Not long ago, a friend asked me if I’d heard of “gospel reductionism” and, if so, what I thought about its influence. A quick search on the Net showed its connection to Missouri Synod Lutheran tensions in the early 1970s, a dispute that led the “reductionists” (no longer welcome at Concordia Seminary) to found a seminary in exile (Seminex), where they would be free from the “suffocating” notion of biblical inerrancy. Whatever the expression’s history, he invited me to pick up on a definition he’d come across in his reading:

Basically it’s the tendency to reduce the Bible to the gospel. Gospel reductionism tends to allow the Bible authority only in matters which are explicitly part of the gospel or may be developed from the gospel. Exponents of gospel reductionism believe that considerable freedom should be allowed within the church in matters which are not an explicit part of the gospel. In this way, the rest of the Bible is relativised; it does not have the same authority. Instead of the gospel and scripture, the tendency is for only the gospel to become the standard (the norm) of Christian teaching.

Gospel Reduction # 1

Well, right off, I recognized it as a liberal trope, the sort of move we’d countered in the SBC Conservative Resurgence. But it was nested in a centuries-old struggle. From the very beginning of the Christian era, many identifying as Christian have done what they could to toss off the “whole counsel of God,” which Paul did “not hesitate to proclaim” to the Ephesians. Impatient with the teaching that “all Scripture is God breathed and useful . . .” they have acted like fish who are thrashing about trying to throw the hooks from their mouths. Marcion (AD 85-160) flung out the inconvenient Old Testament, with its angry, tribal god, so unlike Jesus. “Red Letter Christians” of our day hasten to say that “black letter” Paul, and not Jesus, was the one who had harsh words to say about homosexuality, so we should jettison our “homophobia.” The Jesus Seminar cut deeper, judging most red-letter quotes, including John 3:16, to be bogus. And back to the SBC, Southern Baptists had to change the guard in our seminaries, where, for instance, a professor said the feeding of the 5,000 was simply a manifestation of the fellow-feeling inspired by the little boy who offered his lunch to Jesus. Those in the crowd were so inspired that they shared their food with each other, and so everyone was fed. In this context, Southern Baptist “moderates” much preferred “infallible” to “inerrant” as a Bible descriptor: It’ll get you saved, but the rest—that historical stuff for one thing—is tricky. So “gospel reductionism” is typically an exercise in “scripture evasionism.” 

Gospel Reduction # 2

To go with this, we find a second form of gospel reductionism—subtraction from the gospel. Instead of rinsing away “extraneous” passages from the canon, evangelists on this reductionist model downplay or ignore the insult of our damnable sinfulness and/or the steep cost of discipleship. (Will Metzger’s Tell the Truth is a good source for this critique.) They downplay repentance and up-play the therapeutic. They’re more like salesmen than honest brokers of the “offense” and “stumbling block” of gospel truth. 

Back to Metzger for a moment: To see how doctrinally incisive (or lame) a Christian song might be, he suggested substituting a commercial product for references to God and the gospel, just to see if the song still worked. In that vein, I experimented with Steve Green’s People Need the Lord. Back in the 1990s, when I first used the book, I substituted “Amway.” Today, I’m going with Experian Boost, which promises to improve your credit score instantly. You know, the guys who put WWE star John Cena on a purple bull in their ads.

Every day they pass me by

I can see it in their eyes

Empty people filled with care

Headed who knows where

On they go through private pain

Living fear to fear

Laughter hides their silent cries

Only Experian hears

People need Experian, people need Experian

At the end of broken dreams, they’re the open door . . . .

There’s not much edge to this sort musical gospel presentation.

Gospel Reduction #’s 3a and 3b

There’s yet a third form of gospel reductionism in the land, the program of reducing whatever social agenda you might have to a “gospel issue.” (One thinks of the clown cars of the 1950s, with a dozen or more bozos spilling out of a small vehicle.) There are at least two versions, the first being a form of social gospel.  Pick your cause, which may or may not be a fair interpretation or application of a biblical teaching on public policy or the way of sanctification (not justification), and then declare that it’s part of the gospel—amnesty for “undocumented” immigrants; universal government health care; gracious deference to others’ preferred pronouns; reparations for blacks; the elimination of fossil fuels, etc. This sort of reduction makes a tasty sauce, with a soteriological version of “two tablespoons of minced shallot, onion, or scallion; 3 cups of water; 2 tablespoons of softened butter or olive oil (optional), salt, and freshly ground black pepper”—whatever ingredients you find delectable. Why stop with the sola fide and sola gratia of salvation when you can spice things up with behavioral addimantenta to taste.  In another metaphorical direction, I’ll be so rude as to call it “malignant gospel fabulsim.”

The other sort of third-type reductionism is Pentecostal. I see, for instance, that Andrew Womack is calling present-day, "word of faith” healing essential to gospel. By implication, if you don’t believe in that, you’re lost, or likely so. 

So, we have three, toxic “gospel reductionisms,” three ways to enlist the gospel for objectionable causes—1. To dismiss “errant” passages in the canon; 2. To brew “gospel lite” evangelism; 3. To smuggle in your passions. 

Coalitioning Together for What Exactly?

But isn’t there good reason for gospel reductionism as a working principle for collaborative work among denominations. Without “theological triage,” you wouldn’t have T4G, TGC, and ETS, or other broadly evangelical enterprises such as Wheaton College and Fuller Seminary. By it, we join together to advance broadly Christian concerns—the integration of faith and learning; Christ-and-Culture engagements; the sharing of scholarship in biblical archaeology, Ancient Near East manuscripts, and church history; theistic apologetics, etc. But do we advance the gospel? Are these actually evangelistic and missionary forces? If so, why not just pour Southern Baptist mission monies into them and let them “advance the gospel”?  Well, for one thing, when we Southern Baptists get down to the business of gospeling, we insist on non-sacramental, believer’s baptism by immersion; we decline to fund churches led by women pastors; and we eschew hierarchical polity. 

Unmoored from baptistic doctrine, these other groups, if they are not very careful, can elide into something more akin to “Together for the Social Gospel” of “The Gospel-Informed Cultural Coalition.” Of course, there is good room for co-belligerency for great causes, but those can involve atheists as well. Recall the 1990s rally in DC when the ERLC’s Richard Land spoke against partial-birth abortion on the same platform with an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, a Catholic priest, and an atheist, Nat Hentoff of the Village Voice, who worked from a purely humanist premise. And, of course, many conservative evangelicals alarmed at the spread of debilitating wokeness have found much clear-headed and courageous treatment of the phenomenon in the work of such non-Christians as Thomas Sowell, James Lindsay, Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, John McWhorter, Jordan Peterson, and even Ayaan Hirsi Ali—I dare say, more than in the deliverances, posturings, and chameleon-on-plaid disavowals of the Evangelical Industrial Complex. But when we stand with such pagans as these against what I have called the “sensitivity thugs” of the left, we don’t presume to call ourselves their “gospel colleagues,” as admirable as the cause may be.

Kitchen Magic 

Earlier I spoke of sauced-up additions to the gospel, and I’ll return to the kitchen in closing. Four utensils come to mind, all of which betrayers of the gospel use to work their magic—a strainer to rinse away unwanted parts of the Bible; a funnel to insinuate delicious (or perhaps yucky) extras to the gospel; a knife to pare away discomfiting aspects of the gospel; and a whisk to froth up the gospel to unrecognizable proportions. All useful in cooking up a version other than that which was “once for all delivered the saints.”