The Southgate Fellowship: Categorical Fallacies

I want in this post to wrap up my series on The Southgate Fellowship by going back to the core convictions of the group. Tomorrow, Lord willing, I will make a final plea.

Under ‘Who We Are,’ the TSF states that it “exists to advance biblical thinking and practice in world mission.” And their aim is “that God’s name will be glorified among the nations.”

Very good, and something I truly rejoice in. We all need to work, by the Spirit, on our understanding and application of the Word on our ministry practice.

It is their observation, however, that,

due to a convergence of forces in contemporary theology and the global church, many in the study and practice of world mission have strayed methodologically from the sure foundation of Scripture; they functionally deny the categorical uniqueness of the Christian faith, and impose non-biblical and even anti-biblical interpretive grids upon people, religions, culture, and the work of mission.

It is my conviction that the TSF have made precisely the mistake that they accuse others of making, in that they too have imposed a “non-biblical interpretive grid on people, religions, cultures and the work of mission”.

After all, as I have repeatedly asserted, they are looking at traditions through the Enlightenment grid of ‘comparative religions.’ I have argued this before in my critique of Dan’s book:

A major problem with Strange’s construction, then, is his failure to distinguish sufficiently between “religion” and “religions”. This is most plainly seen in his explanation of his approach (36-38). Acknowledging that the term “‘religion’ as a defined category is more ‘Western’ than biblical”, he nevertheless wants to use it inclusively “in terms of one’s ultimate heart commitments and presuppositions concerning reality” (37): so far so good. But Strange then explains that his “focus will be on what are often called ‘world religions’”. The argument is suddenly and with little explanation turned away from ultimate heart commitments to “rival social realities... that are competitors to Christianity”. And so we are introduced to the world of “‘other religions’”. J. H. Bavinck, as Strange himself recognises (70), warns us that, in dealing with the “adherents of other religions” “[e]ach generalization, every systematization, carries within itself the danger that one will do injustice to the living person.”[15] But Strange is happy to argue that “Religions are hermetically sealed interpretations of reality (worldviews) and as such are incommensurable” (242). No place seems to be allowed for the phenomenon of syncretism or of someone following Christ within a non-Christian religious tradition.[16] This, it seems to me, is a problem inherent in the method that Strange has adopted.

And this is a problem inherent in the method of the TSF. 

I have argued that the TSF has elevated systematic theology to such a status that it becomes the rule to interpret every other theological and missiological endeavour. Only Scripture should have this status.

And so, the question arises as to what we should make of the great confessions and creeds of church history. In an important chapter in Globalizing Theology: Belief and Practice in an Era of World Christianity, edited by Craig Ott and Harold A. Netland, Kevin Vanhoozer has this to say about the great confessions of the faith:

At their best…confessions are more than ephemeral performances, more even than a series of local theologies. Confessional theologies are rather ‘great performances’—responses to their own historical context that contain lessons for the rest of the church as well.” (“‘One Rule to Rule Them All?’ Theological Method in an Era of World Christianity,” p. 109)

This is precisely what I am arguing for. Let us give the ‘great performances’ the attention they deserve. Yes, let’s even translate them into the vernaculars of our brothers and sisters in Cameroon and Cambodia. But let us give our brothers and sisters the freedom to express the truths that they find in the Scriptures in their own ways and not burden them with having to sign up to a statement that has ‘From the West to the Rest’ written all over it.

The Southgate Fellowship: Ideals and Realities

The issues discussed below flow on from those of my previous posts, especially here and here.

Repeatedly, the TSF statement revels in ideals. Take this for example:

53b) We deny that the Holy Spirit would ever lead and empower any movement outside of the church of Jesus Christ or any movement in the name of Christ that pits one part of the evangelical faith against another.

The Apostle Paul disagreed. He was able to rejoice even when people preached out of selfish ambition (Phil 1:17-18). He seems to have been able to hold up an ideal and rejoice even when the reality did not match that ideal. This is a huge challenge to many of us who would rather the Holy Spirit worked in a different way.

Under the heading ‘The Holy Spirit and Non-biblical Religion’ a number of affirmations and denials are targeted at those who, in the words of the statement, seek to ‘remain’ ‘embedded’ in an ‘alien faith system.’

