Adrian's simple Gospel: the rights and wrongs
Adrian has been doing his simple gospel on www. adrian.warnock.info he asked me to point out where I disagree with 'his' simple gospel. Thought others might like to see it too.
The Message
1. God made everything that exists out of nothing and made mankind as the pinnacle of his creation designed for a relationship with him. This desire for a relationship is hardwired into us, and one of the evidences for this is our stubborn insistence in clinging onto notions like morality, love, individual choice, nobility and the reality of the conscious self in the face of people telling us we are nothing but a machine.
Yes
2. Everyone has Sinned. Following in the footsteps of our first parents from whom we have inherited a self-destructive urge- we all are biased towards sin. Without the constraints of culture we would all be capable of committing the worst of sins.
yes
3. Despite our hatred for God, God still loves us. God does hate sin and has determined that sin must be punished, or else he could not be considered just.
No, such an abstract idea. Why does God punish sin. Because he wants to get rid of it. Not because pain x balances sin x. God’s justice is about the restoration of relationships not abstract punishment.
4. God loves us so much that he gave his only son to die in our place. Jesus took the punishment instead of us on the cross so that we could receive a pardon for our sins.
God loves us so much he sent his son, amen and amen.
Because I believe Gods justice is restorative I cannot believe the instead of, we were punished in Maybe.
The Response
I don’t really like the division between the message and Response. Being a only Christ person I see the response in Christ. Such that the response is Christ and that is what we partake of. The response in Christ is Atonement.
5. God convicts us of our sins and leads us to confess our helplessness in the face of sin and our need for him.
This can only happen because we are partaking of Christ’s confession of the same.
6. We then turn from sin and towards God in trust in him and in the work of Jesus on the cross which took our punishment. A glorious transaction proceeds where Christ receives our sin and we his righteousness. We turn from going our own way and decide instead to follow him. Our whole being now reaches out in trust towards Christ as much as it used to hide from him in fear and hatred.
Don’t like this transaction language seems all a bit of a legal fiction. The atonement must change the person. I.e. were we saved on the cross or at our ‘moment of decision’?
Too Mechanical and legal, not personal. Above our heads does not change us. You have used pelagian language ‘we turn’. What is the relationship between our towardness to Christ and Christ’s atoning work. Surely our turning must be in the atonement not just the effect of it.
7. As an outward testimony to the inward reality of what has happened to us in secret we outwardly declare to others our determination to follow Christ by being baptized. Baptism is our seal on the agreement that has occurred between us and God.
Sorry going to have to be Presbyterian here and say it is God’s seal. Baptism happens to us we do not choose to be baptised, ultimately. That is why I believe in Peado Baptism.
8. As an outward testimony to the reality of what has happened, God pours out his Holy Spirit on believers that seek him for such a blessing. Receiving the Holy Spirit is a conscious, real experience that is usually accompanied by gifts of the Spirit such as tongues and/or prophecy. At its core, however is an experience of the love of God poured out into our hearts. This is God's seal on the agreement that has occurred between us and God and a deposit that guarantees our inheritance.
Yes
9. The church, on seeing that this has all occurred welcomes the new believer into membership of the family of God. They commit to care for the new believer and in turn the believer covenants to serve God and his local church. The church is Gods body on earth and exists to demonstrate his attributes to the world together. There is no plan b, the church is Gods answer for a fallen world.
Sort of.
10. On earth believers live in a constant state of tension, living in the good of the age to come, but at the same time groaning for that final day when their salvation will be complete. Christians work to speed the return of Christ by building his kingdom, and should anticipate both great blessing and great hardship as the end draws near. We live ultimately not for this earth but for the world to come.
The world to come is this earth transformed, therefore false dichotomy.
The Message
1. God made everything that exists out of nothing and made mankind as the pinnacle of his creation designed for a relationship with him. This desire for a relationship is hardwired into us, and one of the evidences for this is our stubborn insistence in clinging onto notions like morality, love, individual choice, nobility and the reality of the conscious self in the face of people telling us we are nothing but a machine.
