these people “wiser than the rest because they held that everything should be considered doubtful.”⁷ He knew that honest doubt was far superior to superstitious belief. This period of skepticism was essential to Aurelius, for he needed to examine rigorously the various philosophies of his day. And examine them he did — all the way to “the deceitful fortune-telling and wicked lunacies of the astrologers” — and he found them all wanting.⁸

The great intellectual hurdle for Aurelius was the problem of evil. How could a good God allow a universe that was filled with evil, with pain, with suffering? “Where then is evil? What is its origin? How did it steal into the world? What is the root or seed from which it grew?”⁹

These were his questions, and they are our questions too whenever we go through the wringers of life. For Aurelius the first hints of an answer came when he discovered the writings of the Neoplatonists, who viewed evil as the absence of good. In addition, intellectually the Neoplatonists opened the window onto the Bible for Aurelius so that he could look at its claims once again, this time with a more docile heart. He was later to witness that “whatever I had read in the Platonists was said in Paul’s writings.”¹⁰

But all of Aurelius’s high-minded ideals seemed constantly contradicted by his moral ineptitude. He was trapped, as he put it, in “the swirling mists of lust,” which thrust him into “the whirlpools of vice.”¹¹ Try as he-might, he could not break the chains that held him a moral prisoner: “The enemy held my will and made a chain out of it and bound me with it. From a perverse will came lust, and slavery to lust became a habit, and the habit, being constantly yielded to, became a necessity.”¹²

Actually, his sexual escapades only underscored the more profound reality that the character of sin taints all the affections. As a child Aurelius had stolen some pears, and his later prolonged musings on that seemingly trivial event reveal his penetrating understanding of how evil works its way into the very warp and woof of all our motives. Aurelius knew by bitter experience that all of us have tasted of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

The deeply ingrained nature of evil even tainted his professional life, where he had embraced the accepted canons of academia: pride, social advancement, education as an end in itself, and more. By now he had been a professor of rhetoric in Carthage, written a first book (Beauty and Proportion), traveled to Rome seeking the larger world of power and influence, and accepted an appointment in Milan as professor of literature and elocution. But all this only threw him into an intolerable moral contradiction. Here he was— “an ardent searcher for the blessed life” consumed with “a burning zeal for truth and wisdom” —and at the same time enslaved to lust and power and pride. He had “panted after honours,” and it had corrupted his moral sensibilities. He had turned his profession of rhetoric into a “talking-shop” where he showed students how to toy with truth and pervert justice. Words became propaganda to be maneuvered at will. By his own admission he had become a teacher in “the arts of deception.” (I imagine you can readily think of modern parallels.) Desperately Aurelius needed something more; he needed the power to live as he knew he should.

And here, in the midst of his moral quandary, Aurelius met Ambrose, the famous Bishop of Milan. Initially Aurelius was intrigued with Ambrose not out of any spiritual concern, but simply out of a professional interest in observing his skills in rhetoric. And he was not disappointed: “I was delighted with the sweetness of his discourse.”¹³ But ultimately it was the content of that discourse that gripped Aurelius, for Ambrose forthrightly declared that Jesus Christ had the power to break the bonds of moral failure. No one had offered that kind of power before — not the Manichaeans, not the Academics, not even the Neoplatonists, who had been so helpful to him. Only Christ gave the ability to live the virtuous life for which he longed so ardently. Further, Ambrose opened the spiritual meaning of Scripture to Aurelius in a way that released him from a wooden literalism and allowed him to come to the Bible prayerfully, seeking the illumination of the Spirit. Even so, Aurelius was not certain he was quite ready for such soul-shaping commitment. “Give me chastity and self-control,” he prayed, “but not yet.”¹⁴

All of this was such a mighty struggle for Aurelius because he did not believe, as is so common today, that one could be a convert to Christ without being a disciple of Christ. For him conversion and discipleship were two sides of the same door — and both were necessary to get through the door. In counting the cost, he understood that turning to Christ meant turning from the intellectual pride that had driven him so fiercely and embracing a lifestyle free of sexual promiscuity. Conversion for Aurelius was no easy assent to a few propositions; it was the restructuring of his whole life. He not only understood that the grace of God was “costly grace”; he was unaware of any other kind of grace.

A small garden in Milan became Aurelius’s valley of decision. He wrote, “To this garden the tumult in my heart had driven me, as to a place where no one could intervene in this passionate suit which I had brought against myself until it could be settled. … I tore my hair, beat my forehead, locked my fingers together, clasped my knee. …”¹⁵ There, in that Milan garden on a summer’s day in A.D. 386, Aurelius probed the hidden depths of his soul.

What occurred next was so overwhelming an experience that it is best given in Aurelius’s own words:

Then a huge storm rose up within me bringing with it a huge downpour of tears. … Suddenly a voice reaches my ears from a nearby house. It is the voice of a boy or a girl (I don’t know which) and in a kind of singsong the words are constantly repeated: “Take it and read it. Take it and read it.” At once my face changed, and I began to think carefully of whether the singing of words like these came into any kind of game which children play, and I could not remember that I had ever heard anything like it before. I checked the force of my tears and rose to my feet, being quite certain that I must interpret this as a divine command to me to open the book and read the first passage which I should come upon. … I snatched up the book, opened it, and read in silence the passage upon which my eyes first fell: “Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying; but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh in concupiscence.” I had no wish to read further; there was no need to. For immediately [when] I had reached the end of this sentence it was as though my heart was filled with a light of confidence and all the shadows of my doubt were swept away.¹⁶

What a moving example of the living Word of God bringing healing and saving grace through the means of the written Word of God — in this case, Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. Years later Aurelius wrote, “Late it was that I loved you, beauty so ancient and so new, late I loved you! … You called, you cried out, you shattered my deafness: you flashed, you shone, you scattered my blindness: you breathed perfume, and I drew in my breath and I pant for you: I tasted, and I am hungry and thirsty: you touched me, and I burned for your peace.”¹⁷ In a garden in Milan Aurelius at last found this peace.

Have you by now realized that I am telling you the story of Aurelius Augustine, later to become the famous bishop of Hippo? I thought it would be futile to disguise his identity any longer, for what occurred in that Milan garden is, outside of Scripture, perhaps the most well-known conversion story in Christian history. But the story is really only at its beginning; let me continue.

Preacher of the Faith

Following this transforming experience, Augustine, along with several friends, retreated to a country villa at the foot of the Italian Alps for six months of reflection, prayer, and writing. This allowed generous space for Scripture study and endless discussions as Augustine and his friends sought to integrate the reality of this new life into their thinking. As he wrote during this time, “Really great things, when discussed by little men, can usually make such men grow big.”¹⁸ The time was also a vital preparation for his baptism on Easter Sunday, A.D. 387. Augustine was thirty-two years old.

A whole new life lay ahead for Augustine. Perhaps wanting to make a clean break with the professional arrogance and sexual promiscuity that had dominated his life in Italy, he decided to return to North Africa, to Thagaste, the city of his birth. As he and his friends made their way to the coast, an event of enormous sadness occurred. Augustine told of it simply and elegantly in his Confessions: “When we had got as far as Ostia on the Tiber, my mother died.”¹⁹

Back in Thagaste Augustine set about establishing a lay community that would allow ample time for contemplation and Scripture study. No doubt he thought he would spend the rest of his days in this obscure setting, but that was not to be. On a trip to the coastal city of Hippo to counsel a seeker, the local congregation seized him and brought him before the bishop, eagerly shouting for his ordination by acclamation, a not uncommon practice in that day. So it was that Augustine was snatched from the life of reflection and catapulted into the life of protagonist for the Christian faith. Hippo was thereafter the center of his vast ministry and prodigious activities.

Augustine was supremely the preacher with a passion for souls. “Preach wherever you can,” he declared, “to whom you can and as you can.”²⁰ Possidius, a contemporary and biographer of Augustine, wrote, “No one can read what he wrote on theology without profit. But I think that those were able to profit still more who could hear him speak in church and see him with their own eyes.”²¹

Here Augustine’s extensive training in rhetoric and elocution was put to excellent use. No one was more at home in public discourse. Augustine saw himself supremely as a rhetorician for Christ, and he believed that his calling as a bishop was above all else a calling to the apostolic proclamation of the gospel, the very heart of the Evangelical Tradition.

We today can still read many of Augustine’s sermons exactly as he preached them in the basilica of Hippo. This fortunate circumstance came about because of the practice in that day of designating shorthand writers in the congregation to record the message for the further edification of the people — an ancient version of our sermon audiocassette. Even more exciting was the interactive nature of preaching in that day. It was common for the congregation to break into the sermon — applauding when they were pleased, interrupting when they were confused, shouting and heckling when they disagreed. At one point, when Augustine was preaching on Psalm 88, he shouted back to the people, “So you know what I am about to say, you anticipate it by your crying out.”²² Remember too that there were no pews in that day; people stood throughout the service, crowding in tightly together. All this provided a dynamic that made the sermon a preaching event. Augustine clearly understood this when he wrote, “To teach is a necessity, to please is a sweetness, to persuade is a victory.”²³

As a master of the spoken word Augustine would reach out to his people with analogy, metaphor, and illustration, calling them to a living obedience: “It is easy to hear Christ, easy to praise the gospel, easy to applaud the preacher: but to endure unto the end is peculiar to the sheep who hear the Shepherd’s voice.”²⁴ In his biography, Augustine: The Bishop, Frederick van der Meer wrote, “Through his genius for the right word he surpasses all the Church Fathers. Never once does he fail to make an idea unforgettable. … Everyone who reads a number of his sermons will carry away the same impression as the men of his day, for no words from the pulpit have ever so fully come from the heart or combined that quality with such brilliance as did the words spoken by this one man in this remote corner of Africa.”²⁵

But Augustine’s proclaiming work was in deeds as well as words: he lived the gospel as fully as he preached it. We find this most fully expressed in his famous Rule,^* which to this day is the foundation for the Augustinian order. Even before his return to North Africa, Augustine and his friends had formed a community of faith, naming themselves Servi Dei, “Servants of God.” Now at Hippo he was able to bring this vision of community life into full flower. And until his death he lived a simple life, following his own Rule among the Christian community in Hippo, which he affectionately referred to as Familia Dei. “He was always hospitable,” noted Possidius, his contemporary. To preclude malicious gossip, Augustine placed on his dining table an inscription written in Latin and large enough for all to see:

Whoever thinks that he is able

To nibble at the life of absent friends

Must know that he is unworthy of this table.

