| Point |
Simon's View |
| ❑ Rediscovering the lost message |
|
| ❑ Familiarity with Jesus has bred contempt in society at large |
Agree |
| Dallas Willard: "Presumed familiarity of Jesus and his message has led to unfamiliarity, unfamiliarity has led to contempt, and contempt has led to profound ignorance". |
| ❑ The church has not lived up to its responsibility to carry the gospel |
Agree |
| ❑ Many Christians feel like Truman in the Truman show - feel the church's teaching doesn't add up to the perfection of Jesus |
Disagree, most Christians don't think about it |
| ❑ "Church has become a barren and unfulfilling experience, which fails to address, let alone answer, life's deepest questions and concerns" |
Slightly disagree |
| ❑ The Church has failed to narrow the gap between the formulated, polished message and everyday life. |
Agree |
| ❑ We have conflicting elements in our faith: we tell of suffering, but experience wealth, talk about healing while friends die, etc. We have lost the big picture |
Disagree; there is no grand unified theology |
| ❑ The central message of Jesus is "The Kingdom of God is available to everyone through me" |
Strongly agree |
| ❑ We need to contextualise Jesus' message in the 1C setting before recontextualizing it to ours. |
Strongly agree |
| ❑ The "quest for the real Jesus" presumes that Jesus is lost; if he isn't, how sure are we that we know the real, real Jesus? |
Agree |
| ❑ Looking for the real Jesus does not deny the centrality of Scripture - it's only through Scripture that we can look for the real Jesus. |
Strongly agree |
| ❑ The Kingdom Has Come! |
|
| ❑ Does the Church really know God as lover of the poor, the orphan, the widow and the foreigner? Or is our God "tribal", nationalistic or the lover of only the rich, industrious, well-spoken and healthy? |
Agree |
| ❑ Jesus' task was to free people from tribal ideas of God and include the downtrodden from society into the Kingdom of God. |
Strongly agree |
| ❑ 1C Palestinian understanding of the KoG was autonomy, rebuilding the temple and destruction of Israel's enemies. |
Correct |
| ❑ Jesus cut across all of the Kingdom movements at the time, declaring the Kingdom through him. |
Correct |
| ❑ He also declared that the Kingdom was available for the whole world. |
Incorrect, and Chalke has no Scriptural reference at this point... |
| ❑ Jesus' ministry was to remove the boundaries to entry of the KoG. |
Not proven at this point in the text |
| ❑ The central point of the Good Samaritan story is that the untouchable Samaritan was the man's neighbour. |
Agree |
| ❑ Matthew's reference to the Kingdom of Heaven is not a "heavenly" concept but an expectation of a worldly reality. |
Half-correct. Matthew uses "Heaven" to follow Jewish idiom in avoiding saying "God". |
| ❑ When Jesus talks about the KoG, he's talking about an immediate reality. |
Strongly agree |
| ❑ "We live with the idea that the gospel's chief aim is to make us fit for heaven, when in reality Jesus' message is focused on making us citizens of the KoG today." |
Slightly disagree; not an either-or issue, a both-and. |
| ❑ Jesus' message is about a faith to live, love, work and play by today. |
Strongly agree |
| ❑ "If we think of the gospel only as a means by which people get to heaven, then we are misrepresenting and missing the major thrust of the message of Jesus" |
Strongly agree |
| ❑ God's "shalom" offering is about equipping a person to deal with suffering and loss and enjoy life's benefits |
Slightly agree |
| ❑ The promise of the kingdom is of abundant life to the oppressed and marginalized. |
Strongly agree |
| ❑ Now for some "good" news |
|
| ❑ The religion of Christianity is seen by many as bad news, not good news. |
Slightly agree |
| ❑ The gospel has become one of judgement, not of social and spiritual liberation. |
Slightly agree; and it's all the fault of reductionism |
| ❑ The currently proclaimed gospel is a faith to die by, not to live by. |
Slightly agree |
| ❑ John 3:17 should be as well-known as John 3:16 |
Strongly agree |
| ❑ Jesus's ministry demonstrated love and healing to the sick, hungry, untouchable and downtrodden, throughout his life. |
Correct |
| ❑ "God is love" is the foundation of the Kingdom |
Strongly agree |
| ❑ The discovery that God really loves you is not a simple one; it is of such huge import that it takes a long, long time to fully assimilate. |
Strongly agree |
| ❑ In the popular mind, the God of the Bible is, "a sadistic monster, a powerful and spiteful punisher of people who are having a tough enough time on earth as it is. All this while he stay in heaven out of harm's reach." |
