Theological News On-Line

Issue 13 Dec 2002

Theological Commission of the World Evangelical Alliance 

Editor: David Parker  Parker_david@compuserve.com 
Email Distribution: Dr. Paul C. Murdoch   Murdoch@ead.de

Welcome to WEF Theological News On-Line - this is an on-line version of our printed quarterly, WEF Theological News (ISSN 0260-3705). WEF TN On-Line is issued approximately monthly. The content of the printed and on-line versions overlap but are not identical. For more information, visit our website www.worldevangelical.org/tcpubs.html#ert

We welcome news reports on theological matters for both versions - they can cover theological institutions, conferences, publications, faculty, trends and developments, etc. of interest to evangelical theologians around the world.

For more information on the work of the Theological Commission, contact the Executive Chair, Dr Rolf Hille at r.hille@bengelhaus.de

In this issue:

•  Christmas Greeting
•  PTEE gains course accreditation
•  WEA Mission Commission launches new Publication
•  Text-Critical Apparatuses Take Electronic Form for the First Time
•  The story of the UK Evangelical Alliance - a Book Review

Christmas Greeting

The Editor of TN On-line and the Executive of the WEA Theological Commission would like to send our Christian greetings to all our readers at this Christmas and New Year period. The world situation seems to grow more tense by the day, and the plight of many people caught up in poverty, injustice and disaster becomes more desperate. So we turn again in hope to Christmas message of 'peace on earth' and place our faith once more in the one who came to be 'God with us' and 'to save the people from their sins.' We join with old Simeon, rejoicing that, in Jesus of Nazareth, we have seen God's salvation, and we look forward with positive joy and zealous ministry to the outworking of God's kingdom in our midst.

PTEE gains accreditation and plans for the future

The Program for Theological Education by Extension (PTEE), based in Amman, Jordan, which equips and trains Arab church leaders, has announced successful accreditation of its courses. PTEE was established by the Evangelical Churches of the Middle East with its members made up predominately of Arab pastors, theologians and Church leaders. Its purpose is to make biblical and practical training accessible for church leaders in their given context. Since 1981 the courses of PTEE have been used by churches across the Middle East and the Arab World, as well as in Arab language churches in Europe, North America and Australia.

All PTEE courses are in Arabic so people are able to learn from God's word in their heart language. In the past many of the courses were translated from English or another language, but now they are written by Arabs in Arabic. This means that they are written from an Arab perspective, dealing with issues that relate to Arabs.

Accreditation has been given by the Asia Theological Association (ATA) and Middle East Association of Theological Education (MEATE). Full accreditation has been given to the Certificate and Diploma in Theology and provisional accreditation has been given for the Bachelor in Theology. This accreditation is for the next five year. Accreditation was granted after a visit in September 2002 from Dr Joy Bunya from the Phillipines representing ATA and Dr George Assad from Egypt representing MEATE. Dr Joy and Dr George met with students, tutors, members and staff from Egypt, Jordan, Sudan and Syria asking many questions about the PTEE. They also visited PTEE offices in Jordan and Egypt.

Accreditation has been the result of several years of work by the PTEE staff as well as the national committees in Jordan, Syria and Egypt. The accreditation visit was in reply to a self evaluation assessment that was carried out by the PTEE. Many hours were spent answering a series of questions set down by the ATA. This work was done by Brother Nabil Labib under the oversight of Executive Chairman Brother Jeries Habash. The accreditation not only acknowledges the work of the PTEE staff in producing courses but also acknowledges the work of the thousands of students who have studies with the program over the last 21 years.

25 members of the PTEE have recently met together near Amman, Jordan for the 21st PTEE Annual General Meeting. Members from nine countries representing many churches, denominations, theological colleges and missions organisations were there for the three days of meetings. Reports were presented about growth in Syria and Sudan as well as steady advancement in other countries.

PTEE reports that it been so successful in the Arab World that it has not been able to keep up with its rapid growth. Churches running PTEE courses are constantly requesting new courses and there is a great demand for trained tutors to run courses in new areas. Churches in the Arab World are hungry for good leadership training which is accessible and meets the needs of their community. It is exciting to see the way in which PTEE is providing training and impacting the Arab World.

PTEE operates an on-line newsletter which has recently been up-graded. For more information, ptee-online@ptee.org website: www.ptee.org

(adapted from the PTEE website news service and email newsletter)

WEA Mission Commission launches new Publication

The World Evangelical Alliance Mission Commission (MC) ( www.globalmission.org) has launched a new quarterly publication, Connections: The Journal of the WEA Missions Commission designed to serve mission leaders and field-based practitioners around the globe. Dr. K Rajendran, General Director of the India Missions Association, and Associate Editor says, 'Connections at this strategic time will give us the world wide synergy to move ahead with the task of communicating Christ in a new way.'

'So many mission leaders and cross-cultural workers have attested to the help and encouragement that MC publications have been to their ministries. Connections will be yet another tool to encourage, instruct, and support the MC's 60 national missions movements that are linked to the training, sending, and supporting of approximately 150,000 missionaries,' said Jonathan Lewis, Associate Director of the MC.

The MC has a diverse cluster of strategic task forces and networks in operation, each generating fertile missiological dialogue and action. While segments of the missions community have been able to take advantage of these dialogues through publications, email and websites, Lewis believes there is still a very broad spectrum of the global missions community that has little access to these.

'The need for a print bulletin is widely felt by our entire constituency, and particularly those in the Two-Third's World,' said William Taylor, Director of the MC. 'Our desire was to dream of a new kind of instrument that would offer international and inter-regional mission news, that would report on the increasingly diverse work of the MC teams, and offer a venue for like-minded mission networks to share their news.'

