Journal: Faith and Mission
Volume: FM 20:2 (Spring 2003)
Article: The Down Grade Controversy and Evangelical Boundaries: Some Lessons from Spurgeon’s Battle for Evangelical Orthodoxy
Author: Dennis M. Swanson

---

FM 20:2 (Spring 2003) p. 16

The Down Grade Controversy and Evangelical Boundaries:
Some Lessons from Spurgeon’s Battle for
Evangelical Orthodoxy

Dennis M. Swanson

Head Librarian and Director of Israel Studies
The Master’s Seminary
13248 Roscoe Blvd.
Sun Valley, California 91352

Introduction1

The very nature of the quest at hand, “Defining Evangelicalism’s Boundaries,”2 indicates that there exists a level of discomfort or dissatisfaction with the previously established norms and definitions. The idea of Evangelicalism being a movement that “emphasizes conformity to the basic tenets of the faith and a missionary outreach of compassion and urgency;”3 holding to a theological position which “begins with a stress on the sovereignty of God;”4 regarding Scripture as the “divinely inspired record of God’s revelation, the infallible, authoritative guide for faith and practice;”5 or, in short, that Evangelicalism is “the affirmation of the central beliefs of historic Christianity”6 is no longer a settled matter. Perhaps more disturbingly, those items which constitute the “central beliefs of historic Christianity” are no longer a settled matter.

In the new edition of the Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, the article on “Evangelicalism” has been revised and expanded to reflect this discomfort. The authors state, “The very nature of Evangelicalism never was a unified movement but a collection of emphases based on a common core of belief-a core that itself is now under discussion.”7 The revised article summarizes six points of discussion within twenty-first-century Evangelicalism:

First, the nature of God. Some reformers would like to abandon a traditional theism for a more process model of God or would redefine various of God’s attributes, in particular God’s omniscience, arguing that for humans to be truly free, God cannot know the future. Second, Christology. In order to preserve the true humanity of Jesus, some reformists are advocating an adoptionist or kenotic form of Christology. They argue that evangelicalism is in danger of becoming docetic by placing too much

FM 20:2 (Spring 2003) p. 17

emphasis on the deity of Christ. Third, the doctrine of salvation. The theory of the atonement is now being revisited, and various forms of universalism are being openly defended as ev...

visitor : : uid: ()