Possidius observed that “his clothes and food, and bedclothes also, were simple and adequate, neither ostentatious nor particularly poor.”²⁶ And each year, on the anniversary of his ordination, he gave a banquet for the poor. The actions of his daily living are well summed up by his own words in another context: “One loving heart sets another on fire.”²⁷ Thus Augustine sought to be just as eloquent for the evangelical counsels of Christ in the way he lived as in his words from the pulpit.

Apologist for the Faith

The warm-heart experience of Augustine’s conversion most certainly exemplifies evangelical faith, as does his evangelistic proclamation of the good news of the gospel. But equally important is how his vigorous defense of orthodox Christian belief helped to explicate and clarify the gospel message. Over his lifetime he took up the Christian cause against three major opposing views — Manichaeism, Donatism, and Pelagianism — views that continue to be popular to this day.

We have already encountered Manichaeism and its dualism of good and evil. Quickly upon his ordination by acclamation Augustine challenged the local Manichaean priest, Fortunatus, to a formal debate in the hall of a public bathhouse in Hippo. A huge crowd gathered, and Possidius tells us that “the shorthand reporters opened their notebooks as Augustine threw down the gauntlet.” As a professional in the art of public speaking, debate, and communication, Augustine completely humiliated Fortunatus. “The result was that this man, whom everybody had thought so great and learned, was considered to have entirely failed in the defense of his sect. His embarrassment was such that, when soon afterwards he left Hippo, he left it never to return.”²⁸

What Augustine had accomplished in one fell swoop was to completely discredit the notion of absolute dualism: two kingdoms of equal power, eternal and completely separate — the kingdom of Light and the kingdom of Darkness. Instead, he held high the Christian belief in one true God, the Almighty, the Maker of heaven and earth. In creation, Augustine insisted, there was no evil anywhere; what we now call evil is but the absence of good. Evil, he insisted, is degradation, a lack of goodness, a decline from our God-given created rank. Augustine’s teaching here, which interpreted the biblical witness in the light of Neoplatonic thought, may have had its weaknesses, but it clearly was a huge advance over the dualism of the Manichaeans.

The struggle with the Donatists was somewhat more complicated. The issue here concerned the moral character of the priesthood and the treatment that the Church should accord to those Christians who repented after having been guilty of serious lapses. The Donatists were actually the purists in this debate, insisting that those clergy who had renounced their faith during the Diocletian persecution had thereby rendered themselves invalid as ministers of the Word and could therefore no longer validly celebrate the sacraments. As a result, the Donatists went on to declare themselves the only pure and holy church, seeing all others as the church of Judas. Hence a genuine concern for purity turned into a cultic mentality of exclusion.²⁹

The Donatists were especially strong in North Africa, Donatus himself being the bishop of Carthage. When Augustine took over as bishop of Hippo, the Donatist cathedral nearby was the largest church in the city. Indeed, as Augustine’s congregation worshiped, they could hear music coming from the Donatist cathedral — the “roaring of lions,” said Augustine. Although he could, no doubt, appreciate some of the Donatist scruples, Augustine became their sworn enemy. For him the issues were substantive. The legalism of the Donatists, he thought, tended to deny the free gift of God’s grace. Furthermore, he felt that the seeking after a “pure church” was fundamentally misdirected, for in this world the wheat and the tares of the church grow up together (Matt. 13:24-30). Most of all, he utterly rejected the Donatist cultic claim to be the only true church: “The clouds roll with thunder, that the house of the Lord shall be built throughout the earth: and these ***frogs sit in their marsh and croak — we are the only Christians!”³⁰

But as important as the controversies with Manichaeism and Donatism are, they pale next to Augustine’s battle against Pelagian-ism. Pelagius, a genteel British layman, was a popular writer and teacher in the early decades of the fifth century. He had a vastly more optimistic outlook on human nature than Augustine — too optimistic, as it turned out. He wanted people to advance into perfection, letting go of the debilitating doctrines of the fall and our inherent sinfulness. He wrote a pamphlet titled On Nature, which played down human depravity and sin and played up human strengths and virtues — in modern terms, an optimistic picture of human potential, a picture of the human race come of age.

Augustine was enraged. He responded with a major treatise, Nature and Grace, in which he insisted that confidence in human potential only insulates us from an accurate diagnosis of human depravity. Thus he established the foundation for his famous teaching on original sin — namely, the conviction that human beings are utterly incapable of virtuous action within themselves and are desperately in need of saving grace from outside themselves.³¹ The answer to the problem of original sin, Augustine maintained, was not more education or better environment or enhanced self-improvement; rather, it was God-initiated, grace-filled salvation — redemption and justification and sanctification in Jesus Christ alone.

Now, in his emphasis upon sin and depravity and grace Augustine never rejected human response to and cooperation with the divine initiative. He confidently cut a path between unaided human initiative and total passivity, succinctly stated as follows:

Without God we cannot,

Without us, he will not.

On the one side of this path is the abyss of quietism and antinomianism — the conviction that we can do nothing at all and that we accept the process of redemption in complete passivity. On the other side is the abyss of Pelagianism and moralism — the contention that everything depends upon us and that human growth in virtue comes in our own strength. Between those abysses is the path of disciplined grace: the initiative and work come entirely from God, and we act in response to and in cooperation with God. Once, when preaching on grace, Augustine declared, “He who created you without your help, will not save you without your cooperation.”³²

The battle with Pelagius was protracted and complicated, but Augustine ultimately emerged victorious. Pelagian beliefs about the innate goodness of human nature were condemned as heretical in church councils at Carthage and Mileve in A.D. 416 and reaffirmed at a second council at Carthage in 418. Augustine was a triumphant, albeit battle-scarred, defender of Christian orthodoxy. (I hope you noticed how utterly contemporary all three of these “isms” are. We fight much the same battles today.)

A Tale of Two Cities

Throughout the major part of Augustine’s forty years of ministry the Roman Empire was coming apart at the seams. Augustine was fully aware of this disintegration, as well as of the charge by the neopagan intelligentsia that the Christians were to blame for its decline because they had abandoned the gods who had made Rome great. Provoked by the sack of the Eternal City by the Goths in 410, Augustine knew that he must answer the challenge issued by the neo-pagans. Within three years he had begun work on his magnum opus, a brilliant work that would take thirteen years to write: The City of God. It was, however, far more than a refutation of the neo-pagan charge; it was a positive and comprehensive philosophy of history. Departing radically from the Greek notion that history was an endless series of meaningless cycles and deeply informed by the biblical vision, Augustine saw history (under the sovereign hand of God) as having purpose and direction, having a beginning and moving to a culmination. Flatly contradicting many of his contemporaries — those who prized the Roman Empire as the citadel of order in the midst of a chaotic world and were deeply dismayed at its decline — Augustine regarded the passing of the Empire with confident hope in God, who was building a city not made with human hands.

His contrast between the earthly city, formed by the love of self, and the heavenly city, formed by the love of God, is masterful. The earthly city is not all bad, in Augustine’s view. Consider Babylon and Rome — the highest representatives of that city — which out of self-interest brought about a certain peace and order. But the earthly city will fade — indeed, must fade — as the heavenly city grows. And all of history, directed and governed by God, is moving toward a climax in the creation of an all-inclusive community of love, a heavenly city in which God’s will is done perfectly. We enter this heavenly city here and now, although its fulfillment in that eternal “felicity, which shall be tainted with no evil, which shall lack no good” is not fully realized here and now, but only in the age to come.³³ The heavenly city is presently represented by the Church of Jesus Christ — though not perfectly, for not all who are in the Church are citizens of the heavenly city, and not all actions and activities of the Church are actions and activities of the heavenly city.

It is fitting that Augustine should have penned his Confessions near the beginning of his ministry and The City of God near the end. The first was his personal autobiography; the second, the autobiography of the Church universal. He opened the first with his confessional prayer to God: “You made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it find rest in you.”³⁴ He closed the second with the beatific vision of perpetual sabbath rest: “There we shall rest and see, see and love, love and praise. This is what shall be in the end without end. For what other end do we propose to ourselves than to attain to the kingdom of which there is no end?”³⁵

The complete collapse of the “earthly city” of Roman Africa coincided almost to the day with the death of Aurelius Augustine. On 28 August A.D. 430, as the Vandals were laying siege to the city of Hippo, Augustine left this life for the greater Life of the City of God.

We can be immensely grateful for the life and work of Augustine. He modeled evangelical faith for us through his effective proclamation of the gospel, his vigorous defense of the faith, and his faithfulness to the Scriptures.

