The Interpretive Tradition of Modern Evangelicalism

Introduction

In the last article, we established that the idea of “solo scriptura,” or reading the Bible in isolation, is not a feature of Protestantism. Unfortunately, during the 19th century, this became one of the main pillars of American Evangelicalism. There aren’t many great histories of the church after the 19th century, so much of my views here will be my own interpretation of events as I know them to have occurred. I’m sure many people have a different perspective on what exactly caused Protestants to move away from Reformed confessions, but I might find agreement with my peers that a significant shift began in the late 1800’s in London with what is called “The Downgrade Controversy.” Charles Spurgeon was at the center of this controversy, wherein he fought back against the denial of infallibility of Scripture, Christ’s atonement, hell, and the affirmation of universalism. While this was happening in London, we see a similar phenomenon in America with the Second Great Awakening (early-mid 1800’s) and the birth of revivalism, Mormonism, Seventh-day Adventism (late 1800’s), Jehovah’s Witness, and eventually the publishing of the Scofield Reference Bible in 1909.

Chaos in the Western Church

It is difficult to organize the amount of chaos that occurred in the Western church in the 19th and 20th centuries, but the easiest observation here is that there was a lot of schisms and chaos. In all of the major splits, we see the common through line of the belief that there was no single interpretive tradition of the Bible. Charles Taze Russel rejected Presbyterianism, and advocated for personal Bible study and the establishment of Christ’s Kingdom on earth. Joseph Smith received private revelation from what he perceived to be an angel, in opposition to Galatians 1:6-9 and 2 Timothy 3:16. Seventh Day Adventism was born out of the Second Great Awakening and the reinterpretation of Daniel’s prophecies and the Christian Sabbath. The most egregious example of abandoning the interpretive lens of the Protestants was obviously John Nelson Darby’s dispensationalism, which I will handle in a much more thorough article. Protestantism quickly devolved from confessional tradition to revivalism, private interpretations, and an abandonment of the Reformed Catholicism that was born out of the Protestant Reformation. In order to try and organize this chaos, here is a partial list of departures from Reformed Orthodoxy between the 19th and 20th centuries:

1. The acceptance of private interpretations of Scripture over the confessional interpretive traditions (1689 LBCF, 1646 WCF, Three Forms of Unity, Augsburg Confession, 39 Articles, Savoy Declaration, etc.)
2. The allowance of new revelation via prophecies, dreams, visions, and angels (Mormonism, Eschatological Cults, etc.)
3. The reinterpretation of passages to account for cultural changes, world events, and wars (Dispensationalism, Seventh Day Adventism, etc.)
4. The shift from covenant family discipleship to revivalism and missions (Billy Graham Crusades, etc.)
5. The rise of perfectionism and Wesleyanism (Oneness Pentecostalism, Methodism, Fundamentalism, etc.)
6. Denominational downgrades in the academy and response to Darwin and other scientific theories (PCUSA, Princeton, Harvard, etc.)

There of course is a lot more that I could list, but these were significant departures from the Protestant tradition that had held for several centuries. The Protestant churches were going through a reformation of their own. Unlike the Protestant Reformation, which had “Ad Fontes” as its battle cry, this new reformation hurtled forwards, exploring new theological paths. By the mid 20th century, there was not a single version of Protestantism characterized by its lineage to the Reformation, there was a brand of Western Evangelicalism who had sectarianism and isolationism as her main features. As far as I can tell, there was not a single thread that tied all of these movements together, though they all shared one thing in common with the Downgrade Controversy, rejection of the infallibility of Scripture and/or rejection of historical interpretive principles. Western Evangelicalism was facing its own crisis, similar to when Rome had three popes at the same time during the Western Schism (1409-1417).

Chaos, and More Chaos

I know it’s exceedingly difficult to keep track of all of the church authorities in the West, but the end product of the 19th and 20th centuries was the full adoption of pluralism in Western Evangelicalism. Every branch, denomination, and sect could believe antithetical things about the faith while still being considered “Protestant.” Here’s a list of just some of the things that are considered Protestantism in the West.

Protestantism is:

1. Arminianism and Calvinism
2. Peadobaptistic and Credo baptistic (Infant baptism vs. adult believer’s baptism)
3. Unitarian, Modalism, Social Trinitarian, and Classical Trinitarian
4. Cessationist and Continuationist (No more prophecy vs. ongoing prophecy)
5. Covenantal, Non-Covenantal, and Dispensational
6. Synergistic and Monergistic (Faith and works salvation vs. Salvation by faith alone)

It’s clear that the average person has adopted the understanding that anything can be Christianity. Many church historians credit the Enlightenment for the widespread adoption of relativism in the age of reason. The enlightenment, among other things, emphasized empiricism, individualism, religious tolerance, natural rights, and constant progress. BB Warfield, known as the Lion of Princeton, was the Charles Hodge Chair at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1887. It is common to say that he was the last bastion against the enlightenment at Princeton, though others say he actually ushered it in. Some of you might be shocked to learn that Princeton, the fourth oldest university in the US and one of the premier ivy league institutions in the world, was founded as a Reformed Presbyterian seminary in the aftermath of the Great Awakening. The point is, something happened to Christianity in the US, and it happened nearly overnight.

