"Paul, you are out of your mind; your great learning is driving you out of your mind."
This passage is from Acts 26:24, it is the scene where Paul is telling King Agrippa and Roman procouncil Festus of his conversion. Right in the middle of it Festus stands up and shouts this line, which is my favourite verse from this semester. Here's why:
For the last day or so I have been fighting a bunch of Lutherans over the New Perspective of Paul and trying to convince them that N.T. Wright is not a heretic. If you want to get an idea of what the New Perspective is, check out John Zahl's blog on the right there and it is the second posting with the awesome sword fight. But this morning while reading the latest comments (which have shifted away from New Perspective because a "semi-Pelegian" found his way in - go to work you Lutheran thugs!) something came to my mind which for some reason hasn't shown up in a while: "Is theological training driving me out of my mind as far as the Gospel of Jesus is concerned?"
I mean, arguing about whether faith is a covenant marker for the community of Jesus or the "work" which brings righteousness by imputation is fine and good, but I think we theology students (and others) can get so lost in the details that we forget what is central: Jesus atonement on the cross. Because regardless of where you stand on the Calvinist/Lutheran thing or a whole load of other things, the message of Christianity needs to be about this:
1. We were created good by the Triune God.
2. We fell into sin which brought the curse of death, physical and spiritual upon us.
For some reason the rest of this post got cut off, so here is an amazing picture:
posted by Hans-Georg Gadamer @ 1:10 am
6 comments
6 Comments:
I will beat Charles to the punch:
"You raving fundy! Go back to explaining away dinosaurs!"
Glad that is over.
I wonder, though, if you are dealing in false dichotomies here. Certainly, a measure of learning (I mean that in the broadest sense and in no particular or technical sense) is needed to be aware of or understand the “message of the Gospel” in the first place. At what point does learning become too great?
I think I would want to argue that the proper use and gracious application of great learning is what is at issue. Certainly, your example of the exchange between your father and you wasn’t due to your “great learning,” but to an inappropriate use of it. Maybe what I am getting at is something like learning tempered by wisdom.
“I am not out of my mind, most excellent Festus, but I am speaking true and rational words.” Acts 26:25
J. Morg - I think your comments are fabulous. Brilliant! I think it is a false dichotomy, but it seems really hard to implement (sp?) learning with wisdom. Maybe only age and/or the Holy Spirit does that work, but he certainly has a ton more to go on me.
I don't know, hans--judging from your photo there's not much time left!
Call me a quadri-plegian here, but shouldnt the central message of Christianity also entail something about grace, redemption, atonement, Jesus? I don't think the message of Christianity is really about how bad we are, but more how we can be restored to the way we're intended to be -- that we're bad is only a corallary. Otherwise, we're jewish.
Oh wow! Something went wrong with blogpsot and it cut off more than half the post! Awesome! All the redemption stuff is missing! Good call redness! I think you are definitely right and definitely Calvinist. Cheers to that!
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