At his blog Missio Dei, Jonathan Brink raises the question: What are the theological issues that need to be explored in the coming decade? He offers three: 1) What is the problem? 2) What is the postmodern gospel? 3) How do we gather? Brink's answer to this question is interesting. The influence of the Emergent gospel runs throughout his answers and his post and I am not going to deal with his answers in any detail. What I want to offer is my own answer to the question.The gospel.
Recently, our church finished a Wednesday night series on the Epistle of Jude and I found myself reading Jude as if he were writing to 21st Century Christians living in postmodern America. Jude is my favorite book and never have I felt it so timely and needed as now. Jude's message is clear: contend earnestly for the faith once for all delivered to the saints (emphasis mine). Jude originally intended on writing regarding their shared salvation but out of necessity wrote concerning dangerous trends and false teachings within the church that needed to be corrected. There is a sense of urgency in Jude's words.
Contending for the faith is a gospel issue.
The reason I say all of this is because Jude's message is just as applicable today as it was 2,000 years ago. The theological issue that needs to be explored today, tomorrow, this year, next year, this decade, and the next decade is the gospel. To rightly understand the gospel is to rightly understand everything else.
For the Emergent Church, the gospel is like clay that can be re-shaped and re-formed to fit the mold of the times. It is time for a postmodern clay-like gospel. Therefore, the Emergent movement spends much of its time studying Buddhism, talking about the advantages of universalism, the value of deconstructionism, and the irrelevant belief in Scripture's perspicuity. Theology, and there-by the gospel, must be re-formed in order to stay caught up with the times. What we need is to shred the new and synchronize with the new.
This is why I mention Jude. Jude couldn't care less about what the culture thought or believed. He writes with an urgency that most Christians today have lost. Contend for the gospel . . . now! "Such language is too divisive and war-like to be of Christ" postmodern Christianity argues. And yet we are commanded, "contend earnestly for the faith." Does this not imply a transcendent gospel that is in no need of adaption?
The theological issue that must be explored everyday is the gospel. It is the gospel by which men are saved. It is the gospel that makes sense of the world. It is the gospel that reconciles men with God and men with men. It is the gospel that brings Christ the glory. It is the gospel that shuts the pride of men. It is the gospel that fulfills all righteousness. It. Is. The. Gospel.
History is littered with theological debates and heresies. Each generation is forced to deal with the heresies of old. Most heresies and theological challenges deal with a proper Christology, soteriology, Bibliology, theology (I mean specifically the doctrine of God), and/or legalism/licentiousness. All of these are gospel issues. Whether it be Arius, Pelagius, Rauschenbusch, Fosdick, or Hinn, the issue that needs to be explored because it is under the heaviest attack is always the gospel.
For the next ten years, how will the Church be remembered? Will we be a a group of believers who were busy exploring everything but the glory of the gospel or as a unified whole dedicated to the preservation and the spreading of the gospel? Will we trap the gospel under the label "postmodern" or even "post-postmodern" or will we proclaim a message of transcendence: Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!?
Jude warned of such needless distractions. We must not only contend, we must also proclaim the gospel once for all delivered down to us reserved for us in God's Word. "Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen." Jude 24-25
For more:
Missio Dei - Theological Issues For the Next Decade
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