The Gospel Crisis and American Evangelicals

by Harry Lee Poe

Union University

Introduction

For almost two thousand years, Christians everywhere agreed about the content of the gospel message. The great rift between the Eastern Church and the Western Church occurred when the West dared to alter the Apostles’ Creed without consulting the churches of the East. Catholics and Protestants disagreed over many things, but not the content of the gospel. At the beginning of the twentieth century, however, American pragmatism began to take hold of Evangelicals who identified only five fundamentals of the faith. By the end of the twentieth century, Evangelicals had reduced the gospel to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This essay will explore how the gospel has been understood in the Christian tradition and then how it has been truncated in the twentieth century. I suggest that a “full” gospel, in accordance with Scripture and in continuity with orthodox Christian doctrine, needs to be recovered in the twenty-first century and beyond.

Scripture and Christian Tradition on the Gospel: A Brief Survey

The gospel is the good news of Jesus, the good news of who God is, what God has done to save us, and what difference it makes (Rom 1:1–4, 16; 1 Cor. 1:21b). The gospel reveals the righteousness of God (Rom. 1:17). By faith in Jesus as revealed in the message of the gospel, people are saved by God (Gal.3:2). The gospel is the message we believe about Jesus by which we are saved (1 Cor. 15:1–2). Though the New Testament does not present a systematic exposition of the message of the gospel, the same basic faith affirmations appear in paragraph after paragraph of the apostolic teaching:

There is only one God, the Creator.
God spoke to past generations and we know his word is true because his promises have been fulfilled.
Jesus is both Lord and Christ, God and man.
Jesus died for our sins.
Jesus rose from the dead.
Jesus is exalted as God.
The Holy Spirit of God takes possession of each believer.
Jesus will come again to judge the world.

While it will be explored further below, at this point it is worth noting that during the twentieth century it was not unusual to see a confusion of the gospel message with some other aspect of the Christian religion.

In addition to the message of the gospel, the Christian religion is concerned with the mission of the church, the method of evangelism, the medium of ministry, and the messengers. By confusing these critical elements of the whole of what it means to follow Christ, such statements as “my life is my witness” became a common phrase to account for the neglect of a verbal witness to Christ. In the “social gospel” controversy, the medium of ministry seen in caring for the needy was confused with the message of the gospel. While “liberals” came out of the controversy inclined to neglect the message, “conservatives” came out of the controversy inclined to neglect the medium of ministry. While the messenger, the medium, the method, and the mission are all essential, they tend to focus on the active working out of faith in the one revealed by the message. In the New Testament, the gospel reveals Jesus. At the end of his gospel account, John suggested that a great deal more could be said about Jesus, but the gospel tells us the essentials of who he is from before creation until his second coming so that we may believe and be saved (John 20:30–31). Some people confuse the mission of extending the kingdom of God with the message of Jesus. But the good news of the kingdom is not about the kingdom; it is about the King.

When we chose to focus on only one affirmation about Jesus, we do damage to the revelation of who Jesus is. Evangelical pastors and theologians regularly speak of 1 Cor. 15:3–4 as “the gospel in a nutshell” because it explains that the gospel is just focused on the death and resurrection of Jesus. This common late twentieth century tradition illustrates the crisis in biblical hermeneutics among conservative believers who have exchanged the historic gospel for a succinct sound bite that can be affirmed by Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Carl F. H. Henry reminded us that our modern attention to the death and resurrection of Jesus in 1 Cor. 15:3–4 ignores the stress Paul gives in that passage to the fulfillment of the scriptures as part of the gospel.[1] By adopting a hermeneutic that bases our understanding of the gospel on one passage of scripture, we lay a foundation for heresy in coming generations by ignoring what else the New Testament says about the content of the gospel.

Whenever Paul gave a teaching on doctrine, ethics, worship, or any other matter that concerned Christ’s church, he began by anchoring his teaching in the gospel. Paul’s letters are not evangelistic in nature. They are teachings for people who already know and believe the gospel. Thus, he declares that the last judgment at the Second Coming is part of the gospel (Rom. 1:16). He explains that the humanity of Jesus as the descendent of King David is part of the gospel (2 Tim. 2:8). When the Colossians flirted with a “low Christology,”

Paul explained to them that the gospel includes the deity of Christ, his activity as Creator, and his current position as exalted Lord (Col. 1:3–23). In all of these passages, Paul specifically states that these affirmations about Jesus Christ are part of the gospel. Sometimes he mentions the death of Christ, but sometimes he does not. The point is that nowhere in his letters does Paul lay out the gospel in a systematic fashion. Instead he addresses issues based on the gospel.

