THE NEW EVANGELICALISM BURSTS INTO VIEW
by Dr John C WhitcombFROM SWORD & TROWEL 2006
No 1
This compelling insight into a crucial period of modern evangelical
history provides a first-hand look at key details in the development of the ‘new
evangelicalism’, or the collapse of biblical faithfulness among so many evangelicals.
This article appeared in the Sword & Trowel in 1987, based on an address given by Dr
Whitcomb in the same year at the Tabernacle School of Theology.
At the time of the Second World War, Almighty God brought forth something
totally new in America. Following its defeats in the 1920s, fundamentalism (or strong,
biblical evangelicalism) had virtually gone underground; then it reappeared with the vigour of
something new, and suddenly there appeared all over the USA Bible-believing churches and
Bible-training institutes.
These began to group in various associations of fundamentalist churches, and
publishing companies began to pour out millions of booklets, pamphlets, sermons and tracts.
It was almost unbelievable to see what the Lord was doing. It was as close to a miracle as one
could have, because funeral and memorial services were already being held to commemorate
the demise of fundamentalism, regarded as dead, buried and gone forever. But such funerals
were premature.
Sadly, the main focus of our attention now must be the tragedies that were to
follow. God did marvellous things until men entered into the situation and spoiled
everything. That is always the story, is it not? Read the book of Judges: God
heard the cry of the defeated, humiliated, discouraged, disillusioned Israelites and He rescued
them and gave them a leader so that they moved onward and upward. But then pride,
arrogance and complacency entered in, and so He sold them once again into the hands of
their enemies.
The hand of man was seen as a ‘new evangelicalism’ made its appear
ance, which reached its full strength by the 1950s. I shall focus on just one place where it
started, though there were many places involved, many seminaries, many churches and many
hearts. To avoid confusion in this analysis one key example will serve to show the essential
character of the new evangelicalism. I consider this example to be the most spectacular,
horrible example of what Satan can do through the sinful nature of man (even as we find it in
the regenerate) to pollute and spoil the great work of God. The particular institution I shall
focus upon is the Fuller Theological Seminary, in Pasadena, California.
In an indirect sense I was personally involved in the history of this seminary,
because in the year that Fuller opened (1947), I was completing my studies at Princeton
University and looking for a theological seminary to attend. The campus missionary who
brought me to Christ successfully urged me to go to a seminary in Indiana, but you cannot
imagine how the literature and the publicity of Fuller Seminary began to attract young
American Christians who were looking for seminary training beyond college and university.
In fact it must have been one of the most spectacular launchings of any theological seminary
in the history of America.
Fuller Theological Seminary arose as a consequence of the enormous influence of
Charles E Fuller’s radio programme - The Old Fashioned Revival Hour - which
was in those days heard by millions of people all over the world. This radio evangelist had a
great reputation for godliness and for his love for God’s Word.
At the end of the Second World War, Charles Fuller, then in his declining years,
became very concerned to launch a seminary where young men could be trained to do what
he was doing, but tragically this laudable desire eventually led to a disaster, the story of which
has been told and retold, especially in three volumes of regret written by former professors of
Fuller Seminary.[1] Within ten years of the founding of the new seminary it was
virtually destroyed as a reputable repository of the truths of God’s precious Word.
Of course, it still continues. In fact it now has 1,300 [in 1987]
students, a magnificent campus, a stupendous library, a school of world missions, a school of
psychology, and almost every facility you could dream of for an internationally acclaimed
institution of higher learning.
Dr Fuller, the founder, invited Dr Harold J Ockenga, one of the most prominent
pastors of America, minister of the famous Park Street Church in Boston, to be the president
of the new seminary. He also invited some of the foremost scholars in Old Testament, New
Testament, Hebrew, Greek, philosophy and apologetics to join the faculty. Names such as
Gleason Archer, Edward John Carnell, George Eldon Ladd and William Sanford La Sor were
among these.
However, in all this excellence we must recognise how the seeds were sown for its
inevitable collapse, for the stated purpose of the school seemed to be less for the glory of our
Lord Jesus Christ and for the perpetuation of His infallible, revealed Word, and more that
Fuller Seminary could be known internationally as a theological institution of great academic
brilliance. ‘Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.’
