Because it’s important to be transparent about biases before one starts a review like this, I have at least 3 going into this blog post:
[1] The DVD I am about to review was provided by Zondervan explicitly and only if I promised to review it. That promise was secured because when I watched the video teaser they sent me to see if I was interested, I told them that I would be glad to watch the video, but that I couldn’t promise I’d review it – and my reason for that was simple: I hate writing reviews that are wholly-negative. I know none of you here at Evangel believe that, but the truth is that I think there are plenty of good things – especially in the Gospel – to write about, and that panning someone’s product is a drain on my time. So I told the publicist I work with at Z that if I didn’t like it I probably wouldn’t review it. He said the only way to get a copy was to promise to review it, so here we are.
[2] I am not a fan of Zondervan’s offerings to the marketplace of spirituality as a whole. They offer some winners like Richard Abanes, Jay Adams, Evangel’s own Gene Fant, The Habermas brothers, two books by John MacArthur, and a few others if you rifle through their stable of talent. But sadly they are also the ones who prop up the liberal end of the spectrum and undergird the “self-actualization” end of the evangelical (small-“e” intended) spectrum, and they do so with gusto. It seems to be their favorite thing to publish. So I tend to hold Zondervan’s offerings in general at arm’s length.
(An important note here: Zondervan also publishes a dump-truck full of fiction titles intended for the Christian book marketplace – one assumes because it is a cash cow. The state of Christian fiction should be the subject of a future year of blogging in every blog venue I have, but suffice it to say today that it’s not their fiction I actually have a serious beef with: it’s Zondervan’s non-fiction and allegedly-serious forays into spiritual/pastor advice)
[3] The easiest way to garner an unenthusiastic response from me in any situation is to place some other value ahead of truth. This sounds like a fundamentalist saw horse, but I think I mean something different by it than the classic fundamentalist would. Recently I had a chance to discuss this at work with a colleague, and when given the chance to elaborate, I said this:
Honesty is not just the ability to tell the truth, but to receive it as a means to improve my own performance and contributions. Being blunt with others is not honesty: treating the truth with respect, and changing when one is wrong, is actual honesty.
This will come back to roost in this review, but keep in mind that I think that truthfulness in this sense is the highest virtue when dealing with others.
So Zondervan has produced a series of DVDs called the Q Society Room — 4 DVDs based on the content and ideas found at Q: Ideas that create a better world.
Before you pre-judge the site and the DVDs by that frontpage screen cap (taken on 28 May 2010), there’s something vaguely noble about the site itself. Overall, it’s not actually a polemical site – it’s sort of a Socratic site that is willing to think about or listen to any idea which is reasoned out in some way, and not make snap judgments about those ideas. Now, whether or not that’s actually “Socratic” in the way Socrates was “Socratic” (I suspect he knew where he was going when he was leading other people around by the nose through their fallible philosophies), it’s at least very generous to the ideas it explores.
And we can say that with a straight face because there’s not a political agenda here. When the site boasts content from a spectrum as broad as Os Guiness, Chuck Colson, Rick Warren, Chris Seay and Jim Wallis, there is a sort of balance involved. It’s not completely balanced – it certainly skews to the liberal edge of the table – but there’s a certain sobriety to the imbalance that you can at least respect the fact that they have tried to reach across the aisle, so to speak, to find the places where the wings of the intellectual household can agree. There is something admirable in that (cf. my disclaimer #3) because there is not merely disagreement among the members of the household in question: there is some agreement, some commonality.
And in that, the Zondervan has partnered with the folks at “Q” to produce these video discussion guides.
The disc they sent me was “The Whole Gospel”, which features some brief conversations with some folks I would call minor contributors to the larger discussion of faith and practice; these conversations are merely intros to videos by larger luminaries like Tim Keel and Chuck Colson. And the point of the disc itself is simply to get a conversation started on the topics in question – to start people thinking about what they really mean when they say certain things – or when they fail to really think about what it means when they say certain things.
