Doctrine Matters
Doctrine and Evangelism
by Gavin Reid
Two recently published, and very significant, books about evangelism bemoan the lack of contact between those who enthuse about evangelism and those who take theology seriously. William Abraham opens his crucial study The Logic of Evangelism with the words: 'One of the undeniable features of modern theology is the scant attention it has given to the topic of evangelism. It is virtually impossible to find a critical, in-depth study of the subject by a major theologian.'1 And Bishop Michael Marshall, in The Gospel Connection, takes up Abraham's lament at the start of his second chapter. 'Surely', he writes, 'the theologians need the evangelists and the evangelists need the theologians.' However, Marshall moves on to a critical reflection on trends in Western theology:
The theologians most certainly need the evangelists. For too long we have assumed that theology is a specialist branch of philosophy concerned with ideas about God. Hence the reduction of Christianity into yet another ideology . . . theology has become primarily an activity of the mind tested in the laboratory of the debating chamber, the lecture room, or those interminable discussion groups!2
While I consider Marshall's criticisms a shade unkind and over-generalised, it is certainly an impression that can easily be gained, and thus it is small wonder that those who have great enthusiasms about their own discovery of the gospel are hardly likely to look to theologians for help, either with their own understandings or in the task of sharing their discovery with others.
Evangelism, therefore, is often regarded as the preserve of enthusiasts, and enthusiasm is not usually seen as linked to reflection and thought. While there is some truth in that caricature, it is ultimately unfair. But caricaturing affects the other side of the story also. Granted that theology and 'doctrine' are not exactly the same thing, the way we do theology in the West has affected the way we often write off 'doctrine' as somewhat removed from the realities of life and faith. We too easily regard a concern for doctrine to be the preserve of religious equivalents of 'barrack-room lawyers'. Doctrine, on this view, is dull stuff about print and propositions. It is the language - so some would say - of those who want to criticise and split hairs. Nobody was ever converted by reciting creeds at them or quoting chunks out of the Thirty-nine Articles.
This caricaturing on both sides is aided and abetted by a trend which has been more obvious in recent years -the emphasis upon experience. The charismatic movement has been a much-needed liberation from dry, cerebral Christianity which was strong on doctrinal or liturgical correctness while weak, and even repressive, on emotion and the experiential. If Christians are people who have been set free from a crippling bondage and have been forgiven and assured of the never ending love of God, how can they talk or sing about such realities as if they were chanting details from a telephone directory?
There is now much more of a place for the experiential in contemporary spirituality - whether it be in expressions of joy or whether it be in recognitions of vulnerability. However, as usually happens, every basically healthy development carries a danger. The danger with the emphasis upon feelings is that we disregard the rational. Doctrine is to do with the rational - but unless there are good reasons for our feelings, we are living unreal lives. Ultimately doctrine matters. It is not enough to say, 'Smile, God loves you.' At some point we have to say why we have grounds for believing and sharing such a sentiment.
In reality doctrine and experience are close relations. Doctrine emerges as people make sense of what they have discovered. The Bible is a book full of discoveries and experiences. It is about what people have learned about God as a result of experiencing him at work. Above all, it is about understanding the implications of the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus. And in saying this, we are right at the heart of the business of evangelism, for, as the Church of England report The Measure of Mission affirms: 'We are charged to communicate that the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is good news from God.'3
Doctrine and conversion
Is evangelism therefore to be considered as the communication of right doctrine? If we get it right, is that the secret of 'bringing people to faith'? The answer to this question is surprisingly complex, for two reasons.
The first reason is that of the Holy Spirit. The wind', said Jesus in his famous conversation with Nicodemus, 'blows wherever it pleases ... So it is with everyone born of the Spirit' (John 3:8). There can be little doubt that people come to faith in Christ in some pretty odd ways! Very often there appears to be no doctrine whatsoever involved. One person I have met came to Christ in a foxhole in the Second World War. As bullets flew overhead, he knew he needed a saviour in every sense - especially the physical! Others find it difficult to specify any particular moment as the moment of their conversion. For them, discovering Christ was a gentle process over many years. All one can conclude is that in one way or another the Holy Spirit acted to draw them to Christ.
