Every so often there is a renewal movement in the church. Someone sees the glory of God or the freeness of the Gospel or the call to follow Christ with fresh clarity. They proclaim their message. Historically, Catholics absorb them and consecrate them. Protestants bludgeon their brothers with their new insights and form sects. That may seem to be a cynical view of history, but then again, maybe not.
After reading Sanders, Chapter 3, So Great Salvation, I am persuaded that it is certainly one aspect of Protestant fragmentation. Without diminishing real theological differences, I think he makes the case that what is needed most is a large Gospel, a Gospel measured by the Godhead. That, by itself, will rescue us from sectarian pride.
It all goes back to a tendency in us all to diminish the greatness of the Gospel. What do I mean by that?
We are, or I am, endlessly self-centered, not just sinfully, but humanly. What else am I to be? After all, I only have one point of view and it is the one from where I sit. I may momentarily walk in your moccasins, but pretty soon I slip back into my own. The Gospel is not such a thing that can be seen fully from the lowly valley where I live. I simply find it hard to keep a firm grasp on its grandeur.
Add to that the effects of sin on my imagination and affections, and we have a formula for dim views of Christ, at least until the Holy Spirit brings fresh sight to our dull eyes. This he has done in the flow of history. He renews us.
Then we start proclaiming the “full gospel” as opposed to the partial gospel. By full gospel I do not mean, and Sanders does not mean, a particular denomination. He means that we see a more complete picture of what God has done in salvation, how it has been lost or at least wandered off the center of our vision, and how we may correct that error.
When this happens, Sanders notes, that these people “have discovered that the gospel is a great thing, and that it includes whole regions of insight and experience that beg to be explored.” (104-105) With such renewed clarity also comes a temptation to censoriousness and to broad generalizations about the state of the church as a whole. When someone climbs up onto a new mountain and sees a view that is partially hidden from me, the temptation is to engage in theological King of the Hill, to assert that my view is the correct one, and theirs is not.
I am not saying that all theological differences are simply a matter of perspective. Not at all. Truth is truth and error is error. God is not an elephant and we are not all grabbing a hold of different parts of him. But emphases within those who hold to orthodoxy are another issue. Renewal sadly becomes a basis for contention and division.
Perhaps there are contradictory statements being made. It is very hard to reconcile Trent with Calvin. But perhaps they are a corrective voice. Perhaps pride has entered the scene. And saddest of all, perhaps the new insight then becomes the sole insight and we reduce the Gospel once more.
Perhaps we need a larger statement of the Gospel, a Gospel whose edges are the edges of the Trinity. That is what Sanders asserts. It makes sense to me. We need to locate all the blessings of redemption in its ultimate end, and not confuse ultimate with penultimate.
That is difficult. I am also part of a culture that Sanders wisely diagnoses as impatient with theology, quick to dismiss anything that seems impractical or complicating, and seems intent on reducing salvation to less than it is. (97-98, 107-11) We are quick to ignore our differences and focus on what we agree on, which, it turns out, is pretty insipid.
I also like to take a part and magnify it for the whole, even when it comes to how we engage with the Gospel. Is justification the center of the NT? Or is it union with Christ? Is propitiation the center of the Gospel or substitution?
I am reading Sanders with a critical application here. The point of the chapter is not critique but assertion – and he does indeed assert a Gospel so grand and glorious that it absorbs all these various components within it.
We will consider that in the next post.
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