A.B. Simpson’s Narrative Theology: The Deep Church for the Old Faith? (AWF essay from Paper 2020)

A.B. Simpson’s Fourfold Gospel profoundly shaped 20th-century evangelicalism. Its axiomatic missiological end—the return of our coming King—demands a corresponding means: the deeper life found in Jesus as Savior, Sanctifier, and Healer. This deeper life forms a theology of purpose that anchors our faithful waiting and witnessing. Without this distinction, the church becomes vulnerable to the false dichotomies of the Western theological canon—accommodated variously by Rome, contemporary theological trends, and caricatures of Reformed determinism.

Simpson’s engagement with mystical authors and eclectic spiritual practices continues to nourish contemplative spirituality within the deeper or higher Christian life. Some Alliance theologians, influenced by this trajectory, have gravitated toward a “deep and high” ecclesiology under the banner of narrative theology—answering not merely, “How shall we then live?” but more crucially, “Where are we going?” The Christian and Missionary Alliance originated in the West, yet Simpson progressively distanced himself from Western systems—political or ecclesial—that risk usurping the grand narrative of Scripture. He cast his vision through the church of Thyatira: not institutional dominance but a faithful people preparing for the King’s return.

For Simpson, the destination shapes the journey. The end of the age, revealed through the Great Commission, orients the Alliance’s mission as an Acts 1:8 family. His eschatology, laid out in The Coming One and his critique The Old Faith and the New Gospels, sharply observed the early 20th century’s shift—from Roman ecclesial power to a Catholic inclusivism now echoed in Protestant-progressive evangelicalism. This shift often prioritizes collective social justice activism over proclamation, favoring human cultural constructs over the biblical vision of grafting into the olive tree.

Such misalignment fosters doctrinal ambivalence, shaped by secular sensibilities and divorced from the sacred. The narrative of linear, apocalyptic redemption becomes spiritualized, mingled with eclectic activism. Meanwhile, gestures of unity under Pope Francis and the popularity of figures like Richard Rohr point toward a personal expressivism, detached from the gospel’s telos. Likewise, theologians like David Bentley Hart offer beauty and theological depth for those disenchanted with proclamation—but often without the urgency of Scripture’s eschatological horizon.

Do deep church traditions offer richer gospel expressions? Perhaps. Yet they often lack something crucial: directionality. The destination—the World to Come—must frame our reading of the Tanakh, our understanding of Judaism, and the sojourn of the Lord’s people as revealed through the LXX. Simpson grasped this. He recognized Christendom’s marginalization of the Jews and supported Zionism in a spiritual sense, believing that a Jewish homeland could catalyze both Jewish hope and Christian mission in “bringing back the King.” He would not have endorsed the political state of Israel as a final eschatological fulfillment, but he leveraged the moment for gospel mobilization.

Simpson’s theology aligned with the ecclesial tension surrounding Vatican I (1870), which entrenched papal supremacy. Today, any assessment must also reckon with Vatican II (1965) and its conciliatory stance toward other religions. While Rome apologized—even to Judaism—it maintained its supersessionist posture, positioning itself as the “mother church” through Lumen Gentium and Nostra Aetate—but always on its own terms.

Post-Vatican II Catholicism merges with 20th-century Protestant kingdom-now theology, producing a narrative embarrassed by apocalyptic expectation. Academic New Testament studies, obsessed with historical Jesus reconstructions and the “New Perspective on Paul,” often sideline Judaism’s centrality. Yet Jesus affirmed the Pharisees’ seat of Moses, and Paul of Tarsus, trained by Gamaliel of Beit Hillel, called out the nationalistic zeal of Beit Shammai and the corrupt Sadducean priesthood he once served.

These insights arrived long after Simpson’s time but affirm the messianic orientation of his biblical theology. His historical premillennialism looked back through history and forward to the World to Come, with Matthew 24:14 marking the definitive milestone: the gospel proclaimed to all nations—not as speculative prophecy, but as eschatological purpose.

