Frank DeLalla

I use the term Evangelical often.  It’s impossible not to, especially when I’m teaching.  It clarifies my perspective, and serves as short hand for a long list of ideas.  It means one believes that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone.  It means one believes Jesus is God and so on.  It means that one believes in the core ideas of a broadly reformed Christian faith—a simple, New Testament faith.  But especially, it speaks to one’s perspective on the Scriptures as being the inerrant, authoritative, inspired Word of God in the original manuscripts.  At least that’s what I mean by it. :-/

Not a bad thing to be!  But of course the term brings other baggage with it that I do not intend by its usage. I recently found a take on what it means (or at least what it should mean) to be an Evangelical that I wish would come to the minds of every reader and/or listener when it is spoken.  From Bruce Waltke’s, An Old Testament Theology:  

I accept the inerrancy of Scripture as to its Source and its infallibility as to its authority.  My spiritual conviction is intellectually defensible.  The finite mind is incapable of coming to infinite truth and moreover is depraved.  To live wisely I need to inspired revelation of the divine reality by which I can judge the wisdom or the folly, the right or the wrong, of my thoughts and actions.  But I dare not presume to understand how or what this revelation means before coming to it on its own terms.  I must allow the Bible to dictate how it seeks to reveal God’s truth.  I study how it writes history; I examine and lean to recognize the different forms of literature:  poetry, narrative, prophecy, and so on.  I consider the Bible utterly trustworthy, and I commit my life to it, but I do not presume to know beforehand the exact nature of its parts.  With this posture, I continue to learn and allow myself to be taught and corrected by the BIble. (Page 77, emphasis added.)

I particularly love the phrase “this posture,” but more on that in a moment. 

He contrasts this with 4 other types of Christian attitudes toward the Bible.  He classifies Evangelicalism (at its best) as standing under the Bible.  A close but misguided relative of Evangelicalism is Fundamentalism, which Waltke describes as standing upon the Bible.  Waltke writes, 

By “fundamentalists” I mean here those who presume the Bible does not stray from their standards of accuracy, especially in matters of science and historiography.  They presume their interpretive horizon represents truth and that the biblical writers, though writing in an ancient environment, will not stray from the “accuracy” of their modern horizon.  But the ancient standards do not necessarily conform to modern standards.  The only legitimate human standard by which the bible can be measured is the logic of noncontradiction.  Paradox may be incomprehensible, but contradiction is “non-sense.”  What I have in mind here is that fundamentalists do not “stand under” the Bible long enough to “understand” it.  Sometimes they, thought well-intentioned, advertise “the Bible as it is for men as they are,” but they neglect the prior question of whether “men as they are are fit for the Bible as it is.” (Emphasis added.)

So a Fundy knows what the Bible means before he reads it!  It confirms him in his ideas!  It must, because he got them from the Bible, right?  

We’re all subject to that kind of self-confirming reading of the Bible.  Humility calls for a different posture in reading.  The posture is the one described by James in 1:25

James 1:25 But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.

This phrase, “looks into” not only describes what such a person is doing, but the way they are doing it.  The Greek term indicates a certain curiosity, which in my mind cannot exist in the heart of the Fundamentalist (as described above).  It calls us to a posture of humility that assumes God is going to show us ourselves as we really are if we come to it with authenticity, and brokenness.  It assumes that I’ll find myself lacking and need to repent daily.  Repent, not only of things I do, but of who I am and things I wrongly hold to be true about myself, my God, and the Scriptures themselves. 

Psalms 139:23–24   Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! 24 And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!