Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals

Analyst Comments [ Back to top ]

MinistryWatch.com’s Take
June 2004
By Dan Wray

Confession Good for the Soul
The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals (ACE) was formed in 1996 for the express purpose of calling the evangelical church to “turn away from (it’s) worldly methods” and to “recover the Biblical doctrines of the Reformation.” Categorically implicit in this call to return are the five “solas,” definitive only assertions of the Protestant Reformation.

• Sola Scriptura (Scripture Alone) – The primacy of Scripture as the exclusive source of written revelation, superceding all other media and experience in informing behavior
• Sola Christus (Christ Alone) – Complete salvation on the basis of the finished work of Christ alone, in the place and on the behalf of the sinner, exclusive of any and all other supposed or suggested remedies
• Sola Gratia (Grace Alone) – Salvation as a sovereign provision of God’s grace alone, exclusive of human merit – individual or by class – effort or initiation
• Sola Fide (Faith Alone) – Justification “by grace alone through faith alone because of Christ alone,” God imputing the righteousness of Christ to the sinner as the only acceptable condition for satisfying His own just requirement, exclusive of any variable or combination of human effort
• Soli Deo Gloria (To God Alone, Glory) – Uncompromising and exclusively theocentric (God-centered) view of the Godhead, its Divine Persons, revelation, relationships and activity, necessarily resulting in the correct and lofty opinion of everything the Godhead is and does

Ministry Manifesto
More than a year in the planning, the Alliance’s clarion was set forth in The Cambridge Declaration, a published document comprising the Alliance’s manifesto and bearing the signatures of its principle proponents. Its founding chairman was the late Dr. James Montgomery Boice of the 10th Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, also formerly a founding member of the 1977 International Council on Biblical Inerrancy. Boice was joined by notables from the Presbyterians, Lutherans, Southern Baptists and Congregationalists, each group referencing one or more historic confessions articulating the consensus cardinal doctrines of evangelical Christianity. Though Boice died in June, 2000, the Alliance has remained robust, transcending denominational boundaries in galvanizing believers around confession of the core doctrines Christians have been historically unwilling to concede or compromise, and providing an increasing reservoir of theological commentary and reference material by noted contemporary scholars including R. C. Sproul Sr., Sinclair Ferguson, Mark Noll, John Hannah and others. The Alliance magazine Modern Reformation is published every two months on a subscription basis, with current excerpts available online (http://www.alliancenet.org/CC_Content_Page/0,,PTID307086|CHID581342|CIID,00.html), as well as for-purchase availability of back issue archives.

Evangelical confessions
The ACE explicitly references the confessional creeds of historical Christianity which have variously emerged from the post-apostolic watershed debates marking nearly two millennia. Prominent among such confessions are The Westminster Confession (and shorter Catechism), The Belgic and 2nd Helvetic Confessions and Cannons of Dort, the Anglican Thirty-Nine Articles, and The 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith. Catechetical (from the Greek katecheo, “to teach orally, inform, instruct”) by nature and intent, the confessions tended to be taught and transmitted from generation to generation with the mechanism of oral recitation, becoming an oral primer for theological verity and discourse. Church history has also witnessed debate over correct understanding and use of the terms which define Christianity and describe its relevance in the world and to the surrounding culture. Evangelical is such a term. Separated from technical considerations the word simply means “of or pertaining to evangel,” which is the English transliteration of euangelion (Grk), “gospel,” literally “good spell,” “good story,” or “good news.” The Christian evangel is the good news concerning Jesus Christ, the evangelical is the one bearing and disseminating this good news. The ACE confidently asserts the essential and fundamental value of the confessions to the witness of Biblical Christianity.

Watershed reform
Many conservative evangelicals, perhaps even a majority, regard the protestant reformation as the single most significant watershed in church history since the apostolic period. For them, a marked return to the convictions codified in the creeds and confessions would be a welcome change to what many regard as a contemporary devaluing of the very core doctrines of their Christianity.

Fundraising
The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals receives financial support from patrons of its print ministry as well as listeners to its various media programs. Alliance radio broadcasts include The Bible Study Hour, with the expository preaching of the late Dr. James Montgomery Boice of Philadelphia’s historic 10th Presbyterian Church, and The White Horse Inn, a radio call-in forum featuring ministry personnel as well as invited guest commentators representing varied viewpoints on contemporary issues. Several notables among the Alliance’s governing council have published successfully, and have contributed literary work for sale under ministry auspices, likely producing a modest organizational support-revenue stream. In addition, the Alliance publishes its own magazine, Modern Reformation, containing selected works by the council members as well as original contributions by council members and others on issues of the day. Other Alliance ministry features include audio and print publications of the late Dr. Donald Gray Barnhouse, a giant among 20th century evangelicals, and 10th Presbyterian’s current senior Pastor, Dr. Phillip Graham Ryken. While it is nowhere stipulated, it is probably a reasonable presumption that Philadelphia’s 10th Presbyterian Church budgets regular financial support for the Alliance ministry.

Individual private support donations are encouraged through secure server connections, and financial and estate planning is offered to those who desire to partner in scheduled systematic support. All donors contributing through the ministry website are directed to the posted ministry profile to be confident that they firmly support the ministry’s stated goals, and are encouraged to donate as those deliberately choosing to consciously support a service from which they clearly derive measurable benefit.

Bits and Pieces
In 1909, in the face of a rising threat of theological liberalism and its European school of “higher criticism” of the Scriptural text, two Christian laymen undertook to codify the fundamentals of the Christian faith as a resource for ministers, missionaries and Christian workers.

