Addressing the United Methodist Congress on Evangelism in Nashville on January 6, Irish Methodist Billy Abraham of Perkins School of Theology in Dallas warned against the anti-supernaturalism that undermined evangelism and the church in the late 20th century.
Although Abraham fills the Albert Outler chair at Perkins, he “painfully” pointed to mistakes by United Methodism’s most influential theologian for much of the 20th century.
According to Abraham, Outler was a brilliant scholar and committed churchman whose “vision of Providence” rejected divine intervention in the world even while Outler upheld an orthodox view of Jesus and the Trinity.
“The Incarnation and Resurrection involve divine intervention,” Abraham insisted with a chuckle. “Suck it up or get over it!”
Outler is the “founding Father” of modern United Methodism, Abraham said. His intellect was “staggering,” and his Christian and Methodist commitments were lifelong and deep. Abraham praised his “historical learning, extraordinary rhetorical skill, boundless energy, deep desire to face the truth, and an uncanny eye for humbug.” As a church historian, Outler strove to enshrine John Wesley as one of Christianity’s great figures.
A commitment to Jesus Christ guided Outler’s intellectual work, Abraham noted. Outler was indignant over the 20th century’s assaults on theism, and he saw secularism as disastrous. He sought to preserve Christian faith by redefining it in contemporary terms.
Outler described life as a mystery that is fulfilled in the “life, death and victory of Jesus Christ who is the paradigm representation of a grace and power that operates at all levels of reality,” Abraham recalled. But Outler also “internalized” modernity’s attacks on Christianity. He sought to preserve the faith’s core, as represented by Scripture and the creeds, while accepting much of the modern critique.
Abraham ascribed to Outler a form of “evangelical liberalism” that was a “hodgepodge of vague Trinitarian doctrine coupled with a heavy stress on divine grace, human freedom, and justification by faith, all wrapped up in a soft version of existentialist humanism.” Outler wanted to interpret the Gospel through contemporary language and symbols. But the “host culture” then gets to “call the shots,” Abraham complained. And a “kaleidoscope of theological options” and “pluralism” resulted, depriving the church of any “corporate consensus” on which to base evangelism.
Lacking a theological consensus, Abraham said the United Methodist Church has come to rely on the language of “organizational structure” and the business world. Meanwhile, evangelism has been reduced to “communication” and anything that points to Christ’s lordship. Outler’s perspective “did not begin to fathom the native hostility in the human heart [to the Gospel] due to sin.”
Abraham said Outler’s deeply influential theology was not the “causation” of United Methodism’s decline over the last 40 years, but the “correlation…is stark and unmistakable.” He also faulted Outler’s minimizing interpretation of evil and sin, which ultimately undermined evangelism, even though Outler’s own enthusiasm for evangelism was “contagious.” Outler defended the importance of evangelism against “concerted academic opposition.”
“It’s utterly imperative that we find lost sheep, introduce them to the green pastures of the Gospel, and see to it that they are given the initial formation that will enable them to both survive in and make a real difference to the world,” Abraham said. “I’m worried when we ‘improve’ on Jesus.” He also warned against some trends in “emergent” Christianity, with its focus on post-modernity. “We could give away the store if we make post-modernity the norm,” just as theological liberalism had made modernity the norm, Abraham said.
Outler tried to translate the language of faith into the language of the “university common room, the couch, and the country club,” guided by “process philosophy and psychotherapy,” Abraham regretted. But an effective Gospel cannot be reduced to contemporary categories, he said. Under Outler’s interpretation, Abraham said, the church becomes an “endless seminar in search of elusive and ultimately unattainable truth, rather than the carrier of the rich and salutary faith once delivered to the saints.”
“God did not come into the world to hold an endless seminar on who He is,” Abraham declared. United Methodist theologians have given up on any “intellectual defense of the faith,” he worried, instead “marrying the intellectual fads of the day.”
Without a common faith in the church, Abraham said Jesus would become a “cipher for our own passions and desires.” And the Gospel becomes a “game of smoke and mirrors,” with God’s Kingdom reduced to television slogans like, “Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors,” Abraham complained, citing United Methodism’s advertising theme.
Abraham called the modern ecumenical movement “brain-dead,” partly because it left out the “riffraff” of churches that emphasize evangelism and the Holy Spirit.
In his later years, Outler had “significant second thoughts about his early aversion to orthodoxy” and “serious reservations” about his propositions of the 1960’s and 1970’s, Abraham noted. Outler also cast a “curious eye” on the rise of the charismatic movement. Before his death in 1989, Outler surmised that the church needed a new Pentecost and new reliance on the Holy Spirit.
Abraham’s remarks on Outler were part of a 3 part series in the Harry Denman lectures, which are given every year at the Congress on Evangelism.
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