A NEW KIND OF PEOPLE
05/01/23 07:39
It matters little if one is baptised by sprinkling or immersion. It matters a lot if your gospel subverts the Gospel of Jesus and Paul and re-instates a gospel of the law and the knowledge of good and evil. One is union in diversity and the other is heresy. Heresy has the effect of limiting the life-giving efficacy of Christ or smothering it altogether. Bent gospels make bent people and spiritualised diseased societies. Christ our life is the eyes that teach us how to see and how to be.
OLD/NEW WINESKIN
‘No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch will pull away from the garment, making the tear worse’ MATT 9.16 NIV.
The Adamic knowledge of good and evil mindset is the foundational lie that opposes and subverts union with God.
PATCHED GARMENT
Writing of patched garment religion, Douglas Campbell observes that, “If a system of ‘truth’ has been constructed of the kind that “Later [genuine] truth claims cannot and must not undermine or disrupt its opening claims [because] the entire structure must collapse into invalidity. So those later claims will be resisted and/or subordinated, including Christology!” (1) This applies to forms of Christian belief that we might call ‘Christian versions of the knowledge of good and evil and which are embedded in a community as cultural legalism. These may be overtly, innately or subtly systems of law and self-justification.
DENIAL
Campbell puts the focus on the ‘denial mindset’ that weaves and ducks away from radical grace and which takes refuge in fictions for the sake of maintaining a legalistic edifice of belief by which a Christology is judged. He continues, “Foundationalism [is the process] of constructing our own foundation on which to evaluate the truth about God [and ourselves]… We must reject as illegitimate any demand that we evaluate the truth of God [according to such a construct because] Such a challenge asks us to erect another ultimate criterion for truth over the top of God, who is the truth.”
BELIEF SYSTEM IDOL
“The Bible warns us, notably in the first of the Ten Commandments, to allow God to define and to reveal God. It prohibits the human construction of God’s image, and hence any human control over the definition and disclosure of God, thereby articulating the connection between foundationalism and idolatry.”
ANOTHER GOSPEL
Thus an alternative theology that places Believers under Adam and Moses, or assumes that that Jesus is subordinate to the law and lives to support the law, is another gospel’ that contradicts the Gospel of Jesus and the apostles, stifling spirit and life in the Believer or causing some to leave the Faith altogether.” Any theology that dilutes grace by making our salvation depend on our efforts to relate to Christ, undoes salvation and the joy of oneness with God that Christ has already earned for us. (1)
PAUCITY OF CONTRACT
(1) “A contractual understanding can lead to a lack of assurance in salvation and weariness in trying to obtain it. In contrast, the affirmation of God’s unconditional grace grants assurance and a freedom to respond because God has already chosen the whole of humanity for salvation and provided a response for us in Christ.”
(1) Radcliff, Alexandra S.. The Claim of Humanity in Christ: Salvation and Sanctification in the Theology of T. F. and J. B. Torrance (Princeton Theological Monograph Series Book 222) (p. 27). Pickwick Publications, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.
OLD/NEW WINESKIN
‘No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch will pull away from the garment, making the tear worse’ MATT 9.16 NIV.
The Adamic knowledge of good and evil mindset is the foundational lie that opposes and subverts union with God.
PATCHED GARMENT
Writing of patched garment religion, Douglas Campbell observes that, “If a system of ‘truth’ has been constructed of the kind that “Later [genuine] truth claims cannot and must not undermine or disrupt its opening claims [because] the entire structure must collapse into invalidity. So those later claims will be resisted and/or subordinated, including Christology!” (1) This applies to forms of Christian belief that we might call ‘Christian versions of the knowledge of good and evil and which are embedded in a community as cultural legalism. These may be overtly, innately or subtly systems of law and self-justification.
DENIAL
Campbell puts the focus on the ‘denial mindset’ that weaves and ducks away from radical grace and which takes refuge in fictions for the sake of maintaining a legalistic edifice of belief by which a Christology is judged. He continues, “Foundationalism [is the process] of constructing our own foundation on which to evaluate the truth about God [and ourselves]… We must reject as illegitimate any demand that we evaluate the truth of God [according to such a construct because] Such a challenge asks us to erect another ultimate criterion for truth over the top of God, who is the truth.”
BELIEF SYSTEM IDOL
“The Bible warns us, notably in the first of the Ten Commandments, to allow God to define and to reveal God. It prohibits the human construction of God’s image, and hence any human control over the definition and disclosure of God, thereby articulating the connection between foundationalism and idolatry.”
ANOTHER GOSPEL
Thus an alternative theology that places Believers under Adam and Moses, or assumes that that Jesus is subordinate to the law and lives to support the law, is another gospel’ that contradicts the Gospel of Jesus and the apostles, stifling spirit and life in the Believer or causing some to leave the Faith altogether.” Any theology that dilutes grace by making our salvation depend on our efforts to relate to Christ, undoes salvation and the joy of oneness with God that Christ has already earned for us. (1)
PAUCITY OF CONTRACT
(1) “A contractual understanding can lead to a lack of assurance in salvation and weariness in trying to obtain it. In contrast, the affirmation of God’s unconditional grace grants assurance and a freedom to respond because God has already chosen the whole of humanity for salvation and provided a response for us in Christ.”
(1) Radcliff, Alexandra S.. The Claim of Humanity in Christ: Salvation and Sanctification in the Theology of T. F. and J. B. Torrance (Princeton Theological Monograph Series Book 222) (p. 27). Pickwick Publications, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.