While the “gospel in a nutshell” form of reductionism has appealed to mainline evangelicals and the revivalist tradition, the Calvinist reductionist approach to a gospel slogan is seen in the popular simplification of Abraham Kuyper’s “Creation, Fall, Redemption” approach. As Kuyper used the outline, it formed a theological framework for explaining the salvation story in a culture thoroughly saturated with a knowledge about Jesus. A century later, however, the absence of specific reference to Jesus Christ makes the outline less helpful in a world in which we can no longer assume a knowledge of Jesus. Whereas the more experiential revivalist “gospel in a nutshell” brings Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses into the fold of Christianity, Kuyper’s approach allows Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists in addition to the cults that broke away from Christian orthodoxy, because “Creation [in some form], Fall [in some form], Redemption [in some form]” is the basic outline of all religions. Few committed Christians set out to start a new heresy or encourage apostasy. Those evangelicals who have adopted these formulas of the gospel would normally be orthodox in their faith, but these approaches assume that others share the unspoken foundational matters of the faith. The death of Jesus has no saving significance if he is not fully God and fully man.

In the development of the New Testament, the gospel of Jesus provided the “canon” or measuring stick for determining if a writing represented the apostolic teaching. All of the New Testament documents explore the meaning of the gospel and its implications in some way. In later centuries, the gospel provided the outline for normative Christian theology. Though the gospel forms the foundation for all New Testament books, the apostles never codified the gospel into a formula. By the second century, however, the leading Christian theologians had begun to present the gospel in a systematic fashion based on the teaching of the New Testament. Eventually, these systematic statements of the gospel faith would be formalized as the creeds. In Against Heresies, Irenaeus (c. 142 – c. 200) elaborated the gospel as the standard for the faith of Christians everywhere:

The Church, though dispersed throughout the whole world, even to the ends of the earth, has received from the apostles and their disciples this faith: [She believes] in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them; and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who became incarnate for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit, who proclaimed through the prophets the dispensations of God, and the advents, and the birth from a virgin, and the passion, and the resurrection from the dead, and the ascension into heaven in the flesh of the beloved Christ Jesus, our Lord, and His [future] manifestation from heaven in the glory of the Father “to gather all things in one,” and to raise anew all flesh of the whole human race, in order that to Christ Jesus, our Lord, and God, and Saviour, and King, according to the will of the invisible Father, “every knew should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess” to Him, and that He should execute just judgment towards all. . .[2]

Ireneaus goes on to add that it does not matter what language people speak or what their geographical location may be, whether in Germany, Spain, Gaul, Egypt, or Libya, Christians everywhere hold the same faith.

Tertullian (c. 150 – c. 225) championed the same faith in Prescription Against Heretics when he argued:

Now, with regard to this rule of faith—that we may from this point acknowledge what it is we defend—it is, you must know, that which prescribes the belief that there is only one God, and that He is none other than the Creator of the world, who produced all things out of nothing through His own Word, first of all sent forth; that this Word is called His Son, and, under the name of God, was seen “in divers manners” by the patriarchs, heard at all times by the prophets, at last brought down by the Spirit and Power of the Father into the Virgin Mary, was made flesh in her womb, and, being born of her, went forth as Jesus Christ; thenceforth He preached the new law and the promise of the kingdom of heaven, worked miracles; having been crucified, He rose again the third day; (then) having ascended into the heavens, He sat at the right hand of the Father; sent instead of Himself the Power of the Holy Ghost to lead such as believe; will come with glory to take the saints to the enjoyment of everlasting life and of the heavenly promises, and to condemn the wicked to everlasting fire, after the resurrection of both these classes shall have happened, together with the restoration of their flesh. This rule, as it will be proved, was taught by Christ, and raises amongst ourselves no other questions than those which heresies introduce, and which make men heretics.[3]

Tertullian gave a more succinct version of “the rule of faith” in his treatise, On the Veiling of Virgins:

The rule of faith, indeed, is altogether one, alone immoveable and irreformable; the rule, to wit, of believing in one only God omnipotent, the Creator of the universe, and His Son Jesus Christ, born of the Virgin Mary, crucified under Pontius Pilate, raised again the third day from the dead, received in the heavens, sitting now at the right (hand) of the Father, destined to come to judge quick and dead through the resurrection of the flesh as well (as of the spirit) (I).[4]

Origen (c. 182 - c. 251), a teacher in Alexandria, differed from Tertullian on matters of interpretation of scripture and the value of philosophy, but they agreed on the gospel. Origen presented his summary of the gospel in De Principiis:

4. The particular points clearly delivered in the teaching of the apostles are as follows:

First, That there is one God, who created and arranged all things, and who, when nothing existed, called all things into being . . . and that this God in the last days, as He had announced beforehand by His prophets, sent our Lord Jesus Christ to call in the first place Israel to Himself, and in the second place the Gentiles, after the unfaithfulness of the people of Israel. This just and good God, the Father our Lord Jesus Christ, Himself gave the law, and the prophets, and the Gospels, being also the God of the apostles and of the Old and New Testaments. 

