Tim Gombis on Evangelical Resistance to the Gospels

Note from CM: On Fridays we have been reflecting on Timothy Gombis’s excellent book on Ephesians. I’ve been looking at some of the other things he has been writing, and I’m impressed. Tim is a fellow Chicagoan and Cubs fan (poor guy), and he teaches New Testament at Grand Rapids Theological Seminary. Just the other day, he wrote an amazing post on his blog about how evangelicals resist hearing the real message of the Gospels. I asked Tim if I could share it with our IM community, and he was glad to pass it on. So, without further ado…

UPDATE: At first posting, I unintentionally neglected linking to Tim’s blog. The title is now linked to the article, and you can access Tim’s blog anytime via the Blogroll.

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Evangelical Resistance to the Gospels: How & Why
by Timothy Gombis, 4/26/2012

A few days ago, I wrote that Christian people, evangelicals included, have developed the terribly unfortunate habit of misreading the Gospels.

It goes beyond unintentionally cultivated habits.  I think that reading the Gospels for what they’re really saying threatens to upset and destabilize our church community dynamics that have become predictable and comfortable.  Contemporary Christians—evangelicals included—are too threatened by the Gospels to read them for what they’re actually saying.

Resistance to the Gospels takes many forms and happens for various reasons.  We’ve noted in the comments some of the forms resistance takes over the last few days (e.g., older premillennial dispensationalism, some forms of a Law/Gospel contrast).

Here are a few more.

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Saturday Ramblings 4.28.12

It has been a fairly quiet week here at the iMonastery. We have been going about our duties and offices as usual. Still, somehow we end the week with a mess of leftovers. Being the thrifty and lazy monks that we are, we have poured everything into a mixing bowl, added some breadcrumbs, put it into a loaf pan, and concocted a tasty dish of Saturday Ramblings.

One more call for those in the Dayton/Cincinnati area who might like to join me for breakfast next Saturday morning. Drop me an email if you are interested. imonkpub [at] gmail [dot] com should get to me just fine.

Do you get the idea that Joel Osteen would be better off not giving interviews? In his talk with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Osteen says Mitt Romney—and all other Mormons—are a little different, but still Christian. Tonight he will be speaking at a large event in Washington, D.C. Eagle, we expect a follow-up report! (And no, we will not be reimbursing you for your $15 ticket to see Joel smile.)

Meanwhile, Liberty University says the complaints about the selection of Romney as the school’s commencement speaker was all a tempest in a cup of tea. (Earl Grey? That’s my favorite.) Others say that their tea was taken away from them, leaving them no where to produce a tempest. I’ll bet Jerry Jr. now wishes he had just asked Michael Jr. to be the speaker and be done with it.

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A Gospel-Shaped Imagination

Fridays in Ephesus (3)
A Gospel-Shaped Imagination

During Eastertide on Fridays, we are reflecting on insights from Timothy Gombis’s recent book, The Drama of Ephesians: Participating in the Triumph of God.

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Timothy Gombis suggests that Ephesians 1:3-14, the panoramic doxology that opens Paul’s epistle, is designed to give Christian people “Gospel-shaped imaginations.” The apostle gives us this magnificent overview of our inheritance in Christ because, “A gospel-shaped imagination is necessary for the church to become a faithful and joyful cast of players and to effectively participate in God’s drama of redemption.”

Right after celebrating our great salvation, Paul prays this prayer:

“I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power” (Eph. 1:17-19).

This goes beyond a request for doctrinal knowledge or even understanding. Paul is asking that God renew our inner beings with the kind of enlightened imagination that will enable us to see the world as heaven’s stage so that we can find our place in it as actors in God’s drama.

One central feature of the script written for us involves what it means to be “in Christ.”

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Another Look: Those Who Dance Are Considered To Be Insane By Those Who Can’t Hear The Music

I wrote this nearly two years ago. I thought it would be well to revisit it in light of Chaplain MIke’s post yesterday morning on listening for God’s word. Listening for God’s voice is not a topic we can get too much of.