Slightly agree; the public certainly haven't grasped that love is the totality of God's being. |
| ❑ The classical gods were not capable of love, but were arbitrary and invulnerable to pain. Similar ideas are in many native cultures. |
Correct |
| ❑ Since the God of Israel so identified with His people, when they went to war (sometimes unnecessarily) so did He; this lead to the picture of Him as violent and vengeful. |
Slightly disagree |
| ❑ God demonstrated Himself in terms of love, but the people understood Him almost exclusively in terms of power. |
Slightly agree; the heros of faith got it right, but that's why they're heros of faith... |
| ❑ The big picture of the OT demonstrates that God's love for His people motivates all His actions |
Strongly agree |
| ❑ God's foundation of Israel and His continued support of them has been a purely arbitrary, unmerited demonstration of unconditional love. |
Strongly agree |
| ❑ The Law needs to be understood as part of the covenant of love between Himself and Israel. |
Strongly agree |
| ❑ The Law means "I know what's best for you, I love you, trust me, and don't do stupid stuff because it'll mess you up." |
Strongly agree |
| ❑ The Law is love. |
Strongly agree |
| ❑ "An eye for an eye" is misrepresented as being about retaliation, when indeed it sets safe and just limits for punishment, to build up society. |
Correct |
| ❑ The Church has failed to communicate the love of God. |
Strongly agree |
| ❑ Not even the creeds of the church declare that God is love! |
Strongly agree; although "For He is good, and He loves mankind!" in the Orthodox litany always makes me cry. |
| ❑ Too much Gospel preaching has been like Jonathan Edward's "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" |
Slightly agree - but note that even if Edwards was a successful evangelist, that was due to the grace of God and not his words! |
| ❑ Thankfully, we're not quite that bad any more; but the world still thinks we are. |
Slightly agree |
| ❑ Council of Chalcedon dismissed the idea that God can suffer, as heretical. |
Correct. See also Kitamori's theology of the pain of God. |
| ❑ Westminster Confession says that God is "without passions". |
Correct. Sadly. |
| ❑ To be faith, this has been questioned by Barth, Bonhoeffer and Moltmann. |
Correct. |
| ❑ To love is to suffer, and that goes for God too. |
Strongly agree; see the prophets |
| ❑ The reason Moses wasn't allowed to see the face of God was not because he would be inflamed by God's holiness, but because he would be devastated by God's pain. |
Slightly disagree |
| ❑ God's holiness is His love, and hence His pain. |
Disagree |
| ❑ We have distorted the meaning of the word "love", so speaking of God as love is now difficult. |
Strongly agree |
| ❑ Jesus deliberately drops the passage from Isaiah 61 about the day of vengeance. |
Disagree; quotations from Scripture in NT context always call to mind their full context in the hearer's mind, since they had memorized the whole thing. |
| ❑ Jesus suspends the Law, in the case of the woman taken in adultery, because "judging and condemning her would not achieve anything". |
Slightly agree |
| ❑ Jesus chose to focus on God's love rather than her sin - but the command to not sin anymore was meant with the same force |
Slightly agree |
| ❑ God's anger is a consequence of His love, and is therefore stored up until there is no other way to reconcile man to Him. |
Agree |
| ❑ The Bible never defines God as anger, power or judgement - only in terms of love. |
Slightly disagree. Need to check. |
| ❑ "We should never speak of any other attribute of God outside the context of His love" |
Strongly agree |
| ❑ The parables of Luke 15 speak primarily of the pain and anguish of loss, and the joy at return. |
Strongly agree |
| ❑ "He has no desire to punish people. They have already been punished excessively by their own inner and outer waywardness" - Nouen |
Agree |
| ❑ Jesus was less interested in original sin after the fall than in original goodness before it. Jesus seeks out that original goodness in everyone. |
Agree |
| ❑ Augustinian doctrines that everything in the world is corrupt and fallen still pervade. The Latins followed this, Orthodox think the seed of God is in all His creation. |
Correct |
| ❑ The promised prince of peace |
|
| ❑ The "sleeping baby" picture of Jesus' birth has become comfortable and sentimental |
Slightly agree |
| ❑ Instead, the promise of the birth of the saviour was a major political trauma |
