Jesus enters Jehrico. The most despised man in town is Zaccheus who has grown rich as Chief Tax Collector. The leaders of Jehrico offered Jesus their hospitality but Jesus chose to eat with Zaccheus and to stay overnight in his home. Luke 19:7 “And when they saw it they all murmured, “He has gone in to spend the night with a man who is a sinner.”
In John 21:15ff, Jesus meets with Peter following the resurrection. He asks Simon Peter, son of John, three times, “Do you love me?” Each time Peter responds affirmatively. And Jesus charges Peter, “Feed my sheep, feed my lambs, feed my sheep.” Earlier, on the night before His crucifixion, John 15:12 records Jesus as saying, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” Just what Jesus told the teacher of the Law in the parable of the Good Samaritan.
Moses brought all the people to the Promised Land, not just the Commandos. I have believed that was my calling for almost fifty years now. For me to walk toward Jesus means looking among all Jesus sheep and lambs, not just some select few.
I question neither the sincerity or the commitment of those who feel called to other paths on the way to Jesus. After all, “In my Father’s House there are many mansions. As I have
preached for many years, with God there is always more and with scripture there is always more. I believe that we all see through the glass darkly and that we are sinners who need to be saved by grace. Finally, as we yearn for god’s truth, it is better to have all voices at the table, not only those of our own choosing.
This comes across as a very muddled and pointless rambling which fails to answer the posited question, ‘Has the The Episcopal Church has walked away from Jesus’? Also, some of the rhetorical tricks he employs could be either described as ‘straw men’ or guilt by (mis)association.
A lot of selective quotes all of which omit the fact that Jesus preached repentance and the necessity to chose. He did not preach universal salvation.
He forgets to tell us the REACTION Zaccheus had to Jesus coming under his roof (he repented and showed that in deed not just word) … or why Z. was chosen in the first place (he was watching for Jesus to come by).
or why Jesus issued those instruction to Peter (three positives to offset the negatives of three denials — it was almost like the Catholic version of Penance).
Not all the Israelites entered the Promised Land. Those who chose to follow foreign gods were destroyed. Those who grumbled at God were killed. Entry to thePromised Land came at a price — obedience to the LORD.
Jim E. <><
Binary thinking, on the one hand, ever-flowing river, on the other. What this Church needs is a Vulcan mind-meld (for those who recall Star Trek).
Dean Werner said at the end of his interesting but tendentious article, “As I have preached for many years, with God there is always more and with scripture there is always more. I believe that we all see through the glass darkly and that we are sinners who need to be saved by grace.”
It saddens me greatly (and at times outrages me) when people take the fact that we do not and cannot know all about God and use that reality as a reason to overturn what God has told us about himself in the Scriptures. Christianity is a revealed religion; we know what we know about God because he has told us about himself, and about ourselves. We may not have been told everything we want to know, and we could not be told some things because those things are beyond our capacity — but we have been told what we need to know in order to know God’s provision for our salvation – our restoration to fellowship with him through repentance and forgiveness.
It also seems to me that Dean Werner does not grasp the reality of the atonement. He is a respected and respectable man, with many good values and ideals, but even though he see Jesus at the center of God’s ministry to the world, he does not seem (from this article) to see the cross at the center of Jesus’ ministry. He seems to think, it seems to me, that Jesus is primarily an example, not one who came “to give his life as a ransom for many.”
[b]”The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the revealed things belong to us and to our children forever, to observe all the words of this law.” (Deut. 29:29.)[/b]
#3, libraryjim, you are right. Not all Israelites entered the promised land. Even Moses was not allowed to enter. He disobeyed God’s firm command regarding making water appear while on the way through the wilderness. God reprimanded Moses after his defiant act and told him he would never enter Canaan. He never did.
Fairly sad that Jericho is not even spelled correctly. Sigh….
It is worth noting for all those who utter the pious high sentence that Chrsit dined with whores and and thieves, as if this were his sole company and that therefore – you must finish the logic here… –
Jesus came to save all sinners, not merely the bottom of the social scale.
See Hakkatan’s nice entry above. That we do not know and cannot know all the ways that God brings men to salvation is the answer to those who say, with simpleminded finality, that only Christians can be saved. H’s point is important, that there is much we do not know, and we should be open to admit that. This fact is, as he says, not justification to invent new theology to fill in what we do not know, as if remedying the horror vacui is more important than accepting what we have been given and working with that. Werner is correct in this, that we do see through a glass darkly, and we need to admit this too. Larry
[i] Slightly edited. [/i]
If universal salvation is God’s way, if God can and will save the most foul of unrepentant and rebellious sinners, then the cross of Christ was a farce, and Jesus was the victim of a cruel, “Divine” hoax.
