thoughts and ruminations while in exile (1 Pet. 2:11)

As many of you know, lots of Christians call themselves "Evangelicals." However, while historically this adjective was used to describe a certain type of Christian, it has now become so diluted of significance that mostly anybody consideres themselves "Evangelical." For example, historically in order to be considered an "Evangelical" one HAD to subscribe (it was not a matter of debate) to the five solas' of the Reformation. Just so we're clear, the first sola, sola Sciptura, meant that the Scriptures were the sole revelation of God, and that God DID NOT speak outside of Scripture. As Luther said with resounding force, "Let him who would hear God speak, read Holy Scripture!"

When the Reformers said "Grace Alone," inherent in what they meant by that was clearly God's sovereign election and predestination of some persons to heaven, while clearly leaving others in their sin. One could in now way merit grace. Simply because God chose to have mercy on one person, in now way meant that God was under obligation to show grace to all persons equally. God is not obliged to give equally that which He is not obliged to give at all.

Finally (I'm not covering all five solas), they said that the ONLY way a person was saved was by justification THROUGH faith ALONE. In other words, a person is DECLARED righteous (not made righteous through infusion by exposing oneself as often as possible through sacraments of the Roman church), solely by Christ's righteousness being IMPUTED to them. A person receives this imputed righteousness when they are granted faith, and place their trust in Christ. Righteousness is received at the moment of faith, not ANY time after. Certainly not through baptism.

I mention this to point out that historically if a person claimed to be an Evangelical, they were clearly an adherent to reformed theology. Nowadays we have Roman Catholics, Arminians, semi-pelagians, and in some cases even Pelagians, claiming to be Evangelicals.
Since the term has lost much of its historical meaning, I am considering no longer referring to myself as an Evangelical. If I do happen to use the title, I will have to specify that what I mean by "Evangelical" is what the title use to signify prior to the 1970's.
I mean, lets be honest, there is no way on earth that Charles Finney was an Evangelical. He not only repudiated historical Reformed/Evangelical theology, he denied much of Christian theology for crying out loud! Plus, much of todays so-called Evangelicals' theology has liberal tendencies, especially since the seeker-sensitive's and emerging church movement's have been growing with a certain amount of rapidity. So many "Christians" these days sound like liberals when they pound this "Deeds not creeds" noise on their media outlets. Not to mention so many "Christian" books talking about "secrets" to happiness, or "secrets" of the kingdom. All this sounds more like Gnosticism than biblical Christianity.

Being that I identify myself with the biblically reformed understanding of the term "Evangelical," I think it is best if we real Evangelicals consider coming up with a new term by which to identify ourselves.

This is why Dr. David Wells suggests in his new book "The Courage to be Protestant." Also, for more info. on this check out Dr. R. Scott Clarks blog on this issue:
http://heidelblog.wordpress.com/2008/05/16/of-catholics-evangelicals-and-rome-2/