Theological News On-Line

Issue 46    July 2006	'Promoting Biblical Truth by Networking Theologians'

Published by Theological Commission of the World Evangelical Alliance

Editor: David Parker wef-tc@pacific.net.au
email distribution: Dr.Paul C. Murdoch Murdoch@ead.de

Welcome to WEA Theological News On-Line - this is the on-line version of our printed quarterly, WEA Theological News (ISSN 0260-3705). WEA TN On-Line is issued approximately six-weekly. The content of the printed and on-line versions overlap but are not identical. We also publish Evangelical Review of Theology. For more information, visit our website www.worldevangelicalalliance.com/commissions/tcpubs.htm  

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 r.hille@bengelhaus.de 

In this issue:

•  Theological Commission focus on Africa in 2006
•  Death of Former TC Executive Secretary
•  Evangelical Theology Working Group in Ireland
•  Verbum: The Challenge of the Liberal Humanist Concept of Freedom by Carver T. Yu
•  Post-Modern Dilemma by Garry Harris
•  New Version of Popular CD-ROM containing Evangelical Review of Theology and TC Publications

Theological Commission Focus on Africa in 2006

The WEA Theological Commission's planning for its 2006 annual meeting at Nairobi, Kenya, continues to develop. The program will include a mini-consultation on the topic, 'Theological Reflection on Religious Fundamentalism as a Global Issue' for which ideas and contributions are welcome. There will also be networking sessions with local theologians and church leaders on matters of local interest, as well as the TC's planning and strategy meeting.

The event will be held Sept 19-24 at Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology. Participants will include TC Commissioners drawn from around the world and for the first time, those who are participating in the new expanded membership scheme announced in January 2006. They include Affiliates (TCs affiliated with national Evangelical Fellowships/Alliances), Affiliates (seminaries and other institutions) and Associates (personal membership). Applications are continuously open for these categories and enquiries are welcomed. Local theologians are also invited to participate.

Another part of the program will be a workshop on 'Poverty and HIV/AIDS'. A small group of local church leaders and theological educators will participate in the workshop to be held at the start of the TC session and in parallel with part of it. It will attempt to understand the complex socio-economic processes at work in African societies, together with a conceptualization of poverty and development.. The TC will contribute to this process with biblical theological thinking and spell out some practical guidelines for action.

Organizer, Vice-Chair of the TC, Dr Ken Gnanakan, who is in conversation with World Vision to jointly conduct the workshop, said, 'It is recognized that one of the major issues facing people in Africa is HIV/AIDS. UNAIDS estimates in Sub- Saharan Africa for 2005 were 5.8 million (out of 40 million worldwide) living with HIV, 3.2 million (out of 4.9 million worldwide) new HIV infections, 2.4 million (out of 3.1 million worlwide) AIDS deaths.' Dr Ken Gnanakan said, 'It is critical for the church to explore the relationship between poverty and HIV/AIDS, through an understanding of the processes by which the experience of HIV and AIDS in households and communities leads to an intensification of poverty. Findings from the workshop will be of great value to the Christian community.'

TC member, Dr David Hilborn, who is Head of Theology for the Evangelical Alliance in the UK, has announced that he has been appointed Director of Studies on the North Thames Ministerial Training Course. He will be leaving EA UK in August after nine years in the post to commence his new full time appointment. Dr Hilborn directs the TC's Rapid Response Unit which provides advice on topical theological issues to the World Evangelical Alliance International Director.

Death of Former TC Executive Secretary

Dr Sunand Sumithra, a former secretary of the Theological Commission, passed away in his home in Bangalore, India on 12 May, 2006. Dr Sumithra assisted Dr BJ Nicholls as Executive Secretary of the WEA Theological Commission, in 1985 and then succeeded him in 1986, serving until 1989. He was 67 years old and had been weakened by several strokes over the past ten years. Sunand leaves behind his wife Beulah and four daughters. Dr Sumithra, a former engineer with a D.Theol. from the University of Tuebingen, Germany, had previously taught at Union Biblical Seminary, and was a minister of the Methodist Church in India. After his service with the TC, Dr Sumithra worked with the South Asia Institute of Advanced Christian Studies (SAIACS) in Bangalore, and later engaged in significant research and writing ministries. He was a respected theologian and a sharp thinker within the evangelical movement in India. He wrote Holy Father, a text book on Systematic Theology, and edited Doing Theology in Context: a Festschrift in honour of Dr Bruce J. Nicholls, (both published by Theological Book Trust, Bangalore.

