The Down Grade Controversy and Evangelical Boundaries:
Some Lessons from Spurgeon' s Battle for Evangelical Orthodoxy
By Dennis M. Swanson
Head Librarian and Director of Israel Studies
The Master's Seminary
A Paper Presented to the Annual Meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society
Colorado Spring, Colorado, November 2001
Introduction
he very nature of the quest at hand, "Defining Evangelicalism's Boundaries,"
1
indi-
cates that there exists a level of discomfort or dissatisfaction with the previously es-
tablished norms and definitions. The idea of Evangelicalism being a movement that "empha-
sizes conformity to the basic tenets of the faith and a missionary outreach of compassion and
urgency;"
2
holding to a theological position which "begins with a stress on the sovereignty of
God;"
3
regarding Scripture as the "divinely inspired record of God's revelation, the infallible,
authoritative guide for faith and practice;"
4
or, in short, that Evangelicalism is "the affirma-
tion of the central beliefs of historic Christianity,"
5
is no longer a settled matter; or perhaps,
1
The theme of the 2001 annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society.
2
Pierard, Richard V., "Evangelicalism" in Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, Walter A. Elwell, editor
(Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1984), 379.
3
Ibid
4
Ibid
5
Ibid, p. 380.
T