Evangelical Review of Theology 48, 3 (August 2024)

The latest Evangelical Review of Theology is now online and available in its entirety as a pdf here.

Bruce Barron

Introduction to the Lausanne Articles and to This Issue

Hannes Wiher

50 Years of the Lausanne Movement

The Lausanne Movement is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year by holding its fourth global congress, in Incheon, Korea, on 22–28 September. In July 1974, 2,400 delegates from 150 countries met in Lausanne, Switzerland. Subsequently, the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization (LCWE) was formed, from which the Lausanne Movement emerged. In this article, I trace the historical background of the Lausanne Movement, including the circumstances of its birth and its development. I then set out its main theological positions, which are considered today as the basis of the evangelical identity. Finally, I evaluate the movement’s impact.

David W. Bennett

A Movement in Motion: A View from the Inside

What, exactly, is the Lausanne Movement? As it celebrates its 50th anniversary this year and prepares for the Fourth Lausanne Congress, to be held this September in Incheon, South Korea, how has the Lausanne Movement changed since the Third Lausanne Congress, which convened in Cape Town, South Africa, in 2010? What are some of the trends emerging within the movement, and the priorities shaping its direction?

Richard J. Mouw

Some Thoughts about a Divine Command Approach to Ethics

Christians treat the Ten Commandments as God’s law because he gave them to us. But is that a sufficient justification for ethics? Is God an arbitrary lawmaker to whom we must blindly submit because of his power and authority? Is it reasonable to trust God’s expertise? In this article, a long-respected evangelical ethicist offers mature reflections on these questions and more.

Thomas Paul Schirrmacher

Reflections on the Use and Misuse of Spiritual Gifts

Christians are often encouraged to figure out which spiritual gifts they do or do not have, so that they can function most effectively within the body of Christ. But we do not apply this concept consistently; for example, many churches make no effort to balance the gifts of various leaders or treat the head pastor as if he or she should possess all gifts. This article seeks to enhance our practical deployment of the diversity of abilities among believers.

Perry Shaw

Towards Indigenous Cosmopolitanism in Theological Education

Cross-cultural communication is difficult in any context due to conflicting worldviews, intellectual frameworks and cultural assumptions. It is even more difficult without sympathetic appreciation of the problem. Through acknowledgement, acceptance, appreciation and adaptation, it is possible to move to a posture of mutual enrichment in multicultural engagement.

Jill E. Nelson

Three Important Questions in Ministering to LGBTQ+ Persons

Evangelical Christians and congregations must deal with highly sensitive, practical questions on how to serve and minister to people with same-sex attraction while upholding the traditional biblical view of marriage and sexuality. This article presents a well-grounded approach to three such issues.

Worring Kashung

The Nagas’ Lohe Shawl and Galatians 3:28

The four Naga tribes of northeast India, regardless of their tribe, socio-economic status or gender, all wear the same type of shawl, known as the Lohe Shawl. This inclusive tradition could be a contemporary life illustration of Galatians 3:28 – except that the Nagas do not fully live out the shawl’s implications or properly apply Paul’s climactic declaration that ‘all are one in Christ Jesus.’ This article carefully pairs real-life and biblical exegesis to deepen the power of a classic Pauline lesson.

Evaluating Kwame Bediako’s Legacy

Book Reviews

Themelios 44, 1 (April 2019)

The latest Themelios is online here (and available here as a single pdf), containing the below articles. This issue contains the irenic exchange of views on spiritual gifts between Andrew Wilson and Thomas R. Schreiner (both of whom have recently published books on the topic) at the 2018 Annual Meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society in the Perspectives on the Spiritual Gifts session.

Editorial

Brian J. Tabb

Themelios Then and Now: The Journal’s Name, History, and Contribution

Strange Times

Daniel Strange

Sad Solo

Andrew Wilson

The Continuation of the Charismata

This article first defines the scope of the debate over whether or not Christians today should earnestly desire spiritual gifts, especially prophecy. The author then offers three key arguments for the charismatic position and concludes by raising and responding to the strongest argument for cessationism.

