We Evangelicals and Our Mission

How We Got to Where We Are and How to Get to Where We Should Be Going

David J. Hesselgrave, Lianna Davis

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781725271296
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

Classical orthodoxy, the Reformational understanding of the gospel, and the Great Awakening beliefs and behaviors, including missions/missiology, reflect what the evangelical movement and its mission should be if it is to have a future. Evangelicals must work and pray together in resubmission of their ways of thinking and working to the Word and the ministry of the Holy Spirit. They must recover the faith of the fathers and the mission of the revivalists. Nothing less will rescue American missions from a marginal role. Nothing less will reinvigorate historic doctrine and get missions back on the track to world evangelization.

Part I: Evangelicals and the Great Tradition of Christian Thinking

A decade or so ago, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (TEDS) published a Festschrift in honor of church historian John D. Woodbridge entitled The Great Commission: Evangelicals and the History of World Missions.1 In the Festschrift, Trinity’s associate professor of church history and the history of Christian thought, Douglas A. Sweeney, provides several definitions of “evangelical” as offered by scholars of other schools and backgrounds. He then offers a stipulated definition of his own. Each of the definitions/descriptions has something to commend it, but in this book, I prefer to adopt and adapt Sweeney’s definition because it is grounded in church and mission history. He says,

I prefer to describe evangelicalism with more specificity as a movement that is based on classical Christian orthodoxy, shaped by a Reformational understanding of the gospel, and distinguished from other such movements in the history of the church by a set of beliefs and behaviors forged in the fires of the eighteenth-century revivals—the so-called “Great Awakening” . . . —beliefs and behaviors that had mainly to do with the spread of the gospel abroad.2

I agree. I believe that the “stakes,” “tethers,” and “cords” of classical orthodoxy; the Reformation understanding of the gospel; and Great Awakening beliefs and behaviors including missions/missiology reflect what the evangelical movement and its mission should be if it is to have a future (Figure 1). It goes without saying that I cannot do justice to the whole of that history. I probably will not do justice to all that Sweeney has in mind, and for that I apologize. I ask the reader to think of what follows in Part I as no more than a series of snapshots of the history involved and to do his or her own study to fill in the gaps of which there will be many.

Figure 1. Three sources of Evangelicalism

Of the many references that undergird Part I, a little book on the great tradition coauthored by David Dockery and Timothy George and published by Crossway has been most helpful to my purpose.3 Of the words used in the title of that book the one most likely to give pause to some readers is the word “tradition.” However, Dockery and George quote the Methodist scholar Thomas Oden, who says, “All that is meant by tradition, then, is the faithful handing down from generation to generation of scripture interpretation consensually received worldwide and cross-culturally through two millennia.”4 Oden’s phraseology is worth pondering—“scripture interpretation,” “consensually received,” “worldwide and cross-culturally,” “handed down through two millennia.” That is precisely what we are attempting to discover here, and it is not only good, it is “essential to evangelicalism.”

1. Sweeney, “Introduction.” See also, Sweeney, American Evangelical Story, 82.

2. Sweeney, “Introduction,” 2.

3. Dockery and George, Great Tradition.

4. Oden, Rebirth of Orthodoxy, 32.

Chapter 1

“Based on Classical Christian Orthodoxy”

Acknowledging a special debt to Douglas Sweeney’s historically oriented definition of what it means to be evangelical on the one hand, and what has proved to be a complementary study of The Great Tradition of Christian Thinking by David Dockery and Timothy George on the other, we begin our study with the early church and the apostolic fathers. With the completion of the earthly ministry of the Lord Jesus and his return to the Father, where did they find true doctrine and divine direction? Paul answers that question in large part when, addressing the church at Thessalonica, he admonished believers to “stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter” (2 Thess 2:15). The Christian great tradition begins with the inspiration and inscripturation of the word of God and proceeds with its proclamation, dissemination, and instruction.

The Scripture Canon: The Old and New Testaments

Wherever the Christian faith has been found, there has been a close association with the written Word of God, with books, education, and learning. Studying and interpreting the Bible became natural for the early Christian community, having inherited the practice from late Judaism.5

The great tradition is not only rooted in the biblical text itself but also in the history of the study and interpretation of the biblical text. It shows that, historically, Bible interpretation was informed by approaches inherited from intertesta­mental Judaism and the Graeco-Roman world of the apostles. However, with the passing of the apostles various needs surfaced: the need for an authoritative Scripture canon, the need to clarify and defend apostolic beliefs and practices, the need to encounter and counter false religionists, the need to reply to heresies within the church, and the need to respond to persecution from without the church. In one form or another—and to one or another degree—these challenges continued and were met by the church throughout the classical period and beyond.

The sing...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Illustrations and Tables
• Foreword
• Preface
• Prolegomenon
• Part I: Evangelicals and the Great Tradition of Christian Thinking
• Part II: Ecumenism and Evangelicalism in Modern Times: An Overview
• Part III: Controversial Issues in Contemporary Missions/Missiology
• Postscript
• One Millennial’s Response Essay
• Bibliography