It’s overwhelming to try and organize all of the events of the 19th and 20th centuries into one, unified story. It’s almost as if the Western Protestant movement was hit from every side, all at once, by a multitude of attacks. The result is that Christianity was placed in a blender with everything else in the world and pureed into an indistinguishable goo. Now in the 21st century, we have the aftermath of the storm that hit Western Christianity over the last 150 years or so.

Christianity Today

Despite the aforementioned theological tribulation of the church, there was one thing that American Christians did not lose until very recently – the traditional Christian ethic. Even though the theological core of Protestantism had been dismantled, Christians maintained traditional views on marriage, children, the role of men and women, the household, modesty, substance abuse, justice, and a general aversion to degeneracy. In the last 25 years, perhaps 50 years, the church has abandoned most of those values. This is no surprise, considering the theological foundation which held these views together had been deconstructed. The theological rot came first, followed by the cultural rot. It just took longer to shake the moral frameworks. It is important to note that the Roman Catholic church was infected this way as well, and she too struggles internally with many of the same issues as the Protestants. Roman Catholic apologists will deny this, but Pope Francis often taught universalist doctrines and pro-progressive politics, in addition to publicly holding views against Vatican I. Such is to say, that Roman Catholic apologists claim that Rome has insulated herself from the same rot as Protestantism, though they would be mistaken or lying.

In the wake of the 20th century, an amorphous blob of Christian tribes emerged, all bearing the name, “Protestant.” Though there are distinct Christian identities in the US, such as Assemblies of God or the Southern Baptist Convention, it is more reasonable to say that American Christianity is defined by radical individualism. Every Christian, across all denominations, is taught that individual belief is what makes one a Christian, and everything after that is a simple matter of preference. The problem with this is that the only Christian distinctive remaining is not concerned with the substance of what one believes. If everybody had the same understanding of who Jesus Christ is and what faith means, then this individualism certainly wouldn’t be any cause for serious concern. At face value, it seems perfectly simple and effective to say that anybody who places their faith in Jesus is a Christian. However, in a pluralistic society, there are dozens, if not hundreds of versions of Jesus. If a bike is defined as anything with wheels, then saying, “I rode my bike to the store” could mean that you rode in your car, or even that you scootered. Many American Christians believe that Jesus is just the Father in human form. That is a distinctly different Jesus than that of the Reformed or even the Roman Catholics. Having two friends named “Bill” doesn’t make them the same person because they share the same name.

In the same way, America has multiple versions of Jesus, therefore multiple Christianities. The question is not, “Do you follow Christ?” it is “Which Christ do you follow?” Now combine this reality with the fact that the vast majority of churches do not define these things in their doctrinal statements, a person believing any number of versions of Christ can be a communicate member of a church while not believing what the church teaches by virtue of semantics. This is further evidence that the term Protestant doesn’t serve much of a purpose. Protestants in the US, in many cases, do not share the same Jesus, the same liturgical practices, or even the same ethics. This is even true within denominational agreement. Note how different one PCA church can be from another. This radical individualism makes it impossible to have any unity in American Christianity. It also makes it quite difficult to point at a Christian church or denomination, and say with confidence, “This is what they believe.” The reality is, you can’t know unless you personally survey every member of that church.

This of course is true in the Western and Eastern magisterial churches, but these institutions at least attempt to create unity through church structure and bureaucracy. Rather than being a bug, this is actually a feature of how Protestants behave in the US. Every Christian is taught to engage in their own private study, come up with new interpretations, new translations, and to neglect historical orthodoxy. I cannot count how many times I have been in a church small group where somebody attempted to share their crazy thoughts on what Paul was really saying, or that they have come up with a new translation of Scripture that is the closest to what the original actually says. The simple observation here is that in America, there are endless versions of Christianity, even within the mainline Protestant denominations.

That is why, when somebody says, “America is a Christian Nation,” I don’t know what to think of it. What version of Christianity is America? It’s not the version that I was taught in my personal or pastoral studies, that’s for sure. Of course there are many that will try to invoke the no true Scotsman fallacy, but it does not apply here at all. In this case, the Scotsman is actually an Ethiopian and the sugar is salt and the porridge is actually spaghetti. Which is to say that in our case, we are not discussing a Scotsman putting sugar in his porridge, we are discussing an Ethiopian putting salt on spaghetti and saying, “Ah but no true Scotsman would put sugar on is porridge.” The no true Scotsman fallacy isn’t a blanket excuse to violate the law of identity.

If we are to gain progress in our discussion, we must be willing to acknowledge that Christianity can be defined, and that there are ways to practice it, and ways not to practice it. Right now, in America, we mostly see example after example of how not to practice it. With this analysis, I believe I have finally laid the groundwork for discussing what exactly Christianity is in America. I fear it will be a difficult task to identify all of the various parts, but I will do my best.