Repentance means "change"

Last sentence of the fourth chapter: Repentance, metanoia, does not mean feeling badly about one's sins, kicking or shaming oneself for one's wrongdoing. Instead, repentance means change, and without change, without deep thoroughgoing change, one could not enter and participate in the kingdom."

There are moments when I want to say, "Okay," and then I have to back off and ask, "but how can this be?" Yes, repentance does mean change. Yes, life change ought to accompany repentance, but how can life change accompany repentance without a change of heart? And how can any rebellious, faith less human being change his own heart? This entire chapter (actually beginning with his description of the "truer" Good News) leaves me with the idea that if we just stop rebelling and relate to God everything would be just fine. Let's do a little personal behavior modification and we'll all be happy in the kingdom. Camp seems to consistently deny that there is a "heart/spirit" component of kingdom life preparation that only God in his grace can accomplish and that as a matter of divine power recreating the human heart/spirit.

Am I missing something here? Can we become citizens of the kingdom because we want to. Is it really so simple that "Jesus dealt with your sins and opened the door. You don't worry about your sins and come on in?" Not likely, I think. What do you think?

Oh, that's how you do it!

I just figured out how to post a comment to the home page and not just as a comment to someone else's post. I feel quite fulfilled at having figured this out.

Here's what I taking away from this book so far: Culture imposed on Christianity. This is bad. Christianity doesn't recognize the imposition. This is bad. If we don't abandon all that we know and start over we'll never be the kingdom of God. This is bad.

I get the Constintinian contract thing, but why does he not go farther back into covenant history and address God's institutional intent in the tabernacle and the social development of national Israel? Those roots also affect the Christian sense of spiritual identity and place.

Okay, so we think we need to control everything, for instance. Where is the accounting of the creation commandment (pre-Law) that human beings are to have dominion. You have to define dominion, not ignore it, if you want to argue that it means something other than "be in charge of." He says, "Jesus called his disciples not to get hold of empire power . . . [but] to an altogether different route of bringing about the radical change of the kingdom of God--that of servanthood." Isn't true servanthood about honor and obeying the Father, which is what Jesus always did? Wouldn't the command to stewardship have an impact in the argument at this point.

I think I'm finding some of the argumentation in this book intriguing but insufficiently developed.

I love the idea (and the fact) that Christians should be like Christ at all times in all things. That that should be considered radical thinking in Christianity is certainly disappointing. Christians should think that was normal, I would think. I like the idea (and the fact) that we should be radically different than the world, living by radically different principles, values, hopes, expectations, and statutes. But does God actually expect the church to usher in the kingdom of God, or is that not His work, and we are to live within that which he establishes?

Have we lost steam?

Having finished the book I have all sorts of things to blog about, but our contributions have really fallen off this last month. Have we lost steam? Are we still interested in this forum?

Blogger Rev

Prayer Request

Hi guys. I want to invite you to be in prayer for one of our SABA churches. This Sunday, and again on Wednesday evening, there will be important meetings that will inform the future of this congregation. At this point, I will not say which one, but ask you to pray for repentance, wisdom, and courage for the leaders and members of this church.

Thank you!

Jeff

I've finished the book! And...

I'm finished with the book now and am ready to post a gazillion things. But I'm wondering about our overall level of interest in discussion. Have we "lost steam"?

Maybe give me an idea of who's still interested in this discussion and we can go from there...

Dale, since this was originally your idea, do you have a specific vision of where you'd like this to go? Have we been asking the right questions? Your input would be great in steering us as well.

REV

Atonement fights brewing?

On page 65 (2nd ed.) under the sub heading "What 'Good News'?" Camp takes aim at penal substitutionary atonement. Something that has been going on in the scholarly world of late as well. Some (like NT Wright) are re-thinking atonement altogether. Others (like Scot McKnight) are arguing for a robust and very full golf club bag. Still others (like John Piper) are going on a seeming "heresy hunt" to defend penal substitution only.

First, where do we bloggers fit into this? Secondly, shall we join with Camp in going on the offensive against this understanding of atonement? He seems to be rooting his understanding in relational terms, redemptive terms, and Christus Victor terms.

