Category: Theology

I have a little book, a reprint of the 1946 100th-year anniversary edition, of a short history of the World Evangelical Alliance.  One of the goals of the WEA was to promote the John 17:21 unity of the Church.  This was considered one of the keys to the return of the Lord.  It remains so today for the WEA as it networks hundreds of millions.  Instead of competition, they seek cooperation in every city and region of the world.  They believe that the prayer of Yeshua will be answered before He returns.  “That they may be one that the world will believe.”  This was the heart of the great Zinzendorf and the Moravians in Herrnhut in the first half of the 18th century. 

However, in many Dispensational circles, the quest for unity is feared as something that will lead to deception and perhaps the great falling away or apostasy.  When classical Dispensationalists looked at John 17, they often interpreted as for the local church. Nott all hold this view. As one leader told us last year in a gathering of leaders here, John 17:21 is only saying that a local congregation in unity will be more successful.  As an example, he described a congregational picnic in a public park.  If the people show a lot of love to one another, the unbelievers in the park will be drawn to this love.  It is about the world around the local people of God.  In addition to the hope for unity, they do not see Acts 2 pointing to a great last days revival before the return of the Lord. 

Dispensational eschatology, or last days teaching, noted the Bible’s warning of a coming last days apostasy (II Thes.2:3).  That apostasy or rebellion, they believe, had already begun as mainline denominations compromised with evolution, critical approaches to the Bible, and denials of Biblical truth. The Ecumenical Movement also quoted John 17 in their question of unity in the World Council of Churches and other efforts. Many of these churches have departed from biblical truth. This, they believe, is all leading to the false world religion that will be part of the one world government of the Antichrist. 

They see other efforts for unity, Evangelical, charismatic, or Pentecostal all leading to the same danger. What is the answer to this?  First, one cannot get around John 17.  Anyone who reads this honestly has to conclude that unity will characterize a revived worldwide Church before the return of the Lord. This Church will complete the task of world Evangelism and making Israel jealous.  Secondly, this unity is based on a solid biblical confession of faith.  For example, the WEA has maintained its doctrinal standards from 1846 until today. However, to do so, they have to eschew the narrower fundamentalism that finds fault and criticism for all kinds of non-essentials and separated them from others on that basis.  The unity is maintained by the Reformers’ dictum.  “In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, and in all things love.”  We cannot merely evaluate from an American perspective.  From a World perspective, we are closer to the fulfillment of the prayer of Yeshua than ever before except for biblical times. 

What are the consequences of one’s view of John 17?  If one agrees that the prayer of Yeshua will be answered then we are to give ourselves to cooperative unity locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally.  This will greatly strengthen the Church.  However, if we do not believe this it will lead to independence, lack of mutual accountability, competition, and local churches that just build their little fiefdoms.  

How dispensationalism swept the American Evangelical World in the first part of the 20^th century is an amazing story.   With the Schofield Reference Bible and its notes becoming the Bible of the Evangelical world, the domination was complete.  Yes, Reformed Evangelicals (Lutheran, Presbyterian, Reformed, and Methodist) did not buy in, but they were smaller and less influential.  It has taken many years for Evangelicalism to extricate itself.  

I trace the beginning of the process of extricating to a group of scholars in the late 1940s.  Dr. Carl Henry, the theologian for Billy Graham and the editor of Christianity Today wrote the Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism in 1947.  The critique hit hard on the abdication of a biblical approach to social issues and justice.  The absence of Dispensationalist Fundamentalists from the Civil Rights struggles of the 50s and 60s was a case in point.  The theology of just getting people to be saved and to escape the tribulation departed from social responsibility.  This was far from the 19th century Evangelicals like Charles Finney, and the Beecher family (Lyman, Henry Ward, and Harriet who wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin.)   Would slavery had ended the dispensationalist quietist views on social issues dominant in the 19^th century?  Dr. Morris Inch, Theology Professor at Wheaton and a classmate of Dr. Martin Luther King was quite passionate about this. 

