Melting Pot Melting? Spring 1997

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0ne of the distinguishing features of Protestant evangelicalism is its high view of the authority of Holy Scripture. When asked where God's authority is located and how it is mediated to us, the Orthodox will emphasize tradition, Roman Catholics will stress the church, charismatics will draw attention to the Holy Spirit's role in personal experience, liberals will insist on contemporary culture's latest discoveries, and evangelicals will champion the Bible. Evangelicals have always been people of the Book: they read it, preach it, study it (individually in "daily quiet times" and corporately in small group Bible studies), memorize it, and generally seek to live their lives under its authority.

But evangelicals today, while largely agreeing on what the Bible is and says, are increasingly disagreeing over what the Bible means. What is at the center of the Bible's message? What things especially need to be stressed? How do we know which interpretation of key passages is correct?

We have biblical feminists who tell us that the Bible teaches there are no gender-specific roles, and we have complementarians who say that the Bible teaches male-female differences that are to be lived out in church and family. We have those who claim that the Bible teaches one can believe in Jesus as Savior without submitting to him as Lord, and others who insist that the Bible teaches Jesus must be embraced in his totality. Some tell us that the Bible is primarily concerned with sexual purity, others that the Bible's central ethic is caring for the poor.

Of course, full unanimity has never existed among evangelicals—nor, for that matter, among any Christians—but what is |new today is both the number of items under contention and their proximity ...

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