D.A. Carson on Confessionalism

Last updated on: October 12, 2011 at 6:41 am by Michael F. Bird

D.A. Carson on Confessionalism 2011-10-12T06:41:49-04:00 Michael F. Bird

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Over at the TGC Blog, D.A. Carson has a good post on confessionalism in light of some controversy in America about the Trinity and an Elephant (????). However, Carson makes a good contrast between two types of evangelical unity: boundary-bounded and center-bounded. He writes:

From the beginning TGC has distinguished between a boundary-bounded set and a center-bounded set. In the former, you establish boundaries to determine who is “in” and who is “outside” the set—whether the set of true believers, or the set of faithful Presbyterians, or the set of evangelicals, or any other set. For the boundary to have any hope of doing its job, it has to be well defined. If the definitions are sloppy, the boundary keeps getting pushed farther and farther out. For example, suppose we were to say that an evangelical is someone who believes in inerrancy. That may be true, but by itself it is almost useless as a boundary-setting criterion for evangelicalism, since many other people espouse inerrancy who on other criteria are not evangelicals (e.g., Jehovah’s Witnesses). Moreover, someone might point to an individual who believes that Jesus died to bear our sin and satisfy the wrath of God, that he rose from the dead, that he is coming at the end of the age to establish resurrection existence in the new heaven and the new earth, that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone, who has personally placed his or her faith in the Lord Jesus, but who holds to a fairly high view of Scripture without subscribing to inerrancy: is that person an evangelical? How much deviation on any point do we allow before we insist the person is not an evangelical? Discussions of this sort lead some writers to declare that there is no widely accepted doctrinal definition of evangelical. The same exercise could be undertaken with definitions of Presbyterian, Baptist, or any number of other flags. Nevertheless in boundary-bounded sets, the attempt is made to provide a boundary that defines who is “in” and who is “out”—and there is usually quite a bit of pressure to keep expanding that boundary, with the result that it easily becomes painfully porous, even meaningless. Sometimes this way of thinking leads to hopelessly bad questions such as, “What is the least I must believe in order to be called an evangelical?”—the answer to which often generates reductionistic approaches to evangelism and horribly emaciated lowest-common-denominator versions of the gospel. Why not rather ask, “How can I give a theologically rich definition of evangelicalism that faithfully reflects the whole counsel of God?” Worse, inside the boundary there is so little agreed tough-minded confessionalism that love for the truth and a deep knowledge of the Bible and historical and systematic theology are rarely encouraged. By contrast, center-bounded sets don’t worry too much about who is “in” and “out” at the periphery. Instead, there is a robust definition at the center. For TGC, the center is defined by our Confessional Statement (CS) and Theological Vision of Ministry (TVM) and sustained by the Council members. There we expect unreserved commitment to these foundation documents. As for others, we often have to explain that people cannot “join” the Coalition. Individuals and churches may choose to identify themselves with us and use the thousands of resources on our site, but Council members do not fall into paroxysms of doubt as to whether or not this individual or that church truly belongs to TGC: We are not a denomination and we do not have the resources to engage in the kind of vetting at the periphery that a boundary-bounded set demands. At the margins there are many who love part of what we stand for and not other parts. They too are welcome to use our material. At the center, however, we expect robust allegiance.

I think Carson is right here. My fear is that too much of evangelicalism has been concerned with establishing a green zone and gone on a frenzied purge to expel anyone who does use the right code words or wear the right badges. Alternatively, a centre-bounded model of theological discipline will orientate unity around a constellation of shared convictions and practices while providing more flexibility and freedom on second order matters.

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