Secondly, That Jesus Christ Himself, who came (into the world), was born of the Father before all creatures; that, after He had been servant of the Father in the creation of all things—“For by Him were all things made”—He in the last times, divesting Himself (of His glory), became a man, and was incarnate although God, and while made a man remained God which He was; that He assumed a body like to our own, differing in this respect only, that it was born of a virgin and of the Holy Spirit: that this Jesus Christ was truly born, and did truly suffer, and did not endure this death common (to man) in appearance only, but did truly die; that he did truly rise from the dead; and that after His resurrection He conversed with His disciples, and was taken up (into heaven). 

Then, Thirdly, the apostles related that the Holy Spirit was associated in honour and dignity with the Father and the Son […] And that this Spirit inspired each one of the saints, whether prophets or apostles; and that there was not Spirit in the men of the old dispensation, and another in those who were inspired at the advent of Christ, is most clearly taught throughout the Churches. 

5. After these points, also, the apostolic teaching is that the soul, having a substance and life of its own, shall, after its departure from the world, be rewarded according to its deserts, being destined to obtain either an inheritance of eternal life and blessedness, if its actions shall have procured this for it, or to be delivered up to eternal fire and punishments, if the guilt of its crimes shall have brought it down to this: and also that there is to be a time of resurrection from the dead, when this body, which now “is sown in corruption, shall rise in incorruption,” and that which “is sown in dishonour will rise in glory.”[5]

Hippolytus (c. 170 – 235) described the profession of faith proclaimed by new Christians at their baptism which declared their faith:

And when he who is being baptized goes down into the water, let him who baptizes lay is hand on him saying thus, “Dost thou believe in God the Father Almighty?” And he who is being baptized shall say, “I believe.” Then, holding his hand placed upon his head, he shall baptize him once. And then he shall say, “Dost thou believe in Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who was born by the Holy Spirit from the Virgin Mary, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate and died, and rose again on the third day living from the dead, and ascended into the heavens, and sat down on the right hand of the Father, and will come to judge the living and the dead?” And when he says “I believe,” he is baptized again. And again he shall say, “Dost thou believe in the Holy Spirit, in the holy Church, and the resurrection of the flesh?” And he who is being baptized shall say, “I believe.” And so he is baptized the third time.[6]

When the persecution of the church by the Roman Empire ended under the rule of Constantine (d. 337), the churches entered a new period of organization and development under the patronage of the emperor. As a legal religion and then the state religion of the empire, the church adopted a series of official statements of faith or what all Christians believe when they believe the gospel. The briefest of these is the Apostles’ Creed. Though it was adopted later than the Nicene Creed, it reflects the language of the New Testament articulation of the gospel as well as the earlier definitions of the gospel by the Church Fathers:

I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth:
and in Jesus Christ his only Son, our Lord; Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost; born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, dead and buried; He descended into hell;
the third day He rose again from the dead;
He ascended into heaven and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty;
from thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Ghost,
the holy catholic church; the communion of saints;
the forgiveness of sins;
the resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting. Amen.

The Nicean Creed and the Chalcedonian Creed clarify and expound upon the simple affirmations of the gospel as reflected in the Apostles’ Creed. Now expressed as a formula, the gospel remained normative for all Christians throughout the period from the close of the classical era to the emergence of the modern era.

The Protestant Reformation and the birth of modern science arose simultaneously and inter-relatedly in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Most Protestant groups retained the creeds and their common understanding of the gospel. Catholics and Protestants agreed about the articles of faith, but they disagreed over the basis upon which salvation was bestowed. The radical reformation, on the other hand, wanted nothing of “human invention” in worship. Written prayers, ceremonies, and human statements of faith were equally obnoxious to groups like the Baptists. While objecting to the recitation of the Creeds as a part of worship, the Baptists still affirmed the content of the Creeds in their theology and evangelism. In his first book, John Bunyan addressed the heretical teachings common at that time to the Quakers. The long title of the book reflects the Baptist agreement with all other Christians about the faith of the gospel:

Some Gospel Truths Opened, According to the Scriptures; Or, The Divine and Human Nature of Christ Jesus; His Coming into the World; His Righteousness, Death, Resurrection, Ascension, Intercession, And Second Coming to Judgment, Plainly Demonstrated and Proved. And also, Answers to several Questions, with profitable Directions to stand fast in the Doctrine of Jesus the Son of MARY, against those blustering Storms of the Devil’s Temptations, which do at this Day, like so many Scorpions, break loose from the bottomless Pit, to bite and torment those that have not tasted the Vertue of Jesus, by the Revelation of the Spirit of God (1656).[7]

