The Good News of Christ, in one sentence, is the very first statement Jesus uttered at the start of his public ministry: That is exactly what Jonah was commissioned to proclaim according to the legend.
I find it hard to see that mission is one of the core marks of the church, considering the fact that there have been many churches throughout the centuries which did not substantially engage in mission..
Oh, I see. When the Bible doesn't support a position, we should resort to legend for support. Makes perfect sense...... Jonah 3:3-5 So Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days' journey. And Jonah began to enter into the city a day's journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them. Jonah was upset when God didn't carry through and destroy Nineveh. Do you really think Jonah had any good news in mind for them? He resented those people for the hardship he had to endure!
If it's that easy to be an Apostle with a capital "A", I think I'll take a message to Tahiti or something...
So…what’s your point exactly? Rumor has it some guy in the Bible resorted to things like parables to make his most important points. Do you recall who that was? It seems I’m in good company. The story sure ended with good news for them, against his will. That in itself is an important feature of the story. What was the point of the Jonah story? Why would it be included in the (Jewish) canon? The answers to those questions shed light on the very topics you raised. Seriously, are you even trying to engage the topic objectively, or is this all just a waste of time? I’m inclined to think the latter.
LOL. I was referring to “apostolic” as one of the four marks of the Church from the Creed. I’m not sure what point anglican74 was trying to make.
Do you have chapter and verse then to show us all that the Great Commission 'defines' the 'people of God', the ecclesia, rather than happens to be one of the New commands of the Covenant Head of the New Covenant of Grace which previously had not been expected of the 'ecclesia', 'the people of God' under the preceding terms of the Covenant of Grace. And let's have no more nonsense about it being the Covenant of Law, because it's not. Jonah's commission was to 'call out against Nineveh'. That was all. Then the word of the LORD came to Jonah the second time, saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.” (but we still are not told what that message actually was). Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's journey. And he called out, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” We can't be certain even now that this is the message God actually gave Jonah to say, (Jonah had already demonstrated a propensity to disobedience), but he said this and the Ninevites believed the message had come from God. (They had faith on God's word and believed. They were therefore saved by faith. The message itself might not have seemed good news, but it was good news to them that they had been warned of God's intentions, no other gentile nations got advance notice of eviction from God and an extension of lease when they had faith in God's word.). And the people of Nineveh believed God. (Gal,3:6-9). They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them. When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it. But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. And God said to Jonah "should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?” Now this might not be an example of eternal life being offered by God to a nation other than Israel, but it certainly is mission and 'Good News' deliverance from the consequnces of sin to a Gentile nation not under covenant to God and not having received promises as had the nation of Isreal. And before you reply that Israel's promises were only teritorial, temporal and conditional on keeping the law in every respect, the promises to Abraham were not any of those things, they were spiritual and everlasting promises and faith based. Gal,3:6-9 Matt.12:41. If the men of Nineveh will be in a position to rise up and condemn others in Jesus Christ's generation, then surely they must have been justified by faith, just as Abraham and Paul's Galatians and all of us are justified by faith. If justified they must form part of the church, 'ecclesia', 'the people of God', 'the Kingdom of Heaven'. .