SEEKING A BIBLICAL PARADIGM

For a biblical paradigm of the Evangelical Tradition I choose the Apostle Peter. The reason is simple: above all else Peter was a proclaimer of the evangel, a preacher of the good news of the gospel. Peter was everywhere and in every way a fisher of men and women. He understood his supreme task to be the winning and making of disciples for Jesus Christ.

We see him doing this most wonderfully and most powerfully on the day of Pentecost. The disciples — now 120 strong — had waited as instructed. The Spirit had come as promised — accompanied with the sound of heavenly wind and the sight of tongues as of fire. And the disciples did speak in other tongues so that the crowds gathered from the nations of the world heard them in their own languages boldly praising God. What under heaven did it all mean?

Seizing the moment, Peter explains exactly what it means. Luke records Peter’s sermon in considerable detail, and with good reason: it is a masterful piece of gospel proclamation. He first explains the supernatural behavior going on as a fulfillment of Joel’s prophecy that the Spirit will be poured out upon all flesh. Next he confronts his hearers with three great facts. Fact 1: God commended Jesus by “deeds of power, wonders, and signs.” Fact 2: In spite of this, Jesus was murdered “by the hands of those outside the law.” Fact 3: God raised Jesus from the grave, “having freed him from death,” an event that King David himself prophesied. Finally, he draws the irrefutable conclusion: “Therefore let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified” (Acts 2:14-36). Pointed, powerful, penetrating gospel proclamation.

Well, the Spirit strikes home with Peter’s message: the people are “cut to the heart” and cry out, “What should we do?” Peter is ready with an answer: “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven” (Acts 2:38). That day three thousand receive saving grace and immediately move into God’s new community: “They devoted themselves to the aposties’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42). It is hard to improve upon this witness and these results.

Essential Training

Peter did not always possess the spiritual resources to speak as he did at Pentecost, however. Oh, he spoke often enough, for he was the titular head of the apostolic band. But more often than not his speaking was what the old preacher of Ecclesiastes graphically described as “the sacrifice offered by fools” — humanly initiated talk, no more (Eccles. 5:1, RSV).

Consider Peter on the Mount of Transfiguration, for example. Jesus has taken his three closest disciples — Peter, James, and John — with him up the mountain to pray. As Jesus prays, he is transfigured before them, and Moses and Elijah appear with him. An overwhelming experience, to say the least. Peter, unable to contain himself, blurts out, “Master, … let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” Though he is attempting, I am sure, to express a sense of devotion, he speaks (as Luke notes) “not knowing what he said” (Luke 9:33b). What, after all, would Moses and Elijah do with a dwelling? Sadly, Peter is offering the sacrifice of fools.

We should not be too hard on Peter here, for often we do much the same thing — perhaps out of fear, out of the need to control a situation, or out of a desire to impress others. We speak “not knowing what we said,” and in so doing we too offer the sacrifice of fools.

On other occasions Peter speaks both rightly and wrongly at the same time. At Caesarea Philippi Jesus gives a midterm exam, asking the disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter speaks right up: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt. 16:16, RSV). Jesus commends him for speaking out of a source deeper than himself and uses the occasion to change his name from Simon to Peter, “the Rock.” Jesus then explains how the Messiah must “undergo great suffering … and be killed, and on the third day be raised.” Immediately Peter jumps into the fray: “God forbid it,” he exclaims. As Jesus had commended Peter a moment ago, he must now correct him: “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things” (Matt. 16:13-23). It is as James reminds us: “From the same mouth come blessing and cursing” (James 3:10a).

At times Peter’s impulsive speech gets him into serious trouble. When the disciples see Jesus walking on the water, they are terrified. But Peter jumps right into the situation: “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” Jesus welcomes this budding faith. As it turns out, though, Peter has enough faith to get out of the boat but not enough to keep himself afloat. “Lord, save me!” he cries out; and, gracious as always, Jesus comes to Peter’s aid (Matt. 14:25-31).

Throughout this process Peter is on a steep learning curve. Every time he runs ahead of the Spirit — he seldom lags behind — he grows from the experience. He is deepening, growing, becoming established. As the pace of events increases, irrevocably moving toward their divine yet tragic climax, so does the training of Peter.

In the Upper Room Jesus washes his disciples’ feet, and in what Peter thinks of as an act of supreme humility, he retorts, “You will never wash my feet.” After Jesus helps Peter see the arrogance in his remarks, Peter’s reflex action then goes to the other extreme: “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” (John 13:9). Again, the sacrifice of fools.

Patiently Jesus shows Peter the larger context of the struggle (reverting here to Peter’s pre-Caesarea Philippi name): “Simon, Simon, listen! Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your own faith may not fail.” Peter responds, “Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death!” Now, this is no idle boast; Peter genuinely means it. But once again he simply does not know what he is saying. He overestimates his own spiritual resources and underestimates the spiritual forces pitted against him. Jesus, you understand, knows the reality of the situation in a way Peter does not: “I tell you, Peter, the cock will not crow this day, until you have denied three times that you know me” (Luke 22:31-34).

To his credit Peter does try, but the spiritual substance of his life has not yet matured. Jesus takes the Twelve with him across the Kidron Valley to the Mount of Olives and then takes Peter, James, and John a little further into the Garden of Gethsemane so that they can be with him in his moment of greatest agony. “Watch,” he says, and “pray” that you do not “enter into temptation.” I have no doubt but that they try to do exactly what Jesus has asked of them, but sleep becomes a ready way to avoid their own pain and grief. So they do not “watch” and they do not “pray” and they do “enter into temptation” (Matt. 26:41, KJV).

Finding them asleep, Jesus diagnoses Peter’s situation this way: “The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matt. 26:41). But Jesus does not intend for this situation to continue for Peter, and later in the stories in Acts we see that it did not. From Pentecost onward we discover that the flesh had come into a working harmony with the spirit, enabling Peter to speak both boldly and appropriately. But we are not at that point yet. Here, now, Peter has a willing spirit, but his flesh needs further training in matters spiritual.

Peter’s flesh does take bold action by cutting off the ear of the high priest’s servant. (No doubt he was aiming for the nearest neck and was able to catch only an ear.) But Jesus has to help Peter see that bold action is not necessarily appropriate action; and once Peter is denied recourse to the power of the flesh, he simply has no other resources.

I am sure I do not need to recount for you the sad story of Peter’s triple denial. Deplorable, heartrending, curse-filled denial. And then the cock crows. At that sound Jesus’ eyes meet Peter’s, and in that instant Peter realizes, perhaps for the first time in his life, what he has said. “And he went out and wept bitterly” (Matt. 26:75).

Sufficient Love

Fortunately, this is not the end to Peter’s story. There is more. There is great tenderness in the angel’s resurrection instruction for the disciples “and Peter” to meet Jesus in Galilee: “Tell the disciples and especially tell Peter, make sure Peter knows Jesus wants him there too” (Mark. 16:7). There is great sensitivity in the word given from the shore for Peter and those fishing with him to cast their nets on the other side, for in their supernatural catch they are able to recognize that it is Jesus speaking to them. There is great kindness in Jesus’ preparation of a warm fire and a fish breakfast for his bone-weary, heartbroken disciples. But the truly great work in Peter is yet to come.

Following this breakfast by the Sea of Tiberias, Jesus takes Peter aside and asks him, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” Perhaps Jesus is referring to the fishing trade, perhaps to the other disciples by the fire — we do not know for sure. Whatever or whoever the object of the comparison, we do know for sure that Jesus is searching the depths of Peter’s love and loyalty (John 21:15).

Now, you must allow me a small digression into the Greek language, for precise language is of critical importance to an understanding of this dialogue between Jesus and Peter. Greek has four words for love. The first, storge, refers to human affection, especially between parents and offspring — a mother nursing her baby or a cat with her litter, for instance. The second word, philia, deals with human friendship and describes a quality highly valued among the ancients — a quality that Aristotle classified among the virtues. Eros, the third Greek word for love, deals with the relationship between lovers — that is, erotic love, which frequently includes the heights of sexual experience. The fourth, agape, used to be translated “charity,” but that was when the word charity was able to bear a lot more weight than it can today. Today, perhaps we could use a term such as “divine love” or “supernatural love” — that is, the kind of love that becomes a part of human experience only by action from beyond and above it. Paul’s catalog of the attributes of agape in 1 Corinthians 13 helps us see something of its character.

In this exchange between Jesus and Peter there is an important play on two of these words — agape and philia. Jesus begins by asking, “Simon son of John, do you agapas me?” — that is, “Do you love me with God’s eternal, ever-receiving, ever-giving, ever-forgiving love?” Now, there was a time when Peter would have quickly answered, “Absolutely!” But not this time. Now, humbled by his recent failures and disciplined by his training under the Master, Peter responds far more modestly (and more accurately): “Yes, Lord; you know that I philo you” — that is, “Yes, I genuinely and deeply care for you as a friend.” Jesus responds by commissioning him with the words, “Feed my lambs.”

A second time Jesus asks, “Simon son of John, do you agapas me?” — “Do you love me with that grace-filled, God-kissed love?” A second time Peter humbly responds, “Yes, Lord; you know that I philo you” — “Lord, you know I am your loyal friend.” Again, Jesus responds with the commission, “Tend my sheep.”

Then a third time. … Do you see what Jesus is doing? Three times Peter denied his Master; three times he is being brought to confess his love and loyalty. I rather think that Jesus is also healing Peter’s heart, which was wounded beyond imagining from the grief of his denials.

