We appreciate the article ‘Is creation care a gospel issue?’ by John Samuel and Richard Buggs in the January issue of en, and share their concern that the phraseology of the Cape Town Commitment might be mistakenly interpreted as ‘adding works to grace,’ and thereby ‘undermining’ the message of the gospel itself.
That is certainly no intention of ours, or indeed of the Lausanne Cape Town Commitment, which elsewhere in Part 1.8 defines the gospel of grace very strongly in terms ‘trusting in Christ alone … on the work of Christ and the promise of God.’
We are grateful that they recognise at the end of their article how important creation care is in the Bible and for the church (not all evangelical Christians are willing to go that far). We would also agree with their last sentence: ‘We need to be clear that creation care is a fruit of the gospel, but it is not a part of the gospel’. For the Lausanne statement does not say it is ‘part of the gospel’, but that it is ‘a gospel issue’ – which is different, and we’ll come to that. However, we would want to clarify immediately that, though creation care is not part of the gospel, creation itself most certainly and Biblically is. For the gospel is not about what we do for creation, but it does include what God Himself has done and will do for it.