Either the cross is the watershed we Christians say it was, or it was not. If universaliam in true, then the Cross is just another event in man’s evil history. But evil no longer means much of anything, because, in the end, God is going to ignore its presence, and save even Satan himself.
I will add to my comment above that, while there is much we might want to know, it is also clear from what Jesus says in the Gospels that 1) he is the only source of salvation, and 2) there will be people who refuse to trust him and who will experience what they desire (or imagine they desire), independence from God. They will not enjoy such independence, but they will have it.
Of course, we do not know how God is at work in any given individual’s life. I have read [i]Eternity in Their Hearts,[/i] which notes many cultures have “hooks” upon which the Gospel may be hung, and that God has sent visions or stories to some people groups that prepared them to receive the Gospel with joy when it was brought to them. It is a fascinating book.
Christ’s death was sufficient for each and every person ever born – but the Scriptures indicate that it will not be efficient for everyone, for there will be those who reject the message, and those who will never hear it. (You may think that this is not fair — but the truth of the matter is that God owes humanity nothing but judgment and rejection. That he redeems anyone at all is a marvel of grace.)
11, well said.
George Werner’s lame theology has (unfortunately) found a worthy successor in Bonnie Anderson.
The “leadership” of TEC continues to be sadly weak and heretical — a certain sign that repentence and reformation is not only not going to happen, but is not even a subject of discussion. This is a once vital church that is heading straight over the cliff.
and those who will never hear it. (You may think that this is not fair—but the truth of the matter is that God owes humanity nothing but judgment and rejection. That he redeems anyone at all is a marvel of grace.)
#11, I suspect you are in error here but this is beyond proof. That God should damn those who could never have heard of Jesus is merciless and unjust and this would violate what we assume is inherent in his nature. However – and you earlier point is essential here – C.S.Lewis remarked most sensibly that God has not told us how he intended to bring those who could know nothing of Jesus to him. AS you rightly said, God has – how careless of Him! – not told us all his plans and designs, let us into all His secret ways. He has told you and me what we need to know. For the rest, knowing HIs nature, we must assume that Jesus’ power will extend to others in ways we cannot guess – and need not know. We really must remember Job’s lesson. Larry
His central problem in the failure to distinguish between different things. The church does not and cannot include unbelievers, and when members of the church unrepentantly act as unbelievers do, we are to [url=http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew 18:15-17;&version=47;]treat them as “Gentiles and tax collectors”[/url]; as if they are no longer in the church. We are still to act with love, still to recognize in them the [i]imago dei[/i], but the relationship of the unrepentant to the church and its members is different.
What, I wonder, could Larry have said that got him edited…
In the past, I’ve sometimes thought Larry just a little rigid in his viewpoints, but suddenly not only is he endorsing Hakkatan’s excellent #5 post, but moderating his more slightly more extreme #11 post…
Kudos to both of you. It is clear from a scientific point of view (if none other) that there is nothing that a 3 dimensional being can possible understand about a 4(+) Being that He does not choose to reveal to us (which is why the revisionists sound so silly when they think they actually know something today that the new Testament writers didn’t), yet by the same token it is equally clear that there are questions about Grace that we cannot possibly answer.
Personally, I think the “many mansions” reference is intriguing, but I wonder if we are just a little too parochial in our interpretation of this. What if mansions refers not so much to people, planets, solar systems, and galaxies, but rather universes? If God is whom we think He is, why should we assume this is the only universe that He has created?
If my take on recent research is accurate, it seems that scientists are finally beginning to get a glimpse of what ought to have been obvious all along, namely that the Universal Laws they seek in which the Arrow of Time is reversible, apply only to the Multiverse in which God Himself exists. It appears our own Universe can only be accurately modeled when the Arrow is Time is constrained to align in a single direction. This would seem to be a prerequisite for a creation that requires causality to make the concept of Free Will meaningful.
There could well by other Universes that God has created than operate with a completely different set of ordained laws. Should we regard Heaven as an attribute of our Universe only, or rather of the elevated space in which He exists? Who knows whom or what we might encounter there? In this respect, the definition that we are created in the “Image of God” is itself revealing. This implies a projection of a higher dimensional Being on our own 3-dimensional Universe. A similar projection on a different Universe would no doubt appear quite alien to us.
In this matter, #16, Confucius make an important dist inction. He said that knowing that we know what we know, and knowing that we do not know what we do not know, is the beginning of wisdom.
I am a strong supporter of scripture, but I seriously doubt those who use it to extend their certainty of divine knowledge and authority into areas about which scripture is silent. At some point, Christians have to be willing to say, “I don’t know the answer to that, so I can only guess from what I do know, but don’t ask me to stake my soul on it.” One can say one believes absolutely in the Great Commandment and also one is doubtful about other matters that are much less clear, there is no fault in this. (When in doubt,m read Mere Christianity, I have come to think.) Larry