Evangelical Theology Working Group in Ireland

By Dr Patrick Mitchel, Chairman, Theology Working Group Evangelical Alliance Ireland

An Evangelical Alliance had never been established in Ireland (the Republic that is) until as recently as May 2004 when Evangelical Alliance Ireland (EAI) was launched, amid much celebration and thanksgiving by the 800 people present, to be a movement to engage Irish society with the good news of the Gospel. The formation of EAI may well be a seminal moment in the long history of evangelicalism in Ireland. It is a small, but encouraging sign (one of many), not only of growing numbers of a previously unnoticed and marginal minority, but of the increasing awareness within the Irish evangelical community of the need to work together to impact their nation for Christ.

EAI has several different 'strands' of which 'Theology' is one. In 2003, prior to the launch, EAI formed a Theology Working Group (TWG), composed of theologically informed men and women drawn from various streams within Irish evangelicalism. The brief of the group was to revolve around three main areas.

The first, essential matters, focused on the aim to speak or write on those matters on which evangelicals are agreed and which define both the centre and boundaries of the evangelical movement as it is represented in EAI. As part of this brief, the TWG was given the task of forming a Basis of Faith for the new Alliance, which would summarise essential beliefs that are shared by all evangelicals. We decided that it would be a positive affirmation and celebration of the Christian faith rather than a negative statement of what we do not believe. As the Basis of Faith of an Alliance that contains a wide variety of people, we wanted to focus on what is central, that which unites and defines what it means to be an evangelical Christian.

Taking the EA UK's 1970 Basis of Faith (which has since been revised) as a starting point the group met regularly over the next few months. Churchmanship included Baptist, Presbyterian, Pentecostal, charismatic, Methodist, Anglican and independent, many of whom did not know each other that well beforehand. As chairman, it was truly a joy to see how the group developed over the year. The group's meetings were marked by a high commitment to Scripture, a common sense of purpose and a gracious willingness to listen to one another. Meetings were marked by plenty of vigorous debate but always in an atmosphere of respect, humour and cooperation. The experience reminded me of two things. First, that as the Spirit unites believers together, the body works at a greatly increased capacity. Second, within evangelicalism, denominational differences are of little significance compared to a shared faith in Christ. In him we are bound together in a common faith and with a common purpose.

With the Basis of Faith agreed and adopted by EAI, the Group decided it would be helpful to produce a companion booklet. We were very aware that no statement can capture adequately all of what is means to be a follower of Jesus. Each sentence within the Basis is brimful with content that needed some unpacking. So we wrote and published a booklet to set out clearly the beliefs that evangelicals consider as crucial to the Christian faith and which provide the foundation for them to work together in the service of God; to note and explain issues of belief and practice on which evangelicals differ and so promote better understanding; to inform readers unfamiliar with the world of evangelical Christianity what it is we believe and why. It was published in 2005 as "Together We Believe: A Common Faith, A Common Purpose". (see www.evangelical.ie).

The Group's brief also extends to two other areas /disputed matters, working for understanding on and writing about those matters on which evangelicals disagree and which occasionally threaten unity, and also public issues. Working in co-ordination with other EAI committees (such as Media, Politics and Voice) the TWG seeks to develop theological reflection on and active response to national and social issues and the complexities of contemporary life which call for a united evangelical engagement and voice.

Our primary objective is to produce written resources for the media and voice groups in their public roles. Initial work has begun on producing briefing papers on a variety of issues. It is planned that some of these papers will also be extended and published as articles or a more in-depth theological treatments of issues of contemporary relevance to the Irish evangelical community.

Verbum: No 5 July 2006

The Challenge of the Liberal Humanist Concept of Freedom
by Carver T. Yu, China Graduate School of Theology, Hong Kong

For both the Christian and liberal humanist traditions, freedom is the core of our being human. However, it is the concept of freedom that divides the two in the most fundamental way, revealing also a radical difference in the understanding of authentic humanity. The liberal humanist concept of freedom poses a forceful challenge to the Christian understanding of life as it should be. In this conflict, Christian tradition seems to be fighting a losing battle. Christian theologians have no choice but to confront the fundamental anthropological assumptions of liberal humanists.