Besides Henry, other groups of young scholars were breaking ranks.  Edward John Carnell the famous professor of apologetics and philosophy of religion at Fuller Theological Seminary and then President wrote The Case for Orthodox Theology, arguing for Evangelical Orthodox theology.  He included a blistering critique of Fundamentalism, but mainly Dispensational Fundamentalism.  He passionately critiqued its narrowness, censoriousness (finding heresy to criticize everywhere), its social quietism, and strange methods of Biblical interpretation and speculation.  He was mainly speaking of Dispensational Fundamentalism.  He argued that Fundamentalism was Orthodoxy gone cultic.  It did not begin that way when the brilliant scholars wrote The Fundamentals.  

George Ladd of Fuller wrote Crucial Questions and the Kingdom of God (1951) where he broke from Dispensational Fundamentalism on the issue of the Kingdom of God and the Gospel of the Kingdom which, according to Ladd, is the Gospel we preach. It is not just the Gospel for the Jewish people in the coming tribulation as they taught in contrast to Dispensationalism’s Gospel of Grace.  Ladd’s early work harkened back to the pre-dispensational pre-millennial views that were so common among those who were early Christian Zionists.  (For example, Lutheran scholar J. A. Bengel-1687-1752) 

The great Evangelical philosopher at Wheaton College, Dr. Arthur Holmes, of dear memory used to say in reflecting really on Evangelical Fundamentalism, “We have lost 100 years.”  Perhaps at that time not really 100 but easily 60. 

Dispensational Fundamentalism is still the majority popular Evangelicalism but is in decline.  In the Evangelical scholarly world, outside of its own schools that define doctrine so narrowly that only Dispensationalists can be on the faculty, Dispensationalism is in decline.  Think of Wheaton, Trinity, Gordon Conwell, Asbury, Denver, Regent Canada, Regent in Virginia, Wycliff, Tyndale (Oxford), and I could go on and on.  Even in a few of the leading dispensational schools, we hear of Progressive Dispensationalism which is 50-70% return to pre-dispensational pre-millennialism.  However, there is still much work to do to get beyond this, to prepare God’s people for revival, partnership with the Messianic Jewish community, and to fulfill the prayer of Yeshua that we might be one.  This is especially the case in Israel where due to mission influences, there is still a great influence of this viewpoint. 

Recently I read two books that prompted this article on the theology of Tikkun Global.  The first was an amazing, definitive book by Jon Mark Ruthven, The Cessation of the Charismata and a short history of the World Evangelical Alliance written in 1946 on its 100th year anniversary.   The first book can almost take your breath away.  It shows with amazing scholarship (over 600 footnotes) that the kind of power in the Spirit ministry of Yeshua and the early Body of the Messiah was meant to continue throughout this age until His second coming.  

Dr. Ruthven recently passed away. My view is that this book cannot be refuted, and I am in accord with most of it.  Dr. Ruthven understands the Gospel of the Kingdom, that the Good News is the invitation to enter into and live from the Kingdom of God which has broken into this world.  The Gospel of the Kingdom is demonstrated in signs and wonders.  The power of the Spirit and prophecy is in all believers and is also manifest in the gatherings of believers who exercise his gifts.  There is far more to come in God’s power and in the progress of the Gospel. This is something that began to be restored in the 18^th century, became much greater in the 19^th and then after Pentecostalism was born has continued to grow until the present time.  Much was lost in history that is now being restored. 

The second book gives an amazing window into the Evangelical world.  However, three things stood out as I reviewed the 19^th century.  It was the fact that the WEA was pursuing and fostering the vision of the prayer of Yeshua in John 17:21 that his followers would be one, “that the world might believe,” in Yeshua.  We are to be one as He and the Father are one. This prayer is to be answered before his return. As it was in the beginning, in Acts 2 when all were one, so it will be in the end, worldwide, and this unity will be restored. 

In addition, the WEA believed that Yeshua would come after the Gospel had been adequately preached to all the nations.  We see this as requiring an understanding of the Gospel of the Kingdom confirmed by signs and wonders (Mark 16:17,18).  Today the WEA is over 600 million and 400 million are Pentecostal/Charismatic.  This spring a few of us Messianic Jewish leaders in Israel met with the leaders of the WEA!!

Thirdly the WEA believed revivals would be a key to see the progress of the Gospel.  They pointed to revivals that were key in the past and expected more in the future. 

My readers will know that these three are part of the five foundations of Tikkun theology, the other is the election and calling of the Jewish people and their salvation (Romans 11:11-31), and a five-fold leadership that pursues the four other foundations (Eph. 4:11ff).  