It starts off in this way:

55a) We affirm that the only way of faith, hope, and life is to be a member of the Body of Christ.

Since we are told explicitly that when we are joined to Christ, we become members of his body (1 Cor 12:12-31) it is hard to imagine anyone disagreeing with this affirmation.

55b) We deny that claims about the work of the Holy Spirit or any other claim can be rightly used to justify a person’s remaining within a Bible-denying or Bible-subjugating faith system.

However, many societies do not separate the spiritual and the secular, the ‘religious’ and the mundane. So, all of life is lived in a religious milieu, including family life.

Which leads me to ask two questions:

1.     Is the newly believing son, daughter or wife of a serious-minded Jewish, Sikh, Muslim, Hindu or Buddhist householder under moral compulsion to leave the home? It would appear that the TSF think so. Paul argues otherwise (1 Cor 7).

2.     How should this work out in a country that has a totalitarian government, say North Korea, where any amount of open dissent from its juche ideology can land you in a prison camp or worse? In the West we are blessed to live in lands that allow for free association.

The statement continues:

55c) We deny that the Holy Spirit works to affirm, adapt or improve non-Christian religions.

Without a definition for ‘religions’ this is impossible to evaluate. Does Roman Catholicism count as a ‘non-Christian religion’? 

The next affirmation states as a fact a situation that is clearly not true, unless we cast doubt on all those, and there are probably millions, who have chosen, for their own reasons, for a time at least, not to express their discipleship in a visible church.

55d) We affirm that when Christ saves those of other faith systems, he leads them by the power of the Holy Spirit from their false religion into the visible Body of Christ.

If this were so, then anyone claiming to have become a secret believer in, say North Korea or Saudi Arabia, has not been led by the Holy Spirit and is not saved by Christ. Do the TSF really believe that? If not, then they surely need to revise that affirmation.

Section 56 continues in the same vein:

56a) We affirm the Holy Spirit working through the Word is the ultimate authority for a godly and ethical life.

56b) We deny that anyone may live in a manner pleasing to God by embedding a professed faith in Christ within an alien faith system that denies the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The TSF states that, 

… though a superficial appearance of being a-religious is possible, all human beings are necessarily religious at a more fundamental level, on account of their being divine image bearers. Romans 1 reveals authoritatively that human ultimate commitments are always religious. (§90e)

Surely this must mean that late-modern Western culture with its widespread acceptance of secularist notions of privatised faith and its expressive individualism is an ‘alien faith system’.

If this is so, those of us who live and work and witness in this system, including the TSF, are living in a manner that cannot please God.

But, as I have observed (ad nauseam, you will be forgiven for shouting) since there are no definitions of ‘religious,’ ‘remaining,’ ‘embedding,’ and ‘faith system’ it is impossible to be sure if this is so.

The Southgate Fellowship: The Antithesis

The TSF make much of the doctrine of the antithesis, the "radical distinction between the Christian and non-Christian religions."

I have already interacted with the following section:

84a) We affirm that theological teaching can legitimately adjust its teaching style, phraseology, selection of content, use of illustrations, and many other ways that prove significant in facilitating the communication and grasp of truth in the audience’s target language and culture.

But there is more:

84b) We deny that such adaptation may rightly interpret any culture, religion, faith, and practice apart from the comprehensive authority of Scripture concerning the radical distinction between the Christian and non-Christian religions, between believers and unbelievers, and between the moral and religious antithesis that exists between those in Adam and those in Christ Jesus.

As religion is undefined, it is really difficult to understand what exactly this is denying. It seems to be saying that the doctrine of the antithesis is so complete ‘non-Christian religions’ have nothing to admire, nothing to appreciate, nothing to celebrate. And yet, the importance of extending hospitality to strangers, the demand to respect the aged, the value of modesty, to name but three, are all features of many communities hardly touched by the Bible.

One might respond that these are merely cultural and not religious. But since the TSF have not adequately defined the difference between those two terms that recourse is not open to them.

