雷默：“基要派最大的罪是狭隘，福音派最大的罪是妥协。” （David Wells, No Place for Truth, p.129.）此君承认，福音派之问题的根源就在于他们“任凭自己所认信的核心教义随意消散”。这一教义就是圣经无谬的教义。今天大部分福音 派人士接受所谓的“圣经高等批判”，使圣经经文出于一种不确定的状态，从根本上动摇了圣经的无谬性和上帝对圣经的保守。
刘重明弟兄：你说基要派的罪是狭隘，福音派的罪是妥协，请问你这样说的根据是什么？是不是打击一大片呢？看来你是改革宗加尔文派的，加尔文不是基要派或福音派吗？难道是新派吗？世人一般认为基督教主要可分为这三派。你是否认为加尔文派是第四派呢？请指教。本人最反感宗派斗争，真正的基督徒应该在主里合一，不要说我是属保罗的，你是属彼得的，甲是属路德的，乙是属加尔文的。 本人网站http://lcming.51.net写了一篇《论基督徒的合一》的文章，请指教。
雷默：刘重明先生，谢谢用你的真名参加讨论，也谢谢你能够针对问题讨论。这两点看起来简单，但在目前华人教会圈子内，尤其是大陆教会中，有诸多软弱，很多人很难做到。感谢上帝对你特别的保守和带领。
我的“说法”有出处，是David Wells所著的 No Place for Truth一书中的说法，是在129页。以下在我在网上搜索“David Wells，No Place for Truth”搜索出来的英文述评。其实，这本书我在中国时曾经读过，到美国后也见到很多神学家和神学生对这本书很认同。其实，David Wells所说的更严厉，他甚至指责今日“福音派”已经完全背离了“福音主义”的立场，成为“教会经纪人”！他们所强调是人数和教会的增长，对于基本要道已经漠然置之，甚至任凭自由派人士偷梁换柱，或者自己干脆旧瓶装新酒，仅仅保留“福音派”的名称，在本质上却发生了彻底的改变。你若能读英文，还可以查考钟马田的助手，现在英国爱丁堡真理之旗出版社负责人Iain Murray所著的Evangelicalism Divided――《福音派的分化》一书，其中描述美国福音派代表人葛陪理如何宣称，哪怕是不信救主耶稣基督的人也可以升天堂；英国福音派代表斯格托如何否定圣经中所启示的关于地狱的教义，等等。很多弟兄姊妹想让我写一写关于福音派具体的界定、发展、分化的文章，只是我现在忙于学习，实在无法集中注意力从事这一工程。希望有负担的弟兄姊妹把这两本书翻译为中文，其实就解决了关于“福音派”之争的大部分问题。
“基要派”和“福音派”这一名词一样，本来就有混乱，现在更加混乱。改革宗神学家，威斯敏斯德神学院创办人梅钦博士一度被人认为是“基要派”的代表任务。 但梅钦始终强调自己是不折不扣的改革宗人士。我们改革宗认识持守圣经中所启示的基要教义，但我们不是那样的“基要派”；正如我们也同样持守福音主义的信仰，但我们也不是那样的“福音派”一样。
我上你的网站察看，有广告帖子反复出现，非常影响阅读。我向你提一点建议：一般而言，认真严肃的神学论文和讨论，包括其他学术探讨，一般都不会让这种商业性信息直接影响阅读或交通，希望你能改进网站的管理或设置。
你在教会合一上颇有自己的看法。你认为：
“当前中国基督徒的合一与和好的障碍，主要是三自教会和家庭教会之间的矛盾与不和。在三自教会内部和家庭教会内部 也有神学思想和观点方面的分歧。但是许多基层教会的同工和信徒，都认为基督徒应该合而为一，也能够合而为一。大家在反对异端－东方闪电方面，观点是一致的，深受其害。在有些地方三自教会的和家庭教会的弟兄姊妹之间有交通有来往，相互勉励；并不是水火不相容。”
其实，你自己也当知道，“三自教会”和“家庭教会”的界定非常混乱。主要不是基督教会本身的缘故，更多地是因为国家干预的缘故。为什么在各个自由国家不存在“三自教会”与“家庭教会”的矛盾？！这不是一个普通的宗教问题，涉及很大的政治问题，并不是个人一厢情愿就能解决的。
你说“东方闪电”是异端，我自己也承认他们所宣扬的确实是异端信仰。我在国内在对他们在文字作过一定考察，和他们的工人也数次发生直接的对峙和冲突。但是，你也不得不承认，很多自以为是“基督徒”的人，非常赞同“东方闪电”的立场，而且认为此异端最合乎圣经。因为，毫无疑问，我们可以说，“东方闪电”成为基督教里面的一个异端派别。另外，我在英国和美国，和华人教会有很多接触，甚至参与讲道侍奉，也通过互联网以及其他渠道调查，发现在英美等国，“东方闪电”似乎并没有多少活动。因此，有人说“东方闪电”是由中国大陆不信者运用政治权势在教会内部设的阴谋和圈套，利用“东方闪电”等名义从内部扰乱、打击教会，并为从外部干预教会提供借口。这也是令人深思的！但无论如何，“东方闪电”也算是一个派别。我唐突地问你，能和这个派别合一吗？还有安息日复临会，也被国内正式承认为基督教的一个派别，能和他们合一吗？还有天主教，你认为新教能和天主教合一吗？还有东正教，也有很多教义有根本性的不同，你认为也当和东正教合一吗？
