A.B. Simpson’s Four-fold Gospel shaped 20th-century evangelicalism. Its axiomatic missiological ‘ends’ toward our coming King requires an individual deeper life ‘means’ drawn from our Savior, Sanctifier and Healer as a theology of purpose. Without this distinction, the challenge of our faithful waiting and witnessing in our anti-evangelical age stands vulnerable to confusion concerning the false dichotomies of the Western Canon accommodated by Rome, contemporary theology, or the caricature of Reformed determinism.
Simpson’s forays into mystical authors and eclectic practice continue to source contemplative spirituality for the deeper or higher Christian life and, for some Alliance theologians, an attraction toward a deep and high ecclesiology in the name of a church-centered ‘narrative theology’ seeking to answer the question: “how shall we than live?” Over simply: “where are going?” The global Alliance originates from the Western church. Yet, Simpson eventually surmised the ‘old faith’ or the gospel as Jesus Christ consummated in His final coming as our ‘coming out’ like the church of Thyratira, not political nor ecclesial systems based on the Western theological tradition usurping the grand narrative of Scripture of faith and obedience of the people of the Lord.
Instead, linearly prioritized with destination, the ‘end of the age’ through the Great Commission provides the Alliance’s witness as an Acts 1:18 family. Simpson’s eschatological focus spells out in The Coming One and his astute analysis of the early 20th century in The Old Faith and The New Gospels. These messages announced shifts from Roman power to current Catholic inclusivism found in Protestant/evangelical progressive thought, diminishing the emphasis on finishing the task of taking the gospel to the nations, for example, exclusive collective social justice activism over the proclamation of Scripture to the individual and collective dividing through human culture over biblical grafting and viewing the ‘Old Faith as the Olive Tree.’
Doctrinal ambivalence is fostered by our contemporary secular sensibilities and distilled from the sacred, causing a bifurcation of a linear time progression story as primarily spiritualized merged with eclectic social justice. Furthermore, enthusiasm toward gestures of unity demonstrated by Pope Francis includes contemplating relevant Catholic authors such as Richard Rohr and mystical spiritual practices reveal personal expressivism in an age of options. Such a search also consists of interactions with the erudite Eastern Orthodox David Bently Hart, who provides beauty, theologically, for those that view proclamation and Scripture-based discipleship ‘as flat’ and thus resort to such ecumenical theology.
Do deep church traditions provide better expressions of the gospel? Perhaps, and elements that seem attractive but missing something ‘crucial’ that is much more directional. Here the ultimate destination is in view toward the World to come while correctly understanding the Tanakh - ‘Old Testament’, and the context of Judaism and the sojourn of the Lord’s people as revelation and missiology evident by the LXX. Simpson empathetically recognized how Christendom marginalized the Jews and was an enthusiastic Zionist, yet in a spiritual sense, believing that a safe homeland for Jews would encourage Jews and Christian missions in ‘bringing back the King’ together. Certainly the current political manifestation of the state of Israel would not sit well with Simpson as an eschatological destination as posited by dispensationalism but certainly leveraged the era for missionary mobilization.
Regarding ecumenical theology, Simpson aligned with the polarization wrought by the Vatican I Council (1870) concerning ecclesiology. Today, an assessment needs to include the ecumenical embrace of Vatican II Council’s and its conciliatory documents (1965) that forced as a theological answer upon our secular age in opening dialog with other religions. Furthermore, Great Tradition practices circulate, sourcing the patristic and medieval era for contemporary spirituality and sacramental mystery. It is crucial to remember that with Vatican II, Rome apologized, even to Judaism, but reinforced supersessionism by viewing itself as the mother church, the center, through the document Lumen Gentium, and further in Nostra Aetate yet on its terms.
Such thought, coupled today with the 20th-century Protestant kingdom presence, a diversion emerged from ‘the embarrassment of the apocalyptic’ consensus. Documented in academic 20th-century and second-temple New Testament studies focusing on the historical Jesus and the so-called New Perspectives on Paul. Such an intellectual pursuit must rekon with Judaism’s centrality that Jesus of Nazareth taught obedience to the Pharisees who sat in the seat of Moses of at least an old faith that had a guiding Qehal (clergy elders) for the Edah (congregation). Paul of Tarsus came out of Beit Hillel. He went to the lost sheep of the house of Israel and the nations calling out the Sanhedrin-controlled Beit Shammai Zealot nationalists and temple-controlling Sadducees he served before the road to Damascus.
