We also have to remember that the gospel is relevant to the rest of our lives, not just the moment of regeneration. It's a past thing, yeah, but it also affects our growth as believers (sanctification) and our future with Christ in heaven (our glorification). All of our salvation is from and through God--which is the gospel. :)

John O., I'm not sure I get your comment in relation to my post. Are you agreeing, disagreeing, saying "yes, but"?
Not sure.
I like what you said, though, so to the extent to which you think it is a correction of my thoughts, I might ask that you see my thoughts within the context of all my posts on this subject.

Which brings me to...

Manders:
Yep.
In my post "The Full Gospel" I explore pretty much exactly what you're saying.
I agree with you, and I hope that this single post won't be considered my entire thoughts on what the Gospel is. I just think too many people leave the sin out. But you can't have the salvation story without sin, and you can't have new life without dying to self.

Jen, thanks.

if we are willing to employ poetic imagination and tell the story afresh. That's the kind of gospel preaching I am hungry to hear.

I say Amen to this.
Remember my "The Call to Discipleship: An Invitation to the Story"? -- http://www.thinklings.org/index.php?p=1256&more=1&c=1
I recall that you appreciated it (and I appreciated your appreciation ;-).

Manders - Evidently Jared thinks we haven't derailed him yet. Got any fighting words on Osteen so we can get a real dust-up going? ;O)

Jared - I skimmed the 'full gospel' post before I posted my first comment, and I applaud what you're doing there.

I took to heart your quote about the gap between the church and its theological heritage and the implications for 'gospel preaching'. I view my comment as building on what you're saying and pointing out some of the challenges involved given our cultural context. I'll try not to be so enigmatic in my endorsements of your ideas. ;O) My only clarification, probably needless, was to be sure we understand that the sin-repentance-faith complex, though important to gospel preaching, is not the gospel. Sin is context for the gospel; repentance and faith are responses to it.

Ellen, without saying whether I agree or disagree with Wright, I will say that I think I get what he's saying well enough in that quote. Your summation of it, however, has me a little confused. Your final sentence doesn't seem to accurately sum up what you've quoted of Wright so much as it seems to be a conclusion you're making about his views based on it.

How does the gospel is the announcement that the crucified and risen Jesus of Nazareth is Israel's Messiah and the world's Lord = declaring the Gospel (the announcement) brings about repentance and faith, but the call to repentance is not the Gospel?

Basically, I don't see Wright in this instance denying that Paul didn't teach justification or faith, only that those things, strictly speaking, aren't the defintion of "the gospel." So I don't see how his words logically result in your conclusion. Unless I'm misreading you (which is entirely possible).

I just finished Jesus and the Victory of God yesterday. Great stuff, I'd say.
Wright goes to great lengths to demonstrate that repentance and forgiveness of sins were, in their historical/Jewish context, about the return of God's people from exile.

As a Calvinist, I enjoyed fitting these views into the Reformed concept of election. In the same way, I enjoy pointing out that the lost sheep was not a goat until the shepherd found it. Neither was the lost son not his father's son before he returned.

Anyways -- stuff for a future post, I guess.
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John O., thanks for the clarification. Sorry for mucking up the works with my own misunderstanding.

I think where folks like us and folks like Wright may most differ is in our "nutshell" defintions of the gospel. But I would hope that neither of us would really believe the gospel can be summed up in a nutshell.
If I had to try, I'd venture to say that for Wright, the good news in a nutshell is that the kingdom of God has arrived in the work and person of Jesus Christ.

Where we start taking different trails is when we start exploring the details.
Wright does not deny the need for repentance or faith or the presence of sin.
And his emphasis on the corporate features of election and forgiveness, while outside the comfort zones of good Reformed believers like me, isn't heresy or anything.

How Osteen would fit into this, I don't know. The primarily problem with him, as I see it, is that there's not much of a theology there to examine. I have no idea what his view is in a nutshell, and as far as I can tell, even if we and Wright favor different nuts, Osteen seems to be more of a fruit or legume man.

I would have to agree with Jonathan Wilson's quote. I think there is huge chasm now between theology and the church if by the church we mean the practices of most of the people in the pews and in many cases in the ministry.

I'm no expert by any stretch of the imagination. I was raised with almost a total ignorance of theology except for the revivalist who came once in a while with his huge charts and tried to scare us into heaven before it was too late.

I'm told that the Apostle's Creed was printed in the back cover of the church hymnal but I don't recall seeing it or hearing it read.

