ESTABLISHING STATE COUNCILS ON THEOLOGY
IN THE U.S.

 
A. JOB DESCRIPTION FOR U.S. STATE COUNCILS ON THEOLOGY

The tasks we are asking State Councils on Theology to do are listed in this section.

a)      Until a 12 man State Council is formed, the first task is to recruit other members onto your council from evangelical professors, pastors, teachers, church leaders etc. who meet the Membership Requirements. An additional qualification for members of a U.S. State Council on Theology is their willingness to sign our ICCP Declaration which declares they agree with our 22 Documents.

b) Defend wherever necessary the positions stated by all 22 ICCP Documents.

(This may involve initiating debates and dialogues with Christian leaders, teachers, pastors, media people who take a public stand against any of these documents.)

(NOTE: A “debate” is a formal, confronting, public debate that follows the normal, debate rules. Whereas a “dialogue” is a friendlier, more informal discussion where there is give and take such as might occur on a talk radio show or some church meeting.)

c)       Promote these documents on local radio and T.V. talk shows, at church meetings and

local evangelical seminars (where the seminar leader is willing for you to do so), in the local news-press and through national and denominational magazines.

d)      In your state, your council is to hold the Bible up alongside the churches, Christian

schools, organizations and mission agencies AS A PLUMB LINE to measure each group’s theological orthodoxy and biblical practices and write a formal letter from your state council to any such group which is into heresy or anti-biblical activity.

e)       Within your state, formally encourage and call for pastors, churches and organizations to initiate CHURCH DISCIPLINE on any of their members which the Apostle Paul would say deserve church discipline.

f)       When the professors of Christian colleges and seminaries in your state receive the COR 40 Question Survey on orthodoxy and Bible inerrancy, stand ready to answer questions and deal with those professors and administrators who want to make a war over this survey which will be presented for us by the Barna Research Group.

 B. LAUNCHING STATE COUNCILS ON THEOLOGY HERE IN THE U.S.

In August of 2003 after 20 of our documents were completed, we held a Theological Consultation in Fort Lauderdale, FL at Knox Theological Seminary attended by about 100 theologians. Over 2000 evangelical theologians in America and Canada who were members of the ETS received an invitation to participate. The purpose of this Consultation was to formalize and finalize the English version of these theological documents so each document was reviewed by a sub-committee. After the 3 days of discussion all 20 documents were approved and a “Declaration” was signed declaring that we believed these documents accurately represented, however imperfectly, the basic teaching of the Bible on those particular issues, and that those who stood in opposition to these documents were thereby undermining the foundation on which the next generation stands. From that point on, the English version we now have was to be considered the standard, fixed version of all these Church Council Documents which is to be edited and from which all translations are to be made until the end of our proposed Global Church Council wherein a final, fixed version will emerge as the standard version for the Body of Christ that is affirmed by theologians from most of the targeted 80 countries of the world.

            In essence then, we are considering the North American version of these documents complete and finalized at this time so we are not asking members of State Councils on Theology to do any editing on these documents. (However, if any member of a State Council on Theology wishes to offer what they think are editing improvements as an individual, they have the freedom to do so as an individual.) So we are not assigning any editing task to any State Council on Theology in the U.S. since we consider these English versions are complete and already edited in North America since August of 2003.

 C. A HISTORY OF THE INTERNATIONAL CHURCH COUNCIL PROJECT

 1. INERRANCY FOUNDATIONAL TO CLEAR, BIBLICAL THINKING

Over the past 30 years, 22 different controversial issues have arisen within the evangelical Body of Christ that would not be controversial if Christian leaders and thinkers firmly believed that the Bible was all God’s revealed, written Word being co-authored by men, and was inerrant and historically accurate throughout. We mean that the Bible itself (Jesus, the apostles and prophets etc.) expects us to believe that it is true not only where it speaks about the spiritual realm of the unseen world, but also where it speaks on matters of interest to science and history in the visible, physical world that is capable of being verified and falsified. When men give up the inerrancy of the Bible, they then become capable of easily sliding into any number of heresies or false teachings with no ability to tell when they have gone too far.

For non-inerrantists, there is no logical stopping place on their downhill slide into total relativism. Their choice to stop sliding downhill at some point is simply a matter of their own arbitrary choice, not a matter of logical necessity required by their theology. Thus, non-inerrantists have no logical, theological reason to claim that there are any moral absolutes commanded by God and therefore have nothing they can say as to why such issues as abortion, homosexuality or Nazism and tyranny are immoral or are offensive to God. The portions of Scripture dealing with those subjects just may not happen to be inspired and inerrant.

 2. THE CHURCH DEALS WITH HERESY THROUGH THE AGES

            Throughout the history of the Church whenever heresies and false teachings have arisen, their proponents almost never raise a flag and openly declare that they are teaching something in opposition to the Bible and orthodox theology. Rather, the proponents of false teaching have quietly, and under cover of darkness, presented their falsehoods as the “true” interpretation, or the “enlightened way” to see a certain doctrine. So many are taken in and led astray because the falsehood is taught as the really spiritual way to look at a certain matter that is falsely said to be compatible with all the other doctrines of scripture.

            When large sections of the Church in any century were “taken in” by a false teaching, biblical leaders in the past rose up, either as a council of bishops, or as a group of reformers, and “set the record straight” by declaring what was the true teaching on certain topics and showed why the false teaching was false and should be condemned and shunned as falsehood. Those falsehood battles in fact account for a large part of the subject of Church History.

