Once upon a time, my mother said that I should have been a marine biologist. I neither begrudge her statement nor fail to see the logic; at one time I had a great love of the wonder of God in creation, and had it not been for my constant and humbling failure at math and the natural sciences (but for which I'm sure I would have been rendered an insufferable nuisance to mankind), I may very well have embarked on such a career path. And so it is with the greatest of ironies that I explore the times and habits of a little-known specimen of marine life which I have previously referenced in these musings: the evangellyfish. (All apologies to Doug Wilson, from whom I am borrowing the term.)
The evangellyfish is a creature who similarly borrows the term "evangelical" from historical Christianity, evangelical being derived from evangelium, the term for the gospel that at one time separated Solas Christianity from pre-reformed or later Liturgical/Episcopal Christianity. However, the linguistic similarities are the demarcated zone of common ground between said sea life and the beleaguered unit known as "the Reformed". Major differences are as follows:
1) A belief that Church history begins with Billy Graham, or at the best, perhaps John Wesley.
Your average evangellyfish will have no conception of any Christianity predating America's 19th and 20th century revivals; and who can blame them? The history of American Christianity precedes these events by perhaps a generous two centuries, and given the state of Christianity, or perhaps it were better, "post-Christianity" in Europe, there is little to see as redeeming in Christian "historicism". However, the attachment, subconscious in the main, of "traditions of men" to "traditions at all" has rendered entire generations of Christians, the youth especially, impotent in the face of rank heresies such as Modalism in the UPCI, Mormonism, the egregiously humanistic wings of Romanism, the word-faith movement, and Open 'theism'. America stands poised to equip a nation of missionaries, politicians, philosophers and theologians with a deficit of tools, in that said nation will neither recognize the claims of aforementioned movements as old, nor realize that a consistent worldview from Scripture, namely Calvinism, stands in centuries-old armor to combat them. Moreover, said worldview has been paralyzed by the introduction of traditions of post-Weslyanism, unable either to move beyond human autonomy as a primary, or to understand that their views are traditional. As James White said to Dave Hunt, "there is no one more trapped in tradition than those who fail to acknowledge its impact in their lives".
2) A total rejection of God's sovereignty...except when convenient.
A dearth of Church history leads to a failure of Biblical soteriology. Statistically, the evangellyfish you encounter will likely recoil squidlike from any mention of man's deadness in sin, his incapacity to love God as he aught, and God's total freedom to love and save as he will. The questioner in Romans 9, thrusting injustice upon God, could hardly have found a better counterpart than the average American pew-sitter. The rule of faith is human autonomy...unless of course it's in the "big picture" of God. The hardening of Pharoah's heart and the opening of Lydia's, the resurrection of Lazarus and the crucifixion of Christ, the book of Revelation and the opening chapters of Genesis are open to God's utter control. The actions of men in time as moral agents, by and large, are not, Genesis 50 and and Acts 2 to the contrary notwithstanding. Evangellyfish want God to be God when Jesus is dying for them, and themselves to be God when that death is applied. They want God to be God when Ananias is slain, and themselves to be God when they go to the club (or buy shoes, or choose Robert Frost's immortal road). Many thinkers have sought philosophical justification for that road less traveled as a human creation, whether they be Molinist or classical Arminian, and yet they flee utterly from a literal reading of Acts 2 or Romans 9.
3) An eschatology that disavows alternatives.
Whether due to outright laziness on the part of preachers and expositors regarding the Old Testament as a foreshadowing of Christ, or a sincere belief that there is only one position because it is the only one one has heard, dispensational thinking latent or patent has crept into the evangellyfish mind. With it has come a dogmatic assurance that the book of Revelation reveals near-gnosis secrets incomprehensible to the initial readers of that Scripture, and a patient waiting for the end of the universe that similarly bears the gnostic fixation on rejection not only of materialism but of the material world. Political involvement, career ambition and intellectual pursuits fall by the wayside as the worst of the stereotypes of Christianity as a faith of "pie in the sky...by and by" come to fruition.
4) Man-centeredness in worship.
The average American parish consists of a dwindling congregation of the Old Guard, perceived as out of touch with the culture and unable to sustain itself biblically or procreatively, or a church that could perhaps paint the faint outline of a guitar upon its Crucifixion symbols. A game I enjoy playing is to eliminate all songs from a contemporary Christian music station (Spirit 105 is a great example) that contain the words "I" or "me" outside of a context of self-abasement , and see how much of the station is commercials. Or to put it another way, if you made a drinking game out of that, you would die. This quickest way to locate an evangellyfish congregation would be to ask the band to play in the back where no one could see them and omit songs including "I". The thought experiment is however, unlikely to happen. Similarly, an overemphasis on "community building" in Church ordinances, and alteration of parish names to conform to worldly standards are hardly infrequent. (Washingtonians: how many churches are you aware of that were named "x or y baptist" and are now some combination of "grace" "point" "way" "church" "free" "fellowship" etc.?)
This my friends, is why soteriology matters. When the law is not unkeepable by mortal hands, then eschatology and covenant theology suffer (the Jews did so much better than we did!). When the point of salvation is our response rather than God's condescension, worship is about adulation of a band and Church history is about "making a decision for Christ'...regardless of whether that was ever the gospel was presented in aeons past. I do not condemn those in the average mileau of American protestantism, or even world Christianity to perdition, and I don't claim that the modern fate of the American Church is irreversible or irredeemable, but the tentacles of the evangellyfish have wrapped snugly around the body too long to stay silent. Lest you fear the future, know that God has made you a moral actor and agent of eternal reformation. The next time you hear the same empty or infuriating platitudes, the next time you despair of American Christianity, know that there is something you can do. When you meet your local evangellyfish, shake their hand/hug them, buy them a coffee....and tell them that Jesus is bigger than they imagine, and that his gospel has been more than a pamphlet.
In Christ,
~JS
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