Even as a young Christian watching this in the 1940s I was shocked. To establish a
reputation for incomparable academic brilliance, and to parade constantly before the
astonished gaze of the Christian world the impressive academic credentials of professors and
their publications, seemed to me to be rather arrogant. One thing was seemingly forgotten:
that the wisdom of man and his achievements are foolishness to God. He is not particularly
impressed by our achievements.
However, what is so frightening is that what has happened at Fuller Seminary has
subsequently happened in numerous other institutions, and because there is a pattern in the
decline of training institutions, we need to understand how our enemy does his work. Paul
said, ‘We are not ignorant of his devices.’
As we look with dismay at the disaster which many seminaries and colleges have
experienced, may God help us to say, ‘Lord, is it I? Am I possibly part of the problem too?
Have I taken my eye off the Lord Jesus Christ? Do I have within me the seed of destruction for
my ministry, and of my people who look to me as a representative of Christ Jesus?’
The new evangelicalism, then, is a name given to a trend or
movement in the United States which has led to a horrifying decline of loyalty to the inerrant
teaching of inspired Scripture. We define the new evangelicalism as an attitude or mentality
on the part of evangelicals to compromise to some extent the doctrines of holy Scripture in
order to be accepted by professing Christians outside the evangelical community.
In other words, new evangelicalism begins with the heart. It amounts to a
desperate desire to be accepted, not so much by the Lord, as by others prominent in the visible
church, who deviate in some degree from the teachings of the Word. In the interests of being
accepted, the new-evangelical attitude is willing to sacrifice Truth on the altar of ecumenical
expediency.
This is what has happened, in some measure, in every single American institution
of higher Christian learning, in every denomination of churches, in nearly every Christian
publishing house, and in nearly every missionary society.
Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, the cradle of the new-
evangelical movement, began with great expectations and great publicity, but from its very
foundation a catastrophe was waiting to happen. Formed, as we have seen, out of a quest for
prestige in the academic community, it lacked from the beginning any confrontation and
discipline to maintain the spiritual quality of the faculty. This last factor made the seminary
highly vulnerable to satanic incursion as it grew rapidly in size. Having begun with fifty
students, by the next year there were a hundred, and then within ten years there were a
thousand.
Naturally more and more professors had to be added, with less and less careful
scrutiny of their theological and spiritual suitability. They were, of course, asked if they agreed
with a very brief statement of faith. But the main question seemed to be - Are you
academically qualified to be impressive to the world of scholarship?
Incipient heresy therefore entered the faculty right from the earliest stages, and by
the mid-1950s the enormity of the disaster became evident to almost every discerning
evangelical theologian in America. But the tragedy of Fuller Seminary did not occur in
isolation, and for a moment we shall glance at the general scene before returning to trace the
events at Fuller.
It is amazing to look back on that harrowing year 1956-57, the date of the
visible birth of the new-evangelical philosophy which had been in gestation for so long.
The new attitude suddenly burst into full view through a number of prominent people and
movements.
One of America’s most influential Bible-conference teachers and writers, Donald
Grey Barnhouse, publicly repudiated his fundamentalist position, changed the name of his
magazine from Revelation to Eternity and began to work with the
National Council of Churches, an utterly liberal organisation of churches in America. Dr
Barnhouse spent the remaining years of his life attacking fundamentalist principles, including
the doctrine of biblical separation. Such a defection created tremendous shock-waves in
America, for Dr Barnhouse was a highly admired and respected Bible teacher.
At the same time the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship in America began to
show its true colours by inviting to its principal conference speakers who would ridicule
biblical separation and the fundamentalist interpretation of Scripture. This trend began at a
conference held in Urbana (at the University of Illinois campus) to which many thousands of
university students were attracted from all over North America. From this time on the Inter-
Varsity Christian Fellowship in America became notorious as a vehicle for the open
promotion of new evangelicals and their views, and there is no more powerful and influential
movement among students.