宗派的存在是历史性的现实，不是我们能够回避的。宗派并不是我们创立的，而是历史性的存在，当然也是上帝允许存在的。有真教会，就有假教会；即使都是真教会，真的程度也有不同。真的与假的就有不同，就是截然对立的“两派”！这是任何人都可以理解的常识。许多教会已经沦落为“鬼魔的住处，和各样污秽之灵的巢穴，并各样污秽可憎之雀鸟的巢穴”，上帝给我们的警诫和吩咐就是“我的民哪，你们要从那城出来，免得与她一同有罪，受她所受的灾殃”（启18：2，4）。 因此，作为热爱上帝和热爱真理的人，不能抽象地谈论教会的合一，尤其是在形式和组织上的合一。真正属于主耶稣基督的人和教会，在基督里已经是合一的，并且永远是合一的，任何受造物都不能使我们与上帝的爱分开，这爱惟独是在“我们的主基督耶稣里”（罗8：39）。对于我们而言，最关键的还是认识上帝，认识他所差派来的独一的救主耶稣基督。我们必须明白真道，并与那些偏离真道、藐视上帝的人和组织保持一定的距离。
你所谈及的是一个大问题，我在《中国旌旗》网刊上有两篇文章，一是关于中国教会的访谈录，一是直接谈宗派的问题，希望你能查考，但愿能对你有所帮助。我自己修炼过瑜伽功，在灵恩派和福音派教会都侍奉过，也认识很多在“三自教会”侍奉的弟兄姊妹。我也主张要按照上帝的真道宽容别人，但不要在自己认信的真道的立场上动摇。 上帝给我的带领是保守的历史性的改革宗信仰，我自己确信改革宗信仰最接近圣经。其实，每个人都有自己的确信，关键是你对什么有确信，更关键的是对自己所确信的有明确的自觉的认识。许多人用神学反神学，用宗派反宗派，这就是我们中国人常说的“打着红旗反红旗”！主要是反对别人的红旗，并不反对自己的红旗。基督教的派别很多，远远不止三派。请你自己多作考察。
没有人喜欢宗派斗争，最好是一片形势一篇大好，到处莺歌燕舞。不仅在教会内部不要有冲突，就是在社会上，甚至政治领域中有宗派斗争，我也不喜欢。但是，世界不是按我们的喜欢为转移的，我们不过是匆匆过客而已。当然，更重要的是，这个世界就是充满斗争的世界，这也是上帝在历史中的旨意，上帝明确说：“我又要叫你和女人的后裔彼此为仇；你的后裔和女人的后裔也彼此为仇”（创3：15）。上帝并没有叫亚当和夏娃与毒蛇和平共处，也没有叫女人的后裔和毒蛇的后裔搞合一。这场争战只有到主耶稣基督再来审判世界的时候才会结束。即使到那时，悔改信主的人在天堂与上帝同在，冥顽不化的人在地狱里永远与上帝隔绝，绝不会有 上帝与魔鬼的合一，也绝不会有天堂之子与地狱之子的合一！
世界历史就是不断分化的过程，关键是你自己占在什么阵营。若是我们与基督同死同活， 完完全全按上帝的圣言去行，就会遭遇逼迫，就会遭遇反对，就会遭遇纷争。当初主耶稣在这个世界上的时候，法利赛人人、撒都该人、希律党，甚至虔诚的犹太人中间，都起了纷争，主耶稣也没有叫他们完全合一！在当今中国，在当今教会里，包括英美等国，很多个人，很多教会，放弃真理，一味寻求人的喜悦，一味应和世上的潮流，一味讲究无原则的合一，这样的合一绝不是上帝所喜悦的，上帝也必不与这样的人合一！因此，关键还是借助基督与上帝合一，与真教会合一，与信靠基督、敬畏上帝的人合一！
属于彼得也好，因为彼得是属于基督的；属于保罗也好，因为保罗也是属于基督的。我们当效法彼得，也当效法保罗，他们都是上帝的忠仆，只是效法他们不可过于圣经所记。那些说自己属于基督的人，往往是最无知最骄傲的人。认为自己属于基督，别的基督徒，哪怕他们有自己所归属的宗派，最终就不属于基督吗？中国教会中常常有人说别人是宗派的信徒，是宗教的信徒，惟独自己和自己所在的教会才能得着了生命，是基督的信徒，这是很重的论断，不过是出于骄傲和无知而已。改革宗明白自己的立场，也坚守自己的立场。同时，也承认其他很多教会或宗派是正统教会，比如路德宗、安立甘宗、循道宗、长老宗等等。改革宗甚至承认即使在不信主的人身上，也有真理的闪光，只是这真理并不是救赎性的真理。因此，在这一点上来说，真正的改革宗往往是最宽容的。同时，改革宗也是最不“宽容”的，因为 上帝是忌邪的上帝，他也希望我们能够分别为圣，为上帝有忌邪之心，包括在教会组织上与那些离经叛道的假教会分别开来。
不能更多详谈。看你的网站，知道你确实下了很多学习的功夫，也整理了很多东西。惟求主帮助我们，使我们明白真理，热爱真理，在耶稣基督这惟一的盘石上生根建造。惟愿上帝保守你，也保守我们之间的交通！
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No Place for Truth or Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology?
Author: David Wells
