Project Thoughts

Well, I’m still plug­ging through Per­spec­tives and strug­gling with some of the issues. First of all being the con­tex­u­al­iza­tion of the gospel. I need to real­ize that even my trans­la­tion of the Bible has dynamic equiv­a­lence, but how much is it truly con­tex­tu­al­ized? Ralph Win­ter talks about P/E-Scales (that is degrees of evan­ge­lism and pres­ence of churches), but I fail to see how much of this really makes an impact in mis­sions mobilization.

I’m read­ing a book called The Mean­ing of the Mil­len­nium: 4 Views, and it is a page turner! I mean it truly is a riv­et­ing read. I now under­stand­ing what escha­tol­ogy is truly about: The King­dom of God. Wow, what an epiphany! The book, thus far, has been largely a debate between three covenant the­olo­gians and one dis­pen­sa­tion­al­ist; but the logic seems to be (as Loraine Boet­tner argues), that if the the­o­log­i­cal foun­da­tion of dis­pen­sa­tion­al­ism is unfounded then so is all their escha­tol­ogy. I empathize with the dispensationlist’s desire to have a con­sis­tent hermeneu­tic, but stick­ing to all lit­eral or all fig­u­ra­tive robs the Bible of so much truth.

A speaker came in, name Steve Shadrach, and he talked about dis­ci­ple­ship (he is also the vision­ary behind the Trav­el­ing Team); and we were talk­ing, and I brought up the lord­ship debate between Ryrie and MacArthur. He then pro­ceeded to tell me (he went to DTS) about how close Ryrie and him got through Ryrie’s divorce. I felt so bad. I apol­o­gized to him today though.

Lastly, pol­i­tics. Yes, pol­i­tics is becom­ing an issue here again. Not a big one, but when I told some guys I voted for Kerry some weren’t happy. First of all two com­ments need to be made: (1) both can­di­dates were bad and nei­ther had the big pic­ture in focus instead their large base of con­stituents while aim­ing for the mid­dle, and (2) a lot of peo­ple make asi­nine polit­i­cal deci­sions. And those peo­ple who are so hard-headed have no desire to have any mean­ing­ful dia­log. I’m glad I left pol­i­tics (which I was much more involved in than theology/philosophy a few years ago) to doing more con­struc­tive things. It’s like peo­ple have com­plete blind­ers over their eyes. That’s why I respect my brother Perry so much, because even though he has con­vic­tions he’ll still lis­ten to the other side in a peace­ful manner.