The Langham Partnership International is committed to the fundamental truths of historic biblical Christianity, in accordance with which we affirm….
Take a guess as to what is in there before you read it all.
The Langham Partnership International is committed to the fundamental truths of historic biblical Christianity, in accordance with which we affirm….
Take a guess as to what is in there before you read it all.
Two observations:
1. Wherever possible the framers of this document avoid He/Him/His in reference to God;
2. “The Holy Scripture in its entirety is inspired by God’s Spirit”– I always want to ask whose canon of Scripture in its entirety is inspired. Is it the one generally, but never formally, agreed upon by Protestants, or the bigger one formally proclaimed by the RCs, or the even bigger one used by the Easter Orthodox, or the much smaller one Luther would have preferred?
#1: Good catch – but para I does say “his”. The phrase “God’s love desires….” is strange; persons desire, not their attributes or feelings.
As a supporter of LPI I think this could be much better written.
Chris Wright: are you reading this?
Interesting that the church is described as universal rather than catholic, at a place where you would expect the latter. Not much about sacraments either – although in fairness there is not much directly about the sacraments in the Apostles’ Creed either. But overall it reflects not only the strong evangelical ethos of Langham Place, but also something of its antipathy to any catholicising of doctrine.
Langham Parthership is not a church and although the prime movers in the UK are Anglicans, there are lots of Baptists, Pentecostals, etc involved in North America and other places. This is not a tstaement from All Soul’s Langham Place, but a statement fr4om the organization know in this country (USA) as John Stott Ministries. A statement on sacraments would be inappropraite in a non-church, transdenominational statement. This is likely also the reason for the owrd ‘universal’ – it’s a translation of ‘catholic’ that non-Anglican evangelicals can understand.
I rather think that this Statement of Faith of the Langham Partnership is not something which is from out of the blue, but a careful reduction of the main points of the evangelical Lausanne Covenant of 1974 as it applies specifically to their ministry. Whether it has been through any further evolutionary history I do not know, but since both were part of the legacy of John Stott, you can be reasonably sure they are both founded on firm biblical ground, and perhaps both written by him.
#3 Fr Tee
I imagine the universal church is the church militant here on earth as well as the church triumphant. Does that make more sense and explain why it would include the church catholic, where catholic means all or universal?.
John Stott was always very clear that as well as being an evangelical he was also as a Church of England minister, both catholic and reformed as we are. People tend to forget this.