In Acts 3:21 Peter says that He must remain in heaven “until the time of the restoration of all things.”  The word restoration is translated into Hebrew as Tikkun, restoration.  Most restoration takes place after the return of Yeshua. However, we can see that some does take place before because of emphases and realities lost in Church history.  Restoration took place in the Reformation, then in the Moravian and Wesleyan Methodist movements.  In the 19^th century, the spiritual healing or cure movement took place.  The people of this movement saw themselves as a restoration movement. Many do not realize that the famous A. B. Simpson who founded the Christian and Missionary Alliance denomination and Nyack College was part of this restoration movement.  A. J. Gordon was part of this movement. He was the founder of Gordon College and Seminary, one of today’s leading Evangelical institutions.  The Pentecostals from the early 20^th century saw themselves as a restoration movement.  Restorationism, without disparaging the Church in history, is an important 300-year thrust.   

When the Lord showed us that we Messianic Jews were a restoration of a Jewish living Yeshua movement, he also showed us the restoration of the Church to power, revival, unity, world evangelism effectiveness, and partnership with us in making Israel jealous.  The salvation of Israel requires these restorations.   Thus, we formed a network in 1984 to foster this restoration view and in 1991 named ourselves Tikkun, Restoration.  

I have been inspired by these two books.  Now I say of us, that we are contending for a restorationist Messianic Jewish movement in partnership with a restorationist-oriented Church worldwide. 

In our last essay, we noted the origins of the term “Fundamentalism” in the series on the Fundamentals published from 1909 onward and then connected to the Niagara Conferences.  It was a scholarly and amazing series that included Orthodox Evangelicals of all stripes.  All can benefit from reading these articles. 

However, as Fundamentalists lost the battles for the mainline denominations, as higher critical and Darwinian nostrums gained more and more currency, scholars say that a reactionary negativism became more and more dominant.  World War I left many with a great pessimism about social influence.  Yes, they would say, we have to make a living in this world.  However, to really seek to better society was considered a waste of time.  Yes, if people became believers, in a limited way they could have some positive influence, but the world was moving toward the last days.  The great apostasy in the denominations was upon us and the Anti-Christ would soon appear.  Opting out of cultural engagement became dominant.  It is debatable that Wheaton College, the bastion of Evangelical arts and science education, ever went so far.  However, some began to push back hard on the trends that dominated Fundamentalism.  Legalism, cultural opting out, and the pre-tribulation rapture as a litmus test of faithfulness was more and more seen to be aberrant.  Carl F. H. Henry, the theological mentor to Rev. Billy Graham wrote about this in his important 1947 book, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism.  Its opting out was given a great critique.  (1947).  Arthur Homes, Wheaton’s most important philosopher, and many think its greatest professor in the last half of the 20^th century used to say we had lost 100 years of cultural influence.  I actually think it was only 50 or 60, but he was tracing attitudes in Darbyite influence for 100 years.  Wasn’t Wheaton founded to both spread the Gospel and to be an influence in cultural formation in all spheres?  It is no accident that Wheaton was an influence to transcend Dispensational Fundamentalism. 

A group of young men decided to face the best scholarship that liberalism had to offer.  They would defend Evangelical Orthodoxy in the face of liberalism.  They studied at schools such as Harvard, Boston University, and Basel in Switzerland.  Such names as Edward John Carnell, the great Christian apologist who became President of Fuller Theological Seminar in Pasadena, California, Bernard Ramm, the Baptist scholar, Kenneth Kantzer Wheaton, and then of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, who studied at Basel and Harvard, and Arthur Holmes from Northwestern.  Reformed Scholars were also very important.  Some argued that Dispensational Fundamentalism as it finally hardened into its mid-century orientations, was actually aberrant and cultic.  

The words of Edward John Carnell were amazing and quite painful to all of us who were involved in our young years. Simplistic theological approaches prevailed.  Sometimes doing biblical theology is not easy. There are different emphases in the Bible and not everything fits a simple black and with the system.  Fundamentalism is given to black and white thinking. Carnell in his book, The Case for Orthodox Theology, called Fundamentalist Dispensationalism “Orthodoxy gone cultic.” Here is a list from Carnell and others. 

