FAQ 52
Is the New Covenant Church of God Truly "Evangelical"?
NCW 50
Q. The Church's endorsement of, and shared ministry with, many evangelical protestant churches, your refusal to openly condemn Trinitarianism despite what you call "Proto-Trinitarianism and your hesitancy to embrace it", and your view of the Church suggest that the New Covenant Church is now fully "evangelical". Would you agree?
We have always been "evangelical" as far as Christology is concerned but have certainly become "more evangelical" in regard to the idea of a "universal church" and ideas about the Godhead. But I should really ask you to define the word "evangelical" because this word does mean different things to different people.
I must admit that I get very hesitant when people try to fit us into generalised theological boxes. Many words are top-heavy with meaning and if you chip away too much at them they are apt to collapse on your head. They are also used as weapons to define "orthodoxy" or otherwise. As such they can be more unhelpful than helpful.
Perhaps a more useful question is what others say of us. Some evangelicals say we are "evangelical" and others say we are not. The ones that do tend to be those who are experiencing living revelation for themselves and can immediately identify with us. The ones that don't tend to be the more historical movements that reject modern revelation for our time. So it would perhaps be more correct to say that we belong to a certain section of the evangelical movement.
Are we "Protestant" may well be a more difficult question. The answer to that is "yes and no". Yes, we identify with the movement initiated by the Reformers, no, because we believe we are the next developmental stage of the Reformation. We are Restorationists, but not one of the three commonly known "Restoration" groups (Latter-day Saints, Campellites, and the modern charismatic "Restoration Movement"). We are a fourth group of "Restorationists" (do you see how these labels are a problem?!). We are also "Millennialists" but not of the existing "Millennialist" traditions. We are also "Sabbatarians" but not Sunday-Sabbath worshippers as Calvinists are.
My advice would be to forget the labels and other traditional systems of classification because in the end you'll get all twisted up. We are New Covenant Millennial Christians (for want of a better term). We believe in the sole-sufficiency of Christ for salvation, in the necessity of a proper Church organisation to effect perfect discipleship, in the reality of modern-day revelation and scripture, in the supremacy of the Bible above all other modern revelation, in the Deity of Christ, in three Persons in the Godhead and one God (proto-Trinitarianism), in salvation by faith, in Christian patriarchal government, in special creation, in all the gifts of the Spirit, in modern apostolic leadership, and much else besides.
This page was created on 8 April 1998
Last updated on 1 October 1999
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