Some have predicted that atonement understandings are the next big fight in evangelicalism. Undoubtedly biblical authority and homosexuality and other issues are down the pipe, but for now some are saying atonement could be the next big thing to divide us. Open theism v. Reformed theology came very close in the providence debates of the BGC a decade ago. Are we on the verge of another showdown?

REV

The community

I'm now into the latter stages of Camp's book on the baptizing and communing community. While he's got great theological/spiritual stuff, I'm still really really struggling with the practical steps to take to "get there." I really need him to stop being a scholar for a second and help me as a pastor to know how to move my flock in this direction.

What do the rest of y'all think about this? Has anyone finished the book? Does he get more practical?

REV

Welcoming Gary Nelson

Hey blogger experts. Let's welcome Gary Nelson who joined us just today on the SABA Pastors blog. He is new to this way of communicating, so take it easy on him! :) We are developing a good little discussion group here. Hey, encourage your other SABA friends to join us. It might take a little encouragement, but it could be worth the effort to have more voices added to the mix. Just have them email me and I'll get them started.

Blog on!

Jeff

Tozer on Topic

"The man of pseudo faith will fight for his verbal creed but refuse flatly to allow himself to get into a predicament where his future must depend upon that creed being true. He always provides himself with secondary ways of escape so he will have a way out if the roof caves in. What we need very badly these days is a company of Christians who are prepared to trust God as completely now as they know they must do at the last day."

A. W. Tozer, The Root of the Righteous

Romans 12 and Romans 13

What do we do with Romans 12 and then 13? Camp as an anabaptist-style approach wants to call on the government to embody Christian virtue, criticizing George Bush for leading the nation to war after 9/11 than leading us to prayer.

I myself heavily lean anabaptist and would have loved to see us pray and reach out rather than bomb. But that said, I'm torn by how on earth God uses governments to reward the good and punish the evil WITH THE SWORD. The tensions between Romans 12 and Romans 13 are a bit much for me.

Is the simple answer that Christians live as Romans 12 people and let the non-Christians do the dirty work of the Romans 13 world? Clearly Camp is bothered by Christians who wield the sword. It makes me uncomfortable too. But then that leaves me wondering what the alternative is for Christians - avoid working for public office, the military, the police, etc.???

REV

Four Contrasts

On p. 27 (2nd ed., paragraph that began on p. 26 with "On the other hand")... Camp gives four examples of how he sees the historical church as having drifted from the biblical church and Jesus' vision for His church:

1. Ritual replaced discipleship
2. Protection of orthodoxy replaced body of Christ as church's purpose
3. heavenly reward replaced the transformed new creation life as "salvation"
4. Christendom replaced Christ-likeness

This resonates as quite true in my experience currently. In my previous experience church planting it did not, as we set a tone contrary to these new forms

Thoughts?

REV

Lipscomb's gospel

Camp has already admitted his biases in favor of anabaptist understandings, Yoder theology and ecclesiology, and now also Lipscomb's anabaptist leanings. I appreciate that honesty in laying the cards on the table.

Page 23 (2nd ed.) states the following, "the Good News [proclaims] a kingdom that held to Jesus as its head: the kingdom of heaven as a real kingdom in the midst of time and history. It is in the world but not of the world, and thus would refuse either to submit to sectional war-making and racism, or to turn a blind eye to the needs of the poor."

This is my understanding of the NT as well. I too admit my biases in being heavily NT Wright/Greg Boyd/Stanley Hauerwas/Jim Wallis/anabaptist mushing and meshing in my approach as well. The radical mission of the kingdom has somehow been lost by the evangelicals among whom I minister. In four years of preaching and embodying the same kind of good news Camp espouses and quotes Lipscomb as having preached, I have found precious little progress. Some days I lament. Other days I am filled with hope from the Holy Spirit.

Thus far in the book I find myself enthusiastically agreeing with Camp. I don't want to beat up Jesus' bride, but I frequently find myself also saying, Jesus' bride needs a second Reformation. Thoughts? And thoughts on this gospel stated on p. 23 (2nd ed.)? Is it a gospel you proclaim? Do your congregants express such a gospel? If not, then at a minimum do they even understand such a gospel?

