The bad blood between Protestant liberals and evangelicals

The bad blood between Protestant liberals and evangelicals has borne more evil fruit than the latter imagine. It has induced them unconsciously to overreact against the veracious teachings of Jesus as if they were the inferior property of bleeding-heart liberal theologians rather than the Law of Christ, the supreme norm for authentic Christian behavior! Satan has slyly manipulated evangelicals to minimize the very instrument and discipline of their highest maturity. To hear evangelical preachers and theologians berate the liberal tendency to exalt the Lord’s teaching is to be struck by grief at the immense loss that Satan’s craftiness has inflicted on the church. [4/10/09] Our ethic rings hollow and all but ignores immense, looming evils as if they were “not our business.” But aren’t they? And how, exactly, should the church/Kingdom of God address them? [12/20/16]

Everything the Cross and Resurrection reveal to us concerning God’s character, they also urge upon us, His believing people. For the ‘Crossurrection’ was and remains the central, nuclear, and radical moment when the deepest depths of God’s theretofore hidden person became unveiled before a core of veracious witnesses who were commissioned to herald the sacred truths of the event to all creation. There could be no inner contradictions, no logical incoherencies, no nagging conundrums, no paralyzing mysteries to impede the full and harmonious unraveling of what up to that point in human history had been deliberately, strategically, ever-so-wisely kept under wraps of enigmatic mystery—a secret so sacrosanct that neither prophet nor angel, much less devil, could divine its sacred idiom.

The sublime simplicity of what was unfolding on that dread hill and in that grim tomb must be utterly clear and incomparably gripping to human consciences, for it would constitute the paramount sample and example of redeemed, indeed, redeeming human behavior. What the Lord Jesus accomplished to perfection not only supplied the Spirit of power to energize all others to perform accordingly, but he furnished the paragon paradigm that cuts the pattern of our own conduct and program of divine imitation.

All of this could hardly mean that we are to courageously bear God’s wrath and demand that others pay us what they owe us in order that we may justly forgive them their debts! The near lunacy of such a popular (although often tacit) notion should stop us cold in our treacherous tracks. We should instantly bring to mind many a parable of Jesus and then, if we still harbor remnants of the above thoughts, pause thoughtfully on our slippery slope until we satisfactorily solve the contradiction between our private assumptions and his public teaching and example. [4/12/09]

God’s righteousness was displayed not (as penal substitutionary theologians insist) because “sin had been paid for at the Cross, and God could not rightfully demand such payment twice (because He would thereby be guilty of imposing “double jeopardy” [5/11/09]), and therefore God raised Christ from the dead.” Much rather, IT WAS BECAUSE CHRIST’S MURDER WAS WRONG THAT GOD THEREFORE MUST IN HIS COVENANTAL RIGHTEOUSNESS REVERSE SUCH A DEATH WITH ABUNDANT GLORY AND A STUPENDOUS GIFT: THE HOLY SPIRIT! [4/12/09]