So that’s all at least not bad: these are nearly-balanced conversation-starters, and they have the intention of starting conversations about faith and the real world.
And I watched the videos and was intrigued because I think that the basic conservative Protestant view of the church as a consequence of the Gospel needs some reform – and that’s what these videos were talking about, to a greater or lesser degree: reforming the real life of the church, ostensibly because it ought to be a necessary consequence of the Gospel.
Tim Keel sort of owned me in his talk until we got to this part, right at the end of his 30-minute video:
Now, let’s think about this: if we completely and utterly concede that “Jesus has a compelling answer to that question” of how to live (I would concede the point utterly and without a single qualification), is that actually the point of the Gospel? Is that actually the mode of evangelism – especially as defined by the New Testament?
Here’s the crazy thing: Keel’s presentation of the greater narrative of the Bible is the previous 28+ minutes of the video (which I truncated for fair use reasons; you can find it at qideas.org and download it if you want to register as a user there for free) I thought was about the best literate exposition of the whole Bible in 30 minutes that I had ever heard. But somehow, right there at the end, rather than grasping that the Exodus narrative (for example) is about God doing something for Israel it cannot do for itself, Keel abandons almost all of his good exegetical work to make a point which is transplanted from his cultural context rather than actually present and active in the text before someone in the 21st century in middle-class America looks at what Moses has written down.
So again, to my bias #3, this is a crisis of truthfulness: is Tim Keel being right-mindedly truthful – somehow more truthful than the Evangelism Explosion straw-man he sets up from a generation ago? If Keel being formed by the content of the text in a way that his counter-example is not – or is he simply hiding his own deep and serious mistake behind the mistake of his Sunday School teachers from 30 years ago?
This brings me back to Bias #2: Zondervan’s failure to actually engage the church as a whole as if there are actual solutions to the quandaries we face, or if we have to invent or adopt solutions from the culture in order to meet our intellectual and spiritual needs. Zondervan is masterful at seeking out and speaking to the broadest possible audience: the problem is that when it gets the seats in the arena full, it delivers something they could have found anywhere – and says that this is what the church can or ought to say to the passers-by.
What’s at stake in the conversations Zondervan and “Q ideas” have opened up here is not whether you personally can reason out your own solutions to the issues raised here – because you can. You do every day – as does every person with an IQ above 75. What is actually at stake is whether or not we have heard God’s solution to the problem of our culture, taking it in as true and real, and therefore do the things which are necessary after it like change our own ways of thinking about the problems for the sake of honesty.
In that, I think the content of the “Q Society Room” discs leave a lot to be desired. They are not adequate teaching tools. They do not provide the fully-orbed solutions the Gospel actually provides – which is an irony given the title “the Whole Gospel” on the disc I received. My opinion is that the conversations starting here are not new, and are not especially insightful, and do not offer the ultimate hope of the Gospel in a clear way.
As I close up here, let’s think about that issue in this way: if we were talking about the Oprah Winfrey Show, or a series on PBS, I have a suspicion that we all could agree that this kind of conversation would be significantly more helpful than the standard fare which includes Joseph Campbell, Marcus Borg and John Spong. But we’re talking about resources that churches ought to be using to educate their members and guide the spiritual formation of their flocks. This sort of ambiguous approach doesn’t really accomplish that, and leaves people to find their own way home after leading them out into a busy foreign city. It would serve both Zondervan and qideas.org to get closer to a fully-orbed orthodoxy than they are right now if their real objectives are to serve the local church and the church at large.
May 28th, 2010 | 11:02 am | #1
Frank,
I think that I agree with you, but I wish that you had spelled out your problem with Keel more clearly. He seems to be dealing more with the issue of communicating the Gospel to our culture than with the full content of the Gospel in the clip that you posted – not that those are wholly distinct, of course. And, in that regard, I’d have to say that he’s right about what people around us are looking for and that the specter of mortality does not connect like it used to do so. Does our presentation of the Gospel have to shift in response? Somewhat, if we are to be like Paul in Athens, for instance; while Jesus must always must be at the center of our proclamation, the order in which we proclaim him will vary depending on context.