And can it really be that only those in Christ are able to help in interpreting a ‘culture, religion, faith, and practice’? If this is so then there can be no point ever in asking those in Adam why they are doing anything. Why do you give flowers to your wife? Why do you applaud a great performance? Why do you play rugby? Why do you attend the funerals of your relatives? Why do you sing in the bath? All are pointless. 

An attempt is made to expand on the TSF definition of culture here:

87a) We affirm that the word ‘culture’ is used generally to describe the shared set of artefacts, characteristics, meanings and values that give shape to the total corporate life of a group of people.

87b) We affirm that culture is complex and multi-faceted and operates at many different levels—the external and observable artefacts of culture always expressing more deeply held beliefs and value systems.

But this creates even more problems: do external and observable artefacts of culture always express more deeply held beliefs and value systems? If this is so, then what would they make of the custom of having bridesmaids at a wedding, widely understood to have originated as decoys for the evil eye?

On this, J. H. Bavinck had a wise word to say:

Numerous customs and practices originally based on pagan ideas and conceptions are gradually secularized and have lost their original meaning. Certain forms of politeness originally expressed respect to the divine majesty of the ruler and were forms of religious adoration, but now they have become civil formalities, the meaning of which is scarcely understood by anyone. Other customs of dress were connected with magic and superstition, but now they have completely lost their original meaning. There are burial customs, even in Western countries, which originally arose from fear of the dead, but which now only bear the character of tradition. Thus, even though a national culture is basically an indivisible whole, so that the meaning of each component is determined by religion, nevertheless, in practice, many customs are detached from this coherence and lost their original character. In such cases it is foolish to go back to the original meaning of a custom, because it is now no longer experienced and felt as it had been originally. (An Introduction to the Science of Missions, 1960: 174)

The paradigm expressed in the TSF statement is cut loose from reality.

The Southgate Fellowship: Religion and Culture

The TSF statement is frequently muddled where it seeks to establish a position on religion and culture.

Throughout the TSF statement the following terms are employed: ‘faith’, ‘faith system’, ‘worldview’, ‘religion,’ and ‘spirituality.’ Yet none of these terms is defined or distinguished from one another. This would not be such a big problem if it was a piece of popular writing. But this is a statement which the group has been working on for four years.  

The result is that it leaves a large number of affirmations and denials ambiguous or even incomprehensible.

Perhaps we are to understand them to be synonyms. If so, then why, for instance, is faith distinguished from religion in the following?

4e) We deny that the Christian faith and religion are purely human constructs.

Despite this lack of definition, religion is supposed to be connected to culture. Hence:

90a) We affirm that culture and religion are interrelated, interdependent and inseparable, the latter informing the former.

But this is incoherent: how can two phenomena be interdependent with only one informing the other? 

Likewise, the following:

90d) We deny the existence of any human culture that functions disconnected from or uninfluenced by human religious thought and expression or by the spiritual forces of darkness.

However, if culture is the expression of religion the denial is meaningless: they are saying that ‘religion externalised’ (their definition of culture) cannot be disconnected from ‘religious expression’. 

Moreover, what are we to make of the following denial?

6f) We deny that non-Christian religions and worldviews also offer ways of salvation.

Is this a denial of the phenomenon (the offer) or a denial of the claim (salvation)? Many religious traditions offerways of salvation. This is surely undeniable. So maybe they mean that people cannot receive salvation by those ways. But they have already said that here:

6d) We deny that the adherents of any non-Christian religions and worldviews can receive salvation, except through faith in Christ alone.

If this is so, 6f is redundant.

But 6d is itself problematic: the way it reads, one might be forgiven for thinking that adherents of ‘non-Christian religions’ can receive salvation through faith in Christ alone, while they remain adherents.

Section 6 has, in fact, multiple intractable issues that arise because of a lack of precision in the language. 6a tells us that the ‘practice of false religions’ makes unbelievers ‘blind to saving knowledge’. 6b is in reference to someone who ‘holds a false … religion’. So, we have people adhering to, holding to, and practising false religions. But with no definition of religion, we are left wondering just what it is to which people are holding or adhering.

So, what is the way forward? Let us stop trying to divide the world into neatly distinct religious mega-communities. It is a figment of the imagination. It does not reflect the reality. 

