Many get these two confused. Please note that most of these contemporary
independent churches are Evangelical in nature and in no way shape or form
fundamnetalist in nature.
Evangelical Theology
Evangelical Theology Contemporary evangelical theology has long and deep
roots. Some consider that it was primarily formed by reaction to theological
liberalism, and while it is no doubt true that this conflict has frequently
introduced a certain complexion to evangelical theology, its basic substance
is drawn from the heritage of orthodox Christian theological formation.
Evangelical theology in essence stands in the great Christian theological
tradition. Evangelical theology goes back to the creeds of the first
centuries of the Christian era, in which the early church sought to correlate
the teaching of Scripture, penetrate its meaning and defend it. In concert
with the thought of this period, evangelical theology affirms that: the
Bible is the truthful revelation of God and through it the life-giving voice
of God speaks; God is the almighty creator and we are his dependent creation;
God has entered history redemptively in the incarnation of Jesus Christ; God's
nature exists in Trinitarian expression; Jesus Christ is fully divine and
fully human, the power and judgment of sin is a reality for all humanity;
God graciously takes the initiative in coming to us savingly in Jesus Christ
and by the Holy Spirit; Jesus Christ is building his church; and the
consummation of history will be expressed in the second advent of Jesus Christ,
the general resurrection, the final judgment, heaven and hell. Evangelical
theology also has strong links with the early medieval church. It draws
heavily upon the satisfaction view of the atonement enunciated by Anselm of
Canterbury and shares the concomitant stress upon the passion of Jesus Christ
expressed by no-one more fully than Bernard of Clairvaux. Evangelical
theology has particular ties with the distinctives of the Protestant
Reformation. It is deeply committed to the centrality of the Bible
(see Scripture), to its power by the Holy Spirit with special reference to
preaching, to its final authority in all matters of doctrine and life, and
to the necessity of interpreting it as naturally as possible and disseminating
it widely in the vernacular. It is equally committed to justification by faith
in which acceptance with God is received by trusting his loving self-disclosure
and not by any human accomplishment. It also readily confesses that the church
is composed of all believers who have thus been incorporated by the Holy
Spirit, and who have direct, personal and constant access to their heavenly
Father. The Reformation expressed itself in various institutional structures,
frequently the result of nationalistic impulse, and in these entities many
of the diversities within evangelical theology arose. There were differences
in understanding the nature of the sacraments, the place of the divine decrees
in relation to personal salvation (see Predestination), the time of the
millennium, the form of church government, the precise nature of biblical
inspiration, the way to arrive at Christian assurance and the relation of
the church to culture and the state—most of which would be considered by
evangelicals today as matters of somewhat secondary importance. Evangelical
theology is also deeply indebted to the series of evangelical awakenings
which began about the middle of the 18th century. Here the tendency was to
reaffirm the theology of the great and received tradition, and to lay special
emphasis on the theology of the Christian life. The nature of saving faith,
or conversion, was continually to the fore, as was the consciousness of the
love of God in Christ and the change of disposition which accompanied it,
although there might be differences about the instantaneousness of conversion.
The means and possibilities of sanctification were also emphasized, while
once again there could be some disagreement over timing and possible
achievement. The theology of corporate spiritual life was also stressed,
assigning special consideration to the renewing of the church, the evangelizing
of the world and the improving of society. By the third decade of the 19th
century there is evidence that evangelical theology was about to break
out of its preoccupation with the theology of the Christian life, and through
serious exegetical work and reflective thought once again make the orthodox
theological heritage a vibrant option as had been done in the early Middle
Ages and at the Reformation. Unfortunately for evangelical theology it
was hit just at this time with the full force of theological liberalism, which
combined the older Enlightenment rationalism with the post-Kantian stress
on the human consciousness as the bridge to the knowledge of God—which was
singularly appealing to a Romantic age. Amid such a scene, evangelical
theology tended to move either into enervating accommodation with the new
views or retreat into a ghetto, defending the received deposit and shooting
at almost anything that moved. While such ‘confessionalists’ did yeoman service
in upholding the essentials of orthodox theology, they frequently did so
in a way that dismissed much of their contemporary world of thought out of
hand, played down the distinctive evangelical emphases on the theology
of the Christian life, and gave the impression that the final formulation
of all theology was imbedded in the confessions of the Reformation period.
