Wir Christen tendieren ständig dazu, auf zwei Seiten zu kippen: Weltflucht und Rückzug von allen aktuellen Fragestellungen (was das Problem 1947 in Teilen des US-evangelikalen Lagers war) und auf der anderen Seite die Preisgabe der Kernüberzeugungen in einer Haltung des vorauseilenden Gehorsams.
What concerns me more is that we have needlessly invited criticism and even ridicule, by a tendency in some quarters to parade secondary and sometimes eben obscure aspects of our position as necessary frontal phases of our view. To this extent we have failed to oppose the full genius of the Hebrew-Christian oulook to its modern competitors. With the collapse of Renaissance ideals, it is needful that we come to a clear distinction, as evangelicals, between those casic doctrines on which we unite in a supernaturalistic world and life view and the area of differences on which we are not in agreement while yet standing true to the essence of Biblical Christianity. But even beyond this, I voice my concern because we have not applied the genius of our position constructively to those problems which press most for solution in a social way. Unless we do this, I am unsure that we shall get another world hearing for the Gospel. …
Those who read with competence will know that the ‘uneasy conscience’ of which I write is not one troubled about the great Biblical verities, which I sonsider the only outlook capable of resoving our problems, but rather one distressed by the frequent failure to apply them effectively to crucial problems confronting the modern mind. It is an application of, not a revolt against, fundamentals of the faith, for which I plead.
Carl. F. H. Henry. The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism. (Preface)