REV

Mere Discipleship: Radical Christianity in a Rebellious World

I picked up this book while we were wandering through the Mennonite Information Center in Lancaster, PA waiting to enter their life scale version of the Tabernacle. The subtitle is what caught my eye. I've felt challenged of late, both from Scripture and from the course of culture to wonder if there is not something more that God has for the Church, and for individual Christians, than what we are teaching or experiencing.

Personally, I believe the desire for more of God is supernaturally imposed on the believing heart as a direct result of the indwelling Holy Spirit's love for the Father and the Son. True love can never get enough of the beloved, I think. So when Scripture says that the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts, I think that that love must first and foremost be God's love and desire for God since it makes sense to me that God would love and desire God more than anything else, there being nothing of greater worthiness for love than God.

So, upon the heart redeemed by God and loved by God, there is imposed a hunger for God by the Holy Spirit. But the world acknowledges no hunger for God. The hunger is there, but it is refused, rejected, denied, dismissed, and overrun. The world rebels against the hunger for God which God built into creation ("he has put eternity in their hearts"). Too often, as I engage in the individual lives of Christians and continue in ministry in the local church, I perceive that that God-hunger dissipates when human beings satisfy their spiritual hunger with the world's vacuous sugar rather than God's substantial meat.

The idea of a "radical Christianity" intrigued me on those terms. I have encountered the phrase before, many times, but not in the context of a "rebellious world." I was hoping for a contrast of authentic Christianity and authentic worldliness. Often before, the contrast, when speaking of radical Christianity, has been between whatever the author or speaker meant by "radical Christianity" and whatever they meant by "non-radical Christianity." It was a Christian vs. Christian discussion that typical left me bored and unsatisfied. My expectation for this book is that there will be some description/definition of "rebellious world," and that that will form the backdrop for understanding "radical Christianity."

Halfway through the book now, I'm finding it interesting, but we're still dealing more with Christianity than world, but we are seeing how the world has impacted the "development" of Christianity into something that might not even ought to be called Christian.

Camp's ideas are an extension of those of one of his mentors, John Howard Yoder, who was his initial dissertation director at Notre Dame (the school, not the church.) I have not taken the time yet to Google Yoder, but a Lutheran friend of mine did, so I know the information is out there if we want to bring it into our conversation at some time.

I'm thinking to post a chapter at a time, discuss that chapter, then move to the next (and back, if necessary). Moving too far ahead and I suspect I'll lose track of the thread. I'm open to other suggestions.

Here are thoughts from the first chapter:

p. 16 "the genocide demonstrated--in graphic and horrific way--that the Western Christianity imported into the heart of Africa apparently failed to create communities of disciples."
Camp lumps all expressions of Chrisitanity in Rwanda into one category: "Western," and that category also seems to be predominantly Catholic. I would expect that Catholic theology would not create Christian communities, since there is little emphasis on personal spiritual transformation in Catholic practical theology. Does this categorization, which seems to ignore evangelical theology in mission, weaken the foundation for Camp's impending argument?

p. 16 "The proclamation of the 'gospel' has often failed to emphasize a fundamental element of the teaching of Jesus, and indeed, or orthodox Christian doctrine: 'Jesus is Lord' is a radical claim, one that is ultimately rooted in questions of allegiance, of ultimate authority, of the ultimate norm and standard for human life." This, I perceive, is the mission statement of the book, which he must now expound and apply. What do you think?

Discipleship

What is discipleship? In Jesus' "great commission" the one imperative floating in a sea of active participles (as you are going, baptizing, teaching, etc.) is "make disciples." Disciple making IS the commission of Jesus' church - among others. So... what is discipleship? What are its marks? What should we be looking for and expecting?

It seems to me one of the traditional markers in the American church is "regular Sunday attendance" and another is "involvement in a class/Bible study/small group" - but is mere presence at activities somehow magically making disciples? Were Jesus' disciples of a totally different nature than this? Were Paul's? And does a potential radical change in how we understand discipleship mean we all become like Shane Claiborne's community?

Treading we hope and joy and yet great uncertainty...

REV