The Gospel in the Twentieth Century

The twentieth century began with great expectations for the evangelization of the world. The Student Mission Movement swept up a generation of young Christians in a passionate desire to spread the gospel. In 1905, a broad spiritual awakening broke out in Wales that had a profound impact on Protestant Christianity far beyond the boundaries of the principality. The next year the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles sparked the beginning of the Pentecostal Movement with its emphasis on speaking in tongues and other ecstatic experiences. Wilbur Chapman, the gifted Presbyterian pastor, continued the mass urban evangelistic meetings made popular by Dwight Moody.

Dispensational theology gained wide acceptance across the mainline denominations through the influence of the summer Bible conferences that Protestant Christians attended in huge numbers. Evangelical concern over social ills such as slavery and alcohol consumption in the nineteenth century broadened to include a general concern for the social ills that plagued the teaming urban centers of America. Walter Rauschenbusch’s “social gospel” embodied this emphasis upon the physical conditions of people as a reflection of the earthly ministry of Jesus. All the while, the Christian colleges and universities continued to educate far more people than the small state universities across the country. With the large waves of Catholic immigration to the United States at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, Protestants took note of a renewed assertiveness from the papacy that included pronouncements about the Immaculate Conception of Mary and marriage between Catholics and Protestants.

In the face of the growing threat of the German critical assumptions about the Bible, a group of leading Protestant theologians produced a series of tracts known as “The Fundamentals.” This twelve-volume work included essays by sixty-four British and American Protestant theologians. It spoke to a broad spectrum of theological issues and doctrines. Perhaps a more important document that shaped the twentieth century consciousness of the gospel, however, came from the Northern Presbyterians. In 1910, the General Assembly of the Northern Presbyterian Church endorsed five points of doctrine as the fundamentals of the faith:

The inerrancy of the Bible
The virgin birth of Jesus
The penal substitutionary death of Jesus
The bodily resurrection of Jesus
The authenticity of the miracles of the Bible

Other groups began to use this list with revisions of their own that sometimes dropped the miracles for a separate statement about the deity of Christ or about his imminent return. Conspicuously absent from the list is any reference to God as Creator, to the Holy Spirit as God with the Father and Son, or the present exalted position of the Son.

Wilbur Chapman reflected this condensing of the gospel in his gospel song, “One Day.” The song refers to the virgin birth, the penal substitutionary atonement, the bodily resurrection, and the imminent return. To these he adds the exaltation of Jesus as Lord, but he omits any reference to the Bible or other miracles. In harmony with the General Assembly’s enumeration of the five fundamentals of the faith, Chapman omits any reference to God as Creator or to the Holy Spirit. Whether through intentional omission, neglect, or the assumption that everyone knows about the Creator and the Holy Spirit, Chapman represents a trend in the public communication of the gospel in the twentieth century that gave heightened emphasis to a few essentials of the faith at the expense of other aspects of the faith. What began as an attempt to combat disbelief in the miraculous would eventually result in a popular evangelical gospel that comprised only the reference to the death and resurrection of Christ.

A variety of factors may have contributed to this trend. To a great extent, conservative Christians demonstrated that they were as much a part of the secular culture as the most ardent atheism. Reductionism had become a common feature of the Western worldview by the early twentieth century, and evangelical Christians embraced reductionism as fervently as adherents to materialism and naturalism. As the century progressed, evangelicals tended to reduce salvation to the penal substitutionary theory of the atonement, and evangelism tended to take the form of a lecture on how it worked. This reductionism marked a major shift from the theology of the reformers who understand the penal dimension of substitution as only one aspect of the vast accomplishment of Christ on the cross. Reducing salvation to one aspect of the atonement, however, completely eliminated the work of the Holy Spirit in salvation. While this reduction attends to issues of forgiveness and justification, it ignores issues of regeneration and eternal life and so many more.

While the influence of reductionism played its role, pragmatism became a guiding principle of church and denominational life as the century progressed. Southern Baptists organized their Sunday School program along the lines of a business model known as “Flake’s Formula.” The denomination streamlined its structure in the form of a great franchising pyramid scheme that proved highly successful, and as all pragmatists know, “You can’t argue with success.”

