Why Evangelicals Need to Replace our "Christian Worldview" with the Rule of Faith

It's time to put to death our evangelical subculture

Probably if you’ve spent any time at all in evangelical circles, you’ve heard the term “Christian Worldview.” The idea expands and contracts depending on the crowd, but the basic gist is: there is a Christian way to think about everything in life. There is something beautiful and true and fulfilling about this idea, for sure. Growing up, I loved the idea that God cared about literature, science, art, film, economics, etc. In fact it was thrilling to me.

The problem, for me, started when I realized I didn’t agree with many of the things my Christian Worldview school of thought taught. I didn’t think classical art was inherently superior to postmodern art. I didn’t think the earth was young. I thought the “Christian” view of the world - free-market capitalism - was loaded with ways in which it exacerbated sin, just like any other political system.

Once I started to unravel these threads, it became apparent to me, in college, that I did not, in fact, have a “Christian Worldview”. And if I didn’t have a Christian worldview, well…maybe I wasn’t a Christian after all. As I continued to poke holes in my Christian Worldview, it felt to me like the whole thing came collapsing down. And so, I left the church, since - according to this worldview - I wasn’t a Christian anymore.

My story is a little on the nose, but I’m confident this story has happened millions of times over in the American Evangelical church. One such case is detailed in Sarah McCammon’s new book, “The Exvangelicals”. McCammon was taught that Christianity was an anti-science, anti-”liberal”, anti-artistic movement. Once she realized she was not any of those things, she simply “grew out” of her evangelical clothing, into who she is today.

Of course, there is an equal and opposite extreme, here. David Gushee’s book, “After Evangelicalism”, is a picture of a “Christian” faith that has no real ties to what historic Christianity has said about much of anything. For Gushee, Christianity should be exemplary of typically white, elite liberalism. This, so often, is the white liberal solution to deconstruction: “If you didn’t like your white conservative Christianity, you should really try white liberal Christianity!”

As McCammon writes, quoting black historian Jemar Tisby and Tyler Burns:

Burns has a similar caution for white exvangelicals. As they deconstruct their faith, he said, they should engage with the perspectives of Black Christian thinkers. He’s observed many white exvangelicals turning for guidance to progressive theologians, who are primarily white men. “It’s kind of replacing one problem for another, the problem of whiteness at the center,” he said. “Maybe we need a little bit more openness to be honest about are we actually giving Black churches and Black leaders and people of color who are leaders a chance?”

And here is where, I think, most exvangelicals and deconstructers begin to unravel the entire evangelical project: we have an authority crisis. What we call a “Biblical Worldview”, as it turns out, so often is not a reflection of the Bible at all, but rather the way a certain subculture - either conservative or progressive - has made the Bible into a tool for political gain.

So where do we go from here? Do we give up on the idea of the authority of scripture? I’ve seen that path taken. Do we run into the waiting, open arms of the Roman Catholic church, who promises to let The Church interpret the scriptures for us? Well, that’s much better (and I’m relieved when deconstructers take that path, rather than the former). But I think we’re selling ourselves short. We protestants have something better than a “Christian Worldview”. But I don’t think 1 in 1,000 evangelicals have ever heard of it: the rule of faith.

The Rule of Faith was articulated in the very earliest stages of the church, as different cultural groups encountered the Bible. Soon, there were as many interpretations of scripture, it seemed, as there were communities. And so, the church began to use the rule of faith as a guide to interpreting the scriptures. This sentiment is communicated as early as 434 AD, when St. Vincent of Larins writes (as you read, remember “Catholic” here does not mean the Roman Catholic Church - which is really just a western denomination who claims universal authority without being true to what the universal church has always taught - but the Universal church):

I have often then inquired earnestly and attentively of very many men eminent for sanctity and learning, how and by what sure and so to speak universal rule I may be able to distinguish the truth of Catholic faith from the falsehood of heretical depravity; and I have always, and in almost every instance, received an answer to this effect: That whether I or anyone else should wish to detect the frauds and avoid the snares of heretics as they rise, and to continue sound and complete in the Catholic faith, we must, the Lord helping, fortify our own belief in two ways; first, by the authority of the Divine Law, and then, by the Tradition of the Catholic Church.

But here someone perhaps will ask, since the canon of Scripture is complete, and sufficient of itself for everything, and more than sufficient, what need is there to join with it the authority of the Church’s interpretation? For this reason,—because, owing to the depth of Holy Scripture, all do not accept it in one and the same sense, but one understands its words in one way, another in another; so that it seems to be capable of as many interpretations as there are interpreters….

Therefore, it is very necessary, on account of so great intricacies of such various error, that the rule for the right understanding of the prophets and apostles should be framed in accordance with the standard of Ecclesiastical and Catholic interpretation. Moreover, in the Catholic Church itself, all possible care must be taken, that we hold that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all. For that is truly and in the strictest sense “Catholic,” which, as the name itself and the reason of the thing declare, comprehends all universally.