Bernard Adeney puts it like this: “The very word religion is problematic, since it groups together the ways diverse cultures understand and interact with ‘the real’ as if such ways had certain common characteristics. In fact, different cultures construe what is real in radically different ways.” “The category of religion,” Adeney continues, “reflects the dichotomizing tendency of Western thought to separate the spiritual from the material world. ‘Facts’ and ‘values’ are considered unrelated” (Strange Virtues: Ethics in a Multicultural World, 1995: 173).

The problem throughout the TSF statement is that an Enlightenment, essentialist construction of world religions has been adopted uncritically. The simple fact is that the religions as they are experienced ‘on the ground’ (as opposed to the way they are described in theological statements) are not nearly so neat and tidy that one can demark true religion (Christianity) from false (everything else – all the other ‘isms’) as the TSF wants to do.

This is not the first time I have argued the inadequacy of this approach.

The Southgate Fellowship: Theological and Missiological Method

So far in this series I have sought to engage with the statement of TSF by describing the group and pointing out a few minor issues, exposing a glaring omission, indicating where it seems to want to fight old battles, and examining how it works out priorities in mission.

That was the warm up.

In this post I want to discuss an even more important issue: the authority of Scripture and the way we do theology and missiology.

TSF argues rightly that Scripture is the ultimate authority for missiology thus:

18a) We affirm that Scripture is the ultimate authority to which all human disciplines, including missiology and social sciences, must be subject.

Whatever happened to theology in that affirmation? Is not Scripture the ultimate authority for that human discipline too? On what basis is theology given such an exalted and privileged place? It may be the queen of the sciences but it is still a science, and so subject to critique in a way that Scripture must not be.

Further on, they warm to their task:

71a) We affirm that local expressions of the gospel should always function in the context of the catholic Christian church, so that local theologians are accountable to the formulations of the Christian faith in the historic creeds and confessions of the church.

But wait, if Scripture is the ultimate authority then are not historic formulations auxiliary? 

This would be a good place to make this explicit. They don't.

Rather they go on the attack:

71b) We deny that faithful contextual formulations of the gospel are merely ‘local theologies’, which have their validity apart from the catholicity of the church.

In other words, a local theology can only be valid if it engages with the historic formulations. Even if there is no translation of those formulations in the local language.

So what are local theologies?

The process of doing theology and interpreting Scripture in a given local context has often been labeled ‘local theology’. For some theologians, such local theologies are context-determined, thus breaking the necessary link between theology and Scripture—the only absolute determining criteria of theology.

I have three problems with this statement:

1.     The phrase ‘context-determined’ is loaded. Everything we say is influenced by our context. The moment we open our mouths we are using language, and there is no context-free language. Thus, there can be no context-free theology just as there can be no context-free visible church, which they acknowledge (§99a). So also there can be no context-free historic creed or confession. If they mean overly influenced by the context to the detriment of the influence of the Scriptures, then they should state this more clearly.

2.     The final clause is recursive: how can theology and Scripture be the only absolute determining criteria for theology? 

3.     The irony of this statement is that, of course, the TSF statement itself is influenced by its context. But this is never acknowledged. Rather, it is held up as a context-free statement to be signed up to by evangelicals all over the world as if it is an absolute standard.

Ultimately this is all special pleading: every other discipline, they seem to be suggesting, must be subservient to theology. But make no mistake, theology here is systematic theology. The work of the systematician is a cut above the work of every other kind of theologian, most notably that of the missiologist.

But why should that be so? Why should it not be the other way around? This is their answer:

86a) We affirm that theology must drive mission methodology, because a failure to deal adequately with the effects of truth suppression will generate an overly positive view of human nature and will manifest itself in distorted methodologies.

Note here that missiology is a ‘methodology’, but theology isn’t. It is a put down.

Two responses to that:

1.     Systematic theology, for that is what this is, is itself based on a methodology, commonly called prolegomena. How bizarre, then, that the prolegomena of TSF’s statement doesn’t even deal with the method by which theology is systematized. It is almost as if the framers wanted to give the impression that the only discipline not open to discussion is systematics.

2.     Missiology proper is not a mere methodology. Ministry methods must come from a robust framework that emerges from a careful interpretation of Scripture in the cultural context in which that ministry is being conducted. 