Here we find ourselves touching upon the second complication. The vast majority of conversions are gentle, and the result of processes of discovery rather than any particular crisis. They cannot be put down to a formal presentation of the gospel. Although evangelists should indeed take doctrine seriously, many of those who respond, and are therefore counted as converts because of evangelists, did not respond because of the particular message preached. Every evangelist can tell of those who come forward at the end of a sermon and preface their comments by, 'It wasn't anything you said, but ..." What has happened is that the Spirit has used the occasion to build on what had probably already been started in the hearts and minds of those who responded. Conversions are rarely simple stories!
This would appear to play down the .significance of doctrine, but there is more that should be said. It is true that a majority of converts will claim they were drawn to Christ because of what they saw in other people who believed, but evangelism does not end with attracting people to want to say 'yes'. It ends (if indeed it ever ends, because we spend our whole lives being changed by the gospel) with nurture; and nurture is about helping people to realise who it is that they have turned to, what it is they have joined and how it is that they should live. All this has to do with doctrine. Much of the great doctrinal material in the New Testament is to be found in the epistles, but they are simply letters to newborn Christians, helping them to grow up in an alien world. In today's church jargon, the epistles are nurture-group material.
The story of Cornelius (Acts 10) is relevant here. It is clear, early in the narrative, that the human side of conversion is in place. Cornelius has obviously turned to God, in spite of all the religious notions of his own culture and upbringing. When Peter eventually meets him he soon recognises that the centurion is accepted by God (v. 35). What the story makes clear, however, is that it was God's will that this person who showed repentance and faith should understand who it was that he believed in and what this meant. In other words, he needed nurturing in doctrine. He needed to know all that Peter - a prime witness to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus - had to say.
A right understanding of the church
One of the fundamental problems we face with the encouragement of evangelism is that many in our churches are afraid of the prospect. Evangelism doesn't seem natural to the sort of church they feel they belong to - or want to belong to. Indeed, the idea of 'belonging' to a church is probably alien to many who attend.
A great deal of this can be traced to the Western idea (a particularly English one) that religion is a private matter and that therefore the institutional church exists for the benefit of its consumers. To people with such understandings the challenge of evangelism is not only a threat - it is to confuse things. The 'institution' and its agents may want to propagate their views in society, but it is hardly the task of the consumer-attender. There is a further consequence of this private-view approach to religion. 'Private' is seen to be part of a complex of ideas including reverence and the sacred. In our British culture, what is sacred needs to be spoken about with reticence and reserve. Evangelism -which is often caricatured as a brash and insensitive activity - hardly goes hand-in-hand with what is considered to be an appropriate reticence. God is too sublime to be 'sold', hawked around or commended to others.
St Peter, however, thought otherwise. In the first epistle attributed to him, we read: 'In your hearts set apart [Gk. = sanctify] Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have' (1 Pet. 3:15). This alliance between reverence and witness is a theme of the epistle. Peter - in words echoing phrases from the book of Deuteronomy - reminded his readers that: 'You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light' (1 Pet. 2:9, my italics). It is not clear who is meant to be the listener to these declarations of praise. Is it God, and are we therefore talking about worship? Or is it men and women, and are we talking about evangelism?
The truth, almost certainly, is that it is both. Witness is the other side of the coin of worship. It is saying to one's fellows what one says to God. It is a mark of integrity. How can one say 'How great thou art' in worship on Sunday and deny it through silence or even contradiction on Monday before others?
The link in Peter's mind between the church and the old covenant people of God was more than a useful illustration. It was of the essence. The old covenant people of God were people within a story. They were the people who had once been a collection of ill-used slaves in Egypt, only to be rescued by the intervention of God. The exodus was more than an episode in the past. It was a continuing story, ever present in the consciousness of the people. Whenever the harvest was gathered in, an offering would be made of the firstfruits, accompanied by these words:
My father was a wandering Aramean, and he went down into Egypt with a few people and lived there and became a great nation, powerful and numerous. But the Egyptians ill-treated us and made us suffer, putting us to hard labour. Then we cried out to the Lord, the God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our voice and saw our misery, toil and oppression. So the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great terror and with miraculous signs and wonders. He brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey; and now I bring the firstfruits of the soil that you, O Lord, have given me. (Deut. 26:5-10)
Should a non-Jew wish to practise the Jewish religion, he would be circumcised and (certainly by Graeco-Roman times) baptised. The symbolism of being under water and rising alive from it identified the proselyte with the Red Sea story of the God who had rescued his people from slavery.