The previous academic information arrived after Simpson’s Bible comment of our ‘coming king,’ yet stands congruent with the messianic nature of a biblical theology he expounded and revised. He was one who gleened from various traditions, and where his adherence to historical premillennialism looked back and viewed the modern era in a semi-post-apocalyptic era on the verge of the World to come according to his reading of Matthew 24:14. Thus, ‘the gospel preached to all nations’ to usher in the reign of the Messiah as absolute destination over prophetic speculation.
Continuing the Great Tradition Western narrative needs revision to escape historicism, progress, and supersessionism of biblical revelation and missiology. A historical-critical orientation ‘back to the text’ includes rejecting Rome’s synthesis of nature and grace. These philosophical/biblical terms weave through the church as Christ’s continuing incarnation. The incarnation of Christ continues in its view of itself as the all-embracing ‘mother church’ as another type of ‘fulfilled Israel’ while presented through a historic and semi-canonical lineage from the early ecumenical councils and now expressed in Vatican II with apologies but no acknowledgment of error in doctrine. Rome just keeps on absorbing — such a narrative ruptures the linear time-apocalyptic transition of Scripture and the prophetic destination into a coming new age. However, shouldn’t this be the task of the church universal as grafted into ‘the cultivated olive tree’ and not under the guidance of the Romanist version?
The Great Tradition, deep church attraction, works at many levels where ecumenical theology intersects with philosophers like the secular Catholic Charles Taylor and sacred Protestant thinker John Milbank. Their thought resonates with ecumenical Protestants varied, such as Stanley Hauerwas, N.T. Wright, Hans Boersma, James K.A. Smith, Scot McKnight, Gordon Smith and the late Robert Webber is sourcing some strands of contemporary Alliance theology distorting Simpson’s ‘old faith.’ A critical analysis of post-Vatican II thought seems to elude those mentioned beyond their approaches toward secularism, defined as a post-Christian reaction. A push back upon the compromise and superficiality of evangelical culture, power, and dispensational escapism and a warranted criticism. However, does contemporary ecumenical thought understand what it seeks to deconstruct in a narrative sense as Simpson understood the ‘old faith?’
Preferably an analysis of the preceding theologians puts the sacrament of the believer’s union with Christ front and center. The mystical tradition emphasized our union with Christ and was held in suspicion outside its ecclesial role by Catholicism, where Rome continues as the mediator. Instead, marriage demonstrates Christ’s righteousness, mediated by His Holy Spirit and the messianic trajectory of Judaism. Union with Christ is not static; it actively longs for His future presence as the whole gospel and arriving in active apocalyptic kingdom glory! Here, the Fourfold Gospel’s everyday relevance to the Alliance’s organizational ecclesiology organically based on conversion, the deeper life, and waiting for Christ’s iron rod reign submits to our coming King in confronting the secular from the individual’s choice and the promotion of healing and expectant kingdom living now!
Perhaps contemporary spirituality, liturgical appropriations, and ecumenical theology sourced by Alliance theologians seem oblivious to Roman Catholic philosophical theology’s ultimate function as a collective and its hegemonic function over Evangelicals. The intellectual ‘nature and grace’ system parallels ‘the secular and the sacred ‘through another split between ‘the individual and the community’ and emerges axiomatic superceeding the ‘old faith’s’ narrative.
Here Rome’s sophisticated syncretism of faith (scripture/tradition) and reason projects a collective Catholic embrace and theological supremacy as the depository of historical Christianity with seemingly no destination but a spiritualized ‘kingdom now’ theology embedded within Christian nationalism. In The Old Faith, Simpson called out the hubris produced by the preeminent status of creative theology and foresight of The New Gospels through the allegorical and overtly existential spiritual interpretation. Approaches resulting in theological ecumenicism, political idolatry, and the worship of its science supplying the secular its liturgy.
The philosophical ‘now’ for theology highlighted by Simpson faced its logical conclusion long ago by the so-called mystic Meister Eckhart, a later brother of Thomas Aquinas, Rome’s Doctor Angelicus, and ultimate articulator. Eckhart prescribed unmediated divine presence without ecclesial mediation. He logically arrived at Aquinas’ natural theology trajectory and its analogy of being beyond nature, as was found with early church fathers through high-scholastic distinctions.