1. Inability to effectively engage the larger culture and become salt and light in it.  Since the world is going downhill, we are to just get people saved and into the lifeboat.  The culture is part of a sinking ship, the world. 
2. Fear of those who are not speaking the same language and towing the same black and white thinking. 
3. A critical spirit that easily sallies off in tirades of criticism of those who are not in the same camp.
4. A fear of contamination.  One may be holy, but if one connects to one that is not sufficiently separated, then one becomes unholy by association 
5. A sectarian spirit that easily separates from those seen as not theologically pure enough and not sufficiently holy (not by the Bible commands but extra standards of holiness in the Fundamentalist Camp.)  This is part of a hyper-critical spirit that heresy hunts and constantly looks for error that is greatly feared.  Really the Fundamentalist is insecure.   
6. Emphasis on doctrinal points that do not hold up to sound scholarship. For example, the pre-tribulation rapture is a litmus test.  Its rejection is thought to be the first step toward liberalism.
7. An inability to understand the views of others and to engage them with respect shows that they have first been understood.  Fundamentalism is characterized by refuting straw men and misrepresentation of the other.
8. Skepticism and rejection of new insights, directions, and methods. 
9. Difficulty in engaging others who are not perceived as people with whom God may be working. If they are not born again.

We are so very glad that Evangelical Orthodoxy is moving beyond Fundamentalist Dispensationalism.  There is still a way to go. 

This essay is part one of two essays on Dispensational Fundamentalism.

In the last half of the 19^th century, critical approaches to the Bible began to make inroads into several of the mainline Protestant denominations.  Their leaders did not deny the basic creedal confessions of Christianity or reject the historic moral consensus of Western Christian culture.  That would not happen to a large degree until the last half of the 20^th century, but those who were weak in confession were allowed to remain.  Conservative churchmen saw that it was only a matter of time and apostasy would come.  The Bible as God’s inerrant Word was rejected by many.  Princeton Seminary held out until the 1930s.  Central to the decline were higher critical approaches to the Pentateuch.  It was claimed that Moses did not write the Pentateuch but that it was a product of a long development of material that was added from the 9^th to the 4^th century.  They saw the movement from more primitive material to a more advanced understanding in the book of Deuteronomy and the Prophets.  The New Testament would also be given a critical evaluation.  There was a quest for the historical Jesus and only what survived the critical evaluation really was from Jesus.   Some also embraced a social Gospel where social action was not an extension of true faith in a divine Jesus and the influence of the Prophets, but social action replaced supernatural faith and conversion.  The theory of evolution was being embraced by some Christian leaders and evolutionary ideas of development from George Hagel, the German idealist philosopher, were influencing Christian scholars. 

From 1878 to 1901 a group of scholars met at the Niagara Fall Conferences in New York and created the Niagra Statement of Faith.  This was a very influential statement and was embraced by many denominations, Bible Colleges, Christian liberal arts colleges, and seminaries.  I noted this when I led a study on the doctrinal confession for the Student Council at Wheaton College in 1969.  It was in my view a good statement but a little too rigid on a few things.  It was based on the old Niagara Statement. 

From 1910 to 1915 a group of scholars worked on an historic set of essays entitled The Fundamentals A Testimony to the Truth.  The original essays were 12 volumes but later condensed to four which are available today.  The authors were like a who’s who of conservative Protestants from many denominations.  They included Dispensationalists and Reformed and other thinkers.  The essays are worthy of study today. 

However, a strange thing happened.  With the pessimism that resulted from World War I, the Dispensational version of Fundamentalism appealed to more and more people. The clear and well-written notes of the Schofield Reference Bible (1909) were very appealing.  The appeal to a literal hermeneutic seemed to be a corollary of Fundamentalism though the meaning of literal interpretation in Dispensationalism was very simplistic and not evenly applied. The social Gospel was not only rejected as a false Gospel but social engagement in the culture was also rejected.  In the most amazing way, Dispensationalism more and more dominated the Fundamentalist movement.  Yes, the Reformed thinkers were still important but became more and more a minority.   My spiritual father at Wheaton College, Dr. Evan Welsh, a graduate of Princeton Seminary, lived through this period and observed as the Dispensationalist variety of Fundamentalism became more and more dominant.  Many rejected cultural engagement.  The famous Wheaton Philosopher professor, Dr. Arthur Holmes, used to say regarding cultural enragement, that we had lost 100 years.  

