What is a name? no. 2

I so appreciated Steve's post on the continued usefulness of the "evangelical" label. Thinking about historian David Bebbington's four-fold identificiation of an evangelical (biblicism; conversionism; cruci-centrism; activism) can be helpful here; it is striking that Steve's list contains them all, save cruci-centrism. To me, that probably should be included: the centrality of the Cross for salvation and especially the penal substitutionary understanding of the atonement.

The striking thing about all this is how the issues for which fundamentalists and evangelicalicals contended in the 20th century are still with us. For example, Steve's "orthodox Christology": those fundamentalist debates over the Virgin Birth and the physical resurrection of Christ are part and parcel of the fourth and fifth century debates about the divine-human nature of Jesus. Likewise, the renewal of the debates over the character of our (inerrant) Scriptures or the vicarious (or substituionary) death of Jesus for sinners--here in the first decade of our new century, we are again forced to defend the faith once for all delivered to the saints on these issues.

And it is why focusing our attention on these "fundamentals," these core evangelical doctrines that separate traditional Protestants and confessing evangelicals from more progressive souls, is still important and worthwhile. Thanks, Steve, for such a thought-provoking post.