Dear Editor,
I can identify with Pete Greig`s struggle over unanswered prayer, having suffered the loss of my wife whilst my children were teenagers – very sad and perplexing.
With many churches showing a disregard for doctrine and often resisting any belief statement, the plea by Pete Greig to rally around the Nicene Creed could appear hopeful.
However the honesty required in belief statements must include clarity concerning the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ and assert the sole and supreme authority of the Scriptures.
Any unity with other branches of the church which deviates from these fundamentals cannot be a true unity, irrespective of numbers.
Can we have proper unity with the Catholic Church, believing in baptismal regeneration, apostolic succession, purgatory, penance, prayers for the dead and indulgences? Can we brush aside transubstantiation, the perpetual sacrifice of our Lord in the Mass and the veneration and prayers to Mary?
Dear Pete, whatever happened to Sola Scriptura? Oh, and the Reformation?
Yours sincerely,
David Putman, Purley
Dear Editor,
A quick note to say how glad I was to see the pastorally very helpful and equipping interview on unanswered prayer with Pete Greig in the September en. Like you, I see Pete’s views on the Nicene Creed as a sufficient basis for collaboration today as seriously mistaken; that creed contains nothing about Scriptural authority and reliability, nor about Christ dying to pay for our sins, and you can’t get doctrines more crucial practically today than those; and had the Nicene Creed been an adequate basis for unity the Reformation wouldn’t have been necessary. But!… it is very foolish if conservative evangelicals of the en stripe think they have nothing to learn – ‘I have no need whatsoever of you’ (1 Cor. 12:21) – from the wise and helpful contributions of evangelicals like Pete who may see some secondary things differently, but are nonetheless very clearly Bible and gospel people. After all, it’s obvious that within the en constituency there would be strong disagreement over what it means to have obeyed the Lord in baptism, which – as secondary doctrines go – is surely more significant than what people may criticise Pete for; and yet we happily learn from each other! So thank you for doing this and for how you pitched it. Please be encouraged and press on!
Pete Lowman, By email
Dear Sir,
I enjoyed reading much of the interview with Pete Greig in the September 2020 issue of en, but was disappointed that valuable column inches were given to checking up on his orthodoxy on subjects quite unrelated to his book. Surely discussing his book and hearing his biblical reflections on unanswered prayer would have been a more edifying and charitable use of space. The implied criticism of his involvement with Catholics seemed strange as well, given that a) it was not at all relevant to the book he was discussing, and b) pages 19-20 were given to the late, great Jim Packer, with no mention of his involvement in Evangelicals and Catholics Together in 1994. Why must the evangelical credentials of one be scrutinised and not the other?
Yours faithfully,
James Taylor, Cambridge