Redefining the Gospel

C. H. Dodd recognized the general confusion over the message of the gospel when he published The Apostolic Preaching and Its Developments in 1936. He set off a firestorm of debate over the content of the gospel message as he explored whether the apostles had a common formula for the gospel message. In light of his Anglican, Enlightenment assumptions about what he would find, Dodd declared in his opening salvo that the apostles drew a sharp distinction between “preaching” or what we might call evangelism, and “teaching” or what we might call discipleship. He also declares that a sharp distinction should be drawn between Paul’s gospel and any gospel that might be common to other early preachers. Preferring the term kerygma to the common English term gospel, Dodd uses his discussion as a tool to advance his own ideas about realized eschatology.

It is not within the scope of this essay to critique the problems with Dodd’s methodology and the extent of his assumptions which forced his conclusions. Rather, the case of Dodd demonstrates the extent to which a common understanding of the gospel as preserved by the church had collapsed by the middle of the third decade of the twentieth century.[8] The Modernist-Fundamentalist Controversy in the Presbyterian Church that spilled over across denominational boundaries in the United States managed to create dichotomies in the understanding of Christians about the gospel and its implications. The rift between the social gospel and the spiritual gospel illustrates the reductionist triumph over the historic faith as each side in the controversy rejected the legitimacy of their opponents’ concerns. Liberals discounted the need for salvation while conservatives dismissed the need to care for the physical needs of people.

The Age of the Gospel Formula

During the spiritual awakening of 1948–1963, a Hollywood candy salesman named Bill Bright incorporated a sales model when he produced a method of evangelism known as “The Four Spiritual Laws.” “The Four Spiritual Laws” is a witnessing booklet that moves the presenter toward “closing the sale.” A theological Calvinist, Bright designed his tract with the pragmatic objective to minimize questions and interruptions from the person to whom the booklet is presented as the presenter reads the booklet aloud. The training program for using the booklet includes tips on how to put off questions and comments that might disrupt the flow of the presentation.

James Kennedy, pastor of the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, wed Bright’s sales model to the catechetical method of the Reformed tradition when he created Evangelism Explosion in the 1960s. Evangelism Explosion uses a memorized model presentation and a training program that demonstrates how to use the model presentation in actual visits. Evangelism Explosion represents an explanation of how the penal substitution works. It includes two aspects of the gospel: (1) that Jesus Christ is fully human and fully God and (2) that Jesus died for our sins. In the extended version of the presentation, provision is made to state that Jesus is the Creator and “that God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and that the Trinity is one God.”[9] The extended version also makes reference to the resurrection and to Christ as Lord, Master, and King. It refers to him as coming into a life and sitting on the throne in the throne room of a life, but this explanation leaves out the work of the Holy Spirit who actually occupies and transforms a person.[10] The presentation explains that the death of Jesus on the cross was “the great transaction” whereby Jesus paid God for our sin and “purchased Heaven for us.”[11] The issue of forgiveness of sin does not arise in the presentation. The presentation discusses going to heaven, but it does not mention regeneration.

The Evangelism Section of the Home Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention negotiated for the rights to adapt Evangelism Explosion to their context, but when negotiations broke down, the Southern Baptists produced a modified version of Evangelism Explosion that they called Continuing Witness Training (CWT). The model presentation outline is essentially the same as that of Evangelism Explosion, but some different examples are employed. Nonetheless, Howard Ramsey, the director of the Personal Evangelism Department and the man responsible for the development of Continuous Witness Training, always insisted that CWT was not in any way dependent on Evangelism Explosion. This model presentation makes use of three elements of the gospel: (1) that Christ is fully human and fully God, (2) that he died for our sins, and (3) that he rose from the dead. The presentation follows “The Four Spiritual Laws” and Evangelism Explosion in its insistence that faith involves “Surrendering to Jesus as Lord.” Like the other presentations, however, it fails to mention the exaltation of Christ and the meaning of the statement “Jesus is Lord.” When challenged about why the presentation makes no mention of the Holy Spirit and regeneration, Howard Ramsey replied, “We didn’t want to confuse people with the Holy Spirit.”[12]

The response of Ramsey may represent a general trend in evangelical attitude toward the Christian faith. The trends toward reductionism and pragmatism compliment a desire to make things as simple as possible. The communication style popularized by seventy years of radio and television commercials has trained Americans to process information in small, digestible bites. The process of simplification discards what may require extra time to explain and even more time to understand.