Correct |
| ❑ Israel's hope of national deliverance was at an all-time high, and everyone wanted the Messiah to come to free them. |
Correct |
| ❑ The Jewish Messiah was not expected to be a divine figure |
Correct |
| ❑ The Life Of Brian is a reasonably accurate satire of 1C Palestine |
Agree |
| ❑ The KoG is all about status reversal. |
Agree |
| ❑ The amazing thing about Mary was precisely that God chose a poor, illiterate, outcast Jewish teenager to bear the Incarnate God. |
Strongly Agree |
| ❑ Mary's song reminds us about the status reversal of the KoG. |
Agree |
| ❑ God's Kingdom is about inclusion - drawing the marginalized into his nativity narrative. |
Slightly agree |
| ❑ Let the revolultion begin |
|
| ❑ Jesus has gone from being a social revolutionary (in his Incarnation) to being a conservative, status-quo institution (in his second Incarnation as the Church) |
Agree |
| ❑ We get the Christianity we deserve; the Western Church is tame and stale because its message is tame and stale |
Slightly agree |
| ❑ People flocked to Jesus instead of the other rabbis and teachers because his teaching was distinctive |
Correct |
| ❑ They did this despite Jesus's stigma of having been associated with sinners; the religious leaders applied guilt by association. |
Correct |
| ❑ Jesus hung about with all the "wrong people", and healed and restored them. |
Correct |
| ❑ Jesus' healing of the woman with a discharge showed that power was going from the clean to the unclean, not uncleanliness from the unclean to the clean. |
Strongly agree |
| ❑ "Holiness is contagious in Jesus' minstry" - Wink |
Strongly agree |
| ❑ The Beatitudes were declarations of blessing to people who were already poor, hungry, crying, persecuted, etc. |
Slightly agree |
| ❑ To use the Beatitudes as a "spiritual checklist" is salvation by works. (Or at least, blessing by works) Jesus blessed by grace. |
Slightly agree |
| ❑ "To what extent does the Church model the spiritually and socially inclusive message of Jesus? Are we liberators of excluded people or simply another dimension of their oppression" |
|
| ❑ "Our quest is how to tell the non-person that God is love." - Gutiérrez |
Agree |
| ❑ In the West, we cannot truly call ourselves poor - but on the other hand, poverty is not only an economic measure. |
Strongly agree |
| ❑ "Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible povery" - Mother Teresa |
Agree |
| ❑ Matthew's "the poor" and Luke's "the poor in spirit" both speak to the same cultural concept of poverty. |
Agree |
| ❑ Jesus believed in "the carrot, not the stick" approach to sin - telling the people that they were blessed, salt and light of the earth |
Agree |
| ❑ Jesus brought people into the KoG first, then helped them to live better lives |
Strongly agree |
| ❑ Jesus rejects the warped version of the Law, the exclusivist version, but fulfills the Law of love, the covenant between God and his people |
Strongly agree |
| ❑ Right here, right now |
|
| ❑ When Jesus asked "is it easier for me to tell this crippled man his sins are forgiven, or to tell him to get up and walk", the contextual answer was that it was easier to make him walk... |
Agree |
| ❑ The Temple system was the center of 1C Jewish life |
Correct |
| ❑ The Temple was the reminder that God was amongst His people. |
Correct |
| ❑ Jesus forgiving people outside the temple system was an anarchic and seemingly blasphemous act. |
Agree |
| ❑ The Temple was the way the religious leaders and chief priests could keep people away from God; (Gentile's court, etc.) Jesus met them where they were. |
Agree |
| ❑ The moneychangers were responsible for essentially selling indulgences. |
Agree |
| ❑ God wanted forgiveness not to be paid for, but to be free |
Strongly disagree; necessity of sacrifice |
| ❑ Jesus shut down the temple system by overturning the gatekeepers, then pronounced healing and forgiveness himself. |
Agree |
| ❑ In the parable of the Prodigal Son, the father's forgiveness was free flowing and prepared from day one. |
Agree |
| ❑ "When it comes to the God of the Bible there is only one kind of sin in the world - forgiven sin." |
Slightly disagree |
| ❑ Jesus' command to the healed leper to present himself at the Temple is a kind of "signing-off" marking his reinclusion into society |
Agree |
| ❑ We are convinced that Jesus is God, but we too often forget that he was human. |
Slightly disagree; we often forget that he was God, too. |
| ❑ Jesus' claims to Messiahship say nothing about divinity. |
Agree |