The publication is designed, edited, and printed in Chennai, India through the assistance of the India Mission Association. 'We are delighted to partner with Dr. Rajendran (the new MC Chair) and the India Missions Association,' according to Taylor.

Rajendran and Taylor believe the magazine will address the needs and interests of missionaries around the world, professors and dedicated students of cross-cultural missions, mission training centres, theological institutions, as well as MC and WEA friends and partners.

Connections is available in a print version and also on-line. For more information or to subscribe, contact connections@globalmission.org

Text-Critical Apparatuses Take Electronic Form for the First Time

At the AAR/SBL convention held in November 2002, Libronix Corporation ( www.libronix.com) and the German Bible Society ( www.dbg.de) announced that they will make text-critical apparatuses available in digital form for the first time. The product will be known as the Stuttgart Electronic Study Bible CD-ROM (SESB), and is scheduled for release in early 2003.

SESB contains the original-linguistic text editions from the German Bible Society, recognized world-wide and distributed in the United States by the American Bible Society, the UBS partner of the German Bible Society. For the first time, text-critical apparatuses will be electronically accessible. The product will offer extensive possibilities to search lexemen and grammatical forms in Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, Septuaginta and the Greek New Testament. In addition the SESB offers several lemmatized German, English and French Bible translations and a wealth of Bible reference works. It will also include a morpho-syntactic database for the Hebrew Bible, allowing syntactic searches within data never previously available as part of a commercial product, which will be of particular interest to OT scholars. Dr. Bertram Salzmann, senior editor for electronic publishing at the German Bible Society commented, 'The German Bible Society is very excited about our partnership with Libronix Corporation. With their expertise the SESB CD-ROM will be a truly unique electronic resource for the Bible scholar, allowing research possibilities that have never before existed in a personal digital library.'

Bob Pritchett, president of Libronix Corporation said, 'It is indeed a privilege to partner with the German and the American Bible Society on the SESB CD-ROM. The release of their unmatched scholarly content in combination with the power of the Libronix Digital Library System, will be a landmark for years to come. The fact that the SESB will integrate seamlessly with other Libronix products makes it even more useful.'

The story of the UK Evangelical Alliance - a Book Review

One Body in Christ: the history and significance of the Evangelical Alliance by Ian Randall and David Hilborn

Carlisle: Paternoster Press and Evangelical Alliance: 2001 ISBN 1-84227-089-3 Pb 394pp index illus appendix

There is no doubt that the Evangelical Alliance of the United Kingdom has provided a worthy model of Alliance work, ever since the movement was founded in that country in 1846. Now the authors of this book have documented with clarity, insight and conviction the history of the organization, revealing in the process some of the key dynamics, both positive and negative which have contributed to its success. Both the authors, Ian Randall (of Spurgeon's College and the International Baptist Seminary of Prague), a prolific author on evangelicalism, and David Hilborn, (Theological Advisor to the EA), have once again proven their ability to handle such a task, compressing a vast amount of material into an extremely readable volume.

The book builds on some previous publications, but accesses a great deal of previously unpublished material as it works its way from the original international efforts to establish the Alliance in the mid-19th century, on through the work of the British organization in the subsequent decades and concludes as its launches itself as a "Movement for Change" into the new millennium. The story is replete with helpful information about the context, cameos of personalities, and assessments of progress (conveniently summarized at the end of each chapter), although occasionally a little more general background is assumed of the general reader than might be justified, and occasionally discussion of the general state of evangelicalism and the church takes over from the story of the EA itself. Some attention is also paid to the global and wider European contacts, but of necessity this is of a summary nature. More attention is properly paid to the impact of American influences, both directly on the EA as a body and indirectly on the evangelical movement in the country through, for example, the advent of crusade evangelism.

The emphasis of the story falls on the inner dynamic of the Alliance and the contribution of its key leaders and participants as it moved from period to period, with the repeated focus on evangelical identity and unity, encouragement to prayer, spirituality and evangelism, and the practical expression of the gospel in terms of social witness, welfare and justice. Blessed with gifted leadership that responded to the needs of the day, the remarkable impact of the Alliance in recent decades is revealed in this account as a continuation of its character over many generations.

Since its foundation, theological, ecclesiastical and spiritual issues (as well as more pragmatic concerns like evangelism and prayer) have been given serious attention by the Alliance. In recent years matters such as evangelical identity, the nature of hell, the 'Toronto Blessing' and sexuality have been on the agenda, but as contemporary as they may seem, similar topics were dealt with in previous generations. Besides these specific issues, the author document the way the Alliance has dealt throughout its history with general theological, church and social trends such as Tractarianism, Liberal Theology, Ecumenism, Neo-Orthodoxy the Pentecostal/Charismatic movement and the impact of wars and political change. .

One Body in Christ is an important contribution to our understanding of an Alliance which has succeeded over many years in representing and uniting evangelicals in fellowship, common witness and faith despite many differences and immense generational changes. Perhaps the most striking factor accounting for this success according to this book has been the strong positive thrust of the Alliance as it saw its mission to promote evangelical unity on sound but broad doctrinal lines, stoutly expressed in mission, witness and service within a robust framework of prayer and holiness. Church and social conditions in the United Kingdom have permitted this goal to be realized through an umbrella para-church organization to the benefit of the church and society alike.

Illustrations, an appendix of doctrinal statements and an index add to the usefulness of this volume which would prove a useful model for other national evangelical fellowships to emulate.

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