Is it time for a re-statement of biblical doctrine for
this generation? I am not referring simply to additional volumes addressing
theology, but I am suggesting the need for a higher degree of militancy and
relevance in what we are saying both to believers in Christ and to the culture.
On one hand we argue that the Church and even the
world does not hear what the teachers of the Word of
God today have to say. But the truth may be that they hear the words we speak
but fail to feel the cutting sharpness of our message.
The Editor of Kregel Publications, Dennis
Hillman, recently returned from a trip to Europe. I
asked him what he sensed of the spiritual climate there. He answered,
"Christianity on the Continent just seems to be old and tired!"
Could the same thing be happening to American Evangelicalism?
Is our enthusiasm for stating our doctrine in a fresh way to a new generation
running out of steam? I decided to examine what John Calvin and John Gill said
as they presented to the world their views on biblical truth. They both
addressed the importance of their systematic theologies written to their
generations. In his 1536 Basle edition of his Institutes,
Calvin wrote to the king of France:
I lay before your Majesty a Confession from which you may learn what the
doctrine is that so inflames the rage of [certain] madmen who are this day,
with fire and sword, troubling your kingdom. …He, moreover, deceives himself
who anticipates long prosperity to any kingdom which is not ruled by the sceptre of God, that is, by His divine Word. For the heavenly oracle is infallible which has declared that
"where there is no vision the people perish" (Prov.
xxix. 18).
John Gill wrote in the Introduction to his A System
of Evangelical Truths (1839):
Doctrine has an influence upon practice, especially evangelical
doctrine. Where there is not the doctrine of faith, the obedience of faith
cannot be expected. …[In the past], when other heresies sprung up and other
false doctrines were taught, it became necessary to add new articles, both to
explain, defend, and secure truth, and to distinguish those who were sound in
the faith of the Gospel from those that were not. Systematical Divinity
(systematic theology), I sense, is now become very unpopular!
The statements from both men seem to sound an alarm.
They vibrate with a certain urgency and immediacy. Their statements connected
up with the issues of the hour. The words of both men rallied evangelical
thinking of those troubled days. In the same way, The Fundamentals,
published between 1910 and 1915, spoke to our spiritual fathers of almost a
century ago. A World Conference on Christian Fundamentals was held from
May-June, 1919, with six thousand people in attendance, to hear the first of
the new fundamentals presented. The sixty-four articles and subjects taught for
some weeks, we are for certain made a tremendous and long lasting impact on our
heritage of faith. And we are told it was a time of growing apostasy! W. B.
Riley at the first Fundamentals Conference stood up and said, "The hour has
struck for the rise of a new Protestantism."
In a definite real sense, no one can create a "new"
systematic theology, as if God's truth was shifting and elusive. But a
re-statement may be called for, in the sense of freshness and application for
the decades we see ahead.
Is it time for such a re-statement to our present
church world - but also to the next generation coming up behind us? I think so.
