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NASB | Romans 10:7 or 'WHO WILL DESCEND INTO THE ABYSS?' (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead)." |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Romans 10:7 or, 'WHO WILL DESCEND INTO THE ABYSS?' that is, to bring Christ up from the dead [as if we had to be saved by our own efforts, doing the impossible]." [Deut 30:12, 13] |
Subject: Church of the Word or Word of the Church |
Bible Note: "The Reformers called this 'enthusiasm' (literally, 'God-within-ism') because it made the external Word of Scripture subservient to the inner word supposedly spoken by the Spirit today within the individual or the church. In 2 Corinthians 3, Paul's letter-Spirit contrast refers to the law apart from the gospel as a 'ministry of death' and the gospel as the Spirit's means of justifying and regenerating sinners. Gnostics, enthusiasts, and mystics throughout the ages, however, have interpreted the apostle's terms as a contrast between the text of Scripture ('letter') and inner spiritual knowledge ('spirit'). "If only it were that easy to identify the 'two sects' in our day. Tragically, 'enthusiasm' has become one of the dominant ways of undermining the sufficiency of Scripture, and it is evident across the spectrum. Rome has consistently insisted that the letter of Scripture requires the living presence of the Spirit speaking through the Magisterium. Anabaptists and Pietists have emphasized a supposedly immediate, direct, and spontaneous work of the Spirit in our hearts apart from creaturely means. Enlightenment philosophers and liberal theologians -- almost all of whom were reared in Pietism -- resurrected the radical Anabaptist interpretation of 'letter' versus 'spirit.' 'Letter' came to mean the Bible (or any external authority), while 'spirit' was equivalent not to the Holy Spirit but to our own inner spirit, reason, or experience. By the mid-twentieth century, the synods and general assemblies even of denominations historically tied to the Reformation began to speak of the Scriptures as an indispensable record of the pious experiences, reflections, rituals, beliefs, and lives of saints in the past, while what we really need in this hour is to 'follow the Spirit' wherever he/she/it may lead us. And we now know where this spirit has led these erstwhile churches; but it is the spirit of the age, not the Spirit of Christ, that has taken them there. "William Placher finely described this broad tendency in modern faith and practice as the 'domestication of transcendence.' In other words, it is not that revelation, inspiration, and authority are denied, but that the surprising, disorienting, and external voice of God is finally transformed into the 'relevant,' uplifting, and empowering inner voice of our own reason, morality, and experience. "Such domestication of transcendence means that the self—or the 'community' (whatever name it goes by) -- is protected from the surprising, disorienting, and judging speech of our Creator. Yet this also means that we cannot be saved, since faith comes by hearing God speak his Word of salvation in his Son (Rom. 10:17). This is not something that bubbles up within us, either as pious individuals or as the holy church, but as a Word that comes to us. It is not a familiar Word, but a strange and unsettling speech that strips us of our moral pretenses, overturns our most intuitive assumptions, disturbs our activistic programs. Basically, we are told to stop talking to ourselves as if we were hearing the voice of God. Through the lips of other sinful messengers, we are put on the receiving end of our identity. We do not discover our 'higher selves' but are told who we really are: treasonous image-bearers of God; we do not find our bearings 'in Adam' toward a fuller sense of inner peace and security but are driven out of ourselves to Christ, who clothes us in His righteousness. ... "While the church is not the master of the text, it is the amphitheater in which the Word creates the reality of which it speaks, the place where a valley of dry bones becomes a resurrected community (Ezek. 37). Just as we come to God with empty hands to receive Christ in salvation, we come to his Word as hearers rather than as judges and lords. Yet even this emptying of our hands is the judging and liberating work of a God who is too gracious to let us have the last word." --Michael S. Horton from his essay "Church of the Word or Word of the Church?" |
Down View Branch | ID# 243322 | ||
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