But that is not how TSF views theology. Theology is a given. 

This view of theology has significant implications, as many cross-cultural workers are aware. 

This is one: when theology is taught in a different context the communication is unidirectional. After all, the theologian is complete. All he needs to do is take his package and ensure it gets across. 

Hence, 

84a) We affirm that theological teaching can legitimately adjust its teaching style, phraseology, selection of content, use of illustrations, and many other ways that prove significant in facilitating the communication and grasp of truth in the audience’s target language and culture.

What if the “target audience” (unfortunate language of objectification) is not even thinking in the categories in which the theology has been framed? No amount of adjustments to its phraseology or use of illustration will connect quite like taking the host’s culture and using that as a framework, all the while probing, extending, and challenging that framework from within.

Why is there such a hard line on contextualization?

83c) We deny that the exigencies of any given local context should dictate how Scripture is to be read, interpreted, and applied.

I trust that none of the writers or endorsers of the statement mentioned Covid-19 in their sermons over the past few weeks.

The Southgate Fellowship: Conceptualising Our Priorities

TSF engages with the thorny issue of how to define and delineate the mission of the church. Rightly, they emphasise the need for people to put their faith in Christ:

67a) We affirm that people have needs of all kinds, but that every person’s greatest need is for faith in Christ and repentance from sin to the glory of God in Christ Jesus.

So proclamation of the gospel is paramount.

But mercy ministry is also important. Many have tried to conceptualize the relationship of mercy ministry with the ministry of proclamation.

TSF’s position is thus:

74a) We affirm that to separate mercy ministry and ministry of the Word is to be out of accord with Christ’s commission. 

74b) We deny that either form of ministry is an isolated or exclusive priority. 

74c) We affirm that in the church’s mission to the world, it is biblically informed wisdom which will recommend the order and leading priority of Word or deed for each occasion.

That encapsulates well my own view which has been argued best by Tim Chester in Good News to the Poor.

What place does the incarnation have in the theology of ministry to the poor?

TSF includes a good set of affirmations and denials on the incarnation of Christ (§§40-42). I think their prime concern here is that a maximal doctrine of incarnation has often been used to underpin various forms of liberation theology.

It seems to me, however, that the statement goes too far in this denial:

42c) We deny that the sui generis incarnation of the eternal Son of God offers a proper analogy for construing contextualisation as ‘incarnational’.

They argue, rightly of course, that it is logically impossible for those who already have flesh to be enfleshed and go on to argue that the “use of 'incarnational' to describe Jesus as a model effectively undermines the sui generis character of God becoming flesh in Christ.”

But that ain't necessarily so.

The incarnation of the eternal Son of God is indeed sui generis (of its own kind).

However, if we accept and preach that, which we must, then any comparison of his incarnation and that of the intercultural communicator is, by definition, understood analogically. So, when Paul instructs the Corinthian believers to “Follow my example as I follow the example of Christ” (1 Cor 11:1) surely no one argues that Paul was hoping to give his life a sacrifice of atonement. Rather, he could follow Christ’s example by having “the same mindset as Christ” in his humility (Phil 2:5-11).

So, an incarnational approach to intercultural ministry is one of foregoing one’s rights, of clothing oneself with humility.

Far too much cross-cultural ministry goes on without any serious attempt to identify with the host community; more so today than ever before because of the ease of travel. I have a sneaking suspicion that people who argue against the incarnation of the Son of God having any bearing on contextualization do so because they do not want to spend the long time necessary to embody the gospel in that host community. I hope that is not the case, but anecdotal evidence suggests that it is.

Perhaps, in God’s providence, the coronavirus pandemic will deter short-term, low-commitment, shallow ministry among underserved communities.

My prayer is that it doesn’t also deter long-term, high-commitment, in-depth ministry. Because it is chiefly through such gospel communicators, sharing their lives and not just their words, that people come to see the beauty of Jesus. I don’t really care if the word incarnational is used for this sort of ministry or not, so long as it happens.

The Southgate Fellowship: Fighting Old Battles

The third in a series of reflections. Part one is here and part two here.

Sometimes the Southgate Fellowship statement seems to belong to another era.

What exactly are is TSF arguing with here? 