But on the third time Jesus changes the word he uses for love: “Simon son of John, do you phileis me?” — “O Simon, dear Simon, do you even love me as a friend?” Scripture tells us that Peter is “grieved” because this time Jesus probes all the more deeply, questioning even Peter’s friendship and loyalty. Finally, Peter confesses, “Lord, you know everything.” The word “to know” here refers to instinctive knowledge. “Lord, you know the depths of my heart. I cannot hide from you. You know that I philo you, that I love you as a friend.”

Peter at this juncture may well feel that he possesses very little love. But his yes is a true yes; he has not embellished or overstated the case. He shares what is truly in his heart. Now, perhaps for the first time, he knows what he is saying. And Jesus sees this in Peter and for a third time commissions him for evangelical ministry with the words, “Feed my sheep” (John 21:15-19).

And, as we say, the rest is history. From this point on we see a different Peter. Not that he is perfect; he still makes mistakes. At one point, for example, Paul has to rebuke him for withdrawing from the Gentile Christians at Antioch (Gal. 2:11-14). But the spiritual substance of his life has been established. He has a new firmness of life-orientation, and we see this most clearly in Peter’s ability to proclaim the good news of the gospel. Whether he is preaching in Solomon’s Portico or before the Sanhedrin or in the home of Cornelius, we see someone who is constantly and consistently “holding forth the word of life” (Phil. 2:16, KJV). This is what commends Peter to us as a faithful representative of the Evangelical Tradition.

In the two Epistles that have been traditionally attributed to the pen of Peter, we see the same faithfulness in gospel proclamation. “By his great mercy,” he writes, “[God] has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Pet. 1:3b). And consistent with the Great Commission stipulations, he calls all peoples to faithful discipleship to Jesus Christ, walking, ever walking “in his steps” (1 Pet. 2:21b).

If the traditions are true, and there is good reason to believe them, then this man who began as a fisherman on the Sea of Galilee ended up fishing for men and women in the greatest urban center of the world, Rome. And it was there, just as Jesus had foretold, that Peter was bound and taken “where you do not wish to go” (John 21:18).

So many years ago and so many miles away Peter had declared his willingness to die for Christ. Then, in that Upper Room, he had spoken naively, “not knowing what he said.” But now, in Rome, he was indeed able to give final witness by death on a cross. His only request was to be crucified upside down, for he believed himself unworthy to die in the same position as his Lord and Master.³⁶

SEEKING A CONTEMPORARY PARADIGM

In considering a contemporary model for the Evangelical Tradition, one name rises head and shoulders above all the others: Billy Graham. In a debate at Cambridge University Dr. Graham declared, “The proclamation of the Gospel lies at the very heart of our mission to the world.”³⁷ Yes indeed, and Billy Graham himself has clearly fulfilled the demands of that mission, proclaiming the gospel to monarchs and millions alike all over the world. He has traveled to more places and preached to more persons than anyone in history.

The life story of Billy Graham has been well documented, and so the barest outline here will be sufficient, allowing us to give more detailed attention to his key contributions to the work of evangelism and the Evangelical Tradition in our day.³⁸

We can be grateful for the sturdy home environment that nurtured Billy Graham during his growing-up years on a farm near Charlotte, North Carolina. Born 7 November 1918, he experienced a second birth — “born from above,” as Jesus put it — as a teenager under the fiery evangelistic ministry of Mordecai Ham. After that decisive event it was not long before Graham’s course was set: he sensed a call to preach while a student at Florida Bible Institute, trained in the liberal arts at Wheaton College, preached and pastored at “the Tab” (United Gospel Tabernacle) and Western Springs Baptist Church, and experienced the wider world as the “international organizer” for Youth for Christ before becoming evangelist to the world after the historic Los Angeles meetings in 1949.

Crusades in Abundance

The number and size of Graham’s crusades, the multiplicity of countries and cultures he has preached in, and the reach of his elongated ministry simply stagger the imagination. Out of his more than three hundred crusades, several stand out as great high-water marks.

The 1949 “Campaign” (a term later abandoned in favor of “Crusade”) in Los Angeles gave Graham his first national exposure. Held in a tent, the meetings had virtually no advance publicity from the media. But then God began moving in wondrous ways: country singer Stewart Hamblen made a “decision for Christ,” William Randolph Hearst issued his famous “Puff Graham” memo to his newspaper conglomerate, and underworld wiretapper Jim Vaus and Olympic track star Louis Zamperini came to faith in Christ. Those meetings, slated to run for three weeks, were extended to a full eight weeks because of the clear blessing of God upon them. Overnight Graham was transformed from a little-known itinerant evangelist to the central figure in mass evangelism.

If the Los Angeles meetings of 1949 gave Graham a national platform, the Greater London Crusade of 1954 catapulted him onto the international stage. Filled to overflowing with divine blessing, that crusade had a power and strength that simply cannot be overstated. “This campaign,” wrote William Martin, “so defied expectations, so triumphed over skepticism and opposition, and so captured the attention and imagination of the English-speaking world … that participants found it easy to believe they were living in the days foreseen in the rousing revival standard: ‘From vict’ry unto vict’ry / His armies shall he lead / Till ev’ry foe is vanquished / And Christ is Lord indeed.’”³⁹

Mention must be made of the longest crusade ever held by Billy Graham: New York, 1957. Meeting in Madison Square Garden, Graham preached for sixteen bruising weeks with a closing rally at Times Square. It was the most broadly sponsored event Graham had had up to that point, and though it precipitated the final break with fundamentalist leaders unhappy with his growing ecumenism, nothing could take away the thrill of proclaiming the gospel to overflow crowds in what Billy believed was “the most strategic center in the world.”⁴⁰

Nor should I fail to mention the million-plus souls who gathered on Yoido Island in Seoul, Korea, in 1973. With Billy Kim as an enormously effective translator, Billy Graham preached the gospel message of salvation in Jesus Christ as that solid block of humanity listened quietly, attentively, reverently. Nearly a year and a half after the event Sam Moffett, son of the first Protestant missionary to Korea, commented that he was “stunned by the emotional impact of that many people on that island. It’s still with me.”⁴¹

Finally, I must note the 1995 Crusade in San Juan, Puerto Rico. This crusade may be the most extensive single evangelistic outreach in the history of the Church — an outreach made possible by satellite technology that transmitted the meetings into 185 countries and territories. Graham’s messages were simultaneously translated into forty-eight languages as people listened in literally thousands of venues, from sports stadiums to refugee camps.

Intentional Focus

Anyone who looks at the life ministry of Billy Graham cannot help but be struck by how focused it is. The charism of the evangelist is a highly specific and intently focused ministry. Graham wrote, “An evangelist is called to do one thing, and one thing only: to proclaim the Gospel.”⁴² He penned these words in the midst of admitting his own failure to live up to this high standard of intentional focus, but whatever his shortcomings in this regard, the more amazing fact is how much he achieved the standard.

This life focus had its beginnings with Billy’s own sense of call to gospel ministry — a call that came, as I noted, during his student days at Florida Bible Institute. The school was a nurturing place that offered a variety of opportunities to test his preaching skills — from street corners and rural churches to his favorite audience at “Tin Can Trailer Park.” The results were most encouraging, but the question that plagued Billy was, “Did I want to preach for a lifetime? I asked myself that question for the umpteenth time on one of my nighttime walks around the golf course. The inner, irresistible urge would not subside. Finally, one night, I got down on my knees at the edge of one of the greens. Then I prostrated myself on the dewy turf. ‘O God,’ I sobbed, ‘if you want me to serve you, I will.’ … In my spirit I knew I had been called to the ministry. And I knew my answer was yes.”⁴³

Billy honed his preaching skills by paddling a canoe over to a little island where he proclaimed gospel truths to alligators and birds and cypress trees. This hidden preparation was crucial for his future ministry, which was destined to include audiences the size and scope of which he could never have imagined back then.

His varied Florida preaching experiences were crucial preparation in another way also, a way that helped focus and direct his entire life. Florida Bible Institute had only one real curriculum: the Bible. Now, this curricular focus certainly had its limitations, but it also had its strengths, and the greatest strength for Billy was the way it encouraged him to immerse himself in the content of the Bible. Most academic settings, even many religious ones, force students to keep the biblical message at arm’s length. Not Florida Bible Institute. There Billy Graham soaked himself in Scripture: reading Scripture, studying Scripture, pondering Scripture, preaching Scripture, applying Scripture. He so imbibed the biblical worldview during those years that “Bible” simply flowed from his every pore thereafter. He thought Bible, he spoke Bible, he prayed Bible. As he later said of those days in Florida, “I came to believe with all my heart in the full inspiration of the Bible.”⁴⁴

Billy had to face the issue of the Bible as the focus of his life again just prior to the famous 1949 Los Angeles Crusade. Chuck Templeton, a close friend and able preacher in his own right, had been attending Princeton Seminary and was challenging some of Graham’s most cherished beliefs about the inspiration and authority of Scripture. Graham indicated little inclination or patience for abstract intellectualism. “Bill,” Templeton retorted, “you cannot refuse to think. To do that is to die intellectually.” The rebuke stung, and the debate in his soul intensified. Finally, the issue came to a head at Forest Home, a Christian retreat center in the San Bernardino Mountains near Los Angeles. Struggling over the intellectual questions his friend had raised, Billy went out alone into the pine forest to think, to pray. With his Bible spread open on a tree stump he dropped to his knees. “O God!” he prayed, “There are-many things in this book I do not understand. There are many problems with it for which I have no solution. … Father, I am going to accept this as Thy Word — by faith! I’m going to allow faith to go beyond my intellectual questions and doubts, and I will believe this to be Your inspired Word.”⁴⁵

He rose from the ground, eyes stinging with tears, sensing the presence of God in a new and living way. This conscious resolution settled the battle in his soul and galvanized his faith. Since that day the singular focus of biblical authority has given unusual power and authority to his preaching.

