Whilst there has been a great deal of good achieved amongst evangelicals since the 1950s - especially with the work done by the Rev Dr Martyn Lloyd Jones and the Banner of Truth trust and other groups, such as Evangelical Press - there has also been something of a slide amongst evangelicals, particularly within the established Church of England.

The “open” evangelical camp, there, has become something almost of a wasteland.

The “open” camp seem to be in the majority but they have made far too many concessions to heathen thought in what is an always futile attempt to appear relevant to the present age, which is passing away (1 Corinthians 7: 31).   The same temptation faced many evangelicals in the late nineteenth century.  That began the slide to theological ‘liberalism’ and then to extreme ‘modernism’; both being in varying degrees a denial of the faith, whilst beguilingly keeping many of its words and terms.

After World War One a new set of evangelicals began to take on some aspects of heathen thought and became known as Liberal Evangelicals, a hybrid between the two opposing principles of belief and unbelief.  By the 1960s the Liberal Evangelicals had petered out, whilst the thorough-going Liberals and Modernists themselves had captured the mainstream denominations and brought about their decline!  Long before there was a broken Britain there was a broken Church. Now, since the 1980s and the 1990s, we have a new wave of ‘trendy’ heresy arising: the “open” evangelicals.  What are their marks?

The marks or notes of the “open evangelicals” appear to be as follows:

They are not quite sure that the Bible is, in principle, without error (inerrant is the technical word) on all that it teaches and on all that it touches.

This is a re-hash on the 19^th century’s theologically liberal denial of the inerrancy of Holy Scripture.

They would still hold that the Holy Bible is the Word of God and Final Authority on all matters of belief, behaviour and salvation but not that it, in principle, gets other matters right, such as, questions of natural science and history.  Faith is thus a leap from at least some historical and biblical facts, and in consequence moves more into the orbit of a personalised make-believe world, rather than true belief connected to a real world of history, time and space.

The genuine or classical evangelical holds that the whole of the Holy Bible is, in principle, utterly without error and fully trustworthy on all matters it teaches and all facts that it touches.  If it cannot get the less important things right about this world and its real-time history, how can one possibly regard it as the Word of God, which is what it claims to be, for the world to come?  If the trumpet blows an uncertain sound who shall prepare himself for the battle (1 Corinthians 14: 8)?

The “open evangelical” approach to Holy Scripture, like the Liberal Evangelical and the Liberal and Modernist one before it, cuts away from us the historical credibility of what we base our theological and historical faith upon, an inerrant Bible.   But this is not to deny that the “open evangelical,” or the Liberal Evangelical before him, does not have a genuine personal faith in the Person and work of Christ; only that such a faith, if genuine, is inconsistent with itself and with what the Bible says about itself!

“Open Evangelicals,” as they style themselves, also have a lower view of the Old Testament law of God, the moral law given at Mount Sinai to the nation of Israel, there gathered in covenant before Him.   This moral law, however, largely matches the law of God written upon our natures (the natural law); predates by many centuries - and from the creation - its later promulgation to the nation of Israel at Sinai; and is the law of God by which all nations shall be judged when Christ shall come to be glorified in His saints (2 Thessalonians 1: 10).   It is the backdrop, in Paul and Jesus, to the gospel of repentance from sin preached since the founding of the New Testament Church; and before Christ, in the prophets of the Old Covenant who rejoiced to see His day and were glad (John 8: 56).  The law of God really is essential to all that the Lord God of creation brings us in the gospel of the kingdom of His dear Son (Colossians 1: 13).  A disregard for the moral law, as shown by some “open evangelicals”, really does undermine the seriousness of sin and the absolute need of faith in Christ and repentance from sin in hope of eternal life.  Much depends on our acceptance of the binding character and immediacy of the Law of God!

Related to the above point “open evangelicals” deny that God is absolutely all-knowing or omniscient, holding that the Holy Bible does not teach this!      But the Holy Bible does.  Shall He that made the ear not hear and shall He that made the eye not see (Psalm 94: 9)?   Even from mere natural theology - the kind of thinking that we do, about God, by means of our own reasoning - it follows that God, if He is to be God, must know all things.  And the same truth is very clearly repeated in many scriptures of both the Old and New Testaments; not least in the prophetic parts where God foretells and lays open the future, surely a clear proof on His behalf, if anything is, of both omniscience and omnipotence.

Let us continue to pray for the “open” evangelical: that he may become more open to what Scripture says about itself and about our Lord Jesus Christ, His Law and His attributes; iHihand that they, with us, may become more profitable in the Master’s service.

© The Revd RMB West, Dip Th.