I feel we are getting our knickers in a twist over mere semantics. the word we are considering is ekklesia: Dictionary Definitiong 1577. ἐκκλησία ekklēsia; from a compound of 1537 and a derivative of 2564; a calling out, i.e. (concretely) a popular meeting, especially a religious congregation (Jewish synagogue, or Christian community of members on earth or saints in heaven or both): — assembly, church. AV (118) - church 115, assembly 3: a gathering of citizens called out from their homes into some public place, an assembly an assembly of the people convened at the public place of the council for the purpose of deliberating, the assembly of the Israelites any gathering or throng of men assembled by chance, tumultuously, in a Christian sense an assembly of Christians gathered... Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church. On which rock? Look at the whole discourse. "You are the Annointed One, the Son of the Living God". On this rock is the 'ekklesia' built. I.e. on Christ, the Son of the Living God. 1 Cor.3:11. That gets Peter out of having to bear the whole weight of the church. The church's one foundation is Jesus Christ her LORD. There is none other upon which the church of Jesus Christ is built. It is built upon himself. Did Christ exist before Jesus of Nazareth? Yes he did. "Before Abrahman was, I Am." "Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, [ Do we all agree that Jesus Christ is the LORD ], when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I [ Still Jesus Christ speaking here as LORD ], made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; [ the covenant of Law ], because they continued not in my covenant, [ They lost faith in the LORD ], and I regarded them not, saith the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; [ reminder: we agree that Jesus Christ is the LORD. ] I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people: [ ekklesia ] None of this annuls the covenant of the LORD with Abraham. Gal.3:17-18. Not according to the covenant that I [ Still Jesus Christ speaking here as LORD ], made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; [ the covenant of Law ], because they continued not in my covenant, (THIS is the Covenant of Law that was made 430 years AFTER the Covenant of Grace with Abraham, by Christ [ the LORD ].) Which according to St Paul the Apostle has not and cannot cancel the Covenant of Grace, which the LORD i.e. Christ, has sworn upon his NAME, YAWEH, will be an EVERLASTING COVENANT. Now let's have less of this nonsense about Christ, the LORD, YAHWEH not establishing agreements with the people of the Old Testament. Christ was absolutely THERE with them all the time. Christ didn't have to wait for Jesus to be born to start His Church. Jesus of Nazareth was waiting in time for vChrist to be born in him. .
Reading some of these posts feels like a combination of wading through deep mud and watching TV reruns. I'd throw in the towel, but that would waste a perfectly good towel. You all have fun with it; I'm done.
my friend- the missionary movement is something of a modern phenomenon.. There are many eastern churches which simply do not have it in their culture to form and train missionaries, and yet they can still fulfill the mandate by baptising and preaching the gospel to their adherents, no? I'm just not seeing what you guys are saying here.... Few historic churches had the modern missionary programs which are largely an outcome of the industrial revolution, so are you going to unchurch most of the churches in history?
I know, I know... I said I was done. But tonight I read something relevant that seems worth sharing. It's from J. I. Packer's Concise Theology. I suspect most of you have a good opinion of Packer, right? He was a highly respected Anglican and was, I believe, theologian emeritus of the ACNA. I know our new friend Invictus (who joined our forum on May 2) thinks highly of Packer, as he wrote elsewhere to Stalwart: Well then, let's see what J. I. Packer has to say about the beginnings of the Church of Christ, shall we? The church exists in, through, and because of Jesus Christ. Thus it is a distinctive New Testament reality. Yet it is at the same time a continuation, through a new phase of redemptive history, of Israel, the seed of Abraham, God's covenant people of Old Testament times. The differences between the church and Israel are rooted in the newness of the covenant by which God and his people are bound to each other." (P. 199) On P. 197, Packer wrote: "...the apostles exercised a unique and functional authority in the infant church." The Church was at the infant stage (newly born) when the Apostles lived. It could not have existed in O.T. times. I will just add that I don't appreciate being made to feel like some wacko heretic for my belief that Jesus Christ established His Church while He was incarnate on earth, around 30-ish A.D. If people want to disagree and state their own views, that's fine... but don't make things sound as if I'm 'out in far left field' all by myself, because I have good company on this issue.
Surely we are not equating the rise in missionary activity of the church in the 18th to the 20th centuries to a beginning of missionary activity which we think did not previously exist in the history of the church. St Augustine of Canterbury was a missionary sent by Rome to England. The Celtic church sent missionaries to Germany. St Paul was a missionary (possibly to Spain) in addition to all his other missionary journeys. Whenever one christian believer speaks to a non-believer of Christ, missionary activity is taking place. there has never been a time since God established his people that it has not missioned. Mission by definition is 'an act of sending', [ πέμπω pempō, Rom.8:3-4 ].Christ was indeed himself a missionary. Exactly, this!! Mission was going on in all churches long before the Church Missionary Society started to organise it along industrial mass production lines.