The evangelistic focus of Graham’s life was almost detoured once when, under obligation to an old friend and mentor, he accepted the presidency of Northwestern Schools, a combination Bible school, college, and seminary. At first he felt that he could build an institution with a passion for evangelism. He even came up with an evangelistic motto for Northwestern: “Knowledge on fire.” But even at an idealistic twenty-nine years of age he quickly learned that he had little stomach for the detailed educational development and administration needed to make such an institution thrive. Never having felt fully comfortable in the presidency, he tried to resign in 1950, but the board of trustees refused to accept his resignation. Finally, in 1952, he was able to make his resignation stick. In retrospect he notes simply, “I was called by God to be an evangelist, not an educator.”⁴⁶

And evangelist he was! As the realization deepened that his gift was in evangelism, this focus became all the more sharp. After the great success of Los Angeles in 1949, he never looked back. Once, when Paramount Pictures tried to lure him into an acting career, he answered bluntly, “God had called me to preach the Gospel and .. I would never do anything else as long as I lived.”⁴⁷

The charism of the evangelist is to proclaim the good news of the gospel and, by means of the convicting work of the Holy Spirit, call people to enter saving faith based upon that message. The temptations to stray from this clear-cut task are many, and they are often far more subtle than the offer of an acting career. In 1955 at Cambridge University Graham tried for three nights to make his preaching academic and erudite, but his efforts had no effect. Finally, realizing that his gift was not to present the intellectual side of faith, he abandoned his prepared texts and in utter simplicity preached the gospel message of our alienation from God because of sin and our reconciliation to God through the cross of Christ. The results were astonishing: hundreds of sophisticated students responded to this clear proclamation of the gospel. It was a lesson in clarity and simplicity that he never forgot.

Even more complex were temptations in the political arena. Here the pressures to lose his evangelistic focus were constant and sustained as Graham cultivated relationships with numerous presidents and other heads of state. And it was not just the temptation of endorsing one political candidate over another; it was also the more knotty problem of advocating religious nationalism of some sort. The pressures here were exceedingly great because they played directly into Graham’s own natural impulses toward patriotism. As a result, particularly in the early years, the Bible often got wrapped in the flag of nationalistic interests.⁴⁸ In later years Graham became much more circumspect in these matters. Frankly, it is never easy to be both pastoral and prophetic to the powerful while being courted by them.

As I mentioned earlier, whatever shortcomings Billy Graham may have had in evangelistic focus, they are eclipsed by the amazing clarity of direction that has permeated his entire life and ministry. When he was first thrust into national prominence, with its attendant multidimensional opportunities, he stayed true to his evangelistic focus: “All I knew how to do was to preach the essential Gospel as revealed in the New Testament and experienced by millions across the centuries.”⁴⁹ When establishing the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, he set into its charter a simple and direct statement of purpose: “To spread and propagate the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ by any and all … means.”⁵⁰ This same clarity of focus has permeated all of Graham’s preaching, regardless of the announced sermon topic or any special emphasis used to attract attention. As Graham noted, “People soon found out that my theme was always the same: God’s redemptive love for sinners, and the need for personal repentance and conversion.”⁵¹

The calling of the evangelist, as we have seen, is to an intentional, disciplined focus upon one thing: the proclamation of the good news of the gospel. Billy Graham has most certainly shown us what such a singular focus looks like.

Major Contributions

The contributions that Billy Graham has made to the evangelistic enterprise in general and the Evangelical Tradition in particular are many and varied. I would like to especially highlight five.

First of all, he has brought moral and fiscal integrity to itinerant evangelism. Graham himself had an unimpugnable moral character, and he did not want any moral failures in his burgeoning organization. Furthermore, he was deeply concerned over the entrenched cultural stereotypes of evangelists as “Elmer Gantry” charlatans. He dealt forcefully with these matters early on in what later came to be known as “The Modesto Manifesto.”

Calling his team together during a November 1948 campaign in Modesto, California, he said to them, “God has brought us to this point. Maybe he is preparing us for something that we don’t know. Let’s try to recall all the things that have been a stumbling block … to evangelists in years past, and let’s come back together in an hour and talk about it and pray about it and ask God to guard us from them.” When they regathered an hour later, they found that their lists of abuses were remarkably similar: money, sex, exaggerating results, and criticism of local churches and pastors.

To deal with the financial abuses, they developed strict accounting procedures and eventually went to a salary support system instead of the common “love offering.” To deal with sexual immorality, they pledged to avoid any situation that would have even the appearance of evil. On that day Graham himself established a rule never to meet, travel, or eat alone with a woman other than Ruth, his wife. To guard against the problem of exaggerated results, they decided that instead of generating their own statistics, they would accept the crowd estimates given by police or arena managers. To avoid an antichurch and anticlerical spirit, they determined never to publicly criticize local clergy and to cooperate with them everywhere possible.⁵²

These simple guidelines reflect the integrity of the Graham team and their determination to have an evangelistic ministry that is above reproach. In this objective they have succeeded immensely, escaping even the slightest hint of scandal in over five decades.

The second major contribution is Graham’s advocacy of “cooperative evangelism” — in other words, working with a broad spectrum of the Christian community in evangelistic efforts.⁵³ This pragmatic ecumenism is actually in the best of the Evangelical Tradition. Whitfield, Wesley, Moody, Finney, Sunday, and others freely cooperated with church leaders of widely differing persuasions in order to proclaim the gospel to all peoples. But in the early twentieth century this Tradition was stunted by bitter controversies between “modernists” and “fundamentalists,” the latter heeding the call to “come out from among them, and be ye separate” (2 Cor. 6:17, KJV).

Graham himself largely escaped the harshness of fundamentalist separatism. At Florida Bible Institute he found “a wondrous blend of ecumenical and evangelical thought that was really ahead of its time.”⁵⁴ In 1948 Graham went to the founding assembly of the World Council of Churches as an observer. Though uncomfortable with its dominantly liberal theology, he was deeply impressed by the council’s secretary, Dr. Willem Visser ‘t Hooft; and the experience instilled in him “a greater desire to work with as many churches as possible.”⁵⁵

He was beginning to catch a vision of united efforts that could bring together as many churches as possible around the common mission of evangelism. In preparation for the 1949 Los Angeles Crusade Graham challenged the sponsoring committee to broaden its base of churches supporting the event. The results were electrifying. From this point on he worked long and hard to deepen and broaden the base of sponsoring church groups. Key fundamentalist leaders, however, viewed such alliances as a compromise of the gospel itself.

The showdown came in conjunction with the great 1957 New York Crusade. Graham had already turned down two invitations (in 1951 and 1954) to hold crusades in New York because he felt that the sponsoring constituency was too narrow. But when he got an invitation from the Protestant Council of the City of New York, he agreed. It was the last straw for the three leading fundamentalists of the day — Carl McIntire, Bob Jones, and John R. Rice. They came out against Graham in article after vitriolic article. Graham gave a spirited defense: “I would like to make myself clear. I intend to go anywhere, sponsored by anybody, to preach the Gospel of Christ if there are no strings attached to my message. I am sponsored by civic clubs, universities, ministerial associations, and councils of churches all over the world. I intend to continue.”⁵⁶ The controversy, however, was distressing to Graham, for it pained him to lose the support and affection of those who had worked by his side. In spite of the division — which was complete and irreparable — Billy for his part pledged, “I shall continue to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ and not stoop to mudslinging, name-calling, and petty little fights over nonessentials.”⁵⁷

The fundamentalism of McIntire, Jones, and Rice and the evangelicalism of Graham took two different paths to gospel proclamation. Graham, in my opinion, chose the better path — certainly the path more true to the Evangelical Tradition and, I would venture to say, more true to biblical revelation. For this those who come after him are ever in his debt.

The third contribution I would like to mention is Graham’s quiet work for racial reconciliation — work that has gone almost unnoticed in the rush of stadium events and meetings with heads of state. The foundation for this push toward reconciliation was, as we should expect, Scripture: “Most influential … was my study of the Bible, leading me eventually to the conclusion that not only was racial inequality wrong but Christians especially should demonstrate love toward all peoples.”⁵⁸

It was, however, an “eventual conclusion,” because Billy, as a son of the South, had inherited some of its discriminatory views. As he struggled toward a Christian view of racial justice, he accepted, for example, the common practice of segregated seating in his southern crusades. But by 1953 he had reached that “eventual conclusion,” and at the Chattanooga, Tennessee, Crusade he personally tore down the ropes separating the white and black sections. In protest the head usher of the crusade resigned on the spot. It was a critical turning point.

One year before the Supreme Court decision of 17 May 1954 outlawing segregated schools, Graham (perhaps lamenting his own reluctance to take a firm stand earlier) wrote in Peace with God, “The church should have been the pace-setter.” He went on to insist that when true Christians look at others, they should see “not color, nor class, nor condition, but simply human beings with the same longings, fears, needs and aspirations as our own.”⁵⁹

From this point on Graham’s integrated crusades were a quiet testimony for racial justice. At the 1957 New York Crusade he asked Martin Luther King, Jr., to lead a prayer, and he later invited King to a team retreat to help the crusade staff understand the racial situation more fully. When the Little Rock Central High School desegregation crisis erupted, President Eisenhower called Graham at Madison Square Garden, asking for his advice about sending in federal troops. “Mr. President,” Graham responded, “I think that is the only thing you can do. It is out of hand, and the time has come to stop it.” An hour later Vice President Nixon called to get a second reading and received the same counsel. That afternoon a thousand federal troops rolled into Little Rock, Arkansas.⁶⁰ Later the Little Rock Ministerial Association asked Graham to help unite the city by preaching in the Memorial Stadium. He did (albeit a year later), to fully integrated seating.