This disengagement and turning inward included a reactive orientation that became more and more narrow.  One sees this narrowness previously in the founder of Dispensationalism, J. N. Darby who led the closed brethren. They would take communion with only other closed brethren.  The famous Chinese saint, Watchman Nee was originally Closed Brethren, but left this movement to embrace fellowship with all true believers and was Open Brethren.  This narrowness became deeply rooted and even engaging areas of study were considered dangerous and rejected.  Suspicion was very strong and led to splits in conservative denominations. 

For Dispensational Fundamentalists, Dispensationalism was Fundamentalism and visa versa. For much of the Evangelical world, it was so.  The manifestation of this in 1957 was the Billy Graham Crusade in New York.  Because Billy Graham had church leaders on the Platform giving support to his crusade, some of whom had questionable views, Fundamentalist leaders like Jack Wyrtzen of dear memory rejected Billy Graham and separated from him.   Graham was vilified.  This harsh judgmental spirit became deeply rooted.  Thankfully much of Evangelicalism has now come out from this.  Many Evangelicals did not want to be called Fundamentalists.  This was the case with Wheaton College during my years there in the late 1960s.  However, there is still a Fundamentalist segment of Evangelicalism, and they still unfairly censor and judge.  Disagreement within the boundaries of Orthodoxy is occasion for severe condemnation.  We will pick up on these themes in the next essay. 

As a Wheaton Philosophy major and then an Assistant to the Professor of Philosophy of Religion, I wrestled with what was called the mind-body problem.  The atheists in philosophy and brain science were more and more saying that the mind and brain were the same thing.  The mind was simply a matter of brain states.  The mind or soul did not transcend the brain.  When the brain is dead, the person ceases to be.  The well-known atheist analytic philosopher J. C. Ryle argued against the idea of the transcendent mind as the “ghost in the machine.”  They were less clear on just what the mind was since mind language, mental pictures, ideas and so much more can not be described in terms of brain states.  As the famous German philosopher, Martin Heidegger argued, one cannot reduce the “lived experience” and the terms in which we describe it to the terms of physics and chemistry.  Yet the problem remains.  What happens to the person, the mind, consciousness, or soul when a person dies or when an old person becomes senile.  

I dealt with this on a personal level when my dear grandmother began to lose some of her mental capacities.  Soon after my mother visited, on the same day, my mother would talk to her by phone, and then she would ask why my mother had not visited in such a long time!   After her fall, a broken hip and hospitalization took a toll and greater senility resulted.  From 1971-1972, near Wheaton, I worked as a cook in a nursing home and saw senility up close.  A dear Baptist woman, Anna Giesfield, used to come into the kitchen in her wheelchair and offer to help me.  She said lots of guests at the resort were coming for dinner, and we needed to get ready for dinner.  I assured her that we had it all under control and she was there to enjoy and relax.  This was sweet senility.  However, others just moaned and seemed lost, not knowing where they were or what to do.  Was their brain deterioration proof that the mind/soul or whatever was so dependent and part of the brain that both were dying together, gradually ceasing to be?   As a follower of Yeshua and a believer in his resurrection, I knew that somehow the person transcended physical death and awaited the resurrection, but I did not have good enough answers.   

About two decades ago, a brain physiologist, Mario Beauregard, wrote a book called the spiritual brain which proved that operations of the mind and soul transcended the brain.  The reality of quantum physics also pointed to events that had no brute physical causation explanation where events at one place miles away from another place had a parallel effect there with no seeming physical connection.  

However, in recent years, I believe I have more clarity.  Two things have added to this clarity.  First is the extensive literature on what is called Near Death Experiences, (NDEs).  I call the most amazing of them death and resurrection experiences.  The best book I know on this is by John Burke, Imagine Heaven.   The second is the literature of a new movement inspired by Jim Wilder, who calls himself a neuro-theologian.  Two books present his views well, The Other Half of Church by Michael Hendricks and Jim Wilder, and Rare Leadership by Wilder and Marcus.  