| ❑ Jesus' claim to divinity is his claim to equivalence with the entire Temple system with the presence of God. |
Agree |
| ❑ A New Agenda |
|
| ❑ Jesus often used the word "repent". |
Correct |
| ❑ "This is a classic occasion where we have to unlearn our normal readings of the Bible and allow the First Century itself to tell us what to hear instead" |
Strongly agree; get your Reformation Goggles off! |
| ❑ Jesus never nagged people to change their ways; he ate with them and told them about a better way to live. |
Agree |
| ❑ But we're told that Jesus told people to repent, so we have to question what we meant by that, in the context of what he actually did and said to people. |
Agree |
| ❑ The Church has always told people what not to do; it's not been so hot on telling people what God does want them to do. |
Agree |
| ❑ People want a message that includes them in it, not that excludes them from it. |
Agree |
| ❑ If Jesus' call to repentance really was about turning back to moral and religious righteousness, the Pharisees would have been all for it. |
Agree |
| ❑ The Pharisees had turned the message of God's love into a negative one of exclusion. |
Agree |
| ❑ And so have we. |
Agree |
| ❑ Religion is about reconnecting yourself to something, not disconnecting yourself from something. |
Agree |
| ❑ Jesus looked for the good in people, the distorted remnants of God's image in them |
Agree |
| ❑ The call to be perfect is a call to reflect God's character of love. |
Slightly agree |
| ❑ Loving one's enemies was practically an alien philosophy. |
Agree |
| ❑ Particularly in the context of liberating Israel from Roman rule. |
Agree |
| ❑ Jesus' message was one of non-violence opposition, in contrast to the revolutionary zealots. |
Agree |
| ❑ Augustine and Aquinas developed the Just War idea, which stands against the non-violent message of Jesus. |
Slightly agree |
| ❑ Unfortunately, violent supremacy dominates our woldviews. |
Agree |
| ❑ "Love your enemy, but kill them first" seems to be the order of the day |
Slightly agree |
| ❑ "Turning the other cheek" is a message of non-violent protest - an invitation to use the right hand to slap the right cheek, instead of backslapping, which would imply equality between the two participants. Hence "hit me again" means "acknowledge I'm your equal". |
Correct |
| ❑ This was "non-violence, but definitely not non-resistance". |
Agree |
| ❑ Similarly, "offer your cloak as well" encourages the oppressor to force the oppressed to go naked, and so inflict taboo on both. |
Slightly agree |
| ❑ Offering to carry the pack the extra mile would only get the solider in trouble from his superiors. So the soldier may have to beg the carrier not to do it! |
Correct |
| ❑ So these are parables about "imaginative and effective ways that people could take on injustice without resorting to violence". |
Not sure |
| ❑ Just one story |
|
| ❑ "We have separated what we refer to as "evangelism" from "discipleship"." |
Agree |
| ❑ "On that basis we have convinced ourselves we need two messages - the first for the outs to get them in, and the other for the ins to make sure they stay there." |
Agree |
| ❑ Terms like "Christian" and "non-Christian" miss the point - you're either heading in Jesus' direction or away from him. |
Strongly agree; and the basis of WEC's church planting strategy |
| ❑ Jesus had one message for disciple and cynic alike - "The Kingdom of God is at hand" |
Strongly agree |
| ❑ Many people who wouldn't call themselves a "Christian" are travelling in the right direction - and many who would, are not! |
Agree |
| ❑ God's work is ongoing. It is not once and for all. Every day we need to know that the Kingdom is at hand. |
Agree |
| ❑ Many people "cross the border" into Christendom without an explicit altar call and commitment. |
Agree; I'm one. |
| ❑ The idea of being "born again" has come to typify the in/out nature of Christianity |
Agree |
| ❑ Jesus only talked about it twice, both times to Nicodemus. |
Correct |
| ❑ Who was already on the way, since he'd come to seek out Jesus. |
Agree |
| ❑ We can't tell who's in and who's out. It's not our job to. |
Agree |
| ❑ For the man on the cross, all we need to do to be saved is to look to Jesus and ask for help. |
Strongly agree |
| ❑ The Church has turned one way of becoming a Christian into the only way of becoming a Christian |
Agree |
| ❑ Jesus looked for conversations, more than conversions. He just talked to people and told them what the kingdom was like. |
Agree |