His trip to South Africa in 1973 also furthered racial reconciliation. Invited several times before, he had always refused since the government policy of apartheid would have meant segregated audiences. But in 1973, to everyone’s surprise, he was able to gain permission for two fully integrated evangelistic rallies — one in Johannesburg and the other in the coastal city of Durban. About the Durban rally, Billy wrote, “I will never forget … when 45,000 people of all races — half the people non-white — jammed King’s Park Rugby stadium and spilled over most of the playing field. Some of the committee members were almost overcome with joy by the sight of white ushers escorting nonwhites to their seats.”⁶¹ As biographer John Pollock noted, “Those South African rallies hold a special niche in history for their contribution to racial reconciliation.”⁶²

A quiet witness, to be sure. Even so, these simple acts of racial justice at home and abroad were noticed, garnering Graham his share of threats and hate mail from white citizen councils (especially through the 1950s) and changing not a few minds. Thus as a witness for truth, a witness for justice, they had their effect.

A fourth contribution is the way in which Billy Graham has used literally every communications tool at his disposal in the task of evangelism. This pragmatism in utilizing the media is, to use the words of Charles Finney, “the right use of the constituted means.”⁶³

Graham’s use of media goes all the way back to the beginnings of his ministry. In 1944 Torrey Johnson, a well-known preacher in the Chicago area, offered Graham a weekly radio program, “Songs in the Night.” Graham seized the opportunity, and “with a confidence bordering on gall” persuaded the well-known soloist George Beverly Shea to become the show’s primary musical performer.⁶⁴ That was his first use of media technology; it was far from his last.

The foundation of his use of media has been the printed page. Since 1950 he has written (or had his staff write) a daily syndicated newspaper column, “My Answer.” In 1953 he published Peace with God, the first of several books. In 1956 he launched a new magazine, Christianity Today, which sought to set forth evangelical concerns in a positive and constructive way. Wisely he turned the editorship and management of the magazine over to other hands. Next came Decision magazine in 1960, which sought to do for the lay reader what Christianity Today was doing for Christian leaders. With a circulation of over four million, it is by far the farthest-reaching of his publications.

On that foundation have been built other media technologies: radio, with “The Hour of Decision”; film, with the establishment of World Wide Pictures; television, with an average of four primetime specials each year; and cutting-edge communication, with satellite and Internet technology.

Every decision made by Graham and his colleagues to move into a new medium has been a challenging story in itself — a story of faith ventures combined with human foibles, superintended throughout by divine Providence. Because these endeavors have been enormously expensive, great care and wisdom have been needed to keep faith-filled exuberance from bankrupting the organization. Most interesting of all is the way Graham has embraced these technologies not just to promote his own ministry, but for the task of worldwide evangelism itself.

Which leads me to the fifth and, in my opinion, the greatest of Graham’s contributions to evangelism in our day: the training of itinerant evangelists worldwide. While this work had been going on in many ways over the years, the concern to train itinerant evangelists became the focused objective of a pair of conferences held at Graham’s initiation in Amsterdam in 1983 and 1986.⁶⁵

In one sense this enormous undertaking is the unknown story of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. No one had ever attempted anything like this before, and leading thinkers to this day do not quite know what to make of it all. It was exactly the opposite of the modern mind set of exerting a worldwide influence by going to the famous, the powerful, the influential. This, in contrast, was an effort to discover and train the most obscure, and, to many, the most insignificant of people: itinerant evangelists. In the eyes of modern opinion makers there could hardly be a more irrelevant vocation. Not to Billy Graham, though.

Before these conferences were held no one had the slightest idea how many itinerant evangelists there were in the world. No one, you understand, had ever tried to find out. These were people who were mostly from Two-Thirds World countries and mostly unknown to ecclesiastical leaders — people who labored in total obscurity, often traveling on foot from village to village, preaching the gospel. Many of them had never been outside the borders of their own country, much less to an international conference. With diligent work, organizers were able to assemble a list of ten thousand evangelists from one hundred thirty-three countries. In time that number swelled to sixty-two thousand from virtually every corner of the globe. Of these, Amsterdam ‘83 was able to accommodate nearly four thousand, and Amsterdam ‘86 somewhere between eight and nine thousand. A tremendous effort really, but only a fraction of the total. Fortunately, the Amsterdam gatherings have spawned many regional conferences. In 1988 there were twenty-six “mini-Amsterdams” in Latin America alone. By 1990 the Graham organization had helped organize eighty-eight such conferences with an aggregate attendance of over forty-six thousand evangelists from ninety-seven countries.⁶⁶

If I were to compare this enormous effort to anything in history, it would be the great ecumenical councils in the first centuries of the Church. And the “Amsterdam Affirmations” that grew out of these gatherings are not unlike the creedal confessions that emerged from those historic councils. From the perspective of heaven, these gatherings may well be the greatest contribution Billy Graham and his team have given the Church of Jesus Christ for the fulfillment of the Great Commission upon the earth.

We can be thankful to God for these varied contributions. They are all deeply rooted in the Evangelical Tradition and have contributed richly to it.

DEFINING THE EVANGELICAL TRADITION

The Evangelical Tradition is comprised of three great themes: first, and foremost, the faithful proclamation of the gospel; second, the centrality of Scripture as a faithful repository of the gospel; and third, the confessional witness of the early Christian community as a faithful interpretation of the gospel.

A Faithful Proclamation

The evangel message is the good news of redemption and reconciliation, powerfully captured in the words of the Apostle Paul: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. … We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God” (2 Cor. 5:17-20, NIV).

This evangel, this euangelion, this wonderful good news is that we no longer have to stand outside, barred from nearness to God by our sin and rebellion. Knowing that we are a stiff-necked and hardhearted people, God has provided us a way into his heart. And that way is through him who says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). Jesus Christ is the door that opens into God’s great grace and mercy.

The evangel message is rooted in the person of Jesus Christ, the Word of God living. In the Christ event — Jesus’ birth, life, death, and resurrection — the way has been opened for us to be reconciled to God.

Jesus himself announced this good news of the gospel in his cryptic call, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near” (Matt. 4:17). The word repent here means literally “to turn around in your mind.” In other words, we should reevaluate our whole way of living in light of this great fact: in the person of Jesus Christ the kingdom of heaven has been made accessible to human beings.⁶⁷

What does this mean? It means that we can be reconciled to God. It means that we can be made new. It means that we can be born from above. It means that we can experience the forgiveness of sins through the atoning death of Jesus on the cross.⁶⁸ It means that we can enter a loving, living, eternal relationship with God the Father, through Jesus Christ the Son, by the power of the Holy Spirit. Surely this is great, good news!

Listen to Jesus’ grand invitation of grace: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matt 11:28-30).

So we are invited into a new life in Christ. And that new life is ours by faith alone. There are no things we do to get good enough to receive this life. It is all grace and all gift: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God — not the result of works, so that no one may boast” (Eph. 2:8-9). In the words of P. T. Forsyth, “Christianity is not the sacrifice we make, but the sacrifice we trust; not the victory we win, but the victory we inherit. That is the evangelical principle.”⁶⁹

Please understand, we are not here talking exclusively (or even primarily) about how we may get into heaven when we die. Getting into heaven is a matter of genuine consequence (and it does, in fact, come as part of the total package), but the evangel of the gospel is that abundant life in Christ begins now, and death becomes only a minor transition from this life to greater Life.

So the evangel, the good news of the gospel, is that we enter into life in Christ as his disciple right now. It is not that we believe now, enrolling as his disciple at some later point if we are so inclined (as if it were possible to believe without being his disciple). Believing in Jesus and discipleship to Jesus are part of the same action. We accept Jesus Christ, the living Word of God, as our life. He then promises to be yoked to us as we are yoked to him, and to teach us how to live our life as he would live it if he were in our place. He is alive and among us in all his offices: as our Savior to redeem us, as our Teacher to guide us, as our Lord to rule us, and as our Friend to come alongside us. In this way we grow ever more into Christlikeness, “for those whom [God] foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son” (Rom. 8:29a).

Even more, we are given the honor of sharing this good news of ongoing life in Christ with all peoples: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:19-20a).

Now, we do not do this without the working of this transforming life in ourselves. We cannot preach the good news and be the bad news. So, making the necessary cultural adjustments, we step into the life of the Gospels and do what they did and live as they lived. As we take the words of Christ into our hearts, and those around us — seeing the transforming power of God in us — say, “We need to get in on this.” What we are offering the world is life as it was meant to be.

Remember, we are calling people not merely to accept a set of beliefs about Jesus that will somehow trip the divine lever and get them into heaven when they die. Oh, no! We are calling people to turn to Jesus as their life. We are inviting people to believe in Jesus by becoming his disciples, and as his disciples (or apprentices) to enroll in his school of living. Thus people become trained in the Way, increasingly taking into themselves Jesus’ hopes, dreams, longings, habits, and abilities. This is how they learn “to obey everything that I have commanded you.” There simply is no other way.

