Picking Up The Pieces - can evangelicals adapt to contemporary culture?

Picking up the Pieces - can Evangelicals adapt to contemporary culture?
By David Hilborn
Hodder & Stoughton. 322 pages
ISBN 0 340 67899 2

Although this is a good book, interesting and well written, I found it profoundly disappointing. The title caught my attention immediately; it seemed to identify where those of us who call ourselves evangelicals find ourselves today: in pieces. It also echoed the opening line of Carl Trueman's recent article in EN: 'The evangelical church stands on the brink of a real crisis'.
Coming from a Council Member of the Evangelical Alliance, and one of its theological advisers to boot, one hoped for a stabilising and re-forming challenge in the midst of the confusion: 'reforming' in the literal sense, because something broken has to be put together again as the title indicates. But therein lay the disappointment, for although it undoubtedly constitutes a restraining influence - and is designed as such - it is unable to re-form because it omits the only glue powerful enough to reunite the shattered pieces.
We wait in vain, for example, for an unequivocal affirmation of what was once axiomatic in evangelicalism: propositional revelation. To the contrary, although the author is at pains to stand on the conservative side of change, propositional revelation is now identified as an unhelpful influence of the Enlightenment. 'This propositionalist, correspondence view of truth is prominent in the work of 'modern' evangelical theologians like Carl F.H. Henry and Francis Schaeffer, for whom it is the proper basis of doctrine and biblical interpretation.' (p.24). The favoured alternative he calls 'the coherence theory of truth' . . . which 'rejects the idea that the truth exists objectively as a series of atomic 'facts', which it is the job of human beings to describe' (ibid.). To be fair, the author sees himself simply as modifying the traditional emphasis, complementing rather than replacing (see pp.281, 284). And to his credit he recognises the dangers inherent in the modification. For he goes on to admit that 'it provides the challenge which underlies much of what follows in this study' - what challenge? 'To find ways of expressing gospel truth which respect the coherence view and recognise its validity while avoiding the kind of thoroughgoing ambivalence advocated by . . . X . . .'; 'liberalism' in short. Which, in the immediate context of the book, means someone like David Tomlinson to whom he devotes an entire chapter. The dilemma is not a new one. It is in fact the familiar story of the slippery slope: once you give up the complete trustworthiness of Scripture, that's where you find yourself! The shift from correspondence to coherence constitutes the essence of liberalism. And this is where so much of contemporary evangelical scholarship has faltered. For it is not we human beings who are trying to identify 'atomic facts', becoming rationalistic thereby; Scripture is what it is simply because God has made it his job to describe what reality really is like. That's the whole point! The Enlightenment denied that God could speak like that. The essence of Christianity is that God has spoken. (Not as a science text book, not as if written in propositions, not as if life equals propositions, etc., etc.). But although contemporary evangelical liberalism sounds as if it accepts God's written Word as authoritative, in abandoning this aspect of what it is, it makes that impossible.
Much about the book is good. Particularly through reports of conversations with dozens of 'leaders' from all parts of the evangelical spectrum, it provides as interesting and helpful an introduction to the 'pieces' as you will find. The survey side is excellent. I also endorse the need for change and adaptability; and many even of the recommendations in the summary. Only the restrictions of this review prevent me from clarifying and commending this aspect further. But the nub of the issue remains: Evangelicalism has shattered because we have lost the foundation upon which everything rests, the full, objective trustworthiness of Scripture. Instead of clarifying this, the book confuses it just a bit more - simply because it sounds more conservative. That's why I find it disappointing.

Picking Up The Pieces - can evangelicals adapt to contemporary culture?

Ranald Macaulay

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