Eckhart’s thought also inadvertently supplied contemporary existential philosophy its immanence without the transcendent One. Such theology stands behind Western Christianity’s current form of subjectivism outside the narrative of Israel and the Church. Still, it is evident Eckhart absorbed Ashkenazi Hassidic thought, as understood in equating Judaism as the Son of God, which all of Christian theology holds Jesus of Nazareth fulfilled, who completed his life as a perfect Jew.
The Eastern and Western Christian traditions distill in Meister Eckhart’s thought and neglect the ‘old faith’ revealed by the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and as our collective story as being Esau redeemed. Eckhart proposed by reason what other mystical authors expressed through their affections and emotions, yet his very Jewish articulations were in an era where the Ashkenazi Jews suffered all-out persecution and forced conversion by the Roman church Eckhart served. Eckhart’s theology stands condemned for intriguing reasons, while Thomas canonized along with his theology. Today, Aquinas’ grand reasoning embraces secularism as repackaged through Vatican II, and the Jews were positioned, yet on Rome’s terms. Such ecumenical theology emerges from a Roman and a Catholic dialectic, bolstering interreligious and ecumenical theology, constructed as ‘the sacred’ having little to do with the narrative of Scripture.
For example, subtle confusion could surround the current Alliance slogan, ‘incarnational ministry,’ based soley on ecumenical ecclesial theology with presence, missiology with movement. In other words, let not incarnational ministry, as the Christ and church interconnection divert from gospel proclamation and the hope of Christ’s coming while subtly prioritizing ecclesiology over missiology. Thus creating spiritual idolatry as a confused collectivism usurping the destination of the church and Israel into a “kingdom now” realized eschatology facilitated by a robust nationalism.
The Alliance slogan Taking all of Jesus to all the World speaks of contextualization for evangelization and witness, not an ecumenical usurpation in the church’s name. Therefore, collapsing the practice of preaching into presence or outward religious practices and placing ecclesiology over missiology; such theology diminishes the Holy Spirit’s role in Christ’s collective church comprised of the nations, not only the Western church. Instead, an ‘old faith’ as a wholistic witness of watching and waiting for Christ’s ultimate presence and embracing the suffering as our Lord and Paul taught his believers would face.
In Conclusion, Christ’s true church continues to grow toward the prophetic promise of Matthew 24:14. Framed by Beit Hillel Pharisee Judaism of the apostle Paul through his teacher Gammiel over the Beit Shammai zealots and the temple Sadducees collectively called out as the antagonist Jews in the N.T. No different than the Hardalim Zionist nationalists of the State of Israel who persecuate the pacifist Haredim. scriptures, challenging the obligation to fulfill Acts 1:8. There is nothing new in the West’s Great Tradition’s formidable longevity. Common moral stances and the rejection by so-called secular shifts require careful analysis in understanding the post-Vatican II Catholic ability to absorb its view of itself at the center, the ultimate in supersessionism all of Christianity.
At the same time, evangelical superficiality retrofits sacramental mystery and enchantment lost in a secular age. Catholicism’s existence and historical significance continue in ecumenical theology in obscuring the sacred in Christ alone, with itself as the center. Nevertheless, the metaphysical description and space for mystical expression describe Simpson’s ‘Christ alone’ through union as poignantly expressed in his poem, Himself transcending the ‘Great Tradition’ through the ‘old faith’ of Scripture.
The global expansion of Alliance believers within Roman Catholic contexts supplies sufficient empirical evidence for moving out of the nominal within Christian religion. It moves outside the Great Tradition worldview based upon Greek philosophy and Roman natural law that makes up the methodology of today’s ecumenical theology.
Therefore, the FourfoldGospel supplies discernment upon the deep church and its mystical tradition, scripturally based upon Jesus and His Final Coming and our union with him practiced in the eucharist for a purpose when we shall eat with Him again in His Kingdom. May the deep church and the old faith act as a ‘means’ to Christ’s glorious ‘end’ to help discern and return to the old story that one day will become anew. Jesus Christ as revelation provides us with our narrative theology and A.B. Simpson focused on Him alone.
