The Existential Crisis of Evangelicalism: Why N.T. Wright Generates So Much Heat

I have been enjoying the series over on Andrew Katay’s blog about (among other things) his stance towards the New Perspectives on Paul. As someone who has been greatly encouraged by the writings of the most popular author associated with this movement, N. T. Wright, and as a person with strong Evangelical convictions, I thought I would engage in a little sociological speculation as to why N. T. Wright is able to whip us Evangelicals up into such a defensive and somewhat confused frenzy.

The reason is, I suggest, that Evangelicalism harbors an uneasy alliance between a deep conservatism and the radical Protestant principle of sola scriptura. Let me explain.

Evangelicalism is a conservative cultural movement. By this, I don’t mean that it holds old-fashioned views, or is committed to certain political values of one stripe or another. I mean that it is a movement that will always try to conserve existing structures, practices, systems and values, before it will try to change existing structures, practices, systems and values. The opposite of this institutional attitude would be something like a progressivism that is disposed to challenge existing arrangements, and frequently try out new structures, practices, systems and values. In the abstract, I don’t think either is better, and in their most popular incarnations, viz. as political models, they both have their excesses and blind spots. Combine this conservative disposition with a hierarchical and deferential institutional arrangement, and you have a recipe for a cultural movement that is geared towards maintaining the status quo of its own organization and collective self-conception. So that’s the first peg: Evangelicalism tends to be, and certainly is in Sydney, conservative in the sense just described.

The second peg is this. My little corner of Evangelicalism is also proudly and strongly committed to its Reformed heritage, and this is often given expression by affirming the five sola‘s, one of which is sola scriptura. However you want to fill this out, sola scriptura will end up meaning something like: the bible is to be the sole authority in matters of life and doctrine. Or as one of our own poets has said, the chief hallmark of Evangelicalism is the disposition to believe whatever the bible can be accurately shown to teach, and to allow this to deeply shape peoples’ lives. This is a radical doctrine because it lays out a strong, one-way principle of authority. Evangelicalism always claims to put itself under the authority of whatever scripture can be accurately shown to teach. Therefore, Evangelicalism is never in a position to maintain any of its settled habits, convictions, values or institutions if they turn out to be opposed by the bible.

So. What happens when a conservative sociological movement is told that by its own lights, it has been getting some things wrong? What happens when a conservative movement is told that it has good reasons, in virtue of a consideration that it values terribly highly, that some part of the status quo - be it doctrinal, institutional, or cultural – has got to go? Well. It freaks out! It is predisposed to take exactly these kinds of reasons more seriously than any other reasons, but it is also predisposed, well, not to change. One part of its self-conception directly clashes with another. Call this, the existential crisis of Evangelicalism.

In my opinion, this is what seems to be happening with Evangelicalism’s reaction to N. T. Wright. The reason N. T. Wright generates so much heat is because he confronts Evangelicalism with an instance of this crisis moment. He fundamentally agrees with Evangelicalism that understanding and listening to the bible is supremely important. But he believes that popular Evangelicalism, in some measure, can improve in doing just that. His message is, in some part, that Evangelicalism ought to let its conservative tendencies give way to its sola scriptura commitments, at least on some important front.

I’m sure that N.T. Wright isn’t the first critic from within to be received in such a way by Evangelicalism. It would be interesting for a historian to fill out this picture by recounting how Evangelicalism has dealt with what I’ve called its existential crisis at other points in its history.

Scripture, Authority, and Faith

An an Evangelical Christian, one of the things I just love to say, is that I take the Bible seriously. One of our great-grandaddy’s, John Stott, once said that this is the hallmark of Evangelical Christianity – the disposition to believe whatever the Bible can be accurately shown to teach, and to allow it to shape your life.

However, this statement has its limits. It is clearly polemical, implying that all other Christians don’t take the Bible seriously. It is also not that illuminating. ‘What exactly would it be to take the Bible seriously?’ you might genuinely ask. Here is one of the more thought-provoking treatments of this question that attempts to fill out the notion.

If we need to say more about the Scriptures than that they are authorized, perhaps we may follow John Webster in speaking of their ‘sanctification’ for their work. That means simply that God has set them apart. As he  has set apart a particular member of the that race for the salvation of the world, so he has set apart particular  writers to bear a definite and decisive  testimony to what he has done. It was, of course, a human testimony they had to bear, a work performed in human ways by human servants. In a thousand ways, the texts that lie between the covers of our Bibles show that they are the product of painstaking and creative human labor and reception. But we must be careful what we make of that word ‘human’. If we glide from speaking of their humanity into implying some kind of inadequacy in them, as though their being human were a shameful secret we have laid bare, a deficiency we are now in a position to patch up, then it is we, not they, that must stand  charged with ignorance and superstition. The humanity of the Scriptures does not entitle us to patronize them. Just as we speak of the sinlessness of the human being Jesus of Nazareth, and some Christians speak of the immaculate human conception of the Virgin Mary, so we may speak quite appropriately of a perfection of Holy Scripture. Its perfection is sui generis, a fitness for its own assigned task. The perfection of the Psalms does not consist in their being the most perfectly metrical verses or containing the most perfect poetic imagery. The perfection of the letters of Paul does not consist in their being the highest examples of epistolary elegance. Neither does the perfection of the historical books consist in their being the most unambiguous records or the  most discerning evaluation of sources.

The only perfection that counts is this: that God truly attests himself and his deeds through this poetry, these letters, this history. The faith required of the reader of Holy Scripture  is obedience to the testimony that God bears within them, and that is one and the same as the faith that  leads to salvation.

– Oliver O’Donovan, Church in Crisis (2008), p. 55-56

Rowan Williams on Liberal Theology

What characterizes theological liberalism is its habit of cultural sensitivity and intellectual flexibility that does not seek to close down unexpected questions too quickly.

– Rowan Williams, ‘The Challenge and Hope of Being an Anglican Today’ (2006)

A hallmark of evangelicalism’s self-identity is its separation from theological liberalism. However, when the distinction is leaned on, it can sometimes be hard to see exactly what this distinction consists in, and what is virtuous about the evangelical position.  Without, of course, wanting to detract from evangelicalism, I found this quote from the current Archbishop of Canterbury to be quite thought-provoking. Meeting unexpected questions with patience and care sounds like something  pretty good, and isn’t incompatible with creedal fidelity.

Norms In Evangelical Reasoning

When really serious issues are at stake and talk of doctrines ‘upon which the church stands or falls’ begins to rumble like thunder, urging the search for resolution can seem like an invitation to capitulate, to concede essential points before beginning. It can seem as though Scripture is deemed to be inconclusive and ambiguous, so that either side is free to concede the possible right of the other’s interpretation. It can seem as though what is needed is an indefinite irresolution about everything important, in which there is no need for, and no possibility of, a decisive closure.

But that is all a trick of the light…

None of this is implied in the search for agreement. The only thing I concede in committing myself to such a process is that if I could discuss the matter through with an opponent sincerely committed to the church’s authorities, Scripture chief among them, the Holy Spirit would open up perspectives that are not immediately apparent, and that patient and scrupulous pursuit of these could lead at least to giving the problem a different shape – a shape I presume will be compatible with, though not precisely identical to, the views my opponent now holds, even if I cannot yet see how. I do not have to think I may be mistaken about the cardinal points of which I am convinced. The only thing I have to think – and this, surely, is not difficult on such a subject! – is that there are things still to be learned by one who is determined to be taught by Scripture how to read the age in which we live.

– Oliver O’Donovan, Church in Crisis: The Gay Controversy and the Anglican Communion (2008), p.32-33

Evangelical Christians believe that one thing which marks them out as distinctive from all other approaches to the Christian faith and tradition is their stance towards Scripture. That is, how they approach the Bible as an authority. This hallmark is not without its problems: Other sincere Christians from different traditions are likely to take offense at evangelicals latching onto this since it implies that other traditions don’t really take the bible seriously; it is also prone to misunderstanding, with the pithy sentence ‘taking the Bible seriously’ being reconstructed as ‘believing every word in the Bible is true, end of conversation’ which soon leads to the caricature ‘science is dumb and let’s legislate Old Testament morality’.

The above remarks from Oliver O’Donovan give a helpful elucidation of what evangelicals are trying to get at when they say that they take the Bible seriously.  O’Donovan’s quote rewards close reading. To those outside of the evangelical tradition, hopefully it should water-down some stereotypes. To evangelicals it should serve as a reminder and perhaps a call to repentance.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this quote.