(re-posted and revised from May, 2007. The first post in this series is here.)

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The conversion of the president of the Evangelical Theological Society to Rome raises the questions: what is an evangelical? and when is evangelicalism not evangelical?

First, if the origins of a word have any role in determining its proper meaning, the word “evangelical” describes the magisterial Protestants. The Protestants used it of themselves and their theology to distinguish their theology, piety, and practice from Rome’s. It continued to signal the “magisterial Protestant theology, piety, and practice” until the 18th century when revivalism began to change the substance of Protestantism and the evangelical theology, piety, and practice.

During the first great awakening, the word still denoted “the Protestant doctrine of justification” (i.e., the definitive declaration of justification on the ground of Christ’s righteousness alone imputed and received through faith receiving and resting alone), even if some of Edwards’ formulations of the doctrine of justification raised serious problems. There were other ambiguities. The most charitable reading of John Wesley’s articulation of the doctrine of justification would find it ambiguous at best.

By the 19th century the evangelical movement included even more diversity than it had in the century previous. By the middle of the Second Great Awakening the evangelical movement included those who essentially rejected the theology, piety, and practice of the Reformation. Through the first half of the 20th century there arose a neo-evangelical movement, led by Carl Henry and others largely led by those who identified with the Reformation doctrine of justification (if not the Reformation doctrines of the church and sacraments).

By the 1970’s, however, the neo-evangelical movement had fragmented as the baby-boomers began to take places of leadership and the 19th century Wesleyan strains re-asserted themselves in the movement and marginalized the older Reformation-oriented leadership.

Since the 1970s there has been virtually no consensus over the meaning of the word “evangelical.” Today there are “evangelical” Romanists, Greek/Russian/Finnish/Eastern etc Orthodox evangelicals, Anabaptist (who, historically categorically rejected the Reformation solas) evangelicals, as well as Free Church evangelicals, Reformation-rooted evangelicals ad infin. Today, among late modern evangelicals, there is no universal theology, soteriology, ecclesiology, or sacramentology. The only universal seems to be something like this, “I have had an immediate experience of the risen Christ.” An evangelical today may affirm the passibility (suffering) of God or the impassibility of God; he may affirm an orthodox doctrine of the Trinity or social Trinitarianism (the doctrine that the divine unity is really a unity of relationship rather than being), he may affirm the inerrancy of Scripture or deny it; he can affirm justification sola gratia et sola fide or he may deny it. Clark Pinnock has even suggested that the Mormons might have a point and that God, considered apart from the incarnation, may have have a body.

It is with the ambiguity of the last 30 years that has led some of us to simply abandon the adjective “evangelical.” As I mentioned in the previous post, Darryl Hart has argued forcefully that there really isn’t any such thing as “evangelical-ism” any longer. The only universal is so slender as to become almost meaningless. What hath Geneva and Wittenberg to do with Billy Sunday, Sister Aimee, Bill Hybels, or the Emergent Village?

We should distinguish between “evangelical” in the traditional sense as denoting the theology, piety, and practice of the Reformation and “the evangelicals” as a modern sociological and theologically pluralist entity. Even this distinction raises problems, however. It requires us to say that there are “evangelicals” who aren’t evangelical!

We can make this distinction by analogy with our continued confession of the word “catholic.” After all, the confessional Reformed churches are insistent that the Roman communion is not really “catholic” at all. The qualifier Roman makes the expression “Roman Catholic” an oxymoron by definition. It’s like saying, “I’m Californian, San Diego Californian and those are the true Californians.” What? No, anyone who lives within the borders of the state of California is Californian. To suggest that one city is the state is the render the state superfluous. In that case we’ve gone down the rabbit hole after Alice.

At Trent, the Roman communion condemned not Luther and Calvin (although she certainly hit those marks) but she also condemned a good bit of the patristic and medieval church. In contrast, the confessional Protestant critique of the fathers and medievals has been much more targeted and surgical. Yes, we have our problems with the fathers and the medievals, but as my students find every year, we have a great deal in common. Those are “our” people (onze folk) as much or more, in many respects, than they are “Roman” catholics.

There is an important way in which the Roman communion is a sect. As we know and experience it, the Roman communion didn’t come into full existence until session six of the Council of Trent, 1547. That was the breaking point. Since session six she has been every bit as novel and fragmented as the Protestants. She has just as ambiguous a relation to the past as we do. The difference is she has a very large institutional skirt and she can hide a lot of the dust. For those of us, however, who study the family history, the picture is a lot more complicated than the evangelical converts to Rome often like to think.

Confessional Protestants are “evangelical” just as we are “catholic” but we’re aren’t modern “evangelicals” just as we are not “Roman” catholics. We have ambiguous and complicated relations to both traditions. That is as it should be.