9
strongly on the preaching of the Word as the key mark of a true church; it insures the church's
apostolicity.
These resources and my own reading of Scripture and experience within a fairly wide
range of evangelical settings serve as the background for the following ecclesiological
boundaries. I offer them as tentative suggestions and as bases for examining some key
ecclesiological issues facing evangelicals today. Some may seem too obvious to need stating,
but sometimes what is most obvious is overlooked for that very reason. In the area of
ecclesiology I fear that is what has happened.
Evangelical Ecclesiological Boundaries
1. The Methodological Boundary: sola Scriptura. By this I mean that the sole normative
source for evangelical ecclesiology, as for all areas of evangelical theology, must be Scripture.
This idea is reflected to a degree by Carson's sixth thesis ("The church is the product of God's
gracious self-disclosure in revelation"
30
), is implicit in the idea of apostolicity as the apostolic
teaching, and is explicit in the Reformation mark of the preaching of the Word as the surest sign
of the existence of a true church. Evangelicals do and have disagreed on what Scripture teaches
about the church, but the affirmation of its normative authority is central in evangelical
ecclesiology and too important to be taken for granted, especially in an era when some
evangelical church leaders seem to cite George Barna more than the Bible.
2. The Christological Boundary. This as well may seem too obvious to need stating, but
a Christocentric focus has far-reaching implications for understanding the unity of the church,
the message of the church, and the nature of the church as a body of believers. Any church
which loses such a Christocentric focus has transgressed an important boundary.
Timothy George and Edmund Clowney both see the unity or oneness of the church as
based on the common worship of one God,
31
but it is even more solidly grounded on our union
with the Lord and head of the church, Jesus Christ. The metaphor of the church as the body of
30
Carson, "Evangelicals, Ecumenism, and the Church, 369.
31
George, "Toward an Evangelical Ecclesiology," 132 and Clowney, 79.