At that very same time Fuller Seminary, through its new president Edward John
Carnell, persuaded, helped and encouraged Billy Graham to abandon separatist principles in
evangelism (principles which he had previously observed). In 1957 Dr Graham accepted the
invitation of the liberal, Protestant council of ministers of New York city to hold a gigantic
campaign in Madison Square Gardens. This marked the beginning of Billy Graham’s phil
osophy of ecumenical evangelism. He hired a theologian to write an entire book to defend his
new principles of inclusivism in evangelism (co-operating with non-evangelicals).
That book, written by Dr Robert Ferm, was very effectively answered by Dr Gary
Cohen, a doctoral graduate of Grace Theological Seminary. Nevertheless the Ferm book was
given away free of charge to tens of thousands of people. I remember that at Grace Theological
Seminary a whole truck-load of these books arrived unsolicited, intended for distribution to
every student and professor. This was, of course, funded by the Billy Graham Evangelistic
Foundation. The book was a colossal distortion of New Testament teaching with regard to
biblical separation.
1956 also saw Christian Life magazine launching an attack on
biblical fundamentalism under the title, Is Christian Theology Changing? That
series of articles created an enormous stir among God’s people, the thrust of the articles
being - yes, it is changing, and drastically, away from fundamentalism and biblical separation,
and the faster the better!
Alva J McClain, the president of Grace Theological Seminary, saw that series of
articles as his opportunity to enunciate the position of Grace Seminary at that time on the
whole new-evangelical issue, publishing a remarkable article in 1957 entitled Is Theology
Changing in the Conservative Camp? This helped to create a polarisation in America,
with certain Christian groups distancing themselves from the new-evangelical trend of Fuller
Seminary and the magazines Christian Life and Eternity.
Those giant denominations which had remained largely aloof from earlier liberal
trends (the Missouri Synod Lutherans and the Southern Baptist Convention) now began to
experience doctrinal tragedy within their ranks as their seminaries took the route of new
evangelicalism. Today,[2] in the Southern Baptist Convention, every seminary is
dominated by new-evangelical and neo-orthodox theologians and a great battle is being
fought by more fundamental teachers in that Convention to get rid of them.
The Missouri Synod Lutherans exercised far more stringent discipline in their
main seminary (Concordia, in St Louis, Missouri) dismissing every non-fundamentalist
teacher and instructing all students who were sympathetic to them to leave within one week.
This was one of the most drastic and successful examples of church discipline I have ever
heard of in the history of the church.
The theologically radical groups, students as well as faculty, all left and started their
own seminary called Seminex (seminary in exile) in another part of the city. They actually
marched out under banners as if they were Moses and the children of Israel leaving Egypt,
and they gained great sympathy in the media. Nevertheless, in twenty years, their school,
having no real doctrinal position at all, finally collapsed.
In the meantime Concordia Seminary, under the Missouri Synod Lutheran
Church, quickly regained its size, and the rest of the evangelical world noted with amazement
how the leaders at that time handled the new-evangelical invasion of their main training
centre.
Returning to the case of Fuller Theological Seminary, Richard Quebedeaux, a
radical, left-wing, new-evangelical writer of some prominence, made the following prediction
about this place of learning: ‘The drastic decline of Fuller Seminary in terms of commitment
to an inerrant Bible and fundamentalist-separatist position is to be greatly admired and
encouraged. In the future I believe that Fuller Seminary will be the centre of neo-orthodoxy
in the entire world.’ I am sure his prophecy is to be taken seriously. Obviously Richard
Quebedeaux applauds and encourages what we look upon with horror.
Fuller Theological Seminary, by the mid-1950s, was showing its colours so clearly
that some of its original lecturers gave up in despair and left. Carl F H Henry left in 1956,
although his resistance and reaction to the downward trend at Fuller does not seem to have
been very effective.
At the same time Wilbur M Smith began to discover that he was being
outmanoeuvred and outvoted in faculty meetings which became increasingly acrimonious
over such issues as the inerrancy of Scripture. Finally he left, filled with grief. Dr Smith
possessed a library of 25,000 volumes which he had offered to Fuller Seminary for the use of
faculty and students there. When he saw the decline he not only decided to leave, but also
asked for the return of his library, so that he could take it with him to the seminary he had
been invited to join. His request was refused, and Fuller Seminary still have those books.
Dr McClain, the president of Grace Seminary, Winona Lake, remembered very
vividly how a tearful Wilbur Smith visited Winona Lake and talked with
him about the stupendous disillusionment that had befallen him through his experience at
Fuller Seminary.