 

And the word of the Lord was rare in those days; there was no frequent vision. (1 Samuel 3:1, ESV)

For so many of my almost 37 years following the Lord, there has been no frequent vision, at least not for me. My “words from the Lord” have come through sermons and books I read. Even Scripture as I read it did not seem to be “alive” to me. My life was directed by what I saw others doing and what others “suggested” that I should be doing. You know, good Christian suggestions like, “You are going to go to a Christian college, aren’t you?” “Don’t date her—I don’t think she is Spirit-filled.” “All real Christians do ____/never do ____.” There always seemed to be someone within a stone’s throw willing to give me his personal advice on where I was failing to live up to the moniker of “good Christian.” With friends like this, who needed to hear God’s voice himself?

But three years ago this month God began to do something completely different in me. I remember the day, the hour, the location when in July of 2007 God began messing in my heart in a new way. He let me taste of him and I saw that it was good. It was like I was given beef tenderloin after eating “meat” hot dogs all my life. I never wanted to go back to hearing God third-hand. I only wanted to experience him through him. But it was a skill I was sadly lacking.

Continue reading “Another Look: Those Who Dance Are Considered To Be Insane By Those Who Can’t Hear The Music”

Open Forum — April 25, 2012

This afternoon, I want to give you, our iMonk community, a chance to simply talk among yourselves.

I’m not going to suggest a topic or prime the pump, it’s up to you.

I still want you to play nice, but I also want you to have the chance to introduce a subject for discussion, ask a question of the community, or weigh in on something that we’ve been talking about lately.

Since we don’t have forums, consider this your chance to speak out in an open forum on Internet Monk.

Have fun, don’t trash the place, clean up after yourselves, and turn the lights out before you leave, OK?

…Oh, and if a baseball thread emerges, I might throw a few comments in.

Listening for God’s Word

Road to Emmaus, Doré

Journey into New Life, part three
Listening for God’s Word (Luke 24)

Our Gospel text for this Easter season is Luke 24:13-35, the story of the risen Lord’s encounter with his disciples on the road to Emmaus. In this passage Luke tells us what it means to walk with the living Lord Jesus Christ. It is more than a story of something that happened back then. It represents what newness of life is all about, how it works, and what it is like to experience the new creation. We are the disciples on the road, and Jesus comes to walk with us.

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“Then he spoke to them…” (Luke 24:25).

The story of the road to Emmaus is the narrative equivalent of a psalm of lament. The individual lament psalm is the most common type in the Book of Psalms, and it appears elsewhere in narrative and poetic sections of the First Testament, particularly in the prophets. One psalm that illustrates the form of the individual lament is Psalm 13:

How long, O Lord? Will you forget me for ever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I bear pain in my soul,
and have sorrow in my heart all day long?
How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?
Consider and answer me, O Lord my God!
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep the sleep of death,
and my enemy will say, ‘I have prevailed’;
my foes will rejoice because I am shaken.
But I trusted in your steadfast love;
my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
I will sing to the Lord,
because he has dealt bountifully with me.

The basic elements are: (1) Complaint addressed to God, (2) Petition for God to act, (3) Confession of trust in God, (4) Vow of praise to God. What is significant to note for our purposes today is that there is always a significant turning point in the psalm of lament, when the petitioner moves from complaining and interceding to trusting and praising.

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“Genesis for Normal People” — Pete Enns’ New E-Book

Genesis for Normal People: A Guide to the Most Controversial, Misunderstood, and Abused Book of the Bible
by Peter Enns and Jared Byas, Patheos 2012

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For a limited time, you can download Peter Enns’ new e-book, Genesis for Normal People, for $1.99 and read it on your Kindle or other device. Later, it will be sold for $4.99.

[UPDATE: The Amazon sale was apparently only a one-day sale. The price is $4.99.]

This is a great chance to read first-rate Biblical scholarship in a more popular format. We have featured Pete Enns on IM and will continue to do so because I think he represents one of the freshest and most honest voices in Biblical Studies today.

Here’s a sample from the first chapter:

So when we read Genesis as an ancient story, written at a particular time to a particular people, it opens up possibilities and worlds we don’t encounter in our limited existence. When we stop using Genesis as an argument, a textbook, or a code of conduct, and begin to see it as an ancient story—with memorable characters, twists and turns, ups and downs, accomplishments and mistakes—we find it fresh, deep, and more true and relevant than we might expect.