One glimmer of what evangelical theology might have been was the Dutch
school that emerged later in the century around Abraham Kuyper. Their genius
was able to affirm the orthodox tradition, have a profound sense of the
importance of a theology of the Christian life in all its ramifications,
and at the same time be sensitive to many of the issues and approaches being
raised by the world in which they lived. In the late 19th century, as the
pressure of theological liberalism continued to intensify and evangelicalism
weakened, an even more defensive evangelical theology arose in the form
of fundamentalism. Its key bulwark was an extreme millenarianism which affirmed
that the church and society were hurtling into irremediable ruin. Christianity
had nothing to say to the issues of the ‘now’; it was all in the ‘not yet’.
From the middle of the 20th century, a revitalization has been taking place
within evangelical theology. British scholars have contributed a serious
and scholarly exegetical approach; Americans have been hard at work in areas
of systematic theology and its adjunct disciplines such as apologetics and
ethics; the Dutch and the Mennonites have been developing theologies of social
action from significantly diverse starting- points, and the
Pentecostal/charismatic movement has been enunciating a theology of the
Holy Spirit which insists that God is powerfully and miraculously present
through the church to minister to the needs of mankind (see Baptism in the
Spirit; Gifts of the Spirit). Finally, it should be emphasized that
evangelical theology is what might be termed a spiritual theology. It has
a way of doing theology which is again part of the great theological
tradition. It is ‘live’ orthodoxy. The Bible is not only central to the
theological enterprise, but it is meditated upon and prayed over as well as
studied. The goal of theological work is not so much to know theology as
to know God; the temptations of academic pride must be mortified, theology
must be done within a community of love and out of love for others, and in
the awareness that the return of Jesus Christ and the day of accounting is
near. Thus the whole of the evangelical theological enterprise is for the
glory of God. Bibliography D. G. Bloesch, The Evangelical Renaissance
(Grand Rapids, MI, 1973); idem, the Future of Evangelical Christianity:
A Call for Unity Amid Diversity (New York, 1983); G. W. Bromiley, Historical
Theology: An Introduction (Grand Rapids, MI, 1978); E. J. Carnell, The Case
for Biblical Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI, 1968); C. F. H. Henry (ed.),
Christian Faith and Modern Theology (New York, 1964); E. Jay, The Religion
of the Heart: Anglican Evangelicalism and the Nineteenth-Century Novel
(Oxford, 1979); G. M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture: The
Shaping of Twentieth Century Evangelicalism 1870-1925 (New York, 1980); Mark
A. Noll, Between Faith and Criticism: Evangelicals, Scholarship, and the
Bible in America (San Francisco, CA, 1987); B. L. Ramm, The Evangelical
Heritage (Waco, TX, 1973); idem, After Fundamentalism: The Future of
Evangelical Theology (San Francisco, CA, 1985); E. R. Sandeen, The Roots
of Fundamentalism: British and American Millenarianism 1800-1930 (Chicago,
1970); J. D. Woodbridge et al., The Gospel in America: Themes in the Story
of America's Evangelicals (Grand Rapids, MI, 1979). I.S.R.
Charismatic Theology
Pentecostalist Theology Pentecostalism is one stream within Arminian
evangelicalism with distinctive emphases upon a further experience after
conversion, namely, the baptism in the Holy Spirit as an enduement of power
signified by speaking in tongues (glossolalia); and upon the gifts of the
Spirit listed in 1Co 12:8-10. Pentecostal theology has its roots in various
aspects of 19th-century fundamentalism in America: holiness groups which taught
that one could receive after conversion an experience of entire sanctification
(see Methodism), sometimes called the baptism of the Spirit, and an enduement
of power by some key leaders such as Charles Finney, Asa Mahan (1800-89) and
Phoebe W. Palmer (1807-87); the teaching of R. A. Torrey (1856-1928) and others
who claimed that the baptism of the Spirit was a post-conversion enduement
of power primarily for witness and service, not sanctification; the teaching
of A. B. Simpson (1843-1919) and A. J. Gordon (1836-95) and others that divine
healing was to be received by faith; and the premillennialism (see Millennium)
and the need to live in expectation of the imminent return of Christ taught
by J. N. Darby, C. I. Scofield (1843-1921) and many others. These streams
all contributed to the ‘four-square’ emphases of Pentecostal preaching: Christ
the saviour, Christ the baptizer in the Holy Spirit, Christ the healer and
Christ the coming king. More...
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