I became slightly involved in the new-evangelical decline of Fuller Seminary,
learning a telling lesson about the way error is spread. In the middle 1950s Edward John
Carnell had become the president of Fuller, but he was very weak in his theological position
on many issues, including the inerrancy of Scripture. In 1959, for example, he wrote in his
book, The Case for Orthodox Theology, that Adam could well have received his
body from a previously evolved ape so that Genesis could be non-historical and
non-scientific.
This book turned out to be a presentation of arguments against fundamen
talism and against the inerrancy of Scripture. It created an enormous stir at Wheaton
College, which was considered in North America to be the most prestigious and academically
respectable of all evangelical, accredited general education universities. E J Carnell had
graduated from Wheaton and was considered to be their brightest star in the theological and
philosophical worlds.
Carnell’s book dropped like a bombshell on Wheaton College, which till then had
been relatively conservative, at least in terms of lifestyle and conduct for students. Dr Carnell
was advocating an abandonment of all the traditional evangelical lifestyle standards, such as
the prohibition of smoking, drinking, social dancing and similar activities. He said in effect,
‘Let us drop all of this. This is just fundamentalist legalism.’ Students at Wheaton were either
excited or offended by this book.
How did Wheaton College react to the challenge? They decided - and this is a
typically new-evangelical response - to have a dialogue, a panel discussion on
the book. They did not want to confront heresy, but to debate it.
In order to attract an audience it was decided that a fundamentalist would be
asked, with a supporter, to state his case, and an advocate of Dr Carnell would be asked, with
his supporter, to defend his views. Interestingly, Dr Carnell was not invited, but George Eldon
Ladd, a colleague from Fuller Seminary, was invited to defend him. To mediate between the
two sides, two professors were appointed from Wheaton College.
I was invited to be one of the fundamentalist spokesmen (in 1960). I was to learn
that this is not the way to deal with theological error, because the whole point of this
arrangement was to show that the fundamentalist position is extreme and hopelessly absurd,
and that the position of Dr Carnell and Fuller Seminary was really quite acceptable, if perhaps
just a little unusual.
What was Dr Ladd’s defence of E J Carnell? What was his response to all the
things in Carnell’s book which I had pointed to as obvious contradictions of biblical
perspectives? He simply answered by saying - I paraphrase his reply - ‘Well, you do not
know him personally as I do. He is a gracious gentleman, a godly man.’
I was stunned. What did this have to do with what he had written in his book? But
this is how Satan brings in heresies. He says to us, ‘Look how gracious this man is. Look how
loving he is. Look how academically respectable he is. Notice how nice he is to students; what
a friend he is. He has done so many good things.’
Doubtless all that may be true, but what about the apostle Paul’s warning to the
Corinthian church? He said, ‘But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through
his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ . . . for
Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his
ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness’
(2 Corinthians 11.3 and 14-15).
Of course Satan will bring in heresy through nice people, not
angry, immoral, radical-looking people. But at Fuller Seminary heretics were accepted
because they were nice people, fine Christian gentlemen, and because they were academically
respectable. No one dared ask the question, ‘What are your convictions concerning the
infallible guideline and measuring stick of Holy Scripture?’
The demise of Fuller Seminary was finally and predictably sealed one day in
December, 1962, a day described by Harold Lindsell as ‘Black Saturday’. At a meeting of the
board of trustees and faculty committees, Daniel Fuller (who was the son of the seminary
founder Charles E Fuller, and newly appointed to the faculty) made a speech. In it he said, in
effect, ‘I must be perfectly honest with you, gentlemen, and with you members of the board
of trustees, I have come to the conviction that the Bible does contain errors.’
To derive profit from this tragic history a word of background is necessary.
Charles E Fuller had made the colossal mistake of sending his son to Princeton Theological
Seminary for his training. At that time, the mid-1940s, Princeton was notoriously neo
orthodox in theology, having thrown out all its orthodox faculty members in 1929. Faculty
members were now committed to neo-Barthian, neo-Brunnerian views. I was on the
Princeton University campus when Daniel Fuller entered the Princeton Theological Seminary
- just two blocks away from the university campus.