I've thought for a long time that many people who consider themselves Christians have things precisely backwards. It has been my observation that many church "attendees" get together with their friends at church and talk about stuff that happened during the week at work or at home or TV shows and whatnot. And in a community there should be some room for that. But I think we should let our life as Christians spill out into the other areas of life such as work and home instead of our homelife spilling over our Christian practice.

I think back to the Keith Green song "They Don't Believe In Me Anymore" about people and society from the perspective of Satan. I'm sure the enlightenment to some extent is to blame as well. Modern social behaviorists with the environmental influences or parental influences. We as a society have discounted the idea of evil and sin. "If it feels good, do it". "Do it until it hurts." This is the beginning of narcissism which is what brought Satan down.

If we have no evil or sin, what do we need a Savior for?

I just keep thinking about the Greeks and how philosophy was taught at the elementary school level along with rhetoric.

This is why it is so important for us to bring up our children in the ways of the Lord.

Err has occured. We have to get on our knees and pray for God's help and wisdom and forgiveness so that we might be able to reverse the decline.

This probably doesn't really touch on what you were trying to get at and probably takes the thread way way off. Probably doesn't even make any sense. For that I'm sorry. This is just where and how I see things now.

Please feel free to give me some feedback as I continue to muddle my way through this journey.

Brian, your insights are always welcome here. If anything else, you put a real "face" on the theoreticals around here. It's easy to just throw out disembodied thoughts and do hypothetical theology; knowing folks like you are doing the walkiing folks like me are talking is an inspiration and an ecouragement.
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Andy, what exactly are you wanting to discuss?
Feel free to go to this Predestination/Will thread -- http://www.thinklings.org/index.php?p=448&more=1&c=1 -- and ask questions or otherwise start up a convo. I promise to join you provided I feel qualified to respond.

Jared - Brian in Fresno's benediction (much appreciated)makes me wonder where the thinklings are with traditions like the Christian Year and, as it's timely, Lent. Cards out, I've been a big advocate of the Christian Year in my free church/believers' church tradition. I wonder what the Baptist pastors of your number would say?

I guess you could just say that I just don't understand Calvinism. Especially since I was a part of the Free Will denom for the past 7 or 8 years. Calvinism was an evil doctrine in the eyes of many there...

Also, I don't see a big difference between Reformed Theology and Calvinism. But that may be a result of the former.

I suppose I'll just round me up a copy of Sproul's book -- whom I admire and respect, BTW, and check it out on my own. As I know that this book was very influential in Rod's life. Books that have that must really have something to say.

And besides, I need some fresh perspectives on Scripture. I've basically been told what to believe and when I chose to think on my own, a with hunt ensued...

More jewels from McLaren:

In the old world, our spiritual heroes were similarly proprietary. The Methodists would say, "John Wesley is ours; you can't have him!" The Presbyterians would respond, "That Arminian? We wouldn't want him! John Calvin is our man!" "Calvin?" the Lutherans would reply, "He was just Robin to our Batman, Martin Luther! There's a real hero for you!" Meanwhile, the Roman Catholics would rise from their couch and join the fray: "And what about St. Francis? Or Mother Teresa?" "Well," the Baptists respond, "we do have Billy Graham." The Mennonites, never too quick to interrupt, now offer, "Then there is Menno Simons..."(Some devotees of televangelism start whispering, "Who? Menno? What kind of name is that?" They have been strangely silent through all this and were about to mention their favorite toupeed evangelist, but then thought the better of it.)

In the new church we will realize that, like Paul and Apollos in the early church, all these heroes are our heroes. And transition zone leaders like Billy Graham and Bill Hybels and Mother Teresa are teaching us that it's not only yesterday's heroes who form our common heritage, but today's heroes also. Together they will be invaluable assets in our common Christian tradition ont he other side.

McLaren makes a good point about the "proprietary" nature of our spiritual and theological heroes. I just hope he's not slamming their great contributions to Christian thought. We stand on the shoulders of giants.

We also stand on the shoulders of a midget or two, but at least they let us stand on their shoulders to see a little farther.

John O., I'm glad Shrode answered. I wasn't sure how well my response would go over. I've never observed Lent or any of the other annual holidays of the liturgical tradition. I grew up Southern Baptist and am now a non-denominationalist, but I do concede that as my theology grows more Reformed, I'm opening up more to such things.
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Andy, I wish you well on your theological journey.
I grew up with default positions, as well, and while alternatives weren't exactly bad-mouthed, they weren't really "mouthed" at all. I grew up a free-willer and had no idea what Calvinism was. I grew up a dispensational pretribulational premillennialist and had no idea there were actually other serious options.

