E-Book, Englisch, 300 Seiten
ISBN: 978-0-8308-9693-6
Verlag: InterVarsity Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)
Kelly M. Kapic (PhD, King's College London) is professor of theological studies at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia. He is the author or editor of numerous books including A Little Book for New Theologians, God So Loved He Gave, Communion with God, Mapping Modern Theology, Sanctification, and Pocket Dictionary of the Reformed Tradition.
Autoren/Hrsg.
Weitere Infos & Material
Introduction
While there is nothing new under the sun, different seasons do make us sensitive to changes in our environment. When winter dawns our attention turns to jackets, scarves and gloves; when spring arrives the renewed warmth of the sun beckons us outside. On cue, the seasons come and go and we would be foolish to treat them all the same. Each needs our attentiveness in due course, as each has a particular power over our lives and calls for us to respond accordingly. Similarly, the church often lives through different doctrinal seasons. With the faith, we embrace the truth of God in all its varied theological realities, but inevitably there are periods when one truth requires our renewed consideration. At times we discover we have neglected or distorted a biblical truth, and the result is similar to realizing you are trying to live through winter in your shorts and T-shirt. Sure, it can be done, but it is certainly not a healthy way to exist. In recent decades debates about justification have dominated the attention of many Protestants. While at times the cool winds of that season can still blow with great power, there are indications that a new season, with new challenges, is at hand. Evangelicals in particular demonstrate strong signs of a growing need to revisit the topic of sanctification. Fresh concern about this vital theological locus is surfacing, which is wonderful since this is where the church so often lives and breathes. Set free from the dominion of sin, “saints” are set apart for kingdom purposes: as God is holy, so he has called his people holy and promises to renew them in the image of his Son. In a way this is a simple idea. Yet, as will become apparent in the essays that follow, the topic of sanctification is profoundly intertwined with all manner of other topics, beyond simply its contested relationship to justification. Although justification remains a key idea that can never be left behind, one must also learn to appreciate how sanctification relates to ethics, union with Christ, ecclesiology, adoption, eschatology and so on. Evangelicalism appears to be in a season of struggling with how best to think about sanctification. What is the relationship between “faith” and human responsibility? How might human agency relate not only to questions of God’s saving grace but also to the way he sustains and preserves us by his grace? Does effort undermine the role of faith? How does all of this relate to our creaturely existence as it is fundamentally empowered by the Spirit? How do we understand the promises of God as we live in the eschatological tension of the now and the not yet? At the more popular level we see mistrust and misunderstanding perpetuated. For some, the temptation is to reduce the gospel to moral improvement, while for others, human effort appears irrelevant—if not downright antithetical—to the Christian life. On the one hand, a number of prominent voices have emphatically focused their message on the “gospel,” by which some tend to mean narrowly “justification by faith alone.” Such voices have at times appeared to provide balm to wounded souls; too many have labored under the suffocating weight of certain forms of rigid fundamentalism that reduced the gospel to a list of oppressive rules. To be told over and over of God’s unflinching love and grace, of your secure position as declared righteous because of Christ’s righteousness, can be both liberating and invigorating to such anguished listeners. On the other hand, some raise the concern that such a perspective, if left undeveloped, might actually risk perverting grace rather than fully proclaiming it. They worry that if in the process of declaring the “good news” we end up belittling the significance of human will and agency, we are not ultimately liberating people; we might be undermining the fullness of gospel life. Not only is the believer set free from the condemning power of sin, but they are also set free to love and serve others, to grow and to flourish under God’s care. A growing multitude echoes this renewed emphasis on personal piety, holiness and justice concerns even as it has welcomed renewed exploration on the topic of human agency. While many of the representative voices on both sides of this come from the Reformed tradition, this conversation is being engaged in by a much larger audience, including many across the spectrum of evangelicalism. Unfortunately, much of the current conversation is only taking place at the more popular level. In this book, we offer something a bit different. It is not intended as a direct engagement with those particular popular authors, but rather provides some “outside” perspective from theologians who are nevertheless also deeply concerned with the Protestant doctrine of sanctification (and justification!). Representing a good portion of the breadth of the Reformed tradition, these scholars gathered in Edinburgh a number of years ago to offer extended reflections on sanctification. Most of the essays in this book grew out of that Edinburgh Dogmatics Conference. No attempt has been made to provide a unified perspective on sanctification here—we are not presenting some new school of thought or anything like that, as some of the subtle disagreements even within this volume indicate. Instead, this is an opportunity to explore the doctrine of sanctification; offer various proposals that might stimulate further thought and discussion; and also hopefully encourage pastoral reflection that is biblically, theologically and historically informed. It is our great hope that these essays by ecclesial-minded scholars might stimulate and foster this growing discussion. Beginning and ending with ecclesial concerns, this volume opens with a homily and closes with theological and pastoral meditations: we aim to place this discussion squarely within the life of the church, even if at times it can appear somewhat technical or philosophical. The following brief reviews of the essays in this volume aim to give potential readers a survey of the work, hopefully orienting them to some of the directions in which the discussion will move. Derek Tidball’s homily on holiness as the restoration of God’s image combines careful exegesis with pastoral wisdom. Using Colossians 3:5-17 as a lens for understanding what it means for a believer to be holy, he proposes that the meaning of holiness in this passage is threefold: to have a Christlike character, to have a Christ-renewed mind and to belong to a Christ-renewed community. Holiness is relational because the church is the place where a new habitus is cultivated, where the image of God is restored. Richard Lints opens up the first section by addressing the relationship between sanctification and faith, and how this relationship is similar to and different from justification and faith. Eschewing any simple dichotomy between sanctification and justification, Lints suggests that faith is just as operative in sanctification as it is in justification: both are “exterior”; that is, sanctification is just as much dependent on divine grace as justification. In this way, the law in sanctification functions sapientially for the believer, rather than judicially. Sanctification is not primarily about moral progress but about the Spirit’s restoration of human desires and worship. Although Henri Blocher’s essay has close affinities to Lints’s, Blocher advances the discussion by providing nuanced definitions and a fresh discussion of law and obedience, as well as carefully navigating the relationship between faith and human agency. After providing a sound introduction to sanctification’s key motifs and to the basic questions surrounding the relationship between justification, sanctification and faith, Blocher argues that sanctification is by faith because sanctification occurs in Christ and requires the renewed believer continually to adhere to a person outside of herself. But sanctification by faith is different from justification by faith in that sanctification is progressive and incremental, involving work and response. The works involved, however, are not “meritorious” in any sense, for Blocher maintains the monergistic givenness of holiness by the Spirit in sanctification, just as in justification. Brannon Ellis hopes to enrich conversations between sanctification and justification by considering the place of union with Christ in sanctification, especially in terms of the communion of the saints. Ellis argues that to be made new by Christ is inextricably bound to being “in” Christ, which in turn is inextricably bound to belonging to the church. In doing this, he does not collapse soteriology and ecclesiology into one another, but emphasizes the inseparability of the new covenant membership with the mystical union. In this respect, rather than seeing union with Christ as holding a particular place on the ordo salutis, it spans the ordo’s outworking of redemption from beginning to end. Bruce McCormack’s essay is historically centered, comparing the theologies of John Wesley and Karl Barth and exploring their respective contributions to the doctrine of sanctification. At first glance this might look like an odd pairing, but McCormack insightfully shows how Barth’s notion of sanctification, though it differs philosophically from Wesley’s, is not far from Wesley in that they both affirm the possibility—indeed, the actuality—of Christian perfection now. For Barth, of course, this Christian perfection is different from Wesley’s in that Barth argues that perfection is not possible within a person herself, but it is...