Daniel Fuller came over one day to the university and talked to our group of
Christian students led by Dr Donald Fullerton, a Princeton- University graduate and former
missionary to India. He said, ‘I would like to do anything I can to help you people here;
maybe to offer a Bible study. I believe in evangelical Christianity unlike most of my lecturers
at the seminary.’
Donald Fullerton, with typical discernment, looked Daniel Fuller straight in the
eye and said, ‘What in the world are you doing in Princeton Theological Seminary? God’s
Word says - from such turn away. What are you doing in that centre of apostasy?’
Daniel Fuller’s answer, which with hindsight I see to be one of astonishing naivety or
arrogance, was this: ‘I am not there to be taught; I am there to be a missionary - to win that
seminary and its faculty to orthodox Christianity, and to a commitment to the inerrancy of
Scripture, as my father teaches.’
Donald Fullerton could hardly believe his ears. ‘You do not go to a seminary to
teach the faculty, sir! You will be influenced. You will be changed;
they will not be.’ And that is precisely what happened. By the time Daniel Fuller graduated,
the faculty had taught him to deny the inerrancy of Scripture. He then went to Basel to study
under Karl Barth and others, returning in the late 1950s to join Fuller Seminary, now moving
in the direction of the radical neo-orthodox denials of inerrancy.
On ‘Black Saturday’ Daniel Fuller declared his position. The result was an
indescribably sad lesson for all of us. Then and there Satan exploited a close father-son
relationship, and Daniel Fuller’s father, the seminary founder, decided his position -
‘Whatever my son says, I will support.’
We are reminded of the solemn words of Deuteronomy 13.6-10: ‘If
thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or
thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other
gods . . . Thou shalt not consent . . . nor hearken . . . neither shall thine eye pity him . . . and
thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die.’
Satan’s masterpiece is to attempt to draw us into heresy, defection, or
modification of the Truth, through a close loved one. This is one of the basic reasons why God
says a believer must not marry an unbeliever. This was Satan’s method when sin entered the
world.
Wilbur Smith was so horrified at Charles Fuller’s support of his son that he
suffered a paroxysm of shock. Charles Fuller, though a great and reputable evangelist,
determined from that moment that the meeting would be considered confidential, and the
minutes and records never released. The formal and total denial of the seminary’s basis of
faith would not be made public.
Key professors could not remain. Wilbur Smith resigned. The following year Harold
Lindsell resigned as Dean. Next, Gleason Archer gave up and left.[3] And by the
middle 1960s the anti-inerrancy forces at Fuller Seminary had absolute control. Doctrinal
collapse had taken less than twenty years, a somewhat limited life of soundness for a
theological seminary.
It is a sad fact that the track record in church history for theological seminaries is
very dismal. In North America not one single theological seminary that stood for the Truth of
God’s Word in the 1800s has survived as a Truth-bearer into the 1900s; not one. Every
theological seminary in North America that today takes any significant stand for the Word of
God has been started in this century.
Why should this be so? What lesson may be derived from these events? We have
seen enough of Satan’s activity in this matter. What is God’s plan in all this? God, Who is
sovereign, is not standing back helpless while Satan does his work.
One lesson is surely the principle that God has no ‘spiritual grandchildren’. Each
generation of children must fight its own battle for the Truth all over again. We can certainly
build upon the writings, testimony and example of our forefathers in the faith, but when we
speak of local churches, fellowships of churches, Christian publishing companies, missionary
societies, or institutions of higher Christian learning, the principle is that each generation has
to learn for itself what the Truth is, and what it costs to stand for that Truth. We cannot
assume that the next generation will perpetuate our work. God has not promised to
automatically perpetuate any institution - only His Word.
This does not mean we should be hopelessly pessimistic about everything, but
that we should be realistic and discerning about these matters. It means that we should (as we
say in America) ‘hang loose’ and be only loosely attached to institutions, so that when the
inevitable decline and defection does happen, to our horror, we are not hopelessly locked
into it.
Some may protest, ‘But what about commitment?’ The question hits
the vital nerve. What are we committed to? Our chief commitment should
always be to the Word of God, and to the God of that infallible and infinitely precious Word.
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