Thomas R. Schreiner

A Response to Andrew Wilson

Thomas R. Schreiner

It All Depends Upon Prophecy: A Brief Case for Nuanced Cessationism

Nuanced cessationism can be defended from a number of angles, but one of the most significant is from the nature of prophecy. The argument defended here is that NT prophecy is infallible and inerrant just like OT prophecy. Various arguments are given by some continuationists to establish the fallibility of NT prophecy, but it is argued here that they are unconvincing. Since NT prophecy is infallible and inerrant like OT prophecy and since the church is established upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets (Eph. 2:20), we have significant evidence that NT prophets no longer exist today inasmuch as the doctrinal foundation of the church has been laid once for all. First Corinthians 13:8–13 is a good argument for all the gifts lasting until the second coming, but this text does not demand that all the gifts continue until the second coming.

Andrew Wilson

A Response to Tom Schreiner

Richard M. Blaylock

Towards a Definition of New Testament Prophecy

Despite a number of recent proposals, scholars have yet to reach a consensus regarding what the New Testament prophets were actually doing when they prophesied. In this essay, I attempt to make a contribution to New Testament studies by working towards a definition of New Testament prophecy. I proceed in three steps. First, I survey five different views on the nature of New Testament prophecy. Second, I analyze relevant texts from the New Testament to answer the question: what kind of an activity was New Testament prophecy? Third, I evaluate the arguments made for both limited prophetic authority and full prophetic authority. On the basis of the study, I conclude that prophetic activity in the New testament (1) is a human act of intelligible communication that (2) is rooted in spontaneous, divine revelation and (3) is empowered by the Holy Spirit, so that prophecy (4) consists in human speech or writing that can be attributed to the members of the Godhead and (5) that always carries complete divine authority.

Vern S. Poythress

The Boundaries of the Gift of Tongues: With Implications for Cessationism and Continuationism

Speaking in tongues potentially includes three subcategories: (1) known language; (2) unknown language; and (3) language-like utterance – an utterance consists of language-like sounds but does not belong to any actual human language. Category (3) occurs today in charismatic circles. Given that the church in Corinth was permissive, it can be inferred that category (3) may have occurred at Corinth. Moreover, each of the three categories can occur either in inspired, infallible form or noninspired, fallible form. Thus, it is possible to hold a cessationist view of inspiration (no more infallible utterances) and a continuationist view with respect to noninspired forms.

Ben C. Dunson

Biblical Words and Theological Meanings: Sanctification as Consecration for Transformation

Protestants have traditionally understood sanctification as God’s work of gradual spiritual transformation over the entire life of every believer. Recent biblical scholarship has argued that such a definition does not actually correspond with the meaning of biblical terminology for sanctification, which refers to a single and definitive setting apart of believers at conversion. Some have also insisted that this calls into question the wisdom of using the word “sanctification” to describe how God transforms Christians throughout their lives. This article examines these competing perspectives, concluding that biblical terminology for sanctification, while indeed definitive in nature (indicating a once-for-all action occurring at conversion), is also integrally connected in the Bible with the process of spiritual transformation begun at conversion. The article then provides some reflections on how definitive and progressive dimensions of sanctification can (and should) be held together in a doctrine of sanctification.

Lydia McGrew

Finessing Independent Attestation: A Study in Interdisciplinary Biblical Criticism

The claim that some incident or saying in the Gospels is multiply and independently attested is sometimes made in the wrong way by biblical scholars. Insights from formal epistemology can help to sharpen the requirements for alleging independent attestation to avoid such problems. In the course of this analysis it becomes clear that independent attestation is entangled with the connection between the documents and the facts, so that it is not possible simultaneously to theorize that the differences between accounts are due to the authors’ embellishment while also arguing persuasively that the accounts have the relevant kind of independence for multiple attestation. I discuss three cases where independence has either been claimed inaccurately or has been claimed in such a way that the scholar’s own theory blocks the route to arguing independence. This study illustrates the need for cross-disciplinary interaction in biblical criticism.

