Total depravity - unconditional election - limited atonement - irresistible grace - the perseverance of the saints! Private conversations on the OST website have drawn my attention once again to the great hammer blows of the reformation - quietly being unpicked, perhaps, by the seamstresses of opensourcetheology?
The moral flaws of the central characters in the biblical narrative, the corruption flowing from idolatrous nations and in the chosen nation itself form the backcloth to the person and mission of Jesus.
What is sin? Is it personal, or social and structural? Does it need to be redefined? What is the significance of sin in our own experience and the maps we are drawing of redemption history?
Re: Sin and redemption: an old, old story - or in need of updati
Thinking contextually in this instance is important as far as I can see. Rabbis had the exclusive authority to bind and loose rabbinical regulations on their disciples, so what we see is Jesus turning around and telling his disciples: "Truly I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."
Do we have authority to bind and loose things today? Are there limits? Slavery was once accepted by Christians, but that was redefined, to use your expression. Can we redefine anything out thre?
I don’t know, a few more questions thrown in here would not hurt right?
Re: Sin and redemption: an old, old story - or in need of updati
I once heard sin defined as “missing the mark.” I thought the definition boring and perfectionistic at the time, but lately I’ve embraced it from a new perspective. Arthur Peacocke (Paths from Science Toward God) argues that human beings are “beasts rising,” in the sense that we are animals that have evolved a spiritual capacity, via God’s working through the synergy of laws and chance to bring about our creation as conscious beings capable of a relationship with our Creator. As evolved beings, we come with survival instincts and predispositions and imperfections of various sorts. But now that we have become conscious, spiritual beings capable of relating to God, so integrated that our consciousness can even survive death, we can palpably sense the gap between us and God, between what we long to be and what we are. We long to be sons and daughters of God, yet we are enslaved by our lower instincts that, while perhaps helping us survive in some situation, do not help us in our quest to manifest the image of God that is a spark within us, somewhere deeper than our DNA. My observation is that much of sin is survival instincts that are either misdirected, driven by fear of death or enacted without agape love for others. This acting out of the lesser dimensions of our human nature misses that mark of God’s great love and God’s great calling of human beings upward, to become like him (her.)
Re: Sin and redemption: an old, old story - or in need of updati
Good questions Peter - way to stir the pot, as they say. What do we really believe about issues considered so central to the faith through the centuries. Has postmodernism really changed the significance of these emphases? Should it? If so, how, why?
Regarding the comment, "Do we have authority to bind and loose things today? Are there limits? Slavery was once accepted by Christians, but that was redefined, to use your expression. Can we redefine anything out thre?"
I understand Jesus’ use of bind and loose, in keeping with the usage of the rabbis, to be the language of enforcing or loosening various relational and religious obligations (as for example in the case of church discipline, cf. Matt.18). E.g., the church’s role in discerning the legitmacy and ground for divorce in a particular case (imagine a pastor declaring to a potential divorcee, "woman, thou art loosed!" - i love that title).
Are there limits in discerning these things? Of course, as with the rabbis, the scriptures themselves framed the issues, providing both ethical boundaries as well as moral direction. In the case of slavery, it was the logic of the NT’s, and especially Paul’s (e.g., Philemon), affirmation of the brotherhood and equality of the believing slave with his believing master that both grounded the ethics of master-slave relationships (which was the original context of the so-called ‘house-table’ instrutions in the NT) and initiated the hermeneutical trajectory, which, as the providential course of political history would have it (moving us far away, politically and socially, from the Greco-Roman world of the first century), would end with the evangelical demand of emancipation in the 19th century. E.g., read the passionate case made by Fredrick Douglass in http://www.yale.edu/glc/archive/1084.htm
This was not then a decision to ‘redefine’ anything, but to understand the implications of the gospel and its apostolic witness (as recorded in the NT), not to mention the Mosaic and prophetic witness of the OT, for our present social and political circumstance. The concern was NOT to redefine, but to be faithful to this record, this gospel.
I submit that the central concern for any church or church movement ought to be the concern for faithfulness. Relevance? A fool’s gold (anything that has to call itself ‘relevant’, a friend of mine once joked, is obviously irrelevant). Postmodern? It seems to me that it is no more commendable for us to seek to be postmodern than to seek to be modern, or pre-modern for you ‘radical orthodox’ folks. Let us instead seek, despite all our cultural, epistemological, hermeneutical, denominatinal, etc., baggage and preconceptions, to be faithful to the text of Scripture (and, maybe, we’ll find that such ‘baggage’ isn’t always the ‘cage’ it is so often assumed to be). Let us go again and again to the text to be corrected, encouraged, confounded, humbled, and honored by its good word. Let it deconstruct us, exegete us (expose us), and redefine us. Amen?
Re: Sin and redemption: an old, old story - or in need of updati
Hi there, kingjames1
In order to be truly faithful to the texts of Scripture, we must realize that the times/culture have changed since they were written. Did any females wear head coverings in your church today? Or did you have to wash your hands in a communal basin before taking part in the festivities at the last wedding reception you went to?
My guess is that you haven’t done either of these things. Are you still being faithful to the text of Scripture?
The times may have changed, but Scripture hasn’t. Can we exhibit faithfulness to Scripture while altering the means and method of how we communicate and live it out?
Based on the conclusions you’ve made, you are probably familiar with the work of Millard Erickson. In "Postmodernizing the Faith," he discusses whether or not ‘deconstructed horses [can even] be led to water.’ Erickson asserts that they can, without altering the message. In order to do so, Erickson suggests…
"It is necessary to alter the form of leading, that is, the method and the means… This approach would hold to the objectivity of truth and the relativity of knowledge, but would acknowledge that all knowers are to some extent historically and socially conditioned."
Your idea of faithfulness strikes me as a requirement to obey all of what Scripture teaches … including the wearing of head coverings and ceremonial washing of hands (referring to Jesus’ first miracle at Cana… the water he turned to wine was at a wedding feast, and would have been used for the washing of oneself, particularly the hands and feet before entering the celebration). Surely this is not expected of us anymore, is it?
What if being "faithful to Scripture" is sharing it in a way that upholds its inherent truth and authority, but presents it in a way our non-head cover-wearing & non-washing-at-weddings culture understands?
How can we even begin to be faithful to Scripture without taking into consideration culture, epistemology, hermeneutics, and other facets of Biblical Criticism? How can Scripture exegete us or deconstruct us if we have no proper context to read it from? Are we not just developing our own standard of faithfulness, then? That sounds pretty postmodern to me.
Re: Sin and redemption: an old, old story - or in need of updati
Relevant and faithful don’t seem like contradictions to me. Jesus sought to meet the relevant needs of those who sought his help. Paul, in his biblical witness sought to be relevant to his hearers by engaging the concepts and constructs of their culture as his means of communicating life-transforming truth. I agree with ben, faithfulness requires examination of context, criticism, culture & self, all in the Presence of God’s Spirit. As we bring all these dimensions to our interactions, we will be in the best, most honest and authentic position to let the text challenge, humble, uplift and transform us to the Image of the Invisible God who is manifest in Christ Jesus our Lord!