All three of these highly influential plans for evangelism share a common basic outline that concerns (1) God’s plan and purpose, (2) human spiritual need, (3) the work of Christ to achieve salvation, and (4) human response to Christ. Greg Gilbert continues this tradition in his recent book What is the Gospel? (2010). This basic outline had formed the outline for John Stott’s influential book Basic Christianity published in 1958 and running through sixteen re-printings before the revised edition came out in 1971. Stott describes sin in terms of the failure to meet a moral code, to fall short of the good, to transgress the law or violate justice. He speaks of sin in legal terms as a violation of God’s law rather than as a violation of the relationship with God. He cites the Ten Commandments as the standard.[13] In terms of its breadth, however, Stott makes clear that sin involves alienation from God, bondage to self, and conflict with others. Rather than simply a legal problem, Stott argues that “sin is an inward corruption of human nature.”[14] Having recognized that sin is multi-dimensional, Stott explained that salvation is also multi-dimensional.

Following the imagery of C. S. Lewis in Mere Christianity, Stott describes Christianity as a “rescue mission.” In describing the rescue, Stott piles up the dimensions of salvation. The work of Christ involves liberation from sin as well as reconciliation. Stott stresses that reconciliation and atonement are the same concept. In his discussion of the cross, however, Stott divides the unity of the Trinity. Stott insists that Jesus was separated from God when he cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” He says:

He was bearing our sins. And God who is “of purer eyes than to behold evil” and cannot “look on wrong” turned away his face. The Lord Jesus Christ who was eternally with the Father, who enjoyed unbroken communion with him throughout his life on earth, was thus momentarily abandoned.[15]

Stott justifies his teaching that God turned his face from Jesus on the basis of his reading of Hab. 1:13. The problem with this interpretation of Habakkuk, of course, is that God can and does look on evil all the time. If God did not look on evil, then he has not seen anything on earth since Adam and Eve. Habakkuk is questioning God in the verse that Stott quotes. Nothing escapes God’s notice. Rather than God not being able to look on sin, it is sinful man that cannot look upon God, as God explained to Moses (Exod. 33:18–20). On the contrary, when the Son took on human sin, for the first time in eternity he could not behold the Father. Sin formed a barrier, but not because the Father had abandoned the Son. It is a very weak view of the Trinity that would allow us even to consider that one person of the Trinity could abandon another person of the Trinity. They are one. For a true abandonment to occur, they would have to be many.

Evangelism in the twentieth century insisted upon the deity of Christ, but not upon the unity and oneness of the Trinity. Stott continually insisted that Jesus was not “a third party wresting salvation for us from a God unwilling to save,” but he also admitted that he could not explain “how he can have been in Christ while he made Christ to be sin for us.”[16] The trouble occurs because at root, Stott presents the death of Christ as a great transaction between the Father and the Son, the way Kennedy and Evangelism Explosion do.

By stressing the penal aspect of substitutionary atonement to the neglect of other aspects of the substitutionary atonement, and by describing the atonement in terms of a transaction, evangelism in the United States over the last fifty years has eroded the gospel faith and reduced it to a kernel that Jehovah’s Witnesses might comfortably affirm. The transactional interpretation that separates the Father and the Son and leaves no place for the Holy Spirit results in an American church that has abandoned the Trinitarian faith of the New Testament as it conceives of salvation as strictly a matter of legal standing with God and a contractual right to accommodations in Heaven.

A Theological Trend

This problem relates to the general abandonment of the gospel as the heart of the Christian faith in America over the last fifty years. Millard Erickson, whose theological method reflects a long- standing evangelical tradition, addressed the question of the gospel message in his Christian Theology:

“The essential points of the gospel are Jesus Christ’s status as the Son of God, his genuine humanity, his death for our sins, his burial, resurrection subsequent appearances, and future coming in judgment.”[17]

In contrast to Erickson’s exposition of the New Testament to understand the gospel message, Wayne Grudem represents a new evangelical tradition spawned in the second half of the twentieth century. The preaching of the gospel involves three elements: an explanation of the facts concerning salvation, an invitation to respond to Christ personally in repentance and faith, and a promise of forgiveness and eternal life. As for the facts concerning salvation, Grudem reduces them to three:

1. All people have sinned (Rom. 3:23).
2. The penalty for our sin is death (Rom. 6:23).
3. Jesus Christ died to pay the penalty for our sins (Rom. 5:8).[18]

In keeping with the late twentieth-century evangelism tradition, Grudem reduces salvation to the legal issues related to sin. The problem of sin is seen as a legal issue rather than an ontological issue that strikes at the heart of human nature in contrast to the divine nature.

