Comments

Ted, that margin is shocking. As you may know, in order to change the ETS Constitution, the amendment needed to win with a 4 to 1 margin (or 80%). The fact that it could not even garner a majority is stunning. I had expected it to lose but with a slight or near majority.

I wonder how many are generally supportive of expanding the doctrinal basis, but just not in the form presented to them?

I was there and voted (negatively), and I believe the margin was closer to 3 to 1. There is plenty of evidence that many members would accept a brief statement that defines evangelical essentials, but I don't sense that there is widespread passion to expand the doctrinal basis. The members did not show up in great numbers for either the discussion or the vote.

Whether one agrees or disagrees with the proposed amendment, Denny Burk and Ray Van Neste should be applauded for their efforts. They chose as a model for the amended confession a document that has generally been affirmed by evangelicals in another mature context. Isn't it striking that a "theological society" does not necessarily want to define its theology beyond the slimmest of statements? Will ETS become an only slightly less radical institution than AAR or SBL?

Evangelicalism desparately needs the Catholic spirit of the whole Church. Without this, it is left with a narrowly defined biblicism that is determined by Enlightenment ways of construing reality. We do not worship the Bible; we worship the the Triune God. Evangelical means "of the Gospel," yet North American evangelicals live according to a gospel which is little more than a baptized form of the American Dream (the mega church comes to mind). As an older "evangelical" who has remained young in spirit, I have no interest in the very limited agenda which has preoccupied the ETS. I find this true of many "yonger evangelicals (c.f. Bob Webber) who are half my age.

I'm glad it didn't pass. The amendment proposed a doctrinal-basis expansion that would rule out many people who genuinely believe in the true evangel, but don't fit the strict definitions proposed in the amendment.

This is a fortuitous problem in the evangelical movement. Although they want to be defined by the evangel, they refuse to allow their identity to be be sola evangel, and would rather cling to several non-evangel doctrines that are not necessarily essential to the gospel, although they may have ties to historical evangelical identity. It's good to be aware of various components that have more-or-less defined evangelicals in the past, but it's also good to have the reformability to move beyond some of them, and to make the gospel itself the foundation. Nothing else.

I think that the responses are missing the point of what ETS is all about. Bruce Ware made it clear that ETS does not have a doctrinal statement, but a doctrinal basis. And that basis is what unites us in a minimalistic way so that we can have honest dialogue on various biblical and theological issues. The last thing that ETS needs is to have theological headhunters, and this is what the Van Neste-Burk proposal could sponsor. Note, for example, that they state, "we contend that the current ETS doctrinal basis is simply
inadequate because it fails to include significant doctrines commonly held
to be essential to evangelicals." It's the 'commonly held' that is troubling. Not all evangelicals hold to all the points they raised. A move in this direction, I think, would shut down even more dialogue among evangelicals and dictate that only certain kinds of beliefs are acceptable. If we can all agree that the scriptures are inerrant, that should be enough to get us to dialogue honestly about biblical and theological issues. The ETS, after all, is not a denomination, a church, or a seminary. its confession needs to be kept at a minimum to foster serious scholarly interaction without fear of reprisals.

I, for one, am glad that the ETS membership voted it down. I was surprised that we got only a 2/3 vote though.

christians are expert at para-church escapism as the place to do all the stuff NT doesn't teach/show...another scholar's club..

The ETS has always held that the Bible is inerrant authority (which keeps us from being AAR/SBL for sure!) and we talk about everything else from that basis.

The now defunct Open Theism question was an excellent case in point. It was proposed, presented, discussed, defended, argued and dismissed by the membership of ETS. That's a good way to deal with proposals.

With the proposed doctrinal statement, I can just imagine the attempts of try members based on whether or not they REALLY held God as sovereign or not per the proposed statement.

In fact the proposal that Ray and Denny made was done in exactly the spirit of ETS: propose, discuss and decide. The society was quite clear that we don't any basis other than inerrant Scripture and Trinity as a point of agreement for our discussions

Well said.

Regarding the efforts of ETS to come up with an amended doctrinal statement - wouldn't it be easier, and more accurate, just to memorize the Nicene Creed? ;-)

(Just a friendly chide from a sister Christian who happens to be Catholic.)

Re: Evangelical Theological Society Votes Not to Amend

To administrater not to be published, What happened to my
comment?

Michael

I find it fascinating that neither this article nor any of the comments that precede mine mention this part of the proposed amendment:

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