May 28th, 2010 | 11:09 am | #2
Steve:
Interesting comment.
I think Keel is suggesting that someone can have their best life now — he’s just using a different set of code words.
That’s not the Gospel, is it?
May 28th, 2010 | 11:26 am | #3
I love your comment about “treating the truth with respect.” This is a thoughtful post.
I’m not convinced that Keel is retooling the gospel, though. I do see that his phrase “Wake up, come, follow [Jesus]” doesn’t quite equal “Repent – the Kingdom of God is near,” but your objection begs the question: how should Christians talk about Christ with people who are non-Christians?
Of course we should appeal to the New Testament as our authority for evangelism, but can we agree that the message differs, depending on the audience? (I’m thinking of the contrast between Acts 7 and Acts 17.)
May 28th, 2010 | 11:27 am | #4
Aha Steve, you beat me to it!
May 28th, 2010 | 11:44 am | #5
I’m not sure that the EvanExplo straw man was a straw man. One of the biggest problems with the previous century-and-a-half in evangelicaldom is a rotten definition of heaven. The way we have presented it is “My best life then.” Most everyone I’ve ever talked to about heaven (including myself) envisions it as a place where everything is perfect according to me. On that basis, what’s the difference if we just push that calendar forward a few years so we can start that now?
But Jesus spoke of heaven as the place where God’s will is done. And I’m trying to remember any evangelistic messages in my lifetime that looked forward to the fact that in heaven, all we will ever do is what God desires. And your best life now entails the very same life, received by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, producing heavenly works on earth.
I agree that Keel is presenting a false dichotomy here. But what we need is an absorption of the whole, rather than a separation of pieces.
Thanks for the review.
May 28th, 2010 | 12:13 pm | #6
Is earth the goal of salvation? Or is heaven? Or is it the kingdom of God? Jesus came preaching the gospel of the kingdom, “The time is fulfilled, ad the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the gospel” (Mark 1:14-15). He taught us to pray, “Thy kingdom, come! Thy will, be done on earth as it is in heaven.” To me, that says that the kingdom of God is the will of God being done on earth as it is in heaven. Has that not already begun (though not yet completely done)?
Is it all in the future, or is it not also now? Surely, both now and forever. Eternal life begins now, when we entrust ourselves to King Jesus the Messiah.
If heaven and earth are now coming together as one and salvation is both now and forever, should not our presentation of the gospel reflect that good news?
May 28th, 2010 | 12:21 pm | #7
I think you are accurate in your criticism of the these DVDs. They might be okay for someone who has just started his journey into Christianity, but they have very little to offer a mature believer. And there is no mention about sin and repentance. This is touchy-feely, light Christianity. Christ did tell people to “wake up,” but He always paired this with the statement of go and sin no more (I am thinking of the woman at the well and the paralytic).
I am always hesitant to embrace messages about the Gospel that paint this really rosy picture about how everything will be so great after a person has accepted Christ. True someone will have comfort and joy as well as meaning to his life and entrance into the Kingdom, but life will still be hard and difficult.
May 28th, 2010 | 12:48 pm | #8
Adam (who I think works for Zondervan, speaking of truth) [:-)] said:
The appeal to Acts 17 is always a slippery one, I think — because people who are doing that often forget that Paul ends up this way:
Which is to say, even the non-Jewish listener needs to repent and be saved even if he doesn’t have the OT context to make it all clear to him.
I am a big advocate of a Whole Gospel — one in which Jesus doesn’t just die and raise in some kind of theological isolation chamber, but that He dies for us and therefore His resurrection means something for us. The Gospel means there is therefore an assembly of those called out; it means there is a church necessarily.
BUT!
