NON-GOSPELS DISCERNED
21/01/25 09:51
Joe Turner asserted that his friend Nev Strathburn belonged to a Christian cult. Nev would have none of it and attempted a refutation by ‘defining’ a cult. But it was not convincing. If we are tied to definitions to support our faith, it may be that we have lost the argument already.
WON A POINT AND LOST THE TRUTH
Phenomena are not always described by words or contained in them. And there’s such a thing as a continuum. Unfortunately, Nev’s community was more like a cult than not like a cult. So the refutation was not robustly convincing. The nature of a phenomenon is defined by its being. We can mis-describe it, delineating it as what it is not. Or we can offer a spin in order to maintain ourselves in our fictions and avoid a confrontation with the truth. Truth is not found in the words but in the nature of the thing itself.
INCONGRUOUS
As such one can be circumcised as Jew, yet live a godless life. Or as a Christian belong to the Body, yet be more of a disease than a healthy organ.
Legalism and fundamentalism operate from a mindset of definitions and positions. They are a fabric of the letter that kills. The knowledge of good and evil of which they are an expression consists of bifurcations, compartments and contradictions. Dualism with its binaries is well suited to law formed thinking. But the life of God just is. Emanating from the trinity, genuine spirituality is non-dualistic and just is like God. In the incarnation the Fatherhood of God is manifest in His daughters and sons. This is what it means to be alive, full of love and life-giving.
NOT OF THE LETTER
Stephen Morrison makes this perceptive observation. “Torrance’s doctrine of the Trinity is built on a foundation of adoration, not on the reductionistic need to contain God’s being with statements.” (1) This means that we may not have described God, the gospel of the Kingdom and who we are as a result - by pulling together a string of proof texts. Particularly if the texts have no natural relation to each other and contradict what God did, what Christ achieved by the cross and who we are as a result.
PRESUMPTION
Unless our thoughts and theology come out of the being of God, because we are in God and part of Him, we can presume to assemble a collection of scriptures to ‘prove’ that Jesus lives to empower us to keep the law, live moralism and do religion as a life work. People have done that and in so doing degraded themselves, negated the cross and prolonged the fall among those unfortunate enough to have been taken in by this aberrant ‘gospel.’
Any gospel’ that forces us to search for the ‘nature’ and ‘character’ of God beyond the Trinity is an aberration, a deceit and a lie. To wear such a gospel is to wear the king’s new clothes, because such a gospel is a lie.
(1) Morrison, Stephen D.. T. F. Torrance in Plain English (Plain English Series Book 2) (p. 100). Beloved Publishing, LLC. Kindle Edition.