Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Faith Comes by Hearing

Here is my most recent contribution at Credo Magazine and Credo Blog--"Faith Comes by Hearing: The Inclusivists' Abuse of Romans 10:9-17."

1 comment:

  1. I admit I skimmed it. Nicely presented online though my eyes are dimming with age. I am surprised at your trust in your logic. I am inclusive in my thought from reading the Psalms (in Hebrew) and I was raised in the faith of Christianity and I find exclusivism and parochialism anathema. The Psalms are inclusive in spite of their apparent focus on Israel and election. They are an invitation to dialogue with the only true God. Jesus himself learned from the Psalms.

    Then I went back to read your article again, and the flash player controls were completely disfunctional - the screen was zoomed and I could not navigate. It's been like that with technology today - maybe my mouse is stuck.

    So I am left with the inclusivist's abuse of Romans 10. I don't abuse anything. I love because he loved me. The same phrase occurs in Psalm 116. I love with no object.
    "I love
    for יְהוָה heard my voice
    my supplication"

    The I of the psalms is the elect. Do I then determine by logic that God cannot save. Because that's where your logic is leading. Right back to the opening of Psalm 3 (really the first psalm).

    So many saying of me
    'There is no salvation for him in God'

    Anyway - I am left with a terrible impression about evangelicals that I cannot correct. And I am called as an Evangelist and Teacher. But I refuse to be distracted by confessional approaches to salvation. I love Paul's Epistle to the Romans but his 55 questions cannot be reduced to syllogisms that support exclusivism. To exclude is not the Gospel.

    What is Gospel (the same letters as flesh in Hebrew) is the transformation of ourselves in God's Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, the Christ that is the Spirit of Anointing that is fully evident in the TNK even if hidden. This Anointing is known and one might say explosively revealed in Jesus - this much I think we might agree on (without logic). This transformation is available to all. How each takes advantage of the call is not available information to the logic police.

    I hope you have read this far - because I went back again and the software behaved so I could verify that I had not misread you completely. (I don't agree with the opponent you have cited either FWIW - I agree with you that his logic is faulty - but so is yours). We do not live by logic but through the death of the Beloved whereby his life in us changes how we work through the difficulties.

    You see, I have two children (of 4) who have no logic that you would be able to put an argument in front of them. Both are Christ's but not through reasoning, for their reason is disabled. God gave me these to prove to me the disability of my own reasoning. In fact when I preached Christ Jesus, I scarcely knew him. Now when I say Christ, I must include the Anointing Scriptures through which even Jesus learned. (Else why would the writer to the Hebrews use the Psalms as he does).

    Salvation (Hebrew=Jesus) is not subject to our explanations. Our expectations may in fact disable the very message we seek to communicate.

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