The Fourfold Gospel Meets Contemporary Theology:
The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same
Stanley Grenz and Roger Olson’s 20th-Century Theology: God and the World in a Transitional Age (IVP 1993) traces the currents and developments of twentieth-century theology through the categories of transcendence, on the one hand, and immanence, on the other. While a highly-influential text, its approach to the categorization and perceived relationship of recent theologies is not the only option available to us. I would assert that contemporary theologies and, perhaps more pointedly, contemporary soteriologies, may also be generally categorized by their relative propensity to emphasize the pre-eminence of either physicality or immateriality in relation to Christ’s saving work. That is, when discussing both the locus of human need and, consequently, the response of the Gospel, twentieth-century theologies tend to give pre-eminence (at least) to either humanity’s physical or spiritual condition.
I have been asked to address what the Fourfold Gospel might have to say to contemporary theology, in general. It is my pleasure to do so. As I do, I am going to use this continuum (somewhat contrived) of physicality and spirituality to do so.
Immateriality
Perhaps, most obviously, the inclination to emphasize the immateriality in regard to soteriology is found within what has been labelled “Evangelicalism”[1] in the late-twentieth century. Certainly, this is, at least in part, due to the significant role that Revivalism had in shaping, if not creating, this movement. The culprit, in particular, is Revivalism’s historic focus on, if not obsession with, spiritual birth or being born again. Late twentieth-century evangelicals understood regeneration, not merely as a necessary aspect of salvation but, practically, they equated regeneration with salvation. To be born again was to be saved.
Evangelicalism’s emphasis on the spiritual nature of salvation is complicated by its historical relationship to Fundamentalism and, particularly, Fundamentalism’s outright rejection of anything that appeared to be “Liberal.” For many Evangelicals, Liberalism included Walter Rauschenbusch’s “Social Gospel” and, therefore, anything that resembled it. If the Liberals believed it and if the Social Gospel practiced it, it was automatically persona non grata to the Evangelicals. Since the Liberals and the Social Gospel were involved in ministries focussing on human physical needs, Evangelicals often ran in the other theological direction. This attitude was further entrenched within Evangelicalism by the growing influence of present-world-rejecting Dispensationalism which found little if any use for the current world. So thorough-going was this rejection of the physical mandate of the Church, that even Carl Henry’s The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism, a critique of Fundamentalism’s abandonment of its social mandate, was not enough to stem the tide. While in recent years it seems as though this attitude is diminishing among those who self-identify as Evangelicals, it still tends to characterize the movement.
Physicality
The greatest majority of those theological trends to develop in the latter part of the twentieth century have almost uniformly leaned in a direction opposite to that of Evangelicalism; each has tended to understand the fundamental human need and, therefore, the fundamental object of salvation as falling on the more “physical” end of the spectrum. Many, if not all, of these movements developed not only subsequently, but in some ways consequently, to the events and aftermath of World War II. In particular, these movements have appeared in response to transitions in Western sociological understandings. Included among these trends is the rise, spread, and popular appreciation of democratic government and the rise of existentialism as a mode of thought and a way of life. Included among these movements, one will find Liberation, Black, Feminist, and Minjung theologies. While sociological issues such as racism and poverty are addressed in these movements, more fundamentally, these movements, though diverse, commonly assert that the primary problem to be addressed is the arbitrary elevation of one social class over another. While issues of discrimination and poverty are addressed, they are understood to be symptomatic of a more basic issue—the arbitrary subjugation of one group to another and the fiendish social structures that support it. While these groups do not necessarily deny the spiritual needs of humanity, they tend to assert that these can only be finally remedied by addressing the unjust social orders which, they believe, cause them.
The Testimony of the Fourfold Gospel to Contemporary Theologies
As I noted in my plenary lecture, Simpson’s Fourfold Gospel was both a reflection of and a correction to the popular theological emphases of late nineteenth-century theology. In summary, the Fourfold Gospel 1) resisted the common tendency to objectify or commodity the blessings consequent to union with Christ, 2) spoke against the temptation to artificially separate and, then, isolate, the various consequences of Christ’s saving work, and 3) criticized the common habit of bifurcating human being and, consequently, exalting one part to the detriment or exclusion of the other.
I would suggest, as the old adage goes, that the more things change, the more they stay the same. That is, the criticisms and correctives that the Fourfold Gospel made in the nineteenth century are criticisms and correctives that can still be made today. The criticisms and correctives are, today, as they were almost 150 years ago, directed against those movements that are, “theologically,” both “conservative” and innovative.