The Fundamentals
Originally published in 12 booklets, The Fundamentals represented virtually every facet of historically biblical, protestant Christianity, with an index of contributors reading like a veritable Who’s Who of historical Christian scholarship. While not attempting to address every interpretive doctrinal nuance, The Fundamentals affirmed the Virgin Birth, deity and substitutionary atonement of Christ, as well as the unity and verbal-plenary inspiration of Scripture (i.e., the same quality of inspiration extending equally to every part), thus affirming the authority of Scripture in every area upon which it speaks. Fundamentalism became quickly identified with a zeal for the fundamentals of the faith, often militantly so. In these terms, a fundamentalist was most assuredly an evangelical, and more.

Wary synonyms
Predictably, those espousing fundamentalist fervor became lightening rods for criticism, labeled harsh and intolerant, lacking Christian charity and anti-intellectual. Amidst the ensuing furor, denominational lines were drawn between those espousing doctrinal purity while desiring to maintain fellowship with groups less dogmatic, and those declaring that such fellowship constituted theological compromise. What might arguably have been initial interchangeability between the terms evangelical and fundamental vanished and a new designation was coined. In 1947, Harold Okenga of Fuller Seminary aptly termed this new trend among evangelicals neo-evangelicalism. Helpful or not, the distinction endured. Over perhaps the last 25 or 30 years, fundamentalism has become all but passé’ with the evangelical camp dividing along lines more or less simplified as follows:

• Conservative-evangelical – viewing Scripture literally, uncompromising in the cardinal doctrines historically associated with orthodoxy;
• Neo-evangelical – acknowledging the death of Christ as the supreme example of God’s love, a watershed in human history; variously tolerant of evolving views on the unity and authority of Scripture, increasingly tending to interpret the gospel and work of Christ in terms of social justice and humanitarian concerns.
  

This distinction remains generally valid today, a “high view” of Scripture emerging as the sine qua non of the conservatives, with clear understanding that all the cardinal doctrines stand or fall on the authority of Scripture.

Evangelical complications
The members of The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals are theologically conservative evangelicals emphasizing the confessional creeds of historical Christianity. They are also Covenant Reformed, steeped in the historical traditions of the Protestant Reformation and, more importantly, the theological construct systematized in its aftermath. The Alliance’s stated observation that the term evangelical has dramatically changed accords with the points developed above, clearly addressed by their explicit call for a return to the plain truth of Scripture. What is nowhere addressed is the Alliance’s dogged loyalty to the theology of the Reformation, giving rise to the following questions: Is the Alliance’s call for modern reformation simply a call for return to the Biblical faith of the apostles, “once for all delivered unto the saints?” Or is it a well meaning, albeit more narrow, appeal to the theology of Swiss reformer, John Calvin and his doctrinal T-U-L-I-P anagram, frequently referenced as the doctrines of grace, with it’s insistence upon the exclusive role of elective grace – not only in redemption but also in it’s mutually exclusive notion of reprobation – and Calvin’s determinedly allegorical view of prophecy? While many Baptists, Pentecostals, and independents within the conservative evangelical camp readily concur with the cardinal doctrines which have historically defined evangelicalism – whether expressed in the five solas of the Reformation or the sine qua none of fundamentalism – they are put off by the Calvinist extremes of Covenant Theology. Additional objections would include the Covenant-Reformed camp’s insistence upon ascribing dangerous Pelagian error to anyone unwilling to accept Calvin’s view of Election. (Pelagianism: named for the fourth century monk Pelagius, emphasizes human freedom and seriously controverts the broad Biblical implications of original sin and it’s universal and mortal impact upon mankind; views grace as an influence enabling free response of fallen man to correct Biblical information) Indeed, recently resigned ACE president Michael Horton has asserted in his essay, “The Legacy of Charles Finney,” that Finney’s perilously flawed view of original sin and Christ’s substitutionary atonement infected the theology of Dispensationalists such as Lewis Sperry Chafer and Dallas Theological Seminary. No matter that Chafer and many other non-Reformed concur with Scripture that God sovereignly chooses, witness His choice of Israel (Deuteronomy 7:6-7), also the twelve (John 15:16) and every New Testament Church saint (Ephesians 1:4), with no constraint whatever to explain His elective activity (Daniel 4:34-35), never conditioned upon any confused notion of mere benign “foresight,” and always demonstrating His freedom to do anything, yea everything that accords with the good pleasure of His will (Romans 9:14-21). Finally, to perhaps somewhat lesser degree, many evangelicals are uncomfortable with the ceremonial role the sacraments play in Reformed Theology, as external administrations of redemptive grace, regarding them as awkward holdovers from the very Catholic Theology from which they militantly separated in the Reformation. For at least these reasons, ACE’s efforts to bring disparate factions within contemporary evangelicalism into alliance will continue to be met with measured skepticism as a thinly veiled attempt to unite evangelicals on the ostensibly moral high ground of contemporary Covenant-Reformed Theology.

Here we stand
Though the current analysis cannot offer sufficiently comprehensive treatment of the subject, it is clear that those desiring to be designated by the term “evangelical” continue to demand that it’s fundamental meaning be informed by the very medium conveying the evangel, the Scripture itself, and that its meaning not be merchandised upon the winds of social change or the transient moorings of moral and cultural relativism. Against this backdrop, the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals is fervent in appeal for a return to the God who alone possesses authority and sovereign power to rule (Psalm 2:4-12), to His unique Son (John 3:16; Acts 13:30-33), who alone possesses the only name with power to save (John 1:12; Acts 4:12), by the gracious, unmerited favor of God (Titus 2:11), upon exercise of a faith which God gives, unattended by human merit (Eph. 2:8-9), all to the unending praise of the ultimately inexpressible glory of the only triune God (Ephesians 1:6, 12, 14), to which true evangelicals of every stripe may well say, Amen.