Description: Has something indeed happened to evangelical theology and to evangelical churches? According to David Wells, the evidence indicates that evangelical pastors have abandoned their traditional role as ministers of the Word to become therapists and “managers of the small enterprises we call churches.” Along with their parishioners, they have abandoned genuine Christianity and biblical truth in favor of the sort of inner-directed experiential religion that now pervades Western society.
Specifically, Wells explores the wholesale disappearance of theology in the church, the academy, and modern culture. Western culture as a whole, argues Wells, has been transformed by modernity, and the church has simply gone with the flow. The new environment in which we live, with its huge cities, triumphant capitalism, invasive technology, and pervasive amusements, has vanquished and homogenized the entire world. While the modern world has produced astonishing abundance, it has also taken a toll on the human spirit, emptying it of enduring meaning and morality.
Seeking respite from the acids of modernity, people today have increasingly turned to religions and therapies centered on the self. And, whether consciously or not, evangelicals have taken the same path, refashioning their faith into a religion of the self. They have been coopted by modernity, have sold their soul for a mess of pottage. According to Wells, they have lost the truth that God stands outside all human experience, that he still summons sinners to repentance and belief regardless of their self-image, and that he calls his church to stand fast in his truth against the blandishments of a godless world.
No Place for Truth is a contemporary jeremiad, a clarion call to all evangelicals to note well what a pass they have come to in capitulating to modernity, what a risk they are running by abandoning historic orthodoxy. It is provocative reading for scholars, ministers, seminary students, and all theologically concerned individuals.
Book Review: David Wells – No Place for Truth
(Reviewed by Monergism.com's Aaron Orendorff)
“Perhaps no modern author has written more powerfully on this subject.”
Iain Murray
“No Place for Truth was the bomb that exploded on the evangelical playground.”