The apostles saw the church in the same light - people of the story. At the last supper, however, Jesus had rewritten the story. Once again a nation had been created by an act of God. The slavery and bondage on this occasion had been to sin and the power of Satan. The act of deliverance was the body given for us and the blood shed for us for the forgiveness of our sins. The Passover and Red Sea crossing elements in the story of the people of the old covenant are merged and replaced by the cross of Calvary and the empty tomb. There is a new story and a new people. The major difference is that whereas there were only hints in the Old Testament that membership of the people of the story might be open to the non-Jew, it was now clear that the membership of the new people of the story was intended to be open to all.
For the Christian community, therefore, the story is more than a constant reminder of the identity of the people of God. The story is the good news that has to be shared, first in Jerusalem, then Samaria and to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8). The rite of initiation into the people of God is no longer circumcision but baptism, a change which reveals that, among other things, there is now no distinction between male and female: ' ... all of you who were baptised into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus' (Gal. 3:27-8).
Christians, therefore, are the new covenant people of the story. Witness and worship are two sides of the same coin. For the church to be true to itself, it must continue to remind itself of the story of its deliverance. The Holy Communion service is the setting par excellence of that continuous retelling.
Writing on Zwingli's theology of the eucharist, Alister McGrath picks up this theme which the Swiss theologian saw and which (even if there is more to the eucharist) surely must hold true: 'Zwingli affirms that the Eucharist narrates the foundational event of the Christian community, and that by doing so, it gives substance to the values and aspirations of that community, and enhances its sense of unity and purpose.'4 In the same article McGrath quotes some telling words from Alasdair Maclntyre's work After Virtue:' ... we all live out narratives in our lives and . . . we understand our own lives in terms of narratives that we live out ... '5 As people of the story - receiving it from others and seeing ourselves caught up in it - Christians find themselves to be new people with a new identity and purpose in life.
For the church to be true to itself, however, it must also be retelling its story to those outside its membership. It was founded on the work of apostles and is itself apostolic. It exists not to stand still, but to go - not only to listen, but also to tell. Evangelism is therefore an essential element of what the church is and what it is meant to do. Any doctrine of the church that does not see evangelism at the heart of its being is a false doctrine.
Evangelism
Before we can talk meaningfully about the 'place' of doctrine within evangelism, we need to be clear as to the nature of evangelism itself. The suffix 'ism' tends to distort things - it makes evangelism a subject in itself rather than an activity. We tend to use the word in a static rather than a dynamic way. We talk of 'doing' evangelism, when the New Testament simply talks in terms of 'evangelising'. The noun 'evangelism' is relatively new. Its first recorded use, in English, dates to the middle of the seventeenth century. The New Testament talks about the 'evangel', meaning the content of the story. It talks about 'evangelists', referring to people with a particular gift and calling of story-telling, and it speaks of 'evangelising' as the natural activity of snaring good news - any good news, and the particular good news of Jesus.
It is hard to discern any sense in which the New Testament Christian community felt it was engaging in a special activity by evangelising. What we see is a community of people discovering that they were caught up in the implications of the story of Jesus and recognising that they were called to carry on living out and sharing the story. Peter and John, when urged by the authorities to keep silent, replied: 'Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God's sight to obey you rather than God. For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard' (Acts 4:19-20). Speaking about the story that was taking place around them was part of the obedience and integrity of the first Christians.
True evangelism is therefore the healthy and necessary overspill of the story that holds the church together and which gives it a sense of purpose. This means that the story also becomes testimony - my story. The distinction that some make between 'doctrine and evangelism', with which I started this essay is, in fact, a false one. My testimony cannot be unrelated to doctrine because it cannot be unrelated to the story of Christ.
It is only when we have established evangelising