The central thesis of Wilder is that we must get a hold of new research into the distinctions of the left and right brain.   The left brain is the logic information processing part of the brain, and the right brain is the intuitive, fast track, immediate processing and response part of the brain.  Much of our immediate behavior processes through the right brain and decides before the left brain gets started.  If we are to disciple character, then we must disciple the right brain.  Wilder presents an amazing outline of brain responses and the different parts of the brain that do different things in that amazing fast-speed response.  However, though Wilder says that spirit transcends the brain, and he and the Life Model Works movement which he inspired is very strong on hearing the voice of the Spirit and gasping God speaking to us, Spirit to spirit, one could wrongly conclude that the books are teaching that we are our brains.  

Here is where the NDE literature and John Burke come in.  This literature proves to an open-minded person that the soul transcends the brain and that God can separate the soul and the brain.  In an NDE persons experience themselves leaving the body and having total and heightened awareness.  They describe the scene where their dead body lies.  They accurately describe the room, what the doctors were doing, nearby rooms, if drowning, those around the pool, or in a car accident in the same detailed types of description.  They sometimes accurately see events happening in the areas nearby.  There is no naturalistic explanation for this.  They often then go through a tunnel and if they are followers of Yeshua,  end up in Heaven.  They see Jesus and loved ones and have conversations, sometimes with amazing and accurate information.  Sometimes those who are not followers of Jesus go to heaven, but others go to Hell.  They are given an opportunity and a choice to go back.   They travel back, enter into their body as they come to.  The pain resumes whereas out of the body they were gloriously pain-free.  They remember their experience and return to recover with new faith and to live with a new faith-confidence.  There are a plethora of such documented experiences.

So how do we put Burke and Wilder together?  There is a way.   Both are so important.  We learn that to interact and have authority and affect things in this physical realm, we must have a physical body.  This does seem to be biblical.  When we leave the body our time of major influence in this world is over though there is something to the fact that we are in communion with those who died and there are experiences with those who have died from time to time (J. B. Phillips, the translator, with C. S. Lewis).  Our direct experiences with God and of revelation do transcend the physical brain.  It is my view that we should see the brain as the manifestation in this world of the soul.  The brain is the most central and important manifestation of the soul in this world.  We must have an earth body not just the part of the person who does appear in heaven as if physical but without an earth body. I prefer to use the word soul over the spirit to differentiate the spirit as the deepest part of us where we have intuitive and direct communion with God.  In the Bible, the two terms are not clearly distinguished, but I believe there is a tendency in this direction.  Plus, the soul is not only manifest in the brain, but though that is primary, but in the larger body (See, Babette Rothchild, The Body Remembers).  

The soul/spirit together is the transcendent center of our human existence.  As such it is no ghost in the machine but is a differentiated complex reality.  The brain has 171 billion cells.  Why should we think that the soul is any less complex? This is a thought experiment, not a scientific assertion, but why should we not think that the soul would have 171 billion soul cells parallel to the brain cells plus connection to body cells beyond the brain.   Therefore, what happens when a person dies, or becomes senile, or has a death and resurrection experience?  I believe that in the death and resurrection experience or when a person dies God separates the brain and body from the soul totally.  However, in senility or brain images, nothing of the soul ceases to be, however, that aspect of the soul that gets through on the physical plane of life in this world no longer has access. The soul is fully there but part of it cannot get through.  Sometimes some relief for the injured takes place by other parts of the brain developing the functions.  When the brain deteriorates the soul just cannot get through.  However, until then soul and the physical are so totally integrated that we cannot distinguish them.  We are fully psycho-physical beings.  We must think in terms of other dimensions, multi-dimensional thinking.  The soul is integrated into the brain but is also other dimensional.  We also access the soul through the brain. When we train the brain we train the soul.

Then, in addition, in this world the brain and soul are so closely, almost totally joined and integrated, you reach the soul through the brain.  If you train the brain (Wilder’s term) you are training the soul.  In this space-time physical world, we cannot distinguish them except in the supernatural realm of the Spirit and revelation or illumination. 

However, let us not think of the brain as the sum of the human personality.  Let us rather think of the soul as really there, as differentiated in functions as the brain, and as transcending the brain.  The brain and soul learn as one.  The brain responses are also soul responses.  Therefore, we speak of left-brain/soul and right brain/soul.  

I don’t know what my readers will think of this essay, but I can rest on this way of seeing things. It is the conclusion of many years of reflection.