79c) We deny that a younger church has no theological, financial or moral obligation to the sending church.

Can we really frame relationships between churches in terms of ‘sending’ and ‘younger’? That may have been the reality of church and mission in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when many churches in the traditional ‘fields’ began with some sort of relationship to a missionary or mission society. The agency brokered the relationship of the new churches with their supporting churches back home. Control of those new churches was assumed to belong to the missionaries, who were themselves accountable to the mission board back home.

It took a great deal of heart searching and argument to free many churches in the global South from foreign control. In fact, it was only with the end of the colonial era that many churches became autonomous. Sadly, this process was often slow, begrudging and acrimonious, so that indigenous alternatives were sought outside of all relationship with brothers and sisters in other countries. 

In recent decades the vast majority of church planting in the global South has been carried out by local evangelists. Everything is about relationships. Formal transactional partnerships are alien. The idea that churches that have shared resources might have no obligations to one another would be considered bizarre.

So why the denial?

It comes over as naïve and anachronistic.

Furthermore, one wonders whether the implications of some sections of the statement have really been thought through.

There is a proper recognition that the primary locus for mission is the local church. Parachurch agencies have their place but must not usurp the authority of the local church. I have argued for this myself. 

So primary oversight of cross-cultural ministry must not be in the hands of denominational agencies or parachurch organizations:

75a) We affirm that visible churches bear the primary responsibility for the theological, moral, and ministry-method oversight of missionaries.
75b) We affirm that the visible church has the primary responsibility to recruit, mobilise, and send individual church members into mission.
75c) We deny that denominational agencies and parachurch organisations should have the primary theological, moral, and ministry-method oversight of missionaries.

Strangely, however, considering the majority of the council teach in theological colleges, no specific mention is made of them. Does the visible church have primary oversight over their work in these parachurch organizations or is that oversight exercised by others? How does primary oversight work out at Westminster or Oak Hill? Perhaps a measure of autonomy for parachurch agencies is allowable after all.

The lack of any acknowledgement that there might be an issue here causes one to pause and ask whether the ground reality is rather more messy than the formal statement. In the interest of candour, this should be more transparent.

The Southgate Fellowship: Glaring Omission

The statement of TSF covers a range of different missiological issues throughout its 100 affirmations and denials. Denial 62b, for example, covers the menace of prosperity theology, and rightly, is situated in the section on eschatology and the tension of living in the already and not yet.

Many of the pet methods of contemporary missiology are dealt with. In one denial, 85c, 'golden keys' and 'persons of peace' are dismissed if viewed as ‘elusive, mysterious or secret interpretive formula,’ something I have dealt with before on this blog. 

One wonders, however, how close to the ground the fellowship are keeping their ears, or how well served they are by their advisors.

In some areas they seem to be out of touch. This is suggested in the following affirmation:

15a) We affirm that if God were to use extraordinary means today (e.g. miraculous events, dreams or visions), that these occurrences should be interpreted providentially either as pre-evangelistic praeparatio, uncommon tools in God’s hand for sovereignly drawing people to himself, or as divinely purposed tools for hardening unbelievers in their unbelief. (my emphasis)

Why are such phenomena considered uncommon when evidence reported in the literature suggests that they are, in some contexts, frequently encountered? Surely such an eminent cohort of scholars and reflective practitioners know this? I am left puzzled.

The glaring omission of TSF, however, is that there is no statement on spiritual warfare. For much of the world church, battle with the demonic realm is the primary lens through which everything else is viewed. 

In Christianity in the Twentieth Century: A World History, Prof Brian Stanley argues that neo-Pentecostal teaching has had such a profound effect on the spirituality of substantial parts of African Christianity that it has “reordered the entire architecture of Christian doctrine around the motif of spiritual warfare.” My experience tells me that it is also massively significant in parts of Asia.

Clearly by framing the statement in the manner they have, the TSF would not hold such a perspective. So why do they not provide a critique? 

TSF asserts that they worked with the “valuable guidance of nationals and missionaries from all over the world.” Which leads one to wonder who those people are. If they do not even bring up the questions that are exercising their national brothers and sisters, what is the value of their contribution? I fear all the advice does is give a cosmetic multi-cultural gloss to a fundamentally North Atlantic project.

