John Stott - Authenticity Overcomes Controversy

http://kylearoberts.com/wordpress/?p=487

by Kyle Roberts

August 2, 2011

In the days following John Stott’s death, I have read numerous reflections and eulogies on his life, writings, and impact on evangelicalism and Christianity. He has been held up by the NY Times Nicholas Kristoff as a foil to the “blowhards” and has been honored by several Gospel Coalition voices as a defender of the centrality of Christ and the penal substitutionary understanding of the atonement. He dialogued with liberal mainline theologians and spoke regularly at conservative evangelical institutions, such as Wheaton College. During a chapel Q&A session at Wheaton, Stott responded to a student who asked him about his controversial annihilationist position, a notion that the unredeemed wicked will cease to exist after the general resurrection (they will be “burned up” in the flame of judgment). Stott’s modeled in his answer both a quest for the truth as well as a reverence for the authority of Scripture.

I have sometimes wondered, incidentally, why it is that annihilationism seems to be less threatening to conservative evangelicals than hopeful, inclusivistic universalism (the notion that everyone might eventually be saved through faith in Jesus)? I suspect, at least in Stott’s case, it has partly to do with his explicit attention to biblical texts in mounting his argument (and, correspondingly, with biblicism, as a high value in evangelical theology). Yet there are “evangelical universalists” today who are also mounting arguments from Scripture (see Gregory McDonald’s The Evangelical Universalist, for a good example).

In that controversial book referred to by that student, Stott wrote,

“Emotionally, I find the concept [of eternal conscious torment] intolerable and do not understand how people can live with it without either cauterizing their feelings or cracking under the strain. But our emotions are a fluctuating, unreliable guide to truth and must not be exalted to the place of supreme authority in determining it . . . my question must be — and is — not what does my heart tell me, but what does God’s word say?”

I suspect that Stott’s consistent reverence for Scripture and his stated desire to be faithful to biblical truth, enabled him to remain in the generally good graces of even the most conservative evangelicals. J.I. Packer, taking on Stott’s annihilationist position decades ago, concluded his essay by saying “it would be wrong for differences of opinion on this matter to lead to breaches of fellowship…”

In that 2003 chapel address I mentioned earlier, Stott answered a student who was looking for advice about evangelizing “post-modern people,” by saying that “I, myself, am persuaded that the major way in which the gospel can be presented to a post-modern age is not by anything we say but how we live. There needs to be in us Christian people an authenticity which cannot be denied, so there is no dichotomy between what we say and what we are…there must be no dichotomy between what we are in private and in public. What we say. What we are. That is authenticity. People have to see Christ in us and not just hear what we talk about.”

The admiration in these days expressed for the ministry and life of John Stott, despite an eschatological position that runs against the mainstream of conservative evangelical theology, can perhaps best be explained by the fact that he seemed to follow his own advice.

Authenticity can overcome controversy.

(for more reflections and a link to his 2003 talk, see this essay by David Malone)