More recovering of my evangelicalism
6 May 2008
I’ve written a couple of explicit posts about summarising how the last few years have had me re-evaluate my evangelicalism, and it’s renewal and recovery.
I won’t repeat the list of affirmations from that post here, and they remain much the same as I review them today.
I would add to them, that I am convinced more than ever of the lapsarian nature of the world (doctrine of the fall and original sin), and humanity, and it’s need for redemption in Jesus Christ.
Of course once you look into it, there are so many lapsarian views. I do wonder in the much needed discussion about penal substitution, and the review of the highly negative view evangelicalism has had of human nature as a result, if we are in danger of lapsing (pun intended), into a new pelagianism.
The pendulum swings, and we have too high a view of human nature, it’s potential, and Jesus is about helping me become what I was already wanting to be, and had it within me to become.
How do we speak of the need for Jesus, as an alternative basis of reality, of the Gospel as making an exchange, completely, for my life.
I don’t just find the cross a metaphor and story to locate my story in, to give it extra meaning, and christian content. Instead I embrace the cruciform life, my identity and my story become part of the story of Jesus himself.
How do we express that without falling (no pun intended this time) into the negative views of humanity that are so unhelpful from previous expressions.
Or maybe in writing that, I just took a stab at an articulation.
Tagged: Atonement, Evangelicalism, Fall, Gospel, Sin
4 comments
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Comment by brett jordan
4.13 pm on 6 May 2008
“How do we express that without falling into… negative views of humanity… that are unhelpful…”
Well, for starters I’d want to maintain a vigorous balance of the twin-truths that every human has a vast capacity for evil, and that (by God’s saving work through Jesus Christ) humans have a similarly vast capacity for good… it seems to me that most of the misinformation about the biblical view of human nature tends to major on one of those truths at the expense of the other.
Comment by Paul
6.55 pm on 7 May 2008
i dunno, maybe something like we can only love as much as we realise we are loved, forgive as much as we realise we are forgiven, give as much as realise we have gained, as freely as we have ourselves have received/
Comment by steven hamilton
12.12 pm on 8 May 2008
…i finished reading ‘the cross in our context’ by douglas john hall a few months ago, and his articulation of the ‘theologia crucis’ versus the ‘theologia gloria’, his understanding of embodying Christ to our context of the ba’al of materialism along with its seduction of ‘personal fulfillment’…and i think he journeys close to what you have articulated here…it can be such a subtle, slippery slope, but in the book he gives the example of karl barth, and barth’s discernment of what his age needed to understand vis-a-vis the multi-varied truth of God at a certain point. it is in discerning what is needful (and not really in the way of negativity, as you said above, even though barth is well-known for his great ‘nein’) that is redeeming at this time in a certain context…
Comment by Jason
12.22 pm on 8 May 2008
that is an awesome book!
thanks for your comment, Jason
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