| ❑ "Jesus didn't come to tell people how to become Christians. He didn't even spend his time telling people how they could join the Church. Rather, he came to show them how to be human." |
Strongly agree |
| ❑ "Salvation isn't about having the right labels; it's about becoming truly and fully human." |
Ladies and gentlemen, we have just achieved Orthodoxy. |
| ❑ The job of the Church is to inspire people to move towards Jesus; to water the seed God has planted. |
Agree |
| ❑ Guess who's coming to dinner |
|
| ❑ Many of the Gospel stories center around mealtimes, guests and invitations. |
Correct |
| ❑ Mealtimes were social statements - who you know and who you hang around with. |
Correct |
| ❑ The purity of what you ate wasn't as important as the purity of those you ate with. |
Slightly disagree; overexaggeration |
| ❑ Eating with a sinner was anathema. |
Correct |
| ❑ So Jesus did it. |
Correct |
| ❑ Jesus ministry was about breaking down ingrained cultural boundaries between the marginalized and the elite. |
Slightly agree |
| ❑ Jesus' public dining with sinners was a direct affront to Jewish mores of the day. |
Agree |
| ❑ The feeding of the five and four thousands was an amazing event in that it forced everyone who had been following Jesus to eat as one - totally destroying the purity regulations. |
Agree |
| ❑ Jesus eating with Matthew makes it worse - tax-collectors were oppressors and collaborators. |
Correct |
| ❑ God has "wonderfully low standards" - Desmond Tutu |
Strongly agree |
| ❑ Jesus was more of a prophet than a preacher - he did things, and they shocked people, and they meant stuff. |
Agree |
| ❑ The Last Supper and Jesus' service to his disciples broke all the rules of Jewish etiquette. |
Agree |
| ❑ This was the climactic moment of his work, signifying that in God's eyes, status is who you serve, not who serves you. |
Agree |
| ❑ One act, two scenes |
|
| ❑ How can you "preach Christ crucified" evangelistically at Christmas? |
|
| ❑ "Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners". Paul does not go on to say that this is through the cross, although we tend to add it in mentally. |
Agree |
| ❑ Evangelicals have majored on the cross, almost exclusively. |
Agree |
| ❑ What happened to the resurrection? |
Agree |
| ❑ The task of the Church is to preach Christ crucified. But it is also to teach Christ resurrected. |
Strongly agree |
| ❑ The crucifixion and resurrection are "two scenes of the same act". |
Agree |
| ❑ We all ware "cultural spectacles that colour the way we see the world" - and we view the cross through our post-resurrection, post-Reformation, post-modern glasses. |
Strongly agree |
| ❑ For the followers of Jesus at the time, a crucified Messiah was a failure. |
Agree |
| ❑ "The Romans wanted to get rid of Jesus because he was a nationalist Messiah, and the Jews wanted to get rid of him because he wasn't." - N T Wright |
Agree |
| ❑ The Greek "lestes", for those crucified with Christ, speaks about revolutionaries, not thieves. |
Not sure |
| ❑ "Jesus, as he hung on that cross, soaked up all of the forces of hate, rejection, pain and alienation all around him. Jesus wasn't failing as the Messiah; he was succeeding." |
Strongly agree |
| ❑ "The cross isn't a form of cosmic child abuse - a vengeful Father, punishing his Son for an offence he has not even committed". |
Strongly agree |
| ❑ "Such a concept stands in total contradiction to the statement "God is love". If the cross is a personal act of violence perpetrated by God towards humankind but borne by his Son, then it makes a mockery of Jesus' s own teaching to love your enemies and to refuse to pay evil with evil." |
Strongly agree |
| ❑ The crucifixion is an "event full of paradox". |
Agree |
| ❑ If God is omnipresent, He cannot exclude himself from creation - He must look upon sin every day. |
Agree |
| ❑ By crying "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me", Jesus was identifying with those who cry "If God is really love, where is he?" |
Agree |
| ❑ The cross stands in the center of the world to declare that God is here and that He associates with His people. |
Agree |
| ❑ The cross leads inextricably to the Resurrection. You cannot separate them. |
Strongly agree |
| ❑ When Jesus died, his disciples scattered, despondent. They really saw Jesus as being a Messianic failure. |
Correct |
| ❑ The resurrection confirms Jesus as Messiah. |
Agree |
| ❑ Jesus' death and resurrection shows that he had endured all the powers of darkness, human and satanic, and arisen victorious. |
Strongly agree |
| ❑ The resurrection not only vindicates Jesus, but also vindicates his message. |
Strongly agree |