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BlogHere are the thoughts and news of the people in our community. Leave a comment as you wish. If you want to join the blogging ask Mark.
Monday, March 22, 2004Christology for Disciples I was thinking today how useful it would be to try to layout some of the different ways of looking at the nature of salvation. The predominant evangelical view has been very monochrome in its emphasis: law court imagery in which humanity has transgressed the law, Satan is the accuser, God made a guilty judgment, then laid the judgment on Jesus, mankind goes forward free to have a relationship with God again and from the judgement of hell. This has been widely accepted as the gospel. However this hasn't been the case through church history, and the good news there is some movement [not least in seeing salvation as a consequence of the gospel - the announcment of Jesus as Lord of the World - rather than the gospel itself]. As I thought about putting some thoughts on paper, I remembered a book that sought to do that a little: God so loved the world: a Christology for Disciples by Jonathan Wilson. The book seeks to take a narrative approach to Christology by laying out the story of the messiah and covering different ways the story has been framed. He then covers three ways in which the Gospel event in Jesus could be viewed: Christ as Victor, Christ as Sacrifice, Christ as Example. He does this by covering the NT evidence, the ways this has been approached in Church history, and finally laying out what that means for God, Humanity, Sin and Salvation by placing them in the context of the story he started with. I tell you this because I quite like the methodology of trying to draw out some threads of theology from the context of the biblical story and interpretations through church history. Unfortunately the book does not quite succeed, for a number of reasons, his broad conclusions, however are interesting starting points: 1) Christ as Victor - God as warrior, conqueror and liberator - Humanity as victims, captives and hostages - Sin as enemy and prison - Salvation as triumph, liberation and homecoming 2) Christ as Sacrifice - God as judge and judged [note: relational judgment over legal] - Humanity as perpetrators, rebels, collaborators and criminals - Sin as rebellion - Salvation as forgiveness, pardon, innocence, righteousness and peace 3) Christ as Example - God as teacher, enabler and lover - Humanity as ignorant, feeble and alienated - Sin as ignorance, weakness and separation - Salvation as knowledge, power and love What do you think? Are all valid? Do you favour one over the rest? Do we need all of them [and more?] to get a full picture? Posted by: Mark | 3:15 pm |
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