This modern trend can be seen in Grudem’s view of justification. Grudem speaks of justification, not in terms of a right relationship with God, but in terms of a right relationship to God’s laws. Thus he regards justification as a legal declaration rather than as a matter of actually making someone just or rightly related to God.[19] Grudem defines justification as “an instantaneous legal act of God in which he (1) thinks of our sin as forgiven and Christ’s righteousness as belonging to us, and (2) declares us to be righteous in his sight.”[20]

Grudem’s reductionist hermeneutic represents the trend in neo-Calvinism to depart from the earlier Calvinist tradition. The idea of not including the Holy Spirit and regeneration in an understanding of the gospel would have been abhorrent to those in the mainstream of the Calvinist tradition until the twentieth-century. Perhaps the greatest expositor of Calvinist doctrine in the twentieth-century was Martin Lloyd-Jones. Instead of speaking of the gospel, Lloyd-Jones had a preference for speaking of “the great doctrines” as the object of faith. Nonetheless, he identified what he regarded as the essential doctrines one must believe to be identified as regenerate. These essentials included belief in (1) a “holy, righteous God who is Judge of the universe,” (2) that people are sinful and must be saved from “the guilt of sin in the presence of this holy God,” (3) the person and work of Christ: “the priestly work, the mediatorial work, the atonement,” (4) and some aspects of the person and work of the Holy Spirit in regeneration.[21] One should note that until the twentieth century, the three-fold office of Christ as prophet, priest, and king was understood by Calvinists as an essential aspect of the gospel. These offices refer to the incarnation of God in Christ as prophet, the death of Christ and his exaltation as priest, and his glorious exalted reign culminating in the Second Coming as king. Salvation depends upon the totality of Christ, but more so, the totality of the Trinitarian God who saves. Thus, the gospel of historic Calvinism emphasized God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, as the Christian faith has historically affirmed for centuries through the creeds.

In contrast to Grudem, who reflects the more recent trends of American theology, J. I. Packer represents the historic stream that insists that the gospel message present Christ in his fullness. In Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, Packer insisted that the message of salvation cannot be reduced simply to a brief slogan. His lengthy exposition of the gospel arises from his concern about a general confusion in the evangelical world in 1961 related to evangelism. Packer declared, “The root of the confusion can be stated in a sentence. It is our widespread and persistent habit of defining evangelism in terms, not of a message delivered, but of an effect produced in our hearers.”[22]

The Pressure toward Simplification

Other pressures add to the desirability of simplification. Evangelicals faced a variety of controversies during the twentieth century, and each controversy provided an opportunity to omit something that might confuse people. When the Pentecostal Movement exploded on the scene following the Azusa Street Revival of 1906 and when the Charismatic Movement burst forth in the 1960s, the Holy Spirit became a controversial topic in many evangelical churches. It was simply easier not to confuse people with the Holy Spirit. Debates over the millennial reign of Christ, the rapture of the church, and the date of Christ’s return make it simpler not to talk about the Second Coming. The confusion of the Lordship of Christ with “works salvation” makes it simpler not to talk about the Exaltation of Christ. The combination of Process Theology and a Catholic resurgence of Thomist theology that placed emphasis on creation, plus the added weight of Karl Barth’s denunciation of natural theology and theological reference to creation, made reference to God as Creator suspect. With the emphasis on the environment and the re-emergence of the veneration of the earth as deity at the end of the century, God as Creator lost a place in the evangelical vocabulary. It was simpler not to talk about it with all the debate about science and religion. Even the place of Scripture had no place in the evangelical understanding of the gospel by the end of the twentieth-century. As a result, a good evangelical could present a sound theology of inspiration but could not explain why the Bible is different and unique among all the holy books of the world and why it has authority in guiding a person to salvation. It was simpler not to explain such things.

The twentieth-century witnessed the amazing disconnect among evangelicals between faith and doctrine, the gospel, and systematic theology. Christian doctrine is nothing more than the explanation of what the gospel means. Systematic theology is nothing more than the exposition of the gospel. Modern evangelism collapsed in the United States when Christians no longer recognized the good news of the faith. They no longer had anything to talk about. Witness training plans and evangelistic methods provided a crutch to help Christians limp through something to say. All evangelism programs are a sign of failure by the entire church, but especially its teachers for whom the gospel no longer has an immediate connection to life. From the powerful advance of the gospel in other parts of the world, we know that the message of Jesus has not lost its power. The steady decline of the evangelical church in America, following in the footsteps of the mainline Protestant churches, is a testimony to the neglect of the gospel by pastors, professors, and denominational leaders. It is a terrifying situation in light of the introduction to the first book written in the New Testament, Paul’s letter to the Galatians:

But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned! (Gal. 1:8–9).

Conclusion

At the end of the twentieth-century, George Barna confidently predicted that evangelical Christians would dominate American culture for the foreseeable future. After little more than a decade, evangelical Christianity lies in a shambles. Churches, denominations, institutions, and para-church ministries struggle. Ayn Rand seems to have replaced Jesus as the face of religious political conservatism. Many evangelical leaders have condemned the “Emerging Church” for abandoning cardinal Christian doctrines, but they fail to recognize that young evangelicals have been taught that doctrine is optional and non-binding. If the gospel is that Jesus died for our sins, without much awareness of what difference the resurrection makes, then anything else is simply what people have added.