So is Packer truly saying that Christ did not pre-exist Jesus of Nazareth, in time, so Christ could not be founder and leader of a 'church' which was being knitted together in the womb of God, [ Isa.44:24, Isa.49:15-16 ] in the Old Testament under The Covenant of Grace, which St Paul makes very clear is the foundation of the principle of faith, in Christ, which is the ultimate distinguishing qualification for anyone becoming a member of Christ's church? Israelites had faith in Christ, they just called him the LORD. or is someone trying to say that Christ is not the LORD? Is a human foetus in the womb, not a human being? Is a church in the Old Testament not an ekklesia. Scripture says it is, just as it says the ekklesia in the New Testament is the Church. Let's not get confused though and bandy about ugly words like heretic wacko or otherwise. This is not a debate about possible heresy, it is a debate about concepts which affect how we view the entire salvation history of the human race as God has established His Purpose. God is working His Purpose out as year proceeds to year, God is working His Purpose out and the time is drawing near, nearer and nearer draws the time, the time that shall surely be, when the earth shall be filled with the Glory of God, as the waters cover the sea. God did not only start that process when Jesus of Nazareth was conceived. God did not only start that process when Mary gave birth one dark night in Bethlehem. God did not only start that process when Christ died nailed to a piece of wood. God did not only start that process when Christ rose again from the dead, God did not only start that process when Christ ascended into the heavens. God did not only start that process when the church was born on the day of pentecost. God started the process before the foundation of the world. Matt.13:34-35, Matt.25:33-34, Luke 11:50, John 17:24, Eph.1:4, Heb.4:3, Heb.9:25-28, 1 Pet.1:20, Revelation 13:8, You would only be a "wacko heretic" if you truly believe, and insist that, no one on earth could have been saved from perdition by Christ, through Christ and in Christ, before the birth and death of Jesus of Nazareth, thus dismissing the possibility of salvation for everyone born before 4BC or thereabouts, in addition to all those dying outside the faith of Christ crucified, since 4 AD or thereabouts. To preach such a crippled and distorted 'gospel' would truly be a heresy. If that cap fits, then wear it. .
No one’s called you that, have they? If anything it’s the views that I enunciated which may seem wacko and out there. Frankly I’m surprised to see others here backing me up, because “the church of the Old Testament” is not something you hear in Christian circles any more. Just shows you how deeply dispensationalism and covenant theology have eroded the historic Christian view. And Rome has eroded it for their own reasons as well. So if anything, it’s our view that is the unusual one. Nevertheless it is the historic view. It undermines Roman claims. It undermines modern Reformed errors. All around it’s a super helpful little doctrine, with a lot of big consequences, and so I definitely would advocate for all Christians to re-embrace it.
Can you give me more information and how the term 'covenant theology' has changed meaning, perhaps as it voyaged across the Atlantic over to the New World from this sceptered isle? My Anglican education from Sunday School, through Church of England study groups, Servers Guilds, Reader training etc. Hundreds of sermons, (some of which I actually listened to and at least partially understood), up to now in my septuagenarian years, included a lot of teaching about how the Covenant of Grace came about, how it both affects and effects our salvation and how the differences in application and differences in extent and distribution of the universality of God's grace, can be traced in the scriptures, with respect to the Covenant of Grace, under the Old Testament and the New Covenant under the New Testament. I regard such knowledge as being key to a fuller understanding of the true faith. Yet you seem to be referring to 'covenant theology' (i.e. the knowledge concerning God's Covenants), in a derogatory manner, as if such knowledge is in itself a bad thing to have. I'm guessing I am ignorant of what 'covenant theology' has become to mean in the USA, just as I am ignorant of many other changes that Americans have made to good, standard English language and also largely ignorant of the lovingly preserved, many anachronisms, that they have retained, that the Puritans relieved us of over here at least 300 years ago, when the English population generally heaved a sigh of relief, on their departure from my home town. .
Well it's as I've said before, Covenant Theology teaches that man and God go through sequences of changing legal arrangements with each other. In one time you relate to God in this way; at another time you relate to God in this another way. What it's done is train countless generations of Christians to think of sacred history as fundamentally a list of alterations, sequences and changes, rather than something one and single, forever. By contrast, in traditional theology (classical theism), a huge effort was expended to force all facts into a heavy theory of one single monistic God, one single indomitable providence and Will. Even inconvenient facts that talked about God changing his mind, getting mad, etc, all were explained within the larger Framework that actually, change in God is impossible. It's one, the same, implacable, for all times. For ever and ever, amen. But now, even 'conservative' Christians have abandoned this, and freely allow God that actually (not just seemingly) changes. His decisions aren't final, his will isn't constant, and nothing is forever. Everything is mutable, changeable. "What the Church is", is just one of the myriad doctrines that became soft and flexible, when they had been rigid and eternal under classical theism. And covenant theology is one of the biggest places where that started.