When we get so lopsided that we think that we can proclaim that the Good News is that you can live the next 20 years in a way that you are satisified with, that you find meaningful, we have not at all proclaimed the Gospel.
May 28th, 2010 | 12:58 pm | #9
To DPR’s point about “Heaven” as thought of by the last generation, I think there’s something to it that the last generation of conservatives were not very ready for Christ’s return. However, I also think that neither were the last generation of liberals and Christian existentialists — for completely different reasons.
This is why returning every time the the explicit Good News of Christ — even in our own generation, even in our own personal daily walk — is something so much greater than finding a way to see the felt needs of the lost and speak to those felt needs.
I know I can remember that there was a time in my own personal walk that I thought that heaven would be great because there I would finally meet my father’s father; there I would be able to introduce him to my son and my daughter, and to tell him what a great son he had raised in my father.
Then one day I realized that if this is true, how much greater it will be to see the Savior who makes all of that reunion and reconciliation not just possible but real — so real that we actually bank our hope on it.
Christ who makes any other of these hopes even conceivable as real is the great part. Whether or not I have a meaningful life in my own eyes is so inexplicably empty in comparison.
May 28th, 2010 | 1:31 pm | #10
Does the gospel create for us a distinction in this life, but not enough to make a meaningful difference in this life?
May 28th, 2010 | 2:02 pm | #11
I didn’t say that at all, Jeff. I think I said the opposite.
May 28th, 2010 | 2:17 pm | #12
Frank:
Your theological critique is great — we should remember that the Whole Gospel must also keep sin in the picture. I do think you’re inferring something from Keel’s words that isn’t really there, but I have no proof :)
That’s an articulate post on heaven, by the way. I hope you don’t mind me pointing out a pretty charming typo – “I would…introduce him to my sin and my daughter.” At first I thought that was a homespun proverb I’d never heard before :)
And I’ll own up to it, I work for Z!
May 28th, 2010 | 2:21 pm | #13
:-)
May 28th, 2010 | 3:08 pm | #14
Is the gospel perceptibly meaningful in this life in such a way that a person who has been redeemed can actually perceive the difference it has made in his life over, say, twenty years? If so, is it irrelevant to the gospel to speak about the perceptibly meaningful difference salvation makes now in this life? Or is it lopsided to bring that up?
I’m trying to understand what your problem is with the Tim Keel clip. And I’m wondering why the idea of one having the best life now in addition to the best life forever gets discounted — as if the gospel leads us into a life that is less than the best.
The gospel Jesus preached was the gospel of the kingdom, and He said, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things [the things necessary for a good life] will be added to you.” Was he suggesting that someone can have their best life now — but just using a different set of code words? Or was He suggesting that a life centered on the rule and reign of God and His rightness is somehow less than the best life now?
May 28th, 2010 | 3:09 pm | #15
Reminded me of my teacher who used to say, “When you grow up to be adults and adulteresses. . . “
May 28th, 2010 | 6:00 pm | #16
Frank,
I’m still not sure what the issue with Keel is. As someone pointed out above, “following” Jesus implies cruciform repentance. Maybe you picked up on something in the broader context of that clip, but nothing that Keel said seemed to negate the importance of repentance (although I don’t know what came before in his speech). I was mostly just wondering what in the broader context made it clear that Keel is preaching a Joel Osteen-type message (if that was your intention in referring to “your best life now”).
May 28th, 2010 | 7:24 pm | #17
I took Keel’s use of “Wake up, come, follow” as a call to repentance. Isn’t that sometimes how we use the metaphor of the “wake-up call,” to say that something has to change? We certainly must repent, so that needs be part of our evangelism, but there is more then one way to say it.
May 28th, 2010 | 8:09 pm | #18
I like it that “wake up” is being interpreted as “repent”. Keel repudiates that early in the video, saying that “repent” is an inferior translation of “metanoia”.