In his important book on Asian theology, Mangoes or Bananas, Bishop Hwa Yung laments the lack of engagement in this area of ministry in the literature and attributes this to the influence of the Enlightenment and dualism on Asian theological writings. Hwa argues that, “Western theologies are the products of the histories, cultures and realities of the West. They cannot, therefore, adequately address the existential realities of the rest of the world because these differ so much from those of the West.”

Quite so. But this is his answer: if “Asian theology is to be truly contextual, it must … necessarily involve the practice of ‘power encounters’ in the healing and exorcism ministries.”

Not so, in my mind. In fact, I disagree profoundly with Hwa’s solution (though this is not the place for me to provide my workings). I suspect the framers of the TSF statement would agree with me. So, I think they have squandered a significant opportunity to say so.

The late missionary anthropologist, Paul Hiebert, noted that Westerners often have a blind spot in the area of spiritual warfare, with their tendency to distinguish ‘high religion,’ with its strongly conceptual and institutionalized character, and ‘folk religion,’ related to magic, astrology and the spirits (itself, I would argue, a deeply problematic construct). The consequence is that the missionary-planted church in the non-Western world is often poorly equipped to deal with folk beliefs and practices, a phenomenon Hiebert calls the ‘flaw of the excluded middle.’

TSF has demonstrated in short measure that that they do not intend to address that flaw, greatly weakening the value of their project.

The Southgate Fellowship

The Southgate Fellowship is a group of theologians, missiologists and reflective practitioners who are concerned at the state of missions in the contemporary evangelical world. A few days ago, the group, which has been meeting together over the past four years, launched a new web site.

Council members of The Southgate Fellowship are drawn from the USA, UK, and France. 

They belong to a number of denominations, but all are committed to Reformed theology; the Council is co-chaired by David Garner of Westminster Theological Seminary and Dan Strange of Oak Hill College, two heavyweight systematic theologians from Reformed institutions.

All council members take an active interest in cross-cultural ministry with a few having experience of work among Muslims. Some have ministry experience outside their homeland, though it is not clear that this includes substantial personal intercultural interaction.

I have met half of the council and was a supervisor of Bill Nikides’s uncompleted doctoral research. My review article of Dan Strange’s book on the subject is available here.

The council has been helped by a number of external advisors, though these are not named.

TSF has already been endorsed by dozens of well-known conservative evangelical leaders in church, seminary and mission, including Don Carson, Ligon Duncan, Kevin DeYoung, Michael Horton, Bill Edgar, Richard Pratt, Garry Williams, Paul Wells, Ray Porter, and Steve Smith, as well as lesser-known pastors and leaders in various other parts of the world.

You are given the opportunity to add your endorsement. I will not be doing this and will try over the next few blog posts to explain why.

For now, though, allow me to make some general comments.

It is the conviction of TSF that

due to a convergence of forces in contemporary theology and the global church, many in the study and practice of world mission have strayed methodologically from the sure foundation of Scripture; they functionally deny the categorical uniqueness of the Christian faith, and impose non-biblical and even anti-biblical interpretive grids upon people, religions, culture, and the work of mission.

The core project of the TSF, therefore, is a statement consisting of 100 pithy affirmations and denials that seek to outline where the points of contention are and provide a biblical critique. The statement is ordered in a systematic theological framework, is well presented and is easily accessible using the format of drop-down section headings.

For the most part, the statement is readable. But not always. In places it is even clunky:

79c) We deny that a younger church has no theological, financial or moral obligation to the sending church.

Why the double negative?

I understand that a statement of this nature needs to be terse. It is already long (nearly 10,000 words) but at times the degree of abstraction tends to opacity. For example, I am not really sure to what this is referring:

58b) We deny that in terms of redemptive history or for the sake of mission method, these last days offer direct parallel to or unqualified analogy to those prior to the coming of Christ.

That may be just my ignorance.

Proof reading missed out this incomplete sentence: 

Whilst individuals, groups and societies may see themselves as a-religious and describe themselves as such (whether atheistic, disinterested, secular or other).

These are minor concerns. Over the next few days I plan to engage with the statement in more significant ways.