salvation and the gospel

I was afraid someone might ask me this! Amazing what you can get away with in the pulpit, but not on OST.

I was desperately searching for the commentary in which I found this nugget of information, but couldn’t find it in time for the post. So you may have to wait a little longer.

(This post was cut from the thread ‘Christianity - the only way?’, mainly because the conversation had been squeezed to the point of unreadability by the threaded comment structure.)

It used to be said that Christianity was about believing five impossible things before breakfast. Now I see that the honour has passed to the postmoderns. It is possible to believe conflicting claims without rejecting any of them.

Knocking from the Inside: A theology of redemption in light of God’s omnipresence

If God is everywhere, then s/he must be Everywhere, including within the vibrating cells unbelievers, nonbelievers, partial believers and even gay haters, gluttons and grass. Even me. Even before I was becoming a Christian, opening to an increasing awareness of God’s truth, grace — really just God’s love in all its many faces, like justice and joy and the cross and being alive.

God is willing that none should perish; Jesus asked his Father to forgive those who know not what they do, and our Divine Creator sent his only begotton Son — which could just as easily have been a her only begotton daughter — not to condemn the world, but to save it. Grace is free, and it’s already here. Grace is alive, waiting, present for everyone, anytime. All we have to do is wake up and open the Present of Christmas morning: God with us. If God is everywhere, then s/he must be Everywhere, including within the vibrating cells unbelievers, nonbelievers, partial believers and even gay haters, gluttons and grass. Even me. Even before I was becoming a Christian, opening to an increasing awareness of God’s truth, grace — really just God’s love in all its many faces, like justice and joy and the cross and being alive.

Federal Theology (Covenant Theology) is at the heart of the relationship between humanity and God. John Owen (1616-83) was the finest proponent of this theology and we have much to learn from his approach. The genius of Owen was to weld together Biblical scholarship with personal experience.

How do you consider yourself a evangelical - what are the parameters that you use to define that in your life? I have not for instance seen you quote or refer to your relationship with Jesus. Are you sure you are saved?

This (provocative?) question was posed by marhorse in the thread ‘What is the “emerging church”?’ This is by no means a complete or even a very coherent response, but the question is important and helpful - partly for personal reasons but also because it brings sharply into focus a critical area of contention between evangelicalism and emerging theology. For a personal statement of faith you could also have a look at ‘My (tentative) beliefs’.

I just finished reading through the rather extensive thread “What does it mean to be saved” and I thought that it might not be a bad idea to revisit this theme, this time in the context of a relational theology.

I found this story today in The New York Times and was curious what folks thought…

Hi

I would like to hear from any (especially in the UK) 

Who know God, as opposed to merely knowing ABOUT him, and have a father-child relationship with him. Or at least WANT to know him and WANT a father-child relationship with him.

AND believe Jesus when he said “I and the father are one”, “He who has seen me has seen the father”, “I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the father but by me”

BUT who have renounced the notion that God sent his son into the world to die on the cross as an atonement for their sins.

Galatians 6:7 says “God is not mocked by mere pretensions or professions or by having his precepts set aside. What a man sows, that and that only is what he shall reap”.

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? 

I love emergent theology. It’s mix of depth, openess, intrigue and intellectual nuance stimulate and excite me. Scanning this site, I’ve discovered there are really other people out there wrestling with the same kinds of questions as I am. One of the criticisms of both mainline (liberal) Christianity and Emergent is that in the embrace of higher criticism, intellectualism and postmodernism, the simple gospel is lost, muted or severely watered down. I think fundamentalism presents a simplistic, rather than a simple gospel, but with sadness, I have observed a certain correctness about their observations.