ECT II, Evangelical Commentary - from ChristianityToday.Com

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ECT II, Evangelical Commentary - from ChristianityToday.Com

Forum: Theological Expressions
Re:

Evangelicals And Catholics Together: ECT II - With Catholic Commentary (Matthew Tan Yew Hock)
Date: 2001, Apr 18
From: Matthew Tan Yew Hock MatthewTan

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/7te/7te034.html
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Evangelicals and Catholics Together: A New Initiative
"The Gift of Salvation" A remarkable statement on what we mean by the gospel.
An Evangelical Assessment by Timothy George
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"The Gift of Salvation" has been made possible by a major realignment in ecumenical discourse: the coalescence of believing Roman Catholics and faithful evangelicals who both affirm the substance of historic Christian orthodoxy against the ideology of theological pluralism that marks much mainline Protestant thought as well as avant-garde Catholic theology. Thus, for all our differences, Bible-believing evangelicals stand much closer to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger than to Bishop John Spong!
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Certain critics of ECT interpreted its strictures against proselytism as a subtle attempt to undercut the witness of evangelical missionaries in largely Catholic countries. While this was never the intention of ECT, "The Gift of Salvation" says explicitly that evangelicals should preach the gospel to Catholics, and Catholics to evangelicals. We do not assume that all nominal Catholics are true believers in Jesus, nor that all nominal evangelicals are genuine followers of the Lord. As Cardinal Edward Cassidy reminded us at our meeting in October, it is far more important for one truly to know Jesus and find salvation in him than to belong without conviction to any particular community. At the same time, those who do know and love Jesus must pray and support one another in all that they are doing for the cause of Christ, never stooping to underhanded tactics or deceptive methods in their witness for the gospel.
As evangelicals and Catholics pursue theological dialogue, moved by our love for the truth and our love for one another, we must not let our discussions degenerate into a kind of armchair ecumenism, heady, aloof, and divorced from an awareness of "the pestilence that stalks in darkness, [and] the destruction that wastes at noonday" (Ps. 91:6). All who believe in Jesus, Catholics and evangelicals alike, are comrades in a common struggle, not a struggle against one another, but against the Prince of Evil himself; a spiritual conflict with the powers and potentates of this dark world. In a culture of death, we bear witness together to the Lord of life, our crucified, risen, and returning Savior. His triumph we celebrate, his gospel we proclaim, his joy we share, his kingdom we await. Jesus is Victor!
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Timothy George is senior adviser to CHRISTIANITY TODAY and dean of Beeson Divinity School at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama.