I see you

Our people and them

I am in the final stages of editing Volume 4, ‘Lifeline’, which will be a digging somewhat deeper into the Pauline Gospel. Here is a little extract from the Preface. I write about Paul’s confrontation with Peter in the Galatian context. [And of course I do not need to remind anyone that Volumes 1 and 2 can be bought now, volume 3 in the next few weeks. No need to remind you hence placing this in brackets!!]

Beginning of short extract:


Paul’s response was not very diplomatic as he did not allow for any middle ground. Those teachers were proclaiming ‘a different gospel’ and he invited a curse from heaven to come on them:

I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel – which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let them be under God’s curse! (Gal. 1:6-9).

Paul’s understanding of the Gospel was such that he gave no value to that of fulfilling the Jewish rite of circumcision. The only value he held to was that of ‘new creation’:

Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is the new creation (Gal. 6:15).

This is the same language (kaine ktisis: new creation) as in 2 Corinthians 5:17 where in that context he writes that for those who are in Christ how they see others has been totally altered. No one can be viewed according to any former value system, for ‘if anyone is in Christ [there is] new creation’. Through Christ’s death on the cross there is a new social order. Perhaps the best summary of the effect of the Gospel, the birth of this new social order is the classic summary text in Galatians 3:28, 29:

There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.


End of extract…

Paul pushes a lot of buttons. Sight, for him, seems to be a measure as to whether we are ‘in Christ’ or not. I have no idea if he would buy into the forensic argument related to justification without corresponding action (or here sight). Sight needs to mark us out. When we talk about ‘our people’ and ‘them’ and the context is political (as I have seen recently on a Christian video) I cannot square such language with Paul’s indication of what it means to be in Christ. (Even Joshua had to find out that God was not into the ‘us’ or ‘our enemy’ language. No help coming from God to us…. and the ever present danger of the Judas’ gift of being wedded to our view of the kingdom…)

It is a sad day when we are able to label people by ideology. Paul was pretty up tight when he saw the effect of division that came about through the interpretation of Scripture regarding faith. He (in his own wonderful ‘objectionable’ way) called it ‘another’ Gospel. What would he say when we make divides over other issues?

Just a part

I have been involved in a number of settings where I have been invited to bring a prophetic word to a situation in these past months, and given that it is into the current re- situation (re-jig; re-invent; re-new; or re-surrection… i.e. death and loss – only God provides the re- part after this) it can be very challenging indeed. God speaks to encourage and provoke us to embrace the path of life… for sure. But the current climate makes it more difficult to truly see. As I have mentioned before (COVID simply as a sign of things to come) might indicate that we have entered a storm. If so then simply bunker down it will be over soon. If ‘winter’ is a better analogy, then make sure we have enough supplies in place, maybe a candle or two should there be a power cut, etc. But if this, along with what is to come, is an ice age, there will be a before and an after, but something permanent will change and it might not be too clear what the change looks like for a while to come. [I suspect it is somewhere between a winter and an ice age.]

We prophesy in part.

I have understood (and still do) that short phrase to mean we don’t have the whole picture, and it certainly means that. It might even mean (and does practically!!) ‘be a little humble, part of what you prophesy will be from heaven and some from your little preconceived ideas’. But…

Today I am also seeing that it means that if we are truly wrestling with the big question, ‘what does this mean?’ there will be more in our spirits than we can prophesy. More there that we cannot yet articulate. That I find provocative and encouraging. Provocative… don’t stop now… don’t add the full stop…

We can be so quick to move from question #1 to question #2 (‘what are we to do?’) with the assumption we have understood ‘what does this mean?’. (The two questions come from the Day of Pentecost and also from the description of the ‘men of Issachar.) We might have to make a preliminary response related to action (what we need to do), but if there is more sight on the meaning that we are wrestling with the what we are to do can only be a temporary response.

Certainly provocative, and also encouraging. There is more. It is probably OK to make a temporary response. But it will not prove fruitful to conclude it is enough.

Ortho-what?

Orthopraxy: more important?

A number of years ago I read an insightful article by Robert Johnston, Orthodoxy and Heresy a Problem for Modern Evangelicalism. In it he maintained that the ground had shifted as to what was considered orthodoxy, away from a set of boundaries that provided one was inside we were ‘ok’. Those boundaries were normally tightly drawn: inerrancy of Scripture (a faith statement that is based on a presupposition, not even on an internal biblical claim), penal substitution (not easy to defend!) and the like. When along came the publication of The Openness of God (1994) it was pushed to the edge of the boundaries and beyond. (My comments in parenthesis above of course indicate that I, for many reasons, am also on the edges… OK beyond those edges of the boundaries.)

The Johnston article, the work of Fowler that undergirded stages of faith…. and the movement of the Spirit that became known as the Toronto Blessing all originate from the same period of time – late 80s, early 90s.

Defining heresy was the issue that Johnston articulated so well. I have been fascinated by Paul in Galatians being so objectionably strong-minded, writing in no uncertain terms about ‘another Gospel’, and despite biblical instructions to bless not curse, he comes right to the edge of cursing those who come with another Gospel. Now if we think of that being doctrinal – orthodoxy – where do we draw the line? Can I suggest that anyone who believes in predestination is therefore ‘un-orthodox’? (And they do the same of me hence we are advocates of another Gospel.) As much as I cannot reconcile predestination with biblical texts (oh yes there are some odd ones that could be read that way) I am slowly coming to see that what we believe about that is not so central after all. Perhaps, and here Johnston’s article I think gives some foundations for a way forward. He simply outlines two important areas: by what authority do you believe what you believe? (We might need to add ‘behave’ to the word believe… more later.) And how is someone reconciled to God? The two answers are Scripture and the cross of Jesus. I affirm both of those. As do those who ardently believe in inerrancy and penal substitution. (And those who are Universalists and those who believe in limited atonement, that Jesus only died for the elect, also both affirm the right answers.) Johnston presented the problem well. How then can we define orthodoxy?

Jump forward with me a little. Final ‘exam paper’. I have revised my answers to justify ‘Open Theology’; alongside me someone has revised ‘Absolute foreknowledge as a necessary attribute of God’. We turn the papers over. We are both bitterly disappointed as neither question is on the exam paper. Instead – ‘what did you do (to the least of these)?’

So my ‘ortho-what’ title. There are some parameters to our faith, but we all have to do a little squeeze here and there with some arbitrary texts, and can pull on ‘fresh research shows…’ to help us make a successful squeeze. But whatever ‘God-breathed’ means it did not help me to be comfortable with everything that has been breathed into, and more annoyingly has not helped me persuade others to acknowledge my interpretation as being the obvious one.

I am coming to think that the ‘what’ part of the ‘ortho’ is not orthodoxy but orthopraxy… what did you do? Maybe that is the thrust of ‘by their fruit you will know them’. Perhaps the ‘different Gospel’ is not the divide over limited atonement / universal atonement (or whatever else we deem as important) but over how we respond and act, for after all that surely communicates more than anything else the Gospel we believe in, whether it is a Gospel once and for all delivered from heaven, or one we have developed.

I think this is worth exploring as there seems to be so much hatred and insults being generated, even by those who claim to be orthodox in their Christian faith. It is not love without judgement and discernment, for sure… but it is love that is absent of insults; absent of calling for physical response against others.

Perspectives