I agree with 100% of this. The late evangelical theologian Norman Geisler emphasized this a lot in his writings. The first time I read his Creating God in the Image of Man? as a teenager it was as though scales fell from my eyes. One of the attractions of Reformed theology, certainly as Geisler presented certain aspects of it, is the continuity it maintains with Thomism on the subject of God’s impassability. There was a lot of emphasis in mid-20th c. theology on “divine suffering”, in the aftermath of the terrible tragedies of two World Wars and the Holocaust. As well intentioned as those theologies were, what they did in effect was to conceptually transfer Christ’s suffering from his human nature to his divine person, and then from his person to the remaining two. They achieved a passable God, but at the cost of throwing out Chalcedon (which for Anglicanism should be a non-starter). As a result, many Christians today have an understanding of God that is anthropomorphic and in many cases outright unitarian. (Certainly this phenomenon existed before the 20th c., but the “Suffering God” theology arguably exacerbated it by giving that way of thinking the veneer of intellectual and academic respectability for the first time.) I do think it is possible to be a consistent Dispensationalist while still holding to divine impassability, but dispensing with the latter makes adhering to the former a much more straightforward proposition.
I'm none the wiser about what Americans think 'Covenant Theology' is. The way you are describing it seems to me to be the biblical interpretations of a scholarly sect, rather than merely the study by the church of how various Biblical Covenants, (clearly identifiable by a straight reading of the text), affect the progressive salvation understanding of God's People according to the various terms contained in those various covenants. God is behind them all, it would seem and God's intentions in imposing them remained the same overall throughout history, hence the multitude of references to salvation of covenant covered peoples being 'from the foundation of the world' and certain covenants being clearly identified as having been declared by God to be everlasting or everlastingly binding. There are 292 mentions of the word 'covenant' in the KJV so I hardly think this is a subject that can simply be ignored or dismissed as an aberration by 'classical theists', whatever they may be. I fail to see how it is that discovery of God's progressive plan of salvation through studying the various different covenants contained in the pages of scripture can in any way affect God's immutability. I need more information on how modern Americans have, it seems, highjacked this legitimate study, given it a name, called the prognostications of their school of theology by it, and altered it's fundamental meaning from the 'study of God's covenants with His people', to the group name of a particular group of theologians with particular, (right or wrong), salvific theories. I still don't see any reason to make any essential connection between covenant studies per se, and God's immutability. I can't see how the two should be connected. The church has changed considerably down through the ages, church history is the evidence of that, but God's requirements of it and provision for it presumably remain the same, just as its reason for existence and longevity is guaranteed by Christ. Matt.16:18, Gen.6:18, Gen.9:9, Gen.17:7, Gen.17:21, Lev.26:9, Deut.29:13, Heb.10:5-10. I don't see any evidence of any change in God's intentions throughout the whole of that sequence, from first to last, so what's your problem with knowing about the legal basis upon which our salvation is guaranteed by the Word of God? .
That is the problem with most of the churches in the USA. Many only read the Bible in public, it seems, beginning at Matthew and give up sometime around 2nd Timothy. Few get as far as Hebrews because there is so much indescribably alien Jewish stuff in it or start at Deuteronomy because there's even more alien Jewish stuff in it about a bunch of baddies who God 'did in' rather than put up with them, and because nobody from the 3rd pew back would understand what the reader is going on about anyway. Keep it simple - Jesus died to save us from our sins and if you don't believe it you are all going to roast in hell - Job done. We've preached the Gospel, now we can now all go home to a Sunday roast. Preferably lamb, if you're really religious. My guess is though that Anglican churches of whatever ilk do not conform to the pattern I have described above. They have a far more scripture comprehensive Lectionary. .