”˜Acceptance’ in modern parlance has been the favourite mushily sentimental and superficial term which has come to replace the deeply theological term ”˜justification’ In a recent interview3 Bishop FitzSimmons Allison points out how ”˜acceptance’ is used as a watered down secular version of ”˜justification’. He notes that we all have a notion of what is just and right built into us. If we reject the standards our transcendent creator God has set for us to live by, and choose rather to trust our instincts and desires in formulating our behaviour, we are in effect suppressing the truth, and choosing to live by our own standards of righteousness. We have rejected the standard of God’s transcendent righteousness revealed to us in scripture, and thus only have ourselves as reference points with a resulting individualism and subjectivity.
Christian philosopher Prof. Jack Budziszewski points to certain realities about the created order, realities which continue to operate despite our rebellion. For example, knowledge of guilt (even if suppressed) produces certain objective needs, needs which have to be satisfied. These include confession, reconciliation, atonement and justification. Out of our need for justification, the need to be ”˜right’ before God, we develop mechanisms to ”˜be righteous’ ”“ such as thinking well of ourselves, or ”˜self esteem’. “God accepts us as we are ”“ so we should accept ourselves and others”. ”˜Inclusion’ is the term commonly used for this and we are told that ”˜Jesus was inclusive in all his dealings with people ”“he included the outcasts and the sinners’. So basically what the doctrine of ”˜inclusion’ means is that God accepts me as I am. The idea that God accepts us as we are is not a biblical idea. God loves us unconditionally, no matter what state we are in, but that is not the same. God calls us as we are, in the state of rebellion we are in. If we then turn to him in repentance and faith he accepts us in Christ, but if we do not turn to him, we are still lost in sin. Kummel says, “That man must turn around if he wishes to stand before God is one of the basic views of Judaism in Jesus’ time, and thus Jesus also explicitly named conversion as a condition for entrance into, the kingdom of God.”5 So, in Mark 1:15, Jesus’ message of the good news begins with the call to turn around, and from that moment all gospel preaching is based on Jesus’ commission to his disciples to call all men to repentance (Mark 6:12) (Acts 3:19, 8:22)
Great article, thanks for posting it.
He’s argued what one of the American Lutheran figures noted with ELCA’s vote: that “faithfulness” is increasingly being defined in terms of qualities of relating, and not in terms of maintaining the basic structure of a relationship. Once that was pointed out it was obviously part of liberalism’s basic approach (and revisionism’s) but I hadn’t made the connection until then.
The rest of the article is good too, but that’s the thing that’s struck me the last month or so.
A very strong article – one which, at least in part for the reason quoted below, is likely not to receive the attention that it deserves: