Lectures on Conversion

Dr. Peter Beyerhaus occupies the chair for the Science of Mission and Ecumenical Theology at the University of Tubingen in West Germany. An evangelical scholar of world repute, he became available for three lectures at Calvin Theological Seminary in connection with engagements at Pittsburgh and Chicago. Although he teaches in the field of ecumenical theology at a school that was early associated with Liberal Biblical critics, his name has been emerging over the years as an outstanding evangelical voice seeking to alert the Christian world to the Liberal threat to the existence of genuine Christian missions. His profound and thoroughly documented observations, not as a relatively unfamiliar outsider, but as a long-time intimate participant in ecumenical discussions, promised to be worth hearing first-hand.

The speaker’s thesis was that conversion must be at the heart of Christian missions. John the Baptist and the Lord preached, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Mt. 3:2; 4:17). Paul was sent to the Gentiles “to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified by faith in Christ” (Acts 27:18). Throughout its history the church has faced this commission, but has not always pursued it. The speaker had seen this call to all men to conversion obscured or replaced by other missionary aims such as the humanization of social structures and the mutual enrichment of various religions, aims which blunt the gospel call and threaten to swallow up the Christian faith in relativism.

The three lectures focussed attention on the theme of conversion (1) in the 19th Century American and German awakenings and (2) in missions to the non-Christians of the third world, and (3) on how the conversion concept had changed missions and how it must be renewed. The American awakenings saw multitudes responding to gospel preaching by conversion amid the lawlessness and immorality of an advancing frontier, but there have been tendencies to psychologize the movements and they were threatened by superficiality and emotionalism. In Germany too there were genuine revivals in response to God-centered law and gospel preaching. The missionary movements into the third world stressed these same methods of seeking conversions through the preaching of the gospel. In the missions however a trend developed toward trying to civilize the colonized peoples, seeking to Christianize nations instead of converting individuals. The gospel did “turn them from darkness to light and from the power of satan to God,” liberating them from demonic fears, but people must turn to Christ as the only Lord nothing less will do. Older missions, though no longer experiencing the same dramatic change from paganism, needed to seek the same kind of repentance from sin and revival of personal faith in Christ crucified. This missionary message is threatened by a shift of emphasis to sociological changes and influences, and even by a suggestion of a “moratorium” on missions.

The evangelical aim of seeking to convert people through gospel preaching, which was a major influence in the beginning of the ecumenical movement, has become only one voice among others, as its influence on the whole movement diminishes. The “Fundamentalists” emphasis on conversion was opposed by Modernists, who captured the churches and their missions. Their “new” movement would replace “conversion” by an aim to merely “influence” other systems. Concern about deliverance from sin against God was replaced by concern about alleviating social alienation of people from one another. This shift developed into a liberation theology adopted from Marxism-the political theology favored by the World council. “Gone with the wind” was the sense of sin and concern about salvation of the soul, “social justice” replaced “justification by faith,” and salvation gave way to humanization. The WCC sought dialog with rather than conversion of adherents to other religions. This radically secular shift of missionary direction in the Conciliar movement, provoked a new evangelical counter-movement and series of conferences to recover the Biblical call to conversion through preaching of the Gospel in dependence on the Holy Spirit. That call to repentance and faith in Christ, the only redeeming and sanctifying Savior, through whom people are born again, is an indispensible part of the Bible’s message and it must be restored to the center of missionary effort, not in human arrogance, but in obedience to God’s command. This, briefly, was the theme that ran through the three lectures. The detailed development was not always easy to follow and the number who came to hear the world-renowned speaker, despite a press announcement, were disappointingly few—a mere two dozen or so.