 3. THE NEED FOR A MODERN DAY CHURCH COUNCIL TO SETTLE THESE ISSUES

As a group of modern “reformers”, if we may use that word of ourselves, our ICCP Committee has come forth on the stage of church history during the past 16 to 30 years to systematically deal with a number of falsehoods and classic old heresies that have been presented as the “true biblical perspective” by false teachers within evangelical denominations, churches, schools and mission agencies. Please note that these false teachings on 22 issues appeared “on the radar screen” one at a time over the years and not all at once. And we did not set out to become a Church Council committee or to even consider holding a Church Council until we realized that by 1991 we were fighting about a dozen anti-biblical teachings that were spreading like cancer within the Bible-believing churches and schools. At that point we reluctantly decided that the global Body of Christ had no other option but to deal systematically and openly with these many anti-biblical teachings in an official Church Council. And since 1991 another 10 items have arisen that needed our attention, so we ended up (combined with the existing two International Council on Biblical Inerrancy (ICBI) statements which we use by permission), with 22 issues about which we had to create an official statement declaring what was the true biblical teaching on those issues. And like the ICBI team did with the statements on inerrancy and hermeneutics in 1978 and 1982, we wrote the papers in the creedal form of Affirmations and Denials so that each point of each issue was distilled down to it’s basic, most concise essence to make each document usable as a creedal statement.

 4. WE ARE HOPING TO LAUNCH NATIONAL CHURCH COUNCILS IN 80 COUNTRIES

We are offering these 22 Theological Documents to the greater Body of Christ worldwide for their serious consideration and have made them available on our website at www.ChurchCouncil.org. Also we are in the process of pro-actively forming National Theological Councils in 79 other countries of the world (after the documents are translated into their own language) in preparation for a Global Church Council to be held probably in 2017 on the 500 year anniversary of the Reformation. Already several countries in Central America have embryonic National Councils on Theology and Dr. Jay is planning to cover 10 countries in South America for that purpose this fall. Africa and Europe are slated for such visits by Dr. Jay in 2008 and Asia and Oceana in 2009.

             The task of the National Councils on Theology in any country is to review these 22 documents and to edit them if they think their rewording can make any document more biblical, more logical or more concise. Any such editing from any country is to be downloaded into our Church Council website so all countries may see what all other countries are suggesting about any document and such editing will appear both in English and in the native language of the national committee. Committees from any country may also communicate with committees from any other country and discuss these matters by e-mail. Thus, a major, global editing process is to be in progress between now and the Global Church Council proposed for 2017. During these years each continent is to hold its own Continental Church Council to combine and integrate whatever editing the country committees from that continent have offered. Then, hopefully, at the end of our Global Church Council (probably in 2017) we will end up with “a united, global standard of doctrine for the Body of Christ for the 21^st century”.

 
D. DR GRIMSTEAD’S PERSPECTIVE ON OUR THEOLOGICAL TASK

            It is Dr. Grimstead’s understanding that, at this critical, urgent hour of history, God is calling the ICCP to “declare war on all heresy and false teachings within the evangelical Body of Christ worldwide”. We expect open, declared liberals to teach a liberal, non-biblical view on any topic, but when evangelicals who declare themselves “Bible believers” teach heresy or falsehoods in the name of the Bible, the God of truth wants them to be exposed and opposed. 

            Thus, Dr. Grimstead is claiming that, as we are engaging in the process of creating a Global Standard of Doctrine for the Body of Christ Worldwide for the 21^st century, we must also be initiating “A THEOLOGICAL WORLD WAR III” to draw a line in the sand and clarify which leaders and churches stand with the Bible’s truth and which ones oppose the Bible’s truth.

It is not enough to just passively wait for God’s theological enemies to attack God’s truth and orthodox leaders. Rather, we must aggressively take the theological battle to the gates of the liberal enemies who are covertly entrenched within Christian schools, churches, denominations and mission agencies and somehow draw them out into open, honest battle. Most Christians are largely unaware that many Christian colleges, seminaries and denominations are quietly housing liberal professors, pastors and leaders who are in strong disagreement with their own church or organization’s “statement of faith” and are teaching students just the opposite of what parents and donors think is being taught in such institutions.

            The facts are that most of our liberal theological opponents will do everything they can to avoid a head-on collision, debate or discussion with our team. This is so because with orthodox theology and conservative positions on history, science, creation & evolution, archeology, morals and law etc., “we hold all the aces in this game”. That is, we have all the facts of history, logic, science and philosophy on our side! If we can ever get them to an honest debate or discussion, they lose because their presuppositions, perspectives, and “facts” are all phony, myths not grounded in reality, science or history. Theologically, historically and scientifically when we confront them with the facts, it is like John Wayne having a shoot out on main street with a 6 year old who is armed only with a slingshot.

            When a person goes liberal, they tend to go liberal on about 20 issues at once because both truth and error are systematic and their positions are interrelated and have an effect on other doctrines and issues within their own system. So it is no surprise that a person who is pro-homosexual and anti-inerrancy will also tend to have an unbiblical view on God’s attributes, man’s sin, the atonement, heaven and hell, divorce, the Trinity, socialism, feminism etc. etc. This is why all 22 of our documents need to be the issues over which we do battle and draw the liberals within evangelical churches and institutions out into a head-on collision we call “Theological World War III”.

 E. HOW TO BECOME PART OF A STATE COUNCIL ON THEOLOGY

            To become part of a State Council on Theology in your own state, fill out and mail the Membership Application. If you have further questions you may contact our Church Council Executive Administrator, Rev. Eugene Clingman at his e-mail at admin@churchcouncil.org. You may also phone him at 573-226-1316 or write to him at Route 1, Box 1540, Winona, MO 65588. You can see and download our 22 Church Council documents and our explanatory brochure. You will see on our brochure that members of a State Council on Theology must be in agreement with the ICBI Statement on the Inerrancy of the Bible and the 42 Articles on the Essentials of a Christian Worldview and meet the membership requirements. (Note: Adobe Acrobat Reader is required for viewing some of these links.)