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Spring Harvest/Word Alive study guide 2006Blind guideSPRING HARVEST/WORD ALIVE STUDY GUIDE 2006 Having received dire warnings about near-Siberian conditions at Skegness in April, it was a pleasant surprise to find the sun shining during at least some of the Spring Harvest Word Alive week (April 3-8). It was great to hear challenging preaching from such as Kent Hughes and Wallace Benn, to enjoy God-honouring music ministry led by gifted musicians such as Kristyn Getty, and to sample some of the massive array of different activities and seminars. The youth and children’s programmes were impressively run. There was a comprehensive student track with input from such respected leaders as Roger Carswell and Vaughan Roberts. Study guide written by Steve ChalkeThe theme of the week was ‘Celebrating the One True God’, and the Spring Harvest Study Guide, The Big Story: One God (126 pages, A4 format), gave an outline for the four main days of the event: Creation; The Universal God; the Human God; and the Sovereign God. Word Alive has a deserved reputation for the integrity of its teaching, and so it was incongruous, to say the least, that this study guide was written by Steve Chalke. His book, The Lost Message of Jesus (2003), categorically denies the truth that Christ bore the wrath of God against sin on the Cross. Don Carson argues, therefore, that Chalke is ‘abandoning the gospel itself’ (Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church, p. 187). A team, including more conservative Bible teachers, had some input into the study guide, which meant that Chalke’s more extreme views were screened out. But this added to the confusion. I heard local church leaders saying that Chalke’s (superficially attractive) teaching was gaining credence among some members. To discover that Chalke had written the study guide for Word Alive was a kick in the teeth for these leaders. It undermined their efforts to warn against his teaching, especially when their members could say that there was no open denial of penal substitution in it. The guide is in a format that is calculated to offend nobody. Anyone can read into it what he or she wants. Indeed, there are such a variety of perspectives that everyone will probably find some sections they can warmly affirm. Some parts are very well written. It is an oddly unsatisfactory patchwork quilt of quotations from different sources. On the surface it is fairly innocuous. Underneath it is dangerously flawed. The fatal error lies not in what is asserted, but in what is omitted. The central omission is any thorough treatment of sin The massive, central, inexcusable omission is any thorough treatment of sin. This failure can be traced back to the first section on creation. For while it attempts to be even-handed in representing different views, a literal view of creation, it is said, is ‘far from compatible with modern scientific understanding’ (p.15). The preferred interpretation is the ‘literary’ interpretation. There is no definite affirmation of a literal historical Adam and Eve. There is no definite affirmation of a literal historical fall into sin. Man’s accountability to God (Genesis 2.17) is ignored. There is no treatment of Genesis 3. There is no explanation of the fact that as a race in rebellion against God we naturally suppress the truth. There is nothing on the law of God, and that we are law-breakers. There is no affirmation of hell. Such fundamental flaws mean that the many passing references to sin are rendered fairly ineffective. No teaching on our universal spiritual blindnessIt is, therefore, unsurprising that in the section on other religions, the impression is given that all mankind is on a journey to God, and that we should respect other faiths as expressions of that quest (even though the guide draws back from affirming that they are effective in leading to God). Because there has been no mention of the effects of the fall on our understanding, there is no teaching on our universal spiritual blindness and rejection of God’s revelation. If sin is underplayed, it is unsurprising that the section on the cross is feeble. Penal substitution is listed as one of the many ways to understand it (pp.89-90), but the cross is seen primarily as the place where God identifies with human suffering. The weakest section in the guide is section 5, part 2, ‘When Pain is Personal’, where there is strong emphasis on theologians such as Moltmann and their stress on the ‘suffering God’. This section leads towards open theism, which is a denial of divine sovereignty. The treatment of divine impassibility is irresponsibly inaccurate (p.111). The glory of God as the goal of all things is conspicuously absent In the section on the ‘Sovereign God’, the answer to the question ‘Why does God allow evil?’ seems to be that freedom is the greatest gift God can give man (p.103). This misses the biblical ‘big picture’ that the whole of human history, including the fall, is part of God’s great plan of redemption which is ‘to the praise of the glory of his grace’. Evil itself ultimately is worked out by God, in his infinite wisdom, to be the setting in which his free and sovereign grace abounds. The glory of God as the goal and end of all things is conspicuously absent from the guide. It is man-centred through and through. The whole subject of God’s judgement is inadequately addressed. There is no reference to the Tower of Siloam (Luke 13.1-5), that disaster can be a warning to us to repent. And when we have to cope with suffering, the guide emphasises God’s suffering with us. There is no clear prospect held out of final judgment on all injustice, and all evildoers. A wholesale shiftIn criticising this guide as man-centred, are we just returning to the old debate between ‘Arminian’ and ‘Calvinist’? No — this is much more serious. John and Charles Wesley, for example, who were very far from ‘Calvinist’, had a passion for the lost based on a conviction of sin, righteousness and judgement that is light years away from this study guide. That meant that they had a joy in salvation that is noticeably absent too. ‘My chains fell off, my heart was free!’ But there are no chains to speak of here, so no corresponding thrill at God’s grace in granting freedom. Sadly, this is typical of a wholesale shift in theology going on at the present time. (Space forbids a more detailed critique, which should be available shortly on the Reformation Today website http://www.reformation-today.org). It is possible to read the study guide on a fairly uncritical level, and be able to affirm much of what it says. But so much crucial biblical truth is omitted that it offers at best half a gospel. And half a gospel is no gospel at all. Within the context of the Word Alive week, when the whole gospel was presented in so many of the sessions, the study guide seemed like an unwelcome guest — even an intruder. One can only hope that the visitors will go away and listen to the teaching tapes or CDs, and file away and forget the guide. Sharon James,
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