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17
The word `evangelical' comes from the Greek word for `good news' which takes us to
the heart of the matter. Evangelicals are `gospel' people. . . .
31
As gospel people,
evangelicals stress that the heart of the gospel is the cross of Christ, usually insisting on
that interpretation of the cross known as substitutionary atonement; that a personal
response to Christ's work on the cross, usually called conversion, is necessary; that the
fruits of the gospel should be subsequently seen in the believer's life and that the good
news should be shared with all people through evangelism. . . .
32
Every definition [also]
draws attention to the central place given by evangelicals to the Bible. They count it as
their supreme authority and though they may differ over theories of inspiration and
methods of interpretation they believe it to be the trustworthy record of God's revelation
of himself to humankind, having superior authority to any other means of direction in the
church (such as tradition, reason or contemporary scholarship), sufficient for all the
church's needs and to be treated with the utmost seriousness as a guide both to what we
are to believe and how we are to live.
33

For evangelicals, what is central is gospel, cross, salvation, conversion, life of faith and good
works, and the Bible which reliably and sufficiently reveals the truths we believe and by which
we live.
But given open theism's distinctive and essential tenet, viz., that God cannot know future
free creaturely choices and actions, it is clear that certain central evangelical convictions are
compromised to promote the open view. Consider where open theism leaves us in three areas
discussed above that accord with these central evangelical commitments: We are left with a
Bible somehow now devoid of specific and inviolable divine predictions involving future free
human actions, an unintelligible canonical interconnectedness, a pervasive new interpretive
proposal regarding hundreds of biblical passages, and the possibility of revealed predictions
which are, frankly, wrong. We are left with a gospel unable to account for the eternal design of
God's foreknowing and purposing to save those who God knew would sin against him, a gospel
that jeopardizes the legitimacy of OT sacrifices and divine justification of sinners, a gospel
where the substitutionary nature of Christ's death for sin and sinners arising after the crucifixion
is, at best, impersonal and abstract, and a gospel where God's covenant promise to save and the
very death and resurrection of Christ are rendered uncertain in God's salvific plans. And
Christian faith is left possessing a heightened estimate of our own contribution to the unfolding
future at the expense of God's diminished knowledge, wisdom, and certainty, a faith that cannot
but be unsure of God's word, second-guessing God's direction, and ultimately lacking in
confidence that God's purposes will prevail.
31
Derek J. Tidball, Who Are the Evangelicals? Tracing the Roots of the Modern Movements (London: Marshall
Pickering, 1994) 11.
32
Ibid., 12-13.
33
Ibid., 12. For guidance on literature studying evangelicalism, see the helpful bibliographies provided in
Blumhofer, Edith L., and Joel A. Carpenter, Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism: a Guide to the Sources (New York:
Garland, 1990); Magnuson, Norris A., and William A. Travis, American Evangelicalism: An Annotated
Bibliography (West Cornwall, CT: Locust Hill, 1990; idem, American Evangelicalism II: First Bibliographical
Supplement, 1990-1996 (West Cornwall, CT: Locust Hill, 1997); and Mark A. Noll, American Evangelical
Christianity: An Introduction (Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers, 2001) 289-308.