Michael Allen

Disputation for Scholastic Theology:Engaging Luther’s 97 Theses

The essay first seeks to unpack the anthropological and soteriology teaching of Martin Luther’s diatribe “against scholastic theology,” that is, against Semi-Pelagian or Pelagian moral anthropology in his 97 Theses of September 1517. Second, the essay turns to ways in which the theological task is located by Luther in the history of sin and grace, thus connecting his teaching against the anthropology of the scholastics with his methodology for studying theology academically, further clarifying the precise nature of the objections to scholasticism raised by Luther and other reformers (such as Calvin). Third, the essay concludes by charting a set of four protocols for systematic or scholastic theology today, so as to reconfigure the intellectual practice as an exercise in intellectual asceticism or discipleship that is part of the broader process of the sanctification of human reason.

Book Reviews

Romans 12: God’s New People #7 – Radical Belonging

For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.

Romans 12:4-8

By the oversight of the Holy Spirit, while Romans was written for us, it wasn’t written to us. As Peter Oakes invites us to imagine in Reading Romans in Pompeii: Paul’s Letter at Ground Level, it was written to Holconius the craftworker and the Christians who gathered in his workshop every Sunday. How would it have been heard by them?

Almost certainly, as residents of the Roman world of the first century, they would be familiar with the use of ‘body’ as a metaphor for harmony and cooperation. Except there the analogy was used to call the commoners to work for the good of the senators or the state; here those who are gifted work for the good of the whole body – and all are gifted.

A body where ‘each member belongs to all the others’, where a householder and a slave are equally dependent on each other, would undermine the status system of first-century Rome. Centuries later, whenever we’re tempted to feel superior to fellow members in the body of Christ, it still does. How could it be otherwise when the different gifts flow from God’s grace to each of us and are given for the good of the whole body?

The similarities and differences with other lists of gifts in Paul’s letters suggests it’s not intended to be a complete catalogue. Of the ones mentioned here, several of them have to do with the practical assistance of those in need. While some would be exercised during the time of meeting, others would be more applicable outside that context. All of them are concerned with our responsibility to one another, and are to be exercised with diligence and passion. None of them require calling to a special office.

The overall picture is of a community marked by the inspired disclosure of God’s word, a wellbeing that comes from service, teaching that builds people up, encouragement which helps fellow believers live out their obedience to Jesus, sharing generously with those in need, which is led diligently and well, characterised by a cheerful mercy that imitates God himself.

Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that?

Radical Belonging

I contributed today’s ‘Word for the Week’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.

Romans 12:4-8

By the oversight of the Holy Spirit, while Romans was written for us, it wasn’t written to us. As Peter Oakes invites us to imagine in Reading Romans in Pompeii: Paul’s Letter at Ground Level, it was written to Holconius the craftworker and the Christians who gathered in his workshop every Sunday. How would it have been heard by them?

Almost certainly, as residents of the Greco-Roman world of the first century, they would be familiar with the use of ‘body’ as a metaphor for harmony and cooperation. Except that where the analogy was used to call the commoners to work for the good of the senators or the state, here those who are gifted work for the good of the whole body – and all are gifted.

A body where ‘each member belongs to all the others’, where a householder and a slave are equally interdependent, would undermine the status system of first-century Rome. Centuries later, whenever we’re tempted to feel superior to fellow members in the body of Christ, it still does. How could it be otherwise when the different gifts flow from God’s grace to each of us and are given for the good of the whole body?

The similarities and differences with other lists of gifts in Paul’s letters suggests it’s not intended to be a complete catalogue. Of the ones mentioned here, several of them have to do with the practical assistance of those in need. While some would be exercised during the time of meeting, others would be more applicable outside that context. All of them are concerned with our responsibility to one another, and are to be exercised with diligence and passion. None of them require calling to a special office.

The overall picture is of a community marked by the inspired disclosure of God’s word, a wellbeing that comes from service, teaching that builds people up, encouragement which helps fellow believers live out their obedience to Jesus, sharing generously with those in need, which is led diligently and well, characterised by a cheerful mercy that imitates God himself.

Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that?

It would be all too easy to bemoan how we fail to live up to that picture rather than ask instead how we might contribute to it, how we too might belong to the body of Christ.