To continue the Great Tradition without revision is to fall into the trap of historicism, progressivism, and supersessionism. A historical-critical return to the text must reject Rome’s synthesis of nature and grace—terms used to underpin its view of the church as Christ’s continuing incarnation. Rome presents itself as “fulfilled Israel,” anchored in early ecumenical councils and Vatican II. But this self-description ruptures Scripture’s apocalyptic arc and the prophetic destination of a New Creation. That role belongs to the universal church grafted into the cultivated olive tree, not to Rome’s substitute.

This Great Tradition fascination intersects with thinkers like Charles Taylor and John Milbank, whose ideas influence ecumenically-minded Protestants such as Stanley Hauerwas, N.T. Wright, Hans Boersma, James K.A. Smith, Scot McKnight, and the late Robert Webber. These thinkers seek a deeper theology to correct evangelical superficiality, power abuse, and escapist dispensationalism—valid concerns. Yet do they understand the narrative Simpson called the Old Faith?

Properly centered, such theology would place the believer’s union with Christ—emphasized in the mystical tradition—at the core. But Rome confined union to its ecclesial structure. In contrast, biblical marriage pictures Christ’s righteousness mediated through the Holy Spirit and grounded in the messianic trajectory of Judaism. Union with Christ is not static—it longs for His future presence and reign in glory.

This is where the Fourfold Gospel matters for ecclesiology. Rooted in conversion, the deeper life, and waiting for the King’s reign, it confronts secularism through the individual’s transformation and the community’s healing and expectation. Contemporary Alliance spirituality and ecumenical experimentation risk overlooking Rome’s hegemonic role and its nature/grace synthesis—projecting a philosophical narrative that displaces the old story.

Rome’s syncretism of Scripture/tradition and reason exalts itself as historical Christianity’s center, offering no destination beyond a spiritualized kingdom-now theology—often embedded in Christian nationalism. In The Old Faith, Simpson exposed this theological overreach, while The New Gospels critiqued spiritualized allegory and existentialism. These missteps birthed theological ecumenism, political idolatry, and a secular liturgy disguised as sacred.

Meister Eckhart, though condemned, followed Thomas Aquinas’ logic to its radical conclusion—union with God without ecclesial mediation. His theology, while echoing Ashkenazi Hasidic insights, also laid groundwork for immanence without transcendence, distorting the faith’s metaphysical core. Eckhart’s Jewish-like Christology was birthed in an age of intense persecution of the Jews by the very church he served—Rome canonized Aquinas but condemned Eckhart, though Vatican II has since absorbed much of Eckhart’s spiritual grammar into its postmodern liturgies.

Even current Alliance language like “incarnational ministry” risks confusion if detached from gospel proclamation. Ecclesiology must not eclipse missiology. When presence replaces proclamation, and ecclesial mystique takes priority over Christ’s return, the church risks idolatrous collectivism that fuses nationalism with realized eschatology.

The Alliance’s slogan—Taking All of Jesus to All the World—points to contextual evangelization, not ecumenical ecclesiology. The Spirit’s work in Christ’s global church cannot be confined to the Western legacy. Rather, the Old Faith demands a holistic witness: watching, waiting, and proclaiming, in full embrace of suffering and expectation.

In conclusion, the church continues to grow toward the prophetic fulfillment of Matthew 24:14, echoing Paul’s Beit Hillel tradition over the nationalist zeal of Beit Shammai and Sadducean compromise. Today’s Zionist hardliners often mirror those ancient antagonists. The Great Tradition’s moral stances deserve thoughtful engagement, but not blind adoption. Vatican II’s absorption of all things into itself is the highest form of supersessionism—replacing the whole of Christianity with its Roman self.

Meanwhile, evangelicalism’s hunger for mystery and sacrament often reaches for Catholic forms without understanding their philosophical presuppositions. Yet Simpson’s poem Himself captured the essence: Christ alone, not as concept but as union—embodied, mystical, and eschatological.

The global Alliance movement, emerging from Catholic contexts, reveals that the “nominal” must be left behind. It calls us to move beyond the Great Tradition’s Greco-Roman theological synthesis. The Fourfold Gospel provides discernment—a Christ-centered framework rooted in Scripture, looking toward His final coming, and practiced in the eucharist with the expectation: we shall eat with Him again in the Kingdom.

Let the deep church and the old faith be means—not ends. The end is Christ Himself. As Simpson knew well: the King is coming and it also up to us.