It wasn't until my senior year of high school, hanging out with Thinklings Bird and Blo, that I started to make my theology my own.
Figuring out what you really believe can be a fun and exciting and also an uncomfortable and disconcerting time. But God always honors those who aspire to be more faithful to His Word, who want to believe what the Bible says, not merely what they've always been told it says.

If you have any Calvinist/Reformed questions, feel free to ask. And our resident Free Will Baptist, Pastor Kenny Panduku, can chime in, as well, trying to bring you back to shore should you stray too far into Calvinist waters. ;-)

Andy, I tried to comment over at your blog, and got blocked by the spaminator. Aaaargh. :)

Shrode -

I'm all for recovering church tradition. I must say that in practice, though, it's hard to overcome the free church aversion to being told what to do. (It's own tradition. :) I don't think that in an effor to recover the Christian year, and use liturgy, that we should become slaves to it however. It's a difficult balance.

A friend of mine, a priest at an episcopal church nearby, told me when we were discussing their use of the lectionary that he would have to get permission from his bishop to change one of the scheduled readings. He was encouraging in my efforts to introduce our congregation to some of the riches of the Christian Year, but he offered some cautions as well. That 'balance' you're speaking of.

I think free church traditions that are open to its use can have the best of both worlds. We have done some lectionary preaching here, but we were free to be flexible and engage the tradition creatively.

Another thing use of the lectionary encouraged us to do was to recommit to the public reading of scripture. There are some Bible churches where you almost never hear the Bible read publically.

Paul said:
I'm frankly at a loss as to how that is supposed to be different than something like observing Lent. Tradition is the living faith of dead men. Traditionalism is the dead faith of living men. Much of the free church is missing the former and mired in the latter. I think we would do well to recover our heritage. But that is hard work, for sure.

Wonderful statement there Paul.

I found it interesting that while the church that I was brought up in didn't follow the "Christian Calendar" Pagans do. Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Carnival in Rio and many other places. I understand that Carnival is translated as Farewell to Meat. Fat Tuesday as a last chance to wallow in sin before Lent. The cafeteria where I work has fish on Fridays. This is at a Newspaper. Even growing up Protestant Nazarene we had fish on Friday. Yet we didn't observe anything else of the "Christian Calendar".

I tend to like scheduled readings of the Bible as something written down and scheduled will take you places you might not otherwise go in the Bible.

I'm currently attending an Episcopal church and we have readings from the Psalms, Old Testament, New Testament and the Gospels in every service. The lectionary has the same emphasis on four readings each day that follows a theme from the four different areas of the Bible.

For me there is a richness there that had been missing before.

Anastasia, your last three paragraphs make some might presumptuous assumptions about the commenters in this thread.
Who said anything about not liking being told what to do? Who said anything about preferring his own "whims"?
And your last sentence seems out of place in this particular thread. Why you felt the need to apply your strong negative feelings about protestantism to the folks here sounds a bit like you you you, if you ask me.

But I'm glad we have folks like you who are ready to set folks like us straight.
Have a good weekend.

Anastasia,

I did not say that Lent was cute and it is nice that 40 days was chosen by man, not God. And Lent most certainly should not be 40 days. I understand the symbolism. It is my firmly held belief based upon what I have read in the Bible that God wants more than symbolism. In fact Jesus resisted symbolism throughout His ministry and didn't have very kind things to say about it.

I've talked to people who have given up cake for Lent. The cafeteria serves fish on Friday during Lent. I know kids that have given up chocolate for Lent. This may be all well and good but it is at best meaningless. What does God care that we have given up cake or chocolate? What does God care that we eat fish on Friday?

God says in His word the Holy Bible that He wants us to give up *ourselves*. And not just for a 40 day period!

The Bible says that the sacrifice of a contrite heart God will not turn away.

THE POINT is to give up ourselves for the REST OF OUR LIVES so the for us to live is Christ.

ANYTHING LESS IS FLOWERY. And dare I say meaningless and/or sadly mistaken.

I am following the lectionary daily just as you are. I like it very much. It gets me into areas of the Bible that many don't ordinarily go. I like the themes that the daily readings follow. However, who ever deveolped the lectionary lo those many years ago, if I am following them, is telling me what to read and on what days to read it.

Hope you have a good weekend Anastasia.