In the face of the collapse of Christianity in the United States while it flourishes in other parts of the world, often in the face of persecution, a number of people have begun to question if we have lost the core of the gospel. Darrell Bock made an effort at regaining the gospel in Recovering the Real Lost Gospel: Reclaiming the Gospel as Good News (B&H Academic, 2010). He recognizes that we have a problem, and he realizes that the gospel addresses more than the issue of forgiveness, but he fails to see the pervasive repetition of the gospel story throughout all the New Testament books as he struggles to find the narrative structure that the person of Jesus Christ from eternity (Creation) to eternity (Second Coming) provides so clearly in the apostolic writings. Richard Stearns made an effort at addressing the problem of the lost gospel in The Hole in Our Gospel (Thomas Nelson, 2009). For Stearns, the gospel is best understood in terms of the ministry of Christ during his earthly incarnation. He correctly insists that the incarnation has been discarded from the gospel by most evangelicals, even though they would affirm its truth. In the end, however, Stearns suffers from the same reductionism as those he criticizes as he expresses the gospel in terms of one of its components.

Since I first raised these issues in The Gospel and Its Meaning (1996), I have had cause for despair and cause for hope. N. T. Wright in Simply Jesus (HarperOne, 2011) and Scot McKnight in The King Jesus Gospel (Zondervan, 2011) both share the common modern assumption that 1 Cor.15:3–4 represents the New Testament’s succinct statement of the gospel, yet Wright breaks away from this tradition to add that the gospel also includes the exaltation of Christ, and McKnight includes the incarnation of Christ. In The Best Kept Secret of Christian Mission (Zondervan, 2010), John Dickson recognizes that the Second Coming has a place in the gospel. By bits and pieces, significant theologians and pastors have begun to work their way back to the gospel from the twentieth century’s “sloganization” of the gospel.

If a person grew up in church and already knows what kind of God exists (the Creator), that the Bible is God’s word, that Jesus is both fully God and fully human, that Jesus is exalted to the dignity of God where he presides over the universe and his church, that he has possessed every believer by his Holy Spirit and transformed them from children of dust to children of God, and that one day he will judge the world in righteousness and institute the new creation, then a truncated gospel message that he died for our sins and rose for the dead is sufficient. It was for me. Most people, however, do not have such a background, and most churches neglect the teaching of sound doctrine, except that Jesus died for our sins and rose from the dead.

Notes

1. Carl. F. H. Henry, “Who Are the Evangelicals?” in Evangelical Affirmations (ed. Kenneth S. Kantzer and Carl F. H. Henry; Grand Rapids, MI: Acadamie, 1990), p. 77.
2. Ireneaus, Against Heresies, I. x. 1. Ante-Nicean Fathers, 1: p. 330.
3. Tertullian, On Prescription Against Heretics, XIII. Ante-Nicean Fathers, 3: p. 249.
4. Tertullian, On the Veiling of Virgins.
5. Origen, “Preface,” in De Principiis, The Writings of Origen, Volume 1 (trans. F. Crombie; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1869), pp. 3-4.
6. J. G. Davies, The Early Christian Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1965), p. 147, citing Apostolic Tradition, p. xxi; pp. 12-18.
7. John Bunyan, The Works of John Bunyan, Volume 2 (ed. George Offer; Glasgow: Blackie and Son, 1850), p. 129.
8. I have dealt with the debate that Dodd initiated in the first chapter of Harry Lee Poe, The Gospel and Its Meaning (Grand Rapids, IL: Zondervan, 1996).
9. D. James Kennedy, Evangelism Explosion, rev. ed. (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1977), p. 34.
10. Kennedy, Evangelism Explosion, p. 42.
11. Kennedy, Evangelism Explosion, p. 34.
12. Personal conversation between Howard Ramsey and Harry Lee Poe in July 1986 at Glorietta Baptist Assembly, New Mexico.
13. John R. W. Stott, Basic Christianity (Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 1971), pp. 64-5.
14. Stott, Basic Christianity, p. 76.
15. Stott, Basic Christianity, p. 93. Stott quotes from Hab. 1:13.
16. Stott, Basic Christianity, p. 94.
17. Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1991), p. 1063.
18. Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2000), p. 694.
19. Grudem, Systematic Theology, p. 722.
20. Grudem, Systematic Theology, p. 723.
21. Martin Lloyd-Jones, Great Doctrines of the Bible, Vol. 2 (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2003), pp. 150-51.
22. J. I. Packer, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1978.), p. 37.