This rule we shall observe if we follow universality, antiquity, consent. We shall follow universality if we confess that one faith to be true, which the whole Church throughout the world confesses; antiquity, if we in no wise depart from those interpretations which it is manifest were notoriously held by our holy ancestors and fathers; consent, in like manner, if in antiquity itself we adhere to the consentient definitions and determinations of all, or at the least of almost all priests and doctors. (The Commonitory 2.4-6)1

This may sound frighteningly anti-protestant to you. But the fact that this is a foreign language to modern protestant ears, is, in fact, a huge problem. The Reformers - Calvin and Luther - would not have blinked an eye at these passages. In fact, if you were to pick up Calvin’s Institutes right now, and read his introductory letter against Rome, you’d find it chock-full of quotes, not from scripture, but from the church fathers. That’s because half of Calvin and Luther’s critique of the Roman Catholic church was that the church wasn’t faithful to the scriptures. But the other half of their critique was that the Roman Catholic church was unfaithful to the Catholic (universal) tradition. The Roman Catholic Church was calling things “Catholic” that were never believed “everywhere, always, by all.” And yet, today, the Rule of Faith isn’t even one ingredient in our evangelical exegetical recipe. As Dr. Todd Billings has written:

Probably the single greatest difference between premodern exegetes and most Christian exegetes today is one of habit: most premodern interpreters of Scripture saw the reading of their predecessors as a key part of the task of biblical interpretation. oday, however, the vast majority of commentaries available to pastors give little or no attention to the church's exegesis of Scripture ... the core conviction remains [for premoderns] that one should read the Bible together with the saints that have come before.

In other words, evangelicals have a crisis of authority because we’ve replaced the Rule of Faith with our “Christian Worldview”…and so, rather than letting the historic church frame our view of the world, we’ve let the “interpretive tradition” of our own particular tribes frame our worldview.

So…how does this help us with our Christian subculture issues?

Well, let’s take, for example, issues in gender and sexuality. What if we were to consider what the church has always, everywhere, spoken about issues of gender and sexuality?

First, we’d find that the accusations of rampant sexism in the church fathers - if we actually read them - would prove false (this essay on Augustine’s alleged sexism is simply brilliant) No, the church fathers were not operating out of the assumptions of western liberal theory. But to take that as a presupposed, and given, moral critique of them is to make western liberal theory our functional authority, and this is never a good idea, since, as David Koyzis has noted, liberalism’s only functional authority is the totally autonomous self, which is an anti-Christian view of humanity.

Rather, you’ll find several things which offend the “white liberal Christian worldview”:

• The rule of faith will show that the universal church is not allergic to hierarchy like we westerners are, and makes no apologies for a hierarchical view of the family and the church.

• No one in the universal, historic church has ordained women into the priesthood.

• Marriage has always, everywhere, been seen as an institution meant for procreation, and so any sexual relationship without procreative intent is outside the bounds.

As David Gushee notes - I think pretty boldly in his book - he has given up on the idea of trying to live into the Catholic testimony of the church, because it has “been used as a weapon” against him. AKA: it offended his liberal sensibilities when confronted about his views, and so he was content to create a Christianity in his own image.

But what we may miss, here, is that the Rule of Faith also offends many conservative “Christian Worldview” sensibilities:

• Historically, the church has elevated women’s role in the church, and the practice of women deaconesses and female leadership (not elders/priests) is well attested, and women’s gifts have historically been given a prominent role in church life (we need to not confuse the specific issue of eldership with “leadership”).

• The idea of the “stay at home Mom” as the ideal of Christian womanhood is an accretion from the Victorian era, where this was seen as a sign of lavish wealth.

• Singleness (or celibacy) has historically been viewed as an honored calling, not as a second-class citizenship in the church. This calling was well-funded by the church so that communities of celibate believers could live in fellowship and be free from worldly concerns to pursue ministry before the Lord.

• Historically, “complementarity” wasn’t about psychological makeup. This word was used in the early church, but specifically, it is referring to how men’s and women’s bodies are complimentary in such a way that they fulfill God’s purpose of procreation.

Frankly, a deep study of the Rule of Faith would reveal that neither conservative nor liberal evangelicals have much of a “Christian Worldview” when it comes to sex and gender.

So where do we acquire this kind of rule of faith thinking? Well, it’s a question I’m asking myself right now. I’ve read with much apprecation many of the books in D.A. Carson’s “Studies in Biblical Theology” series. But I’ve wondered, for years, why we evangelicals don’t have a similar “Studies in Historical Theology” series. The only book I know, right now, that thinks in these terms is Donald Fortson and Rolland Gram’s “Unchanging Witness” (this is where Vincent of Larins’ quote comes from) which is an incredibly well-done historical theology of the universal testimony of the church on sexual ethics.

But if there’s some resources I’m missing…please, please let me know.