May 28th, 2010 | 8:20 pm | #19
Jeff Doles –
Tell that to John the Baptist. Or Ignatius.
May 28th, 2010 | 9:06 pm | #20
I’m all for the concept of “repentance,” but there is more than one way to speak of it and other terminology to convey the idea. The term “repent,” often carries with it some cultural baggage that does not present the Biblical idea very well. The call to repentance is a “wake-up” call, a warning that something needs to change — one’s mind, heart, direction or life. I don’t think that John the Baptist or Ignatius were limited to just one way to say it. In Hebrew, there was shuv, the idea of returning to God, and nicham, the idea of sorrow over sin. In Greek, in addition to metanoia the idea of a changed of mind or heart, there was also epistrepho, used of turning from vanities and false gods to the living and true God.
So, really, Frank, what is your point?
May 28th, 2010 | 9:25 pm | #21
Frank,
Thanks for clarifying that Keel rejects the use of the word ‘repent’ elsewhere in the video. I can understand your concern in light of that.
May 29th, 2010 | 5:58 am | #22
My point, Jeff, would be three-fold:
(1) Keel explicitly says elsewhere in the video that the translation of ‘metanoia’ in the NT as ‘repent’ is an inferior translation. This is a patently false statement — ‘wake up’ is not the meaning in any Greek context, including the word’s use outside the NT.
(2) Therefore, interpreting that error into one’s view of the proclamation of the Gospel makes ones interpretation faulty.
(3) And specifically here, as I said in my post, which you are welcome to read, Keel has substituted a philosophy of self-satisfied living for the Gospel of repentence and forgiveness. As I also said in my post, that does not mean there is no personal satisfaction in following Christ — but the point of the Gospel is not ‘how to live’. But this view is a natural consequence of Keel’s interpretation of ‘metanoia’.
I welcome you to run over to Qideas and download his whole video to see what he was saying in context. It will help you see how he makes his mistake.
May 29th, 2010 | 6:39 am | #23
Keel has substituted a philosophy of self-satisfied living for the Gospel of repent[a]nce and forgiveness.
Are you certain that you’re not talking about Beth Moore? :-)
When I look at “evangelicalism” today I see the old modernism of the 19th century (eg., Schleiermacher, Ritschl), with its emphasis on ethical living apart from holiness, obedience, redemption, etc. So Moore talks about security v insecurity and Lou Giglio gins up excitement over an “X” in the center of a far-away galaxy while neither wants to confront lying, stealing, and fornication, repentence from those, or the God who is immanent in our lives. They deal with today, not with eternity. They sound like unitarian deists, with just a little Jesus to feel good.
(sorry about the ramble)
May 29th, 2010 | 7:33 am | #24
So there is no way to speak about repentance except to actually use the word “repent”? There are no words in today’s language, no cultural expression that can translate the Old English word “repent.”
But actually, that is not the word we must translate. We must translate what the Greek word metanoia means. I think there are a number of ways we can talk about it without boxing ourselves in with an Old English artifact. If some says, “Wake up! And follow Jesus,” I think they have captured something important about repentance, namely, that one needs to make a new decision, a change of mind, of heart, of direction and of life. That the way one has been going is not good or adequate and that we must follow King Jesus instead. Is that not what the Biblical use of metanoia means? Or must we clothe it in 16th century terminology for it to be legitimate? When I heard Keel talking about waking up and following Jesus, I recognized that he was speaking about repentance — what else would that signify?
So if someone speaks captures the idea of repentance even if they do not actually use the word “repent,” I’m not bothered by that. I don’t insist they must use the terminology of a bygone era.
May 29th, 2010 | 10:14 am | #25
At this point, Jeff, I think you’re simply being intransigent at this point. Do you not understand the sentence, “Keel rejects the translation ‘repent’ as inferior?”
Keel thinks that ‘repentence’ is not what the Gospel is or ought to be about. He says so plainly. When that happens, I think we have a great motive therefore to say, “that’s not what anyone else in the faith has ever said.”
