Evangelicalism Divided: A Record of Crucial Change in the Years 1950 to 2000, by Iain H. Murray.

Evangelicalism Divided: A Record of Crucial Change in the Years 1950 to 2000 by Iain H. Murray.

This is both an interesting and a dull book. Murray doesn’t write with any great liveliness or humor. Very serious, almost grim, he is quite the quintessential presbyterian. What makes it interesting are the insights that he gives, and the indictments. Of all things to accuse the Evangelicals, of all the things of which they accuse themselves piling up statistics and polls, he accuses them of worldliness (255). And then he undertakes, as he has in some previous sections, to preach against it. How many of the numerous books that are indictments of evangelicalism by evangelicals turn naturally into sermons after all the evils are listed? Don’t they usually list some more grim statistics, quote Barth, and carry on with footnotes and theories and all? Murray has verses and goes on from a Biblical explanation of worldliness to explain that Evangelicalism has fallen prey to Satan who is using worldliness and all its corresponding sins to run his program of deceit (257-259). It is quite the astonishingly unique diagnosis.
At the end of Murray’s rather excellent book, he gives some general conclusions that are worth discussing because they are the heart of what his book is about. I’ll take them each in turn.
1 The history of the new evangelicalism has shown how difficult it is to remedy the faults of one position without falling into danger at the opposite extreme.

What is the other extreme? The rather ingenuous reader might ask. Fundamentalism, of course. The problem with fundamentalism is that it had a definition of Christian that was too narrow. Reacting against this, the neo-evagelicals became too broad in their definition. The caution that Murray would like to offer is that all of us aim for the middle. For in the middle is where you will have not a bed that is too hard for us, not a bed that is too soft for us, but a bed that is just right. So how would this work out? Take separation. One extreme is that of deficiency, you do not practice separation at all, you seek to work with unbelievers as if they are believers. The other extreme is that of excess, were you overindulge in separation and actually separate too much, separating even from believers.
2 A great deal of the confusion which has divided evangelicalism has been related to the question, ‘Who is a Christian?’

And Murray insists that the question must be answered from Scripture. This is why so much of the end of his books strikes me as preaching. And this is where any of us would say we have to get the answer. The trouble is that agreeing about the definition isn’t so hard as practicing the application. To be a Christian, by a Biblical definition is to be regenerated, to have new life, to have work of God done in your heart where no one else can see. It works itself out in evidence we can see, but the line between those who are converted and those who are not is hard for any person to draw in practical application.
“While the church cannot infallibly discern the regenerate she can and must recognize belief and conduct which is plainly incompatible with Scripture. Anything less is surely contrary to the New Testament” (303). And he argues for both belief and conduct.
This is precisely what the ecumenical movement works against and what Murray is so eager to contend against. For a recovery of true religion has always been accompanied with “a return to discriminating preaching and practice.” By this he means the application of Biblical criteria in areas of membership, fellowship and co-operation. In short, he calls them to recover separation from apostasy and unbelief and to repudiate the ecumenism that has eroded the integrity of the movement and has divided their loyalties. The question that remains for me is the question of how far are you willing to go to recover that discrimination, that integrity, and to recapture a single allegiance. To recover unity, will you just write books and preach about it? Or is there more that you can do?
3 The church cannot succeed in the same way in which political parties may succeed.
They way this came about, according to Murray, was not overt but subtle. The concessions were part of an ethos where one thing sort of led to another which was not part of the original intention. How much plainer can you say that the fundamentalists were right (at least about the gas balloon theory about movements)? (304). The only thing I’d like to take exception is his statement that no one thought this would happen. But he probably means no one of those who participated.
He explains it happened not because error is stronger than truth and will defeat it, but because the concessions eroded the truth. Giving up a biblical position is not going to help you maintain a biblical position. The political methodology only helps you attain political goals. When the principles are ignored, all you have left it to maneuver however you can and to maintain whatever trajectory your erstwhile principles have most recently given you.
4 This period of history confirms the painful fact that there can be serious differences of belief and consequent controversies among true Christians.

He recognizes that the differences are serious, and he recognizes that they exist. What he says we ought to do about them is to get serious about the things that unite true Christians. What he is doing is indicting the neo-evangelicals for failing to take the things that really unite Christians seriously in their search for unity with non-Christians. He brings up inerrancy at the end. He shows how anybody who is serious about the Gospel must be serious about the source of the Gospel. Only to the degree that we can be certain about the reliability of Scripture can we be certain about the reliability of The Message.
Murray is not interested in lowest common denominators. That is what the mistake has been. That is what the mistake continues to be. And the point is not that some merely eschew inerrancy, it is that they want to have only lowest common denominators, to not dispute things that are not fundamental, to cease to bother with anything that might be complex or controversial. But such minimalism Murray finds dangerous enough to warn against in strong terms. Certainly serious differences come up, but these arise because of our lack of understanding and not because Scripture is unclear. “[N]ot that all opinions on belief not essential to salvation are to be laid aside as of small importance. On the contrary Paul warns strongly against any such minimalist attitude toward truth (1 Cor. 3:10-17) (309).”
5 The history we have covered shows how hard it is for leaders to look in different directions at once.

The need of the day was for Gospel truth, instead the neo-evangelicals looked to join themselves to the cause of the decay of Christianity in the west. For, Murray argues, the reason why true religion declines is because of the presence of false teachers. This is what happened in the days of the divided kingdom, leading into the deportation. False religion was tolerated then, and if it is tolerated now, there is no wonder that the whole of civilization tends in the direction of hell.
6 The struggles and hopes of Christians are not to be understood in terms of the present and the temporal.

They are to be understood in terms of the Day of Doom when the works of Christian leaders will pass before the aweful scrutiny of the Judge. In that day the acclaim of a large group or the acclaim of a small group will be insignificant, for the acclaim of one Voice alone will be all that all most fervently desire. Murray writes a book about serious disagreements and he now points out that the seriousness of those disagreements is derived from the weight of judgment.
My only complaint is that Murray is not incisive enough. This is an indictment, a strong indictment, but he backs off on pushing what he needs to push hard. It will not do to find a moderating position and thus somehow find the center by avoiding the periphery of the target. I appreciate Murray’s serious religion and seriousness about religion. I wish he were not so intent on being nice.