Yes
2. Everyone has Sinned. Following in the footsteps of our first parents from whom we have inherited a self-destructive urge- we all are biased towards sin. Without the constraints of culture we would all be capable of committing the worst of sins.
yes
3. Despite our hatred for God, God still loves us. God does hate sin and has determined that sin must be punished, or else he could not be considered just.
No, such an abstract idea. Why does God punish sin. Because he wants to get rid of it. Not because pain x balances sin x. God’s justice is about the restoration of relationships not abstract punishment.
4. God loves us so much that he gave his only son to die in our place. Jesus took the punishment instead of us on the cross so that we could receive a pardon for our sins.
God loves us so much he sent his son, amen and amen.
Because I believe Gods justice is restorative I cannot believe the instead of, we were punished in Maybe.
The Response
I don’t really like the division between the message and Response. Being a only Christ person I see the response in Christ. Such that the response is Christ and that is what we partake of. The response in Christ is Atonement.
5. God convicts us of our sins and leads us to confess our helplessness in the face of sin and our need for him.
This can only happen because we are partaking of Christ’s confession of the same.
6. We then turn from sin and towards God in trust in him and in the work of Jesus on the cross which took our punishment. A glorious transaction proceeds where Christ receives our sin and we his righteousness. We turn from going our own way and decide instead to follow him. Our whole being now reaches out in trust towards Christ as much as it used to hide from him in fear and hatred.
Don’t like this transaction language seems all a bit of a legal fiction. The atonement must change the person. I.e. were we saved on the cross or at our ‘moment of decision’?
Too Mechanical and legal, not personal. Above our heads does not change us. You have used pelagian language ‘we turn’. What is the relationship between our towardness to Christ and Christ’s atoning work. Surely our turning must be in the atonement not just the effect of it.
7. As an outward testimony to the inward reality of what has happened to us in secret we outwardly declare to others our determination to follow Christ by being baptized. Baptism is our seal on the agreement that has occurred between us and God.
Sorry going to have to be Presbyterian here and say it is God’s seal. Baptism happens to us we do not choose to be baptised, ultimately. That is why I believe in Peado Baptism.
8. As an outward testimony to the reality of what has happened, God pours out his Holy Spirit on believers that seek him for such a blessing. Receiving the Holy Spirit is a conscious, real experience that is usually accompanied by gifts of the Spirit such as tongues and/or prophecy. At its core, however is an experience of the love of God poured out into our hearts. This is God's seal on the agreement that has occurred between us and God and a deposit that guarantees our inheritance.
Yes
9. The church, on seeing that this has all occurred welcomes the new believer into membership of the family of God. They commit to care for the new believer and in turn the believer covenants to serve God and his local church. The church is Gods body on earth and exists to demonstrate his attributes to the world together. There is no plan b, the church is Gods answer for a fallen world.
Sort of.
10. On earth believers live in a constant state of tension, living in the good of the age to come, but at the same time groaning for that final day when their salvation will be complete. Christians work to speed the return of Christ by building his kingdom, and should anticipate both great blessing and great hardship as the end draws near. We live ultimately not for this earth but for the world to come.
The world to come is this earth transformed, therefore false dichotomy.
posted by xopher_mc | 11:29 pm
1 Comments:
That's interesting, thanks :) Might have to write my own, it seems it's not so simple to write a simple gospel.
a couple of thoughts:
on 4) You don't think Christ died in our place? It doesn't require the use of the word 'punishment' to hold to the substitutionary death of Christ.
on Response) I don't really see any problem with Adrian's response section, though I do agree that our response is in christ - you can squeeze us out of the picture so much so that our response doesn't matter at all. There may be theological reasons for that but they don't mesh with the real world experience of our response to God, and if those theological reasons don't mean anything in the real world then perhaps they shouldn't be part of a simple gospel.
(i.e. It's much simpler to say 'turn to God' than it is to say 'turn to God, but actually God's already decided you'll turn to him and he's doing all the work anyway, but just go through the motions - ok?')
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