John Stott and the Changing Face of Keswick

As is now well known, John R. W. Stott passed away this week. The blogosphere is filled with accolades (and a few well-placed but tasteful disclaimers) concerning his life, ministry, theology, and works. Among Stott's many achievements that impact my small world, though, perhaps none stands out more than his revolutionary and nearly single-handed correction of the so-called "Keswick" theology at the 1965 Keswick Convention.

For 90 years, the Keswick Convention had been perpetuating, with virtually no opposition, an understanding of Romans 6 that reduced sanctification to the believer's passive "reckoning" or faith-contemplation of his justification. Despite the 17 references to death, dying, and crucifixion in the first 14 verses of this chapter, it was rather incredibly understood that the old man had not really died. Rather, it had only been declared dead. Practically speaking, the old man was as strong as ever--so strong, in fact, that it was foolhardy to struggle against it. Rather, the believer was to "let go and let God" do the practical work of sanctification.

In 1965, Stott challenged the Keswick consensus through a series of "Bible readings" on Romans 5-8 (subsequently published as Men Made New: An Exposition of Romans 5–8 [London: Inter-Varsity Fellowship, 1966]). In these he argued that the former "self" (the unregenerate self who was "in Adam") is truly dead and has been replaced by the new self (the regenerate self in Christ). Nonetheless, the remnants of the flesh (what Stott denominated the old "nature") persist in the life of the believer (see esp. Men Made New, p. 45). These remnants, he argued, are to be aggressively battled by the believer as he strives to advance in his Christlikeness.

"Reckoning" oneself dead to sin is not, Stott argued, "pretending that our old nature has died when we know perfectly well it has not. Instead, we are to realize that our former self did die with Christ, thus putting an end to its career. We are to consider what in fact we are, namely dead to sin and alive to God" (Stott, Romans, p. 179). But, further, as Christians we are not only to contemplate this truth, but also to act on that truth, resisting sin and radically excising it from our lives so as to "become what we really are."

The furor raised by Stott's alternative (and in my opinion, his spot-on) interpretation was intense (for details, see Price and Randall, Transforming Keswick, 234–44), as is to be expected after 90 years of contrary teaching. But in the end, Stott's understanding prevailed, and the Keswick Conference gradually ceased to perpetuate the so-called "Keswick" theology. The "Keswick" theology still lives, of course, but thanks to Stott, not so much at Keswick as elsewhere.

MAS

...And Why Do Fundamentalists Think They Are Evangelical?

This morning I opened my RSS feed to discover a fascinating web article by Darryl Hart entitled Why Do Reformed Think They Are Evangelical? The article asks, in brief, why the sharp line that once existed between Reformed and Evangelical is disappearing. It is no secret that, in the 1930s, J. Gresham Machen and Cornelius Van Til battled as much against evangelicalism as they did against liberalism. So what happened? Why has the former battle waned into obsolescence? Well, the consensus theory is that evangelicalism has evolved theologically from its Wesleyan and Finneyite roots to accommodate Reformed theology, and has thus become more palatable to Reformed folks.

Hart disagrees with the consensus. While theological evolution within evangelicalism may have been something of a contributor to rapprochement, he admits, this has not been the major contributor. Instead, a greater reason for rapprochement has been evolution on the Reformed side--not an evolution of theology, but an evolution of form. To be Reformed once meant that worship forms were (and in Dutch Reformed circles still are) sharply regulated both by principle and confession. Now, Hart laments, the forms have lost their role as uniting features in worship; instead, either "the Spirit" or "the Gospel" have assumed that role. Forms have been relegated to the junkpile of irrelevancy.

Now, to be sure, Fundamentalism has rarely been as deliberate as Reformed in formalizing elements of worship. Nonetheless, there has been for decades something of an unofficial distinction of form between Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism that contributed significantly to the wall that existed between them. This is becoming less and less the case as time passes. And I wonder, along with Hart, whether such a development is entirely positive.

MAS

Hebrew Unicode Characters R-T-L on Microsoft Word for Mac 2011

Well, off from vacation and home to a new MacBook Pro. Very exciting. I was a Mac prior to 1998, but became a PC while working as librarian at DBTS (our library software wouldn't run on Mac at that time). But at long last I am back with Mac. Maybe the already aspects of the kingdom are more expansive than I had previously thought. :)

Anyway, one of the issues of which I was warned was that Microsoft Word for Mac would not support right-to-left Hebrew character input. But along with my new Mac I got Microsoft Word 2011, and I was surprised to find that R-T-L character input worked just fine using the Hebrew QWERTY keyboard. The only problem I encountered was that many of the keyboard strokes used to produce the various characters did not correspond to the unicode keystrokes with which I was familiar (and I'm not sure of all the implications of this anomaly). Nonetheless, after a bit of experimental poking about, I was able to find most of the basic characters and vowel points. I made the following chart of these for those of you who are interested. Please feel free to refine and expand this chart to make it more useful.

MAS