The best stories shape our lives precisely because as we read them, we are presented with both reality and possibility. The characters and circumstances resonate with us because they are mirrors of our own story, reminding us that we are not alone in our experiences. But they also pull us toward another world that we are less familiar with, a world that is often strange and sometimes dangerous, a world that doesn’t show me what is, but what is possible.

Why would we expect anything less at the beginning of the story of God’s relationship with humanity? But in order to see Genesis through ancient eyes, we have to admit that our modern eyes might get in the way. So this chapter is eye surgery. It is meant to help us suspend our twenty-first-century gaze and allow us to enter a new way of looking at the world.

Eulogies and Dyslogies for Charles Colson

Wow Frank. Tell us how you really feel.

Over the weekend Frank Schaeffer published one of the angriest and most ill-timed screeds I’ve ever read. On his blog he wrote a dyslogy of Charles Colson (1931-2012), the evangelical Christian Right spokesman who died Saturday, and called it, “Colson: An Evangelical Homophobic Anti-Woman Leader Passes On”.

Apparently Schaeffer wrote one post, pulled it, and then rewrote it so he could “get it right and make more of it” the second time. I didn’t read the original, but the second goes beyond criticism of Colson himself and takes the form of a manifesto against a number of far right conservative activists and operatives. He takes on prominent Roman Catholics like Peter Kreeft and Richard John Neuhaus, decries projects like Evangelicals and Catholics Together and The Manhattan Declaration, and excoriates these folks for their “dirty tricks” in advancing “nothing more than oppressive ideas rooted in an anti-Constitutional theocratic far right wish list for changes that were supposed to roll back the parts of the democratic processes – say Roe v. Wade, women’s rights and gay rights — that far right Catholics and Protestants didn’t approve of.”

Not exactly subtle or nuanced. Or kind, especially given the timing.

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“Esau” Christianity? Douglas Wilson Needs a Bible Study

Douglas Wilson has declared war on wuss worship.

Last July, Mark Driscoll, another purveyor of  what I will call from now on “Esau Christianity,” tweeted this offensive message: “So, what story do you have about the most effeminate anatomically male worship leader you’ve ever personally witnessed?” prompting Rachel Held Evans to call him out as a bully. She had her readers initiate a letter campaign to Mars Hill so that people could voice their objections to his tasteless and insulting remarks.

Douglas Wilson must have read Driscoll’s tweet and decided to collect examples over the past ten months, because now he has come out with a post of his own, listing eleven reasons your church worship service might be effeminate.

This is one of the more misguided and mean-spirited pieces I’ve read in awhile. This whole idea of “masculine Christianity” that some among the neo-Reformed and others are promoting these days is so off-base I can’t believe anyone falls for it. Most of our concepts of “masculinity” and “femininity” are time-bound social and cultural constructs and have nothing to do with being “biblical” (there is that terribly misused word again) or representing a vital and rigorous faith.

Its purveyors may be as clueless as Esau was.

Continue reading ““Esau” Christianity? Douglas Wilson Needs a Bible Study”

Shane Rosenthal on Evangelical Theology

Today we are featuring two posts from Shane Rosenthal’s article, “Abandoning Evangelicalism?” in Modern Reformation magazine. Rosenthal is executive producer of “The White Horse Inn” national radio broadcast which can be heard online at www.whitehorseinn.org.

As we said this morning, Shane’s article talks about the American propensity for switching religions and, in particular, why some folks are leaving evangelicalism for other traditions. The issue of worship was our subject of discussion this morning, and this afternoon it is theology.

I thought the following provocative paragraph was just the ticket for good theological conversation here at Internet Monk on a Sunday.

There is a great deal that divides Protestants from Roman Catholics. In particular, we’re divided over the crucial question of justification. Is Christ’s merit alone sufficient for my righteousness, or is that a legal fiction? This is an incredibly important question that divides our two communions, especially in light of the fact that Rome’s anathemas against the Protestant position are still binding. But official Roman Catholicism and confessional Protestantism are closer to each other than they are to the theology and practice of moralistic therapeutic deism that so pervades contemporary American evangelicalism. (emphasis mine)

Have at it!