This is not about finding new ways to express the old ideas. This is about rejecting the old ideas.
Talking around that does not bring further joy to this discussion.
May 29th, 2010 | 10:16 am | #26
Collin -
exactly.
May 29th, 2010 | 11:01 am | #27
Lot of issues here:
1. He ignores that his own answer to the question of Jesus’ significance is just as culturally bound (i.e., “relative”) as is the answer of his Sunday school teacher. “Where would you go if you would die tonight” arose of the evangelical concern with eternal destiny and the revivalist technique of arousing concern with one’s “salvation.” That in turn was a specific American adaptation of the classical Protestant preoccupation with “justification by faith alone,” which itself was a culturally specific response…etc., one quickly gets the picture. (Once one learns how to play the game, historical relativism is so much fun.)
Now on the other side, the notion of “following Jesus” specifically arose out of the attempt to “naturalize” Jesus, to turn him into a moral wise man.(For my response to that claim, see below.) But if Christianity is true, it is true supernaturally, not naturally (2 Cor. 5:16). After all, it is based on the resurrection of Jesus Christ (Rom. 1:3-6). That is the element of validity in the historical evangelical formulation. Christianity has to do with one’s destiny in a manner that transcends worldly reality.
Mr. Keel’s formulation is no more theologically universal than is the traditional evangelical one. The give-away here is his assertion that this traditional line “doesn’t work anymore”. So he drops it, not because it is not true, but because it doesn’t work. I grant him that, but it does not follow that it never worked. For several hundred years, it was a compelling way of capturing the central question of Christianity: how can one be justified before a just God? How can life be whole in a chaotic universe?
2. Now here I will get really radical. I am well aware that many people who would otherwise agree with me won’t follow me in my next move. Does Jesus–the Jesus of the flesh (“kata sarka” in 2 Cor 5:16)– have “a compelling answer to that question” of how to live”? Can we read the Gospels directly and transparently (in the manner evangelicals are wont to read them) and find a vision of life that can be directly appropriated?
I would argue NO for at least 3 distinct reasons:
Firstly, what does it mean to “follow Jesus?” Here Keel equivocates: does “following Jesus” mean following a human teacher or a supernatural being–the one crucified and raised from the dead? I agree that one must follow Jesus–but only if one follows THE ENTIRE DESTINY of Jesus, in his death and resurrection. But Keel apparently (since we are not given the full context) ignores the “rest of the story” and turns “Jesus” into a man of natural human wisdom.
Secondly, the Jesus of the flesh is just as historically relative as every other wise man. There is nothing found in Jesus’ teaching, that cannot be found in Socrates, the DAODEJING, Confucius, and the Buddha. Jesus was faced with the problem of Jews who desperately wanted freedom from the Romans in order to have the kingdom of God among them. He intuited that political rebellion would be suicide (as it indeed turned out to be). So Jesus–like the other wise men of the so-called “Axial Age”–said: wisdom, well-being, success is not on the “outside,” but on the “inside”. Jesus–in the flesh–was a Daoist of first-century Palestinian Judaism: don’t fight back, don’t answer evil for evil (Socrates), trust in “the universe” (his “heavenly father”), believe that God (“the Dao”) will give you want you need and when you need it, goodness is shaping one’s own character, not religious ritual (Confucius). I repeat: Jesus’ kingdom is just as historically contingent as every other expression of the classical “wisdom” of the ancient world.
Thirdly, on the flip side, if Jesus’ insights are simply the historically specifically application (in 1st century Palestinian Judaism) of certain general moral-spiritual insights, then what is unique about Jesus? What is specifically salvific about Jesus life and ministry? Nothing–unless one goes beyond that life and ministry. What is salvific is that the one who taught these general truths was also killed by them–and then resurrected from the dead.