Isaiah Berlin's 'Two Concepts of Liberty' and John Rawls' 'A Theory of Justice' can be considered as the two most powerful essays in shaping the idea of freedom in our culture. Berlin defines freedom as negative liberty, i.e., freedom from constraints imposed on the individual whether by society or private persons, even for the sake of realizing the common good, which is preconceived by society as a whole. Berlin presented his essay as his inaugural address in 1958 for his professorship at Oxford when the world had barely recovered from the Second World War only to be confronted with the menace of communist totalitarianism. His idea of freedom was most probably formulated with the terror of totalitarian states in mind. To avoid any possible encroachment of the state or collective ideology, the idea of the common good has to be shunned. Liberty conceived in such a way confines itself to liberty as sufficient condition for something, and that something is in principle left undefined or indeterminate. It is a liberty with no definite moral discrimination, a liberty of indifference.

But can the absence of external interference be the sufficient condition for liberty? What about inner inhibitions preventing 'free' agents from materializing the choice of their will? What about the false consciousness already embedded in the 'free' agents, leading them to relinquish freedom for bread? Without self-understanding, a 'free' agent can hardly be truly free. But any suggestion of self-understanding for self-realization indicates a preconceived idea of authentic selfhood or authentic humanity.

Rawls follows Berlin's line of defense, but brings back the Romantic ideal of selfhood with radical autonomy. Freedom is defined as freedom for free agents to exercise their rights to define the good for themselves within the boundary of justice, which also means the categorical defense of such freedom for all. Freedom here can no longer be accused as empty-it is no longer merely 'freedom from', it is also 'freedom for'; it is freedom for realizing the ends, not pre-given but chosen out of the individual's autonomy at the core of their being. 'The self is prior to the ends which are affirmed by it.'

What is the self? That may be a wrong question, for the self cannot be presumed to have a 'what' that defines itself as a self. The self with its autonomous will is the 'given'-and in such a way as to define the 'what' of itself. The good cannot therefore have existence prior to the choice of the autonomous will. The autonomous self is therefore the Alpha and the Omega of all values.

Rawls gives absolute primacy to justice among all moral values. In doing so, one's right as a moral category is taken to be prior to the good and independent of it. Given its independent status, one's right constrains the good and sets its bounds. To have rights is 'to have something which society ought to defend me in the possession of it.' In fact, so strong is society's obligation that one's claim of rights assumes the character of absolutism. The priority of right is of course derived from the concept of radical autonomy. The basis of moral laws is to be found in the autonomous subject, which is made the ground for all maxims of action. In a postmodern world where each subject constructs her own world with laws of her own, moral relativism is almost inevitable.

What would Christian theologians have to say about such a concept of freedom and the form of society being legitimated? A theological critique of the liberal humanist concept of freedom is badly needed, and at the same time, a positive concept of freedom from the Christian perspective is perhaps even more urgent.

Verbum: Welcome to Verbum-a page of thoughtful comment and insight giving perspectives and overviews of topical issues. It appears in both our print and electronic editions. Reproduction and wider circulation is encouraged. Please acknowledge as "Verbum: WEA Theological News July 2006"

Post-Modern Dilemma

New Version of Popular CD-ROM containing Evangelical Review of Theology and TC Publications

The popular Theological Resource Library CD-ROM from the WEA Theological Commission is now available in a third upgraded version. The new version of the CD-ROM contains an additional five years of the TC’s flagship journal, Evangelical Review of Theology (ERT), bringing it up to 2005. There are also three new TC publications: Dr Ken Gnanakan’s Responsible Stewardship of God’s Creation; Dr David Parker’s story of the Theological Commission’s thirty year global ministry, Discerning the Obedience of Faith; and a wide ranging internationally authored text book on Eschatology edited by Dr Jochen Eber, Hope does not Disappoint. The CD-ROM now contains 29 volumes of the theological journal, making it an invaluable resource of evangelical thought and insights, as well as a mine of information about hundreds of books that have been reviewed in its pages since 1977.

The new 3rd edition of the CD-ROM uses the powerful Libronix search technology from Logos Research Systems which is supplied on the disk and enables users to access e-books from the huge range now available for purchase. The disk retains all the materials from the first and second versions, including TC publications, books from other sections of the World Evangelical Alliance, and public domain Bibles and reference books.

The cost of the new disk is unchanged at US $50 including freight (or other major currencies). Discounts apply to bulk orders and upgrades for previous customers. Payments may be made by direct transfer, cheque, PayPal and Western Union. Ordering details may be obtained from WEA TC Publications, tc@worldevangelicalliance.com 

WEA Theological News On-line

This is an electronic edition of WEA Theological News (ISSN 0260-3705) published by World Evangelical Fellowship Theological Commission; Chair: Dr Rolf Hille  www.worldevangelicalalliance.com/commissions/theological.htm

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