Sometimes, I come across a blog post that I just wish to have written...
Sojourner posted just such a post on The Challenge of Jesus. It was clearly written without overbearing jargons and speak with such insight on the heart of what it means to be church in Malaysia.
It rightly criticised the 'Titanic' view of Christianity.
In this view, the world like Titanic has hit the iceberg. Before its imminent demise, Christians are called to grab a lifeboat and save as many souls as possible. Dun save the ship, save souls...
My only bone is, this is not the 'traditional evangelical paradigm'...
IMHO it is the 'contemporary evangelical paradigm' which combines Tim Lahaye eschatology, Charles Finney approach of evangelism, Bill Hybels type of church, Benny Hinn type of preaching... :)
Frankly, we have forgotten what "the traditional evangelical paradigm" looks like in Malaysia, maybe because we have yet to see a model of it.
I think it is the combination of "every inch is Christ's" type of Abraham Kuyper engagement, John Wesley type of evangelism (and social activism), Martyn Lloyd Jones' type of preaching, John Stott's type of vision for mission and Francis Schaeffer type of apologetics...
This evangelical paradigm is very, very different from more popular caricature easily dismantled by liberals... and rightly criticized by McLaren etc
But I'd like to think the 'traditional evangelical paradigm' will have a bright future here, because it is faithful to both the gospel and the context :)
Sojourner posted just such a post on The Challenge of Jesus. It was clearly written without overbearing jargons and speak with such insight on the heart of what it means to be church in Malaysia.
It rightly criticised the 'Titanic' view of Christianity.
In this view, the world like Titanic has hit the iceberg. Before its imminent demise, Christians are called to grab a lifeboat and save as many souls as possible. Dun save the ship, save souls...
My only bone is, this is not the 'traditional evangelical paradigm'...
IMHO it is the 'contemporary evangelical paradigm' which combines Tim Lahaye eschatology, Charles Finney approach of evangelism, Bill Hybels type of church, Benny Hinn type of preaching... :)
Frankly, we have forgotten what "the traditional evangelical paradigm" looks like in Malaysia, maybe because we have yet to see a model of it.
I think it is the combination of "every inch is Christ's" type of Abraham Kuyper engagement, John Wesley type of evangelism (and social activism), Martyn Lloyd Jones' type of preaching, John Stott's type of vision for mission and Francis Schaeffer type of apologetics...
This evangelical paradigm is very, very different from more popular caricature easily dismantled by liberals... and rightly criticized by McLaren etc
But I'd like to think the 'traditional evangelical paradigm' will have a bright future here, because it is faithful to both the gospel and the context :)
Comments
I agree with you, science and religion got separated. Then Philosophy and theology. So a church that retreated from Science and culture, thus lost its influence and became further isolated. So, to make sense of her isolated lonely existence, she had to invent her weird own culture (thus the strangeness of the ultra-charismatics and self inflicting polemics of the fundamentalist) that made her feel elite and she had to make a doctrine of escapism(say rapture) to get away from this trauma. So we left the ‘stupid’ trees to the ‘tree huggers” (fundy nickname for environmentalist) and we ended up doing the opposite of everything they did (that’s how we knew what was the right thing to do, just do the opposite) and so if they said “sign the Kyoto protocol” we said “it’s a compromise” – is it no wonder that the planet is now in an environmental chaos that some have attributed to the impending green house effect?
I think Christianity needs to reclaim Science and environmentalism back to what it was meant to be, tools and means to achieve our mission – to keep the vineyard till the Master shows up.
"If this is the good news, then Jesus either never or very seldom preached it."
Actually this is a misunderstanding on the author’s part – Jesus had a very different role than the apostles. The apostles spent their time with him in their locality, training and understanding their teacher and messiah, but later, after his death, resurrection and ascension, he would instruct them to go out and preach to all. If we take Jesus’ ministry as being prescriptive of what a church should do in all entirety (and don’t supplement it with the acts of the apostles) then we would have a Jewish church, since Jesus really didn’t strain himself to reach the gentiles (he would have made a debut in Rome if that was his mission) – but he limits his outreach to persistent gentiles that made it to him.
But in Paul, the one Jesus choose to continue his work to a greater and more far reaching scale, would do so. There are many other areas where we must differentiate the person, role and works of Jesus from the Apostles. Also, from there, we must also differentiate the differences between the Apostolic authority and works and us – if not, there really is no real workable model for the completion of the cannon.
Does tat mean that Paul preached a different gospel than Jesus? if not, why is the gospel of justification by faith so difficult to find in the Synoptic Gospels?
having said that, I dun think we need to appeal to Paul and apostles... the portrait of Jesus in Gospel of John seems to talk much of the role of faith i.e.
"For God so loved the world..."
jacksons: well... for me, I'm looking at people like N. T. Wright and learning a lot from their way of interpreting the apostles, especially Paul - in light of Jesus' message, rather than looking at it as different perspectives. I agree with you that Paul was sent specifically to the Gentiles, thus his message did skew more towards that context. So everytime we hear paul talking about justification by faith, maybe he was talking more about 'you don't need to be circumcised and become a Jew to be a Christian' context. But for me, Paul and Jesus did preach the same message, but to different people.
Thanks to theologians like N. T. Wright, maybe we can learn to see that maybe this 'modern evangelical paradigm' message was not what Paul and the apostles really taught either (or maybe too reductionist) - especially the part about being saved from Hell to go to Heaven by accepting Jesus as our personal Savior. :P
Of course... I'm still learning.. hehe.. not to say that I agree with eveything Wright says... I'm still very new into exploration into his fresh, historical perspectives! As McLaren likes to say - I may be wrong too!
But I'm not convinced that the premodern reading of the gospel as 'justification by faith' is mistaken. Dun throw in the towel yet, go join Kairos' lectures on Pauline Theology coming soon
New Perspective on Paul
http://www.modernreformation.org/krnpp.htm
those Pauline lectures really sound interesting! Looks like I missed one already... I won't be around on the 15th also :(
I'll also be doing some of my own reading on Acts and the Pauline epistles in the coming weeks... and will look at the supporters of the New Perspectives on Paul and its critics!
Thanks jacksons and hedonese for giving me this opportunity to work through these ideas and views with you guys here! haha...I'm sure you all are aware of many things that I am not! I'm still relatively new in this journey through theology! Been really interesting so far! :D
I think the Malaysian church will benefit from a fresh reading of Jesus, Paul and others in their historical context (i.e. not the 'postmodern' God-spoke-to-me-this-morning kinda exegesis) hehehe...
After wrestling a bit with New Perspective, I think the rethinking process has generated fruitful dimensions on the social implications of justification by faith... removing boundary makers. But the key forensic, courtroom dimensions of sola fide (championed by the 'premodern' Luther hehehe) is still central to what Paul's theology, imho...
Here's stg I wrote on it:
http://newpaul.blogspot.com/
PS: Dun miss the rest of the classes! heeheheh