Beyerhaus’ Writings

Memories of some of Beyerhaus’ writings and the relevance of his message to our situation suggested some further reading of his out of print books. I had one, the Library stacks had little, but Kregel’s bookstore had two. In 1971 he published Missions: Which Way? Humanization or Redemption. A Preface by Harold Lindsell recalled how the 1968 World Council meeting at Uppsala, Sweden had shifted the aim of evangelism toward changing social, political and economic structures in a movement toward universalism, wiping out differences between religions. This ominous development drove Beyerhaus to spearhead an evangelical reaction. Asked about the unpopularity such a stance might bring him in Council circles, Beyerhaus replied “that conscience demanded that he be faithful to the biblical revelation in the Scriptures” (p. 12). “He felt that perhaps the time would shortly come when European evangelicals might be forced to dissociate themselves from the ecumenical movement to guarantee the purity of the message of the Gospel” (p. 11). Beyerhaus shows how in missions “today two contradictory points of view, the ‘evangelical’ and the ‘ecumenical’ stand over against each other (p.14). The writer traces briefly the shift in missions from religious to political and social aims. It is a movement to wipe out the differences between saved and unsaved, church and world, making Mission to be “the total responsibility of the Church for the world” (p. 38). This Liberal ecumenical change of direction has inevitably brought increasing conflict with evangelicals, who see the movement as a sell-out of the gospel to the spirit of our age. The Gospel of reconciliation to God through Christ does have implications for living in the present world and for relations of man to man, but we may not let the world rewrite the Christian missionary mandate. If evangelicals are tempted to separate salvation history from world history, ecumenicals are in danger of losing it in evolutionary world history (p. 61). Thus the missionary ambassadorship of 2 Cor. 5:18–20 is blurred into a universalism. The theology of secularization does not really want or attempt to ground itself in the Bible, and in references to it, the Bible’s original meaning is distorted. “The world’s agenda is being allowed to take precedence over the Bible’s message” (p. 77). Marxist revolution displaces Christ (p. 83), as man puts himself in the place of God (p. 87). In opposition to this whole graphically illustrated movement, Beyerhaus calls for a return to the Biblical gospel of salvation by faith in Christ.

This book was followed the next year by another, entitled, Shaken Foundations, Theological Foundations for Mission. The critical attack upon the Bible, pursued with missionary zeal by Liberal theologians, drove evangelicals (like Martin Luther, their forerunner) to return to the “Bible Only” as our bed rock of evangelical faith and action. The critical theology has now developed into a theology of Revolution, no less hostile to the gospel of Christ. In response to these academic and social misuses of the Bible, we, relying on the interpreting power of the Holy Spirit who inspired it, “are called . . . to ask the Lord to speak His living Word through it directly to us” and to hear in it “the voice of the living Lord” (pp. 13 ff.; cf. John 10).

“The unspiritual man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned,” but “we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that comes from God, in order that we may know the things which God has freely given us” (1 Cor. 2:14, 12). Theologians “must humbly join the chain of witnesses, not so much as historical critics, but rather as the faithful stewards of God’s mysteries.”

“Mission does not mean to get aligned as partners with . . . all men of good will who are desirous to help others” (p. 37), but to have a part in the continuing ministry of the risen and reigning Christ who came to save men from sin and eternal death by His expiatory sacrifice. Beyerhaus sees this change of missions from calling people to be reconciled to God, into merely joining common efforts to “help” other people, as amounting to nothing less than rejecting Christ and His unique claims. “There is no bridge which spans the gap between a social concept of humanization and the biblical mystery that by Christ’s sacrifice not only were we restored to our true humanity, but we also were made children of God and partakers of His divine life. Because of this rejection of the unique claim of Christ, all post-Christian movements betray . . . an anti-Christian character . . . . to prepare for the final dramatic conflict with the community of Christ, where the dominating figure will be the Antichrist. He will personify a Christless humanization program by appearing to be Christ himself. He will unite the whole of humanity under his rule, a rule which will superficially appear to be a paradise of social justice. But this paradise will end up in terror, blood, and tears” (p. 61). Beyerhaus sees the basic error of this theology of mission as its minimizing of sin since the fall, and therefore having no appreciation of the need for and role o f the Savior and His cross. “This cross is the power of Salvation for those who believe, but an odor of death among those who are perishing (2 Cor. 2:15, 16).”

This clear statement of issues in the ecumenical conflict about missions found official expression in the March 4, 1970, Frankford Declaration, in the formulation of which, Beyerhaus took a leading part. Frankford’s “all-out attack on the ecumenical program of humanization,” which Beyerhaus showed really displaced Christ‘s saving work and the church of saints which He is saving, provoked hostile reaction. Out ofthe resulting conflict came the resurgence of a distinctly evangelical e ffort to again put the Gospel and its call to repentance and faith in Christ in the center of missions.

Dr. Beyerhaus’ fascinating account of the growing conflict and of the massive new orthodox effort to restore real Christian evangelism, and the bearing of all of this on our present church and mission programs, we hope to consider next month.