11
A further implication of the Christological boundary is the importance of church
discipline for those whose conduct belies their profession of Christ.
38
The disappearance of
church discipline from many evangelical churches thus raises questions not only about our lack
of courage and "tough love," but also about our ecclesiological awareness and acumen.
3. The Pneumatological Boundary. Whether dispensational or covenant in their
theology, evangelicals realize that something significant for the church happened at Pentecost.
In the twentieth century, the Pentecostal/charismatic movement highlighted the importance of the
Holy Spirit and the growth and presence of Pentecostals within evangelicalism has brought a
greater pneumatological awareness to evangelicalism as a whole. This is reflected in Carson's
statement that "The church is a community empowered by the Holy Spirit" and by George's
linkage of the Spirit to the holiness of the church.
39
As Douglas Farrow has perceptively noted
in a recent book, even the Ascension, and the corresponding real absence of Christ, force us to
see the church as profoundly pneumatological.
40
The danger here is perhaps not in what we say explicitly in our ecclesiology, but the
ecclesiology implied by our practice. Any church whose reliance is on careful demographic
study and market analysis as the tools for growth has forgotten the word that says, "'Not by
might nor by power, but by my Spirit,' says the Lord Almighty" (Zech. 4:6). The ecclesiological
38
Ibid. Carson draws this same implication, noting that it has a long history as the third
Reformation mark of the church, and "as virtually mandated by the nature of the church."
39
See Carson, "Evangelicals, Ecumenism, and the Church," 362, and George, "Toward
an Evangelical Ecclesiology," 134.
40
Douglas Farrow, Ascension and Ecclesia: On the Significance of the Doctrine of the
Ascension for Ecclesiology and Christian Cosmology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), esp.
176-178.)