About Me
- Name: shane g hubner
- Location: Perth, Australia
gen x clergyperson seeking to understand the will of god for the church i love.
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Monday, June 28, 2004
a completely new thing or just a new package for the old thing?
I think one of the tensions about the 'emerging' stuff all around the world is how much is actually 'new' or is it the case that we are just doing what everyone has done for pretty much the last 2000 years - and that is making the gospel fit the culture.
ie is it a new gospel or is it the old gospel in new wineskin?
i think the evangelicals among us and maybe others would say it is the gospel in new wineskins but i want to push them and say it really is a new word from the Lord (so to speak) and that the gospel is different.
just been reading a lecture given by david tacey (melbourne lecturer and writer. u should read his book 'reenchantment' fantastic. anyway - just found the following summary useful
"the task of religion, i believe, is to re-position itself as a vital resource for spirituality. it can no longer compete with spirituality, which is today by far the bigger force. instead of competing, it has to re-fashion itself as an aid, a support, and a contributor to the spiritual jouney. this is the only way forward, in my estimation: reliion needs to translate its language, and transform itself. it must make itself more accessible, unwrap spirit from dogma, and make it freely available to the people. to do this, it would have to translate its theology into a new language that people can understand..."
i wonder whether this translation job that tacey mentions actually changes the message?
just wondering...
ie is it a new gospel or is it the old gospel in new wineskin?
i think the evangelicals among us and maybe others would say it is the gospel in new wineskins but i want to push them and say it really is a new word from the Lord (so to speak) and that the gospel is different.
just been reading a lecture given by david tacey (melbourne lecturer and writer. u should read his book 'reenchantment' fantastic. anyway - just found the following summary useful
"the task of religion, i believe, is to re-position itself as a vital resource for spirituality. it can no longer compete with spirituality, which is today by far the bigger force. instead of competing, it has to re-fashion itself as an aid, a support, and a contributor to the spiritual jouney. this is the only way forward, in my estimation: reliion needs to translate its language, and transform itself. it must make itself more accessible, unwrap spirit from dogma, and make it freely available to the people. to do this, it would have to translate its theology into a new language that people can understand..."
i wonder whether this translation job that tacey mentions actually changes the message?
just wondering...
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C.S. Lewis blamed the disinterest in theology on theologians saying fifty years ago, “When I began, Christianity came before the great mass of my unbelieving fellow countrymen either in the highly emotional form offered by revivalists or in the unintelligible language of the highly cultured clergymen. Most men were reached by neither. My task was therefore simply that of a translator—one turning Christian doctrine, or what he believed to be such, into the vernacular, into language that unscholarly people would attend to and could understand…One thing is sure. If the real theologians had tackled this laborious work of translation about a hundred years ago, when they began to lose touch with the people (for whom Christ died), there would have been no place for me.”
I would say that the message is only changed by the vernacular when the cultural translator has little appreciation for either the message or the language or both.
I would say that the message is only changed by the vernacular when the cultural translator has little appreciation for either the message or the language or both.
Does anyone feel as if the truth is being distorted with postmodernism? The focus is less on the truth & more on the gifts & the appeal to others.
Should church be a place that we feel comfortable in? A don't ask, don't tell mentality?
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Should church be a place that we feel comfortable in? A don't ask, don't tell mentality?
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: April 3, 2007 at 4:35 AM
: April 3, 2007 at 4:35 AM<< Home