3. We have a version of C. S. Lewis’ trilemma here. (For more on that, see the essay in the May/June 2010 issue of TOUCHSTONE.) If one follows Jesus because of his teachings, then I respond: Jesus was a fool. I for one cannot be persuaded to “follow Jesus.” More exactly, people who believe that simply loving everyone, trusting Jesus’ heavenly father, finding spiritual wholeness without any external religion expression are fools. Jesus tried that: IT GOT HIM KILLED. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me” was his final cry in the Markan version of his death.
But of course, from a spiritual standpoint, Jesus was GOD’S fool. He was the trickster: the one who turned everything upside down. Into the chaos of death his resurrection brought life. This is the point of Lewis’ trilemma: one cannot interpret Jesus as figure of human wisdom. Either he is God, or he is a goddamned (Galatians 3:13: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us….”) idiot. His fate, the contradiction of his crucifixion, denies to us the middle option of describing him as a sage or a prophet.
May 29th, 2010 | 2:27 pm | #28
I remember, about 5 years ago, doing some world-view questionnaires on my UK university campus (just happens to be the last time I asked questions like these). The “What do you want out of life?” kind of question that Keel thinks is the question to ask people today went nowhere – got the “what everyone wants” kind of answer (health, wealth, happiness, family, and combinations thereof), any discussion on the answer to this was short lived more than about 2 sentences – it was a very closed question.
The similar question to the one he has a go at was asked at the end, something like “If you died tonight, and God asks you why should I let you into my heaven, how would you answer?”. Bang – a completely alien question, most of them don’t have a clue, discussions were almost always at least two minutes, and normally at least 5 as we discussed gospel truths and their ideas and so on.
Yes the gospel has life implications, yes the question that was asked wasn’t theologically great with it’s isolated heaven (you can argue that’s ‘acts 17′ contextualisation to enable understanding of the question), but I know which question ‘works’.
May 29th, 2010 | 8:29 pm | #29
David -
I suggest that both letters to the Corinthians and the letter to the Ephesians speak to an extraordinarily-compelling way of life for those who repent and believe.
May 29th, 2010 | 8:35 pm | #30
Frank:
Indeed.
But they assume, both existentially and theologically, the crucified and risen Lord, do they not?
May 31st, 2010 | 8:15 am | #31
David –
Of course. But let’s make sure that we see that the compelling life is a necessary consequence of what Christ has done.
It’s wrong to make the Gospel entirely about a compelling life — because it is not primarily that. But it is equally wrong to make the Gospel something which only happens outside of us, or as an objective fact of history; what Christ did does something to us who repent and believe. If we miss that, we’re sunk.
June 2nd, 2010 | 11:05 am | #32
Frank, I understand the sentence, “Keel rejects the translation ‘repent’ as inferior.” The real focus needs to be, not on what the Old English word “repent” means but on what the NT Greek word metanoia means. Is “repent” the only choice to translate it? Is it the best choice to translate it? I think that the way it is often used today, with the heavy emotional component and the preoccupation on me and what I have done does not necessarily represent very well how the NT uses it. Emotion may accompany metanoia, but primarily, metanoia is a change of mind, , attitude or belief that results in a change of direction, of how one views something, of how one approaches and lives one’s life. So I think that “repent” may not necessarily be the best translation of metanoia.
When Jesus preached the gospel, He said “Metanoeite and believe the gospel.” He was calling for a change of mind, a change of life, to think and act and believe in a new way, namely, in accordance with the gospel. It is fair to characterize it as a “wake-up call.” It was not a call for an emotion but for a decision: Believe the good news that the time of God’s kingdom has come. It is that kingdom that we are to seek, and it is to King Jesus that we are to submit.
Now, inasmuch as Jesus said, “Metanoeite and believe the gospel,” we can see that metanoia (or repentance) is not itself the gospel. Rather, it is something we must do in order to embrace and believe the gospel. Nor is repentance the same thing as faith or believing (otherwise Jesus would not have said “Metanoeite AND believe”).
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