R. Albert Mohler, Jr.
David F. Wells’ No Place for Truth or Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology is a compelling, poetic and brilliant analysis of today’s ever-widening evangelical landscape. It would be difficult to find a book better suited or more convincingly argued than this, the first in Wells’ four volume series. In it, Wells, Gordon-Conwell’s eminent sociological-theologian, tracks the rise and progress of modernity within Western culture detailing its destabilizing and secularizing effects upon the often hapless souls of men. Wells’ thesis is simple: ours is a day that prizes pragmatisms and profitability. Where character and virtue were once touted and cultivated, now we are left with personality and image. Self-searching and self-fulfillment have triumphed, while self-sacrifice has been eschewed. “Spiritual, but not religious” is the mantra, or perhaps better, the bumper-sticker of our age. And sadly the church is hardly immune. On the contrary, as Wells records, “It may be the case that Christian faith, which has made easy alliances with modern culture in the past few decades, is also living in a fool’s paradise, comforting itself about all the things that God is doing in society (which is the most commonly heard religious version of this idea of progress) while it is losing its character, if not is soul” (68).
Wells’ assessments of modernity and its younger, more boisterous sibling – post (or ultra) modernity – are pointed, clear and exhaustively researched. Following in the steps of cultural critics like Robert Bellah, Peter Berger and Neil Postman, Wells skillfully navigates the lonesome streets of Western society’s sprawling, consumerist cities. In particular, he charts well the impact of enlightenment thinking and post-Kantian ideology upon the religious centers of academia both with its whole-sale abandonment of confessional orthodoxy and its unyielding embrace of empirical and experiential epistemology. What this shift in thinking produced within academia was a stalwart bias towards “the sort of classical liberalism that Schleiermacher argued for (which seeks the disclosure of God within human experience).” Outside of the academy, however, and within evangelicalism at large, the “disappearance of a confessional element” was the result, not of autonomous intellectual rigor, but of autonomous and democratic sentimentality. Having lost its doctrinal heart the word evangelical has itself become “descriptively anemic.” “It is not hard to see,” Wells explains, “that the disappearance of a center of values in culture is now paralleled by a disappearance of a theological center in evangelicalism.” This disappearance is evidenced in the pulpit and the pew alike, creating in the first a gospel of romanticized self-help and in the second vacuous and entertainment driven lives full of moral indecision.
Far from being a mere experiment in doomsday-ism, however, at point after point Wells returns to the redemptive message of apostolic Christianity to find his footing and point a way out. As the following excerpt explains, it is again to the gospel we must turn – to the foolish and scandalous word of cross – to die to ourselves, our way of thinking, believing and living, that we might truly live a life worthy of the name (pg. 279):
It is the biblical world of meaning, its way of interpreting life, into which we are invited to enter, to make its world our own. We stand at its door, like Bunyan’s Pilgrim before the Cross, the bundle of our self-understanding and of our self-interpreted world upon our back. This bundle, as with that of our sin, must be abandoned. If we are to enter this new world of meaning, we will have to do so hermeneutically naked, our modern horizons and taste, our modern fascination with ourselves wrenched from us and abandoned on entry. For we come to take from this new world, not to give. We come to take meaning; we come to give up the narrative of our own life with its parables of self-constructed meaning in order to find the truth that God has given in his own narrative.
And here, strangely enough, lies the watershed both of the ancient and the modern worlds. Where is the locus of God’s truth to be found? To the pagan who heard the voice of the gods within, who listened to the whisperings of intuition, and to the modern who similarly listens within for the voice of self, the answer is the same. For the Israelite it was different. The Bible is not a remarkable illustration of what we have already heard within ourselves; it is a remarkable discovery of what we have not and cannot hear within ourselves. Thus, our inward sense of God and our intuitions about meaning are irrelevant in any effort to differentiate biblical truth from pagan belief. It is how we apply ourselves to learn what God has disclosed of himself in a realm outside ourselves that is important. And unless we steadfastly maintain this distinction in the face of the modern pressures to destroy it, we will soon find that we are using the Bible merely to corroborate the validity of what we have already found within our own religious consciousness – which is another way of saying that we are putting ourselves in place of the Bible. It is another way of reasserting the old paganism. When that happens, theology is irredeemably reduced to autobiography, and preaching degenerates into mere storytelling
http://www.monergismbooks.com/reviews/noplacefortruth.html
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