A Faithful Repository

This evangel message has been faithfully preserved and presented to us in Scripture. The Bible is the Word of God written, just as Jesus is the Word of God living. Evangelical faith is biblical faith. The Gospels — Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John — stand at the heart of the biblical witness, for they faithfully give us the Christ event. The Epistles are the interpretative record of the Christ event, and we receive the Hebrew Scriptures as the written Word of God because Jesus did. And Paul’s confessional statement is ours as well: “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16-17).

Many and varied are the apologetic witnesses to the inspiration and authority of Scripture, and beyond affirming their validity, we need not go into them here. But alongside them we can add what the old writers called the indicia, the inward testimony of Scripture, for it is the uniform witness of the Church that, as illuminated by the Spirit, Scripture authenticates itself.

The evangelical witness affirms the primacy of Scripture as the only infallible rule of faith and practice. This cannot be stressed enough. Scripture has primacy over other writings; primacy over church tradition; primacy over individual religious experience; primacy over the individual conscience; primacy over individual revelations, dreams, and visions; primacy over culture.⁷⁰ As the Protestant reformers put it, Sola Scriptura, the Scripture alone.

This important confession gives us a standard or a norm for discerning faith and practice. Theologians, in fact, call Scripture the “formal norm” (just as Jesus and his message are the “material norm”) for Christian faith and practice. This by no means solves all of our problems, for huge questions of interpretation (hermeneutics) remain, but it does give us a basis upon which to work on the various problems that confront us almost daily.

A Faithful Interpretation

The evangel message of new life in Christ spread rapidly to virtually every culture and people group in the known world of that day. Soon, however, competing views began to emerge, some claiming to replace or even surpass the good news of the gospel. Clarification was needed. In the New Testament Epistles, especially those attributed to Paul, we see the beginnings of this clarification and interpretation of the Christ event. We cannot, for example, read Paul’s great christological statement in Colossians 1:15-20 without the deepest admiration and thanksgiving to God for it:

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers — all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.

This clarifying and interpreting work continued on for some time — roughly five centuries. Several great “ecumenical councils” were held during those years to hammer out as clear an understanding of the Christ event as possible.⁷¹ A precursor to these councils, as you may know, is recorded in our Bible — the momentous Jerusalem Council of Acts 15, convened to clarify the grounds of salvation for Gentile disciples. (We might wish that all of the subsequent gatherings had the same Spirit-driven unity.)

The debates at these ecumenical councils were highly significant, for opposing positions abounded: Gnosticism and Marcionism and Montanism and Arianism and Nestorianism and Pelagianism and more.⁷² Perhaps the three most important councils were Nicea in A.D. 325 (which confessed Christ as fully divine), Constantinople in A.D. 381 (which confessed Christ as fully human), and Chalcedon in A.D. 451 (which confessed the unity of Christ — two natures, one person).

These were matters of no small consequence, and what the councils concluded in regard to them has defined and clarified the Christ event for the Church ever after. For example, the Christian community has for fifteen hundred years looked to the Council of Chalcedon as providing the foundation of the doctrine of salvation in the unique God-man, Jesus Christ.

Probably the most famous of the clarifying statements from these ecumenical councils is the Nicene Creed, which grew out of and was named after the Council of Nicea. In its words we can see how carefully and forthrightly it was correcting the Arian notion that Christ was a created being and the Nestorian idea that Christ was two distinct beings. This statement is so powerful and so foundational to Christian conviction that it is best quoted in full:

We believe in one God the Father All-sovereign, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible;

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, Begotten of the Father before all the ages, Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten not made, of one substance with the Father, through whom all things were made; who for us men and for our salvation came down from the heavens, and was made flesh of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and became man, and was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered and was buried, and rose again on the third day according to the Scriptures, and ascended into the heavens, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father, and cometh again with glory to judge living and dead, of whose kingdom there shall be no end:

And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and the Life-giver, that proceedeth from the Father, who with Father and Son is worshipped together and glorified together, who spake through the prophets:

In one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church:

We acknowledge one baptism unto remission of sins. We look for a resurrection of the dead, and the life of the age to come.⁷³

These affirmations and creeds, which seek to interpret and clarify the Christ event, must never carry the same weight and authority as Scripture, for evangelical conviction always calls for the primacy of Scripture as the formal norm in matters of faith and practice; but they are confessional statements of immense importance. Authentic evangelical witness is rooted in doctrinal fidelity as well as the transforming experience of conversion. What we believe matters, and the Evangelical Tradition has always concerned itself with clarity in belief. (Did you notice how much of this clarifying work Augustine did throughout his ministry?)

Such doctrinal concerns as the deity and humanity of Christ, his resurrection from the dead, and the doctrine of the Trinity are of prime interest to evangelical witness. Why? Because they, and other doctrinal beliefs like them, hold us to a faithful interpretation of the Christ event. This in turn enables us to proclaim the good news of the gospel, the evangel, with fidelity and integrity.

DISCOVERING THE MAJOR STRENGTHS

We can be thankful for the many strengths of the Evangelical Tradition. I shall mention four here.

First, let’s thank God for the evangelical call to conversion. We have constant tendency to hold any real faith commitment at arm’s length, and so we need to hear the call to decide for Christ. We need to hear the invitation to be born from above. We need to hear the witness to experience converting grace.

Such evangelistic fervor is often associated with the explosive revivalism of the Great Awakenings in America and beyond. These revival experiences of grace help to keep our faith warm and personal. They press us past theoretical mental assent toward personal heart-faith.

Lifting high the existential call to commitment, evangelical witness gives us a clear theology of salvation. It is a doctrine of sola gratia, grace alone. It is a doctrine of sola fide, faith alone. It is a doctrine of solus Christus, Christ alone.

Second, let’s thank God for the evangelical stress upon Christ’s missionary mandate to disciple the nations. This is not something peripheral or incidental to who we are and what we are about. As disciples of Jesus Christ we do not have mission efforts; our very life is mission. Emil Brunner put it well: “The Church exists by mission as fire exists by burning.”⁷⁴

The mood of contemporary culture is not congenial to the missionary mandate. This lack of receptiveness has its roots in the modern absolutizing of tolerance and relativizing of belief. Every lifestyle is to be tolerated. Every belief is to be accepted — unless, of course, it is an exclusive-truth claim that challenges the beliefs of anyone else. These unquestioned assumptions of our day undercut any serious mission conviction.

Such assumptions need to be challenged directly and when we do so, they evaporate immediately. Tolerance for people and diverse cultures is surely a good thing, until it is made absolute. Frankly, not all lifestyles and customs should be tolerated. Some are clearly destructive — human enslavement, for example, and other similar forms of dehumanization. Likewise, certain beliefs need to be challenged because they are clearly false. All religious beliefs are not equal. Some are dangerous and destructive to human life. Racism, for example, or militarism. Nor can all religious beliefs stand together. Certain beliefs, by their very nature, exclude other beliefs. The law of contradiction holds that a thing cannot both be and not be at the same time.

Therefore, in spite of its lack of appeal to the mood of contemporary society, we can take up Christ’s missionary mandate with confidence. As his disciples this is not an option; Jesus, our sovereign Lord, calls us to go into all the world and disciple the nations. And he promises to be with us, even to the end of the age (Matt. 28:20).

Jesus uses several striking metaphors to describe our mission mandate — metaphors such as “light,” “salt,” and “leaven.” On the surface these metaphors seem quite different from one another, but with a little reflection we see that they all speak of penetration. Light exists to penetrate the darkness; salt exists to penetrate the meat; leaven exists to penetrate the dough. And we exist to penetrate the world! May I encourage you in this good work with the challenging words of George Fox: “Let all nations hear the word by sound or writing. Spare no place, spare not tongue nor pen; but be obedient to the Lord God and go through the work and be valiant for the Truth upon earth.”⁷⁵

Third, let’s thank God for the evangelical commitment to biblical fidelity. The authority of the written Word gives us the criterion by which we test for error. This is utterly essential, for if we cannot test for error, we cannot claim truth. The knowledge of truth presupposes the distinguishing of it from error.

The Christ event is the heart of Scripture. Everything in the Bible either looks forward to Christ or flows from Christ. And the Bible is a faithful record both of God’s dealings with his children in preparing them for the coming of Christ and of their response to his advent. It is important to know that the Christ event is an incarnational reality rooted in history. It is important to know the historical and grammatical context for his teachings. It is important to know that his death was a literal death on a Roman cross outside the city gates. His burial, his resurrection, his ascension — these were actual historical events witnessed by scores of people living at the time. The Christ of faith is the Jesus of history who walked the dusty roads of Palestine — healing the sick, giving sight to the blind, and teaching the reality of the kingdom of God. “Christ died … he was buried … he was raised on the third day … he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time. … Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as one untimely born, he appeared also to me” (1 Cor. 15:3-8). This is Paul’s confessional witness, a holy witness deeply rooted in history. And Scripture is the faithful record of this holy history.

Fourth, let’s thank God for the evangelical witness to sound doctrine. Beliefs are important. The gospel of the kingdom does have content. Now, the propositional truths of theology may not be everything, but they are something. We do not know many things about God and the life of faith, and many of the things we do know we probably understand imperfectly. But we do want to think as rightly about God as finite human beings can. We do seek to love God with all our mind. We do endeavor to rightly divide the word of truth. This is our intention.

Right belief, “true truth,” as Francis Schaeffer liked to put it — is important to us. Most assuredly we hold these doctrines with great humility of heart, for “we know only in part,” as Paul reminds us (1 Cor. 13:9). We can have it wrong. Our understanding can be defective. We are willing to be instructed. But in our learning and struggling and growing, the words of Martin Luther should ever be ours: “It is impossible for me to recant unless I am proved to be wrong by the testimony of Scripture. My conscience is bound to the Word of God.”⁷⁶

UNDERSTANDING THE POTENTIAL PERILS

As with all the others, the Evangelical Tradition has its own set of perils. As in the other Traditions, these are potential pitfalls rather than convictions inherent to the Tradition itself. They often emerge when the points of strength in the Tradition are distorted.

The first peril is the tendency to fixate upon peripheral and nonessential matters. This danger emerges when, out of a proper concern for truth and sound doctrine, people are unable to distinguish matters of primary importance from matters of secondary importance. All doctrines are important, but not all doctrines are of primary importance. Frankly, it makes a huge difference whether the issue we are debating is the divine/human nature of Christ or the pretribulation rapture.⁷⁷ The first issue is of primary importance; the second is not.

It is critical that we learn to discern between primary and secondary issues if we are to keep from majoring in minor matters. Old-fashioned common sense is sufficient to show us the difference in most cases, but the following principle can also help: the closer the issue comes to the heart of the Christ event — Jesus’ birth, life, death, and resurrection — the more it becomes a matter of primary importance. Using that standard, we see that if we are discussing whether the book of Job is literal history or a literary device to teach religious truth, we are considering a matter of secondary importance — important, certainly, but secondary. But if we are discussing Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, we are addressing an issue of primary importance, for it is right at the heart of the Christ event.

Now, you and I may have strong opinions on double predestination, supralapsarianism, and biblical inerrancy, but these should not be considered evangelical essentials. Even issues as pressing as women in ministry or glossolalia — and I have strongly held positions on both matters — must not be made a test of evangelical orthodoxy. We must never allow pious convictions to be elevated into central dogmas of the Church. In these matters the old saying, first articulated by Augustine, can serve us well: In necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas. “In essentials unity, in doubtful questions [or nonessentials] liberty, in all things charity.”

The second peril (which closely parallels and in some measure grows out of the first) is the tendency toward a sectarian mentality. I say that this peril in some measure grows out of the first because when minor doctrines are elevated to the place of primary importance, they can then become grounds for separation.

Now, a proper concern generally underlies this separatist or sectarian impulse, a concern for the purity of the Church — purity of doctrine, purity of conviction, purity of practice. But problems arise when the impulse turns legalistic, for then it becomes narrow, rigid, and doctrinaire. Nor is it balanced by the equally important biblical concern for the unity of the Church (John 17).

Sectarian groups sometimes take on a cultic mentality by insisting that they are the only true church and that everyone else is apostate. When this occurs, the center of gravity shifts from a warm-heart experience of saving grace to an intolerant, censorious spirit. This can even take the form of guilt by association, as if merely associating with people of differing beliefs would somehow compromise a person. Billy Graham, you may remember, was accused of this very thing when he insisted that the local sponsoring committees for his crusades be drawn from a broad spectrum of the Christian community.

Sectarian groups often break with history with a wave of the hand. They declare, in essence, that no one besides the early Christians and themselves have been faithful to God. This break with history can even get tangled up in specific historical battles. The Protestant Reformation is a case in point. Some groups, going far beyond the corrective teaching of the reformers (and not realizing how deeply their own positions are rooted in Augustine and others), have decided that everything between the end of the book of Acts and the nailing of Luther’s ninety-five theses on the door of the castle church in Wittenberg is doctrinally corrupt and must be rejected.

The answer to this problem is not to break with the history of the Church, but to discriminate between truth and error in church tradition in the light of Scripture. Luther himself linked the two when he spoke of Scripture as the light and church tradition as the lantern.⁷⁸ An authentic evangelical witness is rooted in the heritage of the Church as well as in Scripture.

A third peril is the tendency to present too limited a view of the salvation that is found in Jesus Christ. There are two aspects to this problem. One is the ellipse of the whole of a person’s life in favor of the sole issue of getting into heaven; the other is a pronounced individualism that neglects social responsibility and prophetic insight.

Now, this pitfall emerges because of a valid concern that we never lose sight of the evangelistic call for commitment to Christ — a commitment that must extend all the way down to the most personal and individual level. We should affirm the concern, but we must also affirm that the call to commitment extends out as well as down. It must encompass, first, our entire discipleship before God and, second, our community and institutional life. Christ came to break the shackles of both personal sin and social sin. The salvation that is in Jesus Christ impacts all levels of human existence: personal, social, institutional.

A fourth peril, and the last I shall mention here, is the tendency toward bibliolatry. I describe this as a “tendency” because seldom do people plunge headlong into a literal worship of the Bible. But many people have practices and beliefs that lean in that direction. Some groups, for example, hold views of the inspiration of the Bible that are nothing short of magic religion, as if God had simply dictated the words of the Bible to Moses and Paul and the others, or dropped it out of the sky. Other groups tend to proclaim the Bible more than they do Jesus Christ. Now, the open Bible is certainly a good symbol, but for the Christian it is a secondary symbol. Our primary symbol must ever be Jesus Christ in his life, death, resurrection, ascension, session, return, and reigning forever and ever. One institution I know of has a mural of a thirty-foot Jesus holding out a Bible. Now, I hope that image gives you pause as you consider whether our primary mission is to give the world the Bible or give the world Jesus. Perhaps that artist would have done better to have painted a thirty-foot Bible holding out Jesus.

Now, this problem emerges out of an evangelical strength — namely, the desire to hold a high view of Scripture. But we are to worship God, not the Bible. Donald Bloesch writes, “The ultimate, final authority is not Scripture but the living God himself as we find him in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ and the message about him constitute the material norm for our faith just as the Bible is the formal norm. The Bible is authoritative because it points beyond itself to the absolute authority, the living and transcendent Word of God.”⁷⁹

The euangelion, the good news of the gospel, is not that we have a Holy Book — most religions have as much. The good news of the gospel is that God entered history in the person of Jesus Christ and did for us what we could not do for ourselves. The Bible is ever the normative interpretation of this great redemptive event, and for this we thank God. But the Christ event is the foundation for the normative interpretation, not the other way around.

We should always affirm a high view of Scripture, recognizing at the same time that salvation is not in the Book but in Jesus Christ. To avoid the heresy of bibliolatry, we would do well to remember the classical formulation of Christian theology: Christus Rex et Dominus Scripturae. “Christ is King and Lord of Scripture.”

PRACTICING THE EVANGELICAL TRADITION

I cannot imagine that you need much instruction in the actual practice of the Evangelical Tradition. For most of us the problem is not knowing what we are to do; it is doing it. “Just do the stuff” is the challenge John Wimber gave people again and again. It is a well-aimed challenge. May God give us the strength and courage to do what we already know to do.

Rather than detailed instruction, then, I offer here two simple, practical suggestions.

First, let us get to know our Bible. I recommend that we make a really good friend of Scripture, reading it in substantial doses. It is far better to devote one hour once a week to Bible reading than ten minutes every day. The popular devotional practice of a brief Bible reading each morning is a little like trying to take a shower one drop at a time. Just as we simply cannot get a shower that way, we simply cannot become a biblically saturated person that way. So read entire sections of books of the Bible in one sitting. This is not nearly as difficult as you might think once you develop the habit.

One caution: our souls will never grow in God if we read the Bible solely to get ammunition to defend ourselves or to defeat others. No. We read the Bible to be fed. We read it to be converted, to be strengthened, to be taught, to be rebuked, to be counseled, to be comforted. As we sit under the Bible for sustained periods, we will be formed by the experience.

Second, let us get to know those around us. I am thinking of those we live near and those we work with and those we meet at the grocery store and the gas station. Now, if we really pay attention to those around us — learning their interests, needs, hopes, hurts, dreams, fears — we will be given what we need to say. Our lives will preach Christ, and our words will confirm and make specific the message of our lives.

One caution: we must never confuse witnessing with “soul-winning.” Jesus made it unmistakably clear that it is the domain of the Holy Spirit to convict the world “of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment,” and we must never abrogate the work of the Holy Spirit (John 16:8, KJV). God alone “wins the soul.” We are simply and solely witnesses to how good God is and to what transforming things he has done in us. No more, no less.

THE CALL TO WORD-CENTERED LIVING

QUESTION:

What is the Evangelical Tradition?

ANSWER:

A life founded upon the living Word of God, the written Word of God, and the proclaimed Word of God.

QUESTION:

Why should we explore it?

ANSWER:

Because through it we experience the knowledge of God that grounds our lives and enables us to give a reason for the hope that is in us.

Every one of us is called to a Word-centered life. Jesus Christ is among us as the Word of God living. He teaches us, guides us, rules us, comforts us, corrects us, nurtures us, strengthens us. The Bible is given to us as the Word of God written. Through the illuminating, guiding ministry of the Spirit, Scripture is for us the infallible rule of faith and practice. In addition, the doctrinal fidelity of the early Christian witnesses helps to guide our understanding and interpretation of the Christ event. And we have the evangel, the good news of the gospel, as the Word of God proclaimed. In obedience to Christ’s Great Commission and in the mighty power of the Spirit, we call all people everywhere to be reconciled to God through the atoning sacrifice of Christ Jesus. This leads, of necessity, to lifelong discipleship to Christ, through which we learn from him how to live the abundant life of “righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (John 10:10; Rom. 14:17).

^* Roman Catholic religious orders typically have a Rule — that is, a formal expression of the regulations to be observed by members.

↑ Back to top