-This is my response to Sean that he did not let stand alone as it was meant to be written. He used his power as the blog owner to insert his remarks before, in the middle, and after my comments. When asked if he would re-submit my comments as they were intended he responded that he was too lazy to simply let what I wrote be posted and read how I intended it. In light of this I want to post it here to be read as I intended it.
Sean,
Sean, you wrote in response to me:
Danny, neither Todd nor I make any statement that says "experience leads to truth" In fact, what I said was, "Through that action they would eventually gain understanding."
Sean, you also wrote:
“As Todd (Mr. King) pointed out, real knowledge comes from experience - that is engagement and action.”
And correct me if I am wrong your understanding of the Hebrew mind is that action, or experience leads to knowledge and not the other way around. Hence right living is the starting point in order to gain knowledge.
You have made it quite clear (along with other emergent church leaders) that you disapprove of the church’s over-emphasis of doctrine and right thinking about God. You also say that orthodoxy and orthopraxis are hand in hand however your starting point is in my opinion wrong. You and Todd have both said that experience or action is what comes first and then we will eventually gain understanding. I would like to again point out that our starting point as Christians should always be God’s revelation of Himself as found in scripture that needs to be understood in order that we may believe and then act in response to that revelation. If we teach people that we are evangelizing that they should start to act like Jesus by doing certain things before having personal faith in Him, and then by their actions they will soon realize who Jesus actually is we will have perverted the Gospel and turned it into a merely ethical and works based salvation as opposed to a salvation that comes from Gods free grace that demands faith which as Paul points out in Philippians; is a gift from God and not of ourselves. So, saving faith is not as you have pointed out in the so called “Hebrew view” our faithfulness to God as found in Alan Hirsch and Richard Frost’s book, 'The Shaping of Things to Come.' It is oppositely God’s faithfulness to sinner’s who do not act first and then believe but who are saved first by grace through faith. And this faith again is not faithfulness but the “empty hand” that believes and trusts in Christ alone for salvation. They are saved by believing the Gospel as found in scripture. So in other words orthodoxy or right belief is foundational to salvation, as well as right living (orthopraxis). So I submit that discussing salvation is not a rabbit trail but essential in discussing the topic of orthodoxy vs. orthopraxis.
As a Christian I look to scripture for what to believe and how to live. If the Bible teaches God’s plan of salvation I will submit to the Bible’s authority over my own feelings or experience about the subject. I am interested in what scripture teaches on the subject because that is where God has revealed truth about Himself, His plans, and his creation. For Todd to say that real knowledge comes from experience is in my estimation the same thing as saying experience leads to truth. Correct me if I am wrong but that statement contradicts the protestant position of sola scriptura. That is that the Bible is the final authority on our beliefs about God and how we shall then live. The knowledge found in scripture is where we find out about God. So for the blogger from your church who asked the question “what if we didn’t have the Bible”, my answer would be that either God would have had a different plan of revelation which He doesn’t or we would know nothing about Him at all. If we are left to our own subjective experience and feelings about what to believe about God we would have as many different views of God as there are people in the world. This is simply not the case because any discerning Christian knows that God has revealed Himself in scripture and the knowledge necessary for faith and action is found within the pages of Holy Scripture. This may be the reason that the “western church” has emphasized the importance of right thinking and belief. We first need to know about God either by the preaching of the word or the personal reading of scripture in order to truly know Him and know how to live rightly.
My position is not that knowledge is all that is important and our lifestyle is unimportant, I have never said or alluded to that. A lot of remarks towards me from Sundeos churchgoers have given a false and hypocritical “judgment” about what I believe on this subject, however those remarks are not true. I emphasize hypocritical judgment because you can tell me that I am being judgmental and then in turn falsely judge me for believing something that I do in fact reject. The only reason I am spending time on this blog is because I care a lot about people having right understanding and thinking about God, salvation, mankind ext. I am not interested in being mean or unloving; actually I believe that telling the truth from scripture is more loving than saying nothing at all. I do however believe that right thinking does in fact lead to right action. Not all the time because as Sean has pointed out there are a lot of people who have good orthodox beliefs but go out and live like hell. I agree with Sean on this point that this type of person is in the wrong and should be corrected and strongly rebuked. I also believe that good actions or morals without right orthodoxy is also damnable and should be corrected as I stated in the Mormon and Muslim comments (Sean has yet to answer my question about this topic). They may try to live pious upright lives however they do not know the true God of scripture. And my judgments towards them are not hypocritical judgments that the bible condemns but a righteous judgment that is simply responding to the facts of their beliefs. If a person openly denies essential doctrines and beliefs about God they should not be acknowledged as believers or followers of Jesus. They should be evangelized as an unbeliever who does not know God and is not on their way to heaven even if they live moral lives and have “good” actions. Man’s morality and lifestyle will never earn God’s forgiveness for God does not owe anyone salvation because all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (read Romans). Also if someone is living in open and unrepentant sin they should as well be cast out as an apostate and unbeliever. So we can and should be critical and make right judgments about professing Christians beliefs and lifestyles so they can know they are in the wrong and then in turn repent if God reveals their error to them.
So in conclusion, I again ask you the question because I am truly concerned:
Is it necessary to believe in the content of the Gospel as found in scripture in order to have salvation? Do you believe that people can and will go to heaven even if they do not ever hear of or profess personal faith in Christ’s atoning work on the cross?
Mormon’s who usually have a high view of morals and ethics believe that they will someday become a god of their own universe if they “do the right” thing or have the right orthopraxis. Will they go to heaven without having right thinking about God as found in scripture because of their good living? Can a Muslim simply live up to the light in their religion and do a bunch of good works and have “righteous” living according to your view of right living and still go to heaven? I ask that you would answer honestly because some of the implications of what you are writing are unsettling.
If your answer is that it is indeed necessary to have faith in Christ in order to be saved (and I hope you do) then I wonder how you get to the conclusion that right action leads to right belief because right belief is necessary and foundational to salvation and living/action. However, if you do in fact believe that people can live uprightly and be saved in their religion and or lack of it (example: Sarah’s husband) without submitting to God or believing in Him then my concern about all of this is indeed justified.
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