To contemporary Evangelicalism, the Fourfold Gospel, I believe, the Fourfold Gospel offers the following. First, the Fourfold Gospel affirms the first-order role and necessity of regeneration. As Jesus, Himself, noted the indispensability of being “born again.” (John 3:3, 7) Consequently, the Fourfold Gospel affirms, as does contemporary Evangelicalism, that the Church’s mission can never be separated from the verbal proclamation of the Gospel and the calling of people to faith in Jesus Christ.[2] The Fourfold Gospel, however, would not enter into dialogue with contemporary Evangelicalism without, at the same time, offering to it some constructive criticism. For example, the message of the Fourfold Gospel criticizes contemporary Evangelicalism’s seemingly inbred tendency to understand and act as though regeneration is the preeminent aspect, if not the totality, of God’s saving work in the present age. The Fourfold Gospel, in its very essence, while asserting the necessity of regeneration in the overall work of salvation, also asserts the indispensability of sanctification, of healing, and of the glorious return of Christ in Christian soteriology. To overlook these, is to fundamentally misunderstand the scope of Christian salvation. Consequently, the Fourfold Gospel also implicitly, at least, criticizes contemporary Evangelicalism’s popular tendency to understand salvation in spiritual and eschatological terms.
Beyond that, Simpson’s formulation of the Fourfold Gospel criticizes contemporary Evangelicalism’s tendency to continue to objectify and commodity God’s saving grace. Practically, contemporary Evangelicalism continues to understand Jesus’ role in salvation almost entirely in terms of benefactor. It tends to view regeneration, sanctification, divine healing, and the eschaton as entities that have an existence independent of the person of Jesus Christ. That is, while he provides salvation for humanity, it fails to remember that salvation, in all of its aspects, is consequent to the very indwelling of Christ Himself. According to the Fourfold Gospel, not only is Christ our Savior, Sanctifier, Healer and Coming King/Lord, Christ is our Regeneration, Sanctification, Life, and our Blessed Hope.
To the “liberative” late twentieth-century theologies, such as Liberation Theology, Black Theology, Feminist Theology, and Minjung Theology, the Fourfold Gospel has the following message. It affirms its concern and its work for justice and for the deliverance of people from the dehumanizing effects of oppression, marginalization, and poverty. After all, these are people who are created in the imago dei. More to the point, however, the Fourfold Gospel assumes, as these theologies do, the inherent goodness, dignity, and worth of the human body. In addition, the Fourfold Gospel affirms the fundamental arbitrariness and the dysfunction of the political structures of this age and that, at least to a degree, the mission of the Church is to challenge the principalities, the powers, and rulers “of this dark world.” (Eph. 6:12) This includes, of course, those force, either within or outside of the Church, that would illegitimately privilege and, conversely, degrade particular genders, races, and ethnicities.
Yet, the Fourfold Gospel denies the common “liberative” theological assumption that humanity’s problem is either fundamentally or exclusively sociological or physical in nature. Consequently, it denies that the source and means of humanity’s salvation can be found solely in the manipulation or realignment of social structures or physical conditions. Related to this critique, is the Fourfold Gospel’s denial that the means for the ultimate resolution to humanity’s trouble is found in the exercise of human ingenuity, effort, or achievement. While these may serve an instrumental role, they cannot be understood to be, even latently, humanity’s hope for redemption.
Conclusion
The Fourfold Gospel, then, in response to contemporary theology, in most if not in all of it manifestations, continues to play the prophetic and pastoral role that it played almost 150 years ago. One the one hand, the Fourfold Gospel affirms both the integrity of the human constitution—that humanity is a psycho-somatic unity—and that the atoning and saving work of Jesus Christ is directed and applied to the whole of the human condition. It affirms that the atoning work of Christ addresses to both “body and soul.” (Again, as I mentioned in my plenary address, this phrase “body and soul” is to be understood as a merism, not as a delineated list.) The work of Christ, even in the present age, is that of Saviour, Sanctifier, Healer, and Coming King. For Simpson’s formulation of the Fourfold Gospel, the scope and application of the saving work of Christ can be no narrower and no less than the deleterious consequences of the Fall. As the depravity of human was total in scope (though not utter), so, too, the saving work of Christ, in its scope, is total. To quote the famous Isaac Watts carol, “Joy to the World,” “[Christ] comes to make His blessings flow, Far as the curse is found.”
Finally, the Fourfold Gospel speaks to contemporary theology in its affirmation of the all-sufficiency of Jesus Christ. Salvation does not come from Christ and something else. Jesus is neither merely the benefactor nor the instrument of salvation. It is mystical union with Christ, Himself, that is both the instrumental and material cause of redemption. According to the Fourfold Gospel, salvation, rightly understood, is what we call the collection of consequences that result from the indwelling of Christ Himself. Salvation is not something. Salvation is someone. Salvation is found, in Simpson’s words, in “Jesus Only!”
[1] Donald Dayton has long-noted that the academic use of the term “Evangelicalism” is fraught with difficulty. While I do not in any way suggest that his critique is not accurate, in using the term here, I am using it in a very broad sense denoting those groups and individuals who, as one commentator has noted, “likes Billy Graham.” Donald W. Dayton, “Some Doubts about the Usefulness of the Category ‘Evangelical,’” in The Variety of American Evangelicalism, edited by Donald W. Dayton and Robert K. Johnston, (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1991), 245-251.
[2] Though I did not go into this in detail previously, I would assert that Simpson’s Fourfold Gospel would also affirm contemporary Evangelicalism for its high regard for Scripture as the normative instrument for encountering the person of Christ.
