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In the Guardian this Saturday, the regular Face to Faith column was written by Joanna McGrath, with the tag line, “‘Liberal evangelicals’ are now seen as a threat in the way Jesus once was.” In it, she responds to Richard Turnbull’s widely reported speech on theological education, in which he attempted to define evangelicalism, and to warn of the dangers facing evangelical theological colleges.

She argues that his speech, rather than being a reasoned argument based on revealed truths, is simply an expression of a psychological failing – an unreasoning, emotive desire by groups to define unnecessary boundaries. Jesus, according to her view, was opposed to boundaries (in her words, a “category violator”), and his crucifixion was the combined response of the unbelieving world and the religious purists of Jesus’ own day to his openness and abandonment of boundaries. The thrust of McGrath’s article is that evangelicals today are misguided. Jesus, according to McGrath, would oppose the modern-day boundary making by evangelicals.

As an evangelical myself, I found McGrath’s argument utterly unconvincing. In her eagerness to impose modern-day social theories on the accounts of Jesus life, McGrath seems to have abandoned objectivity in her assessments of Jesus’ life and the position taken by modern evangelicals such as Richard Turnbull. Jesus opposed the Pharisees because the boundaries they had established were objectively wrong, and established boundaries of his own that he expects his followers to keep. I would also suggest that she fails to engage with the rest of Scripture, which establishes doctrinal boundaries and has harsh words for “category violators” of those boundaries. Continue Reading…