Fw: Comment on Ted's point

Ted wrote, responding to Janice: " if people
want to say that God is dead (and actually mean that God is dead, not
just
use those words to say that people don't believe in God anymore) or that
the
resurrection is a wild story invented by the disciples, then I do not
believe such persons have a right to call themselves Christians. What
God
will do with them is up to God, ... it's "intellectually
dishonest" for such folks to transpose their claims to be Christians with
their negative catechisms (no God, no resurrection, no divine governance,
etc).

The application of this paragraph is where it gets awfully hard. "

Quite hard, Ted. I've read a lot of John Spong, and discussed him with
other Christians at a fairly conservative Christian church. We all had a
hard time with John's writings, but agreed that if he were to show up we
would welcome him as we would any other fellow Christian. We'd even let
him teach a SS class as long (as one of us were there to provide another
view).

One needs to discriminate, of course, between the denial of a doctrine
and the simple non-belief (holding skepticism towards) that doctrine.
The virgin birth, the historicity of Adam, the reliability of the Flood
story, etc. are such doctrines. But, of course, not to everyone.

I am very suspicious of the "us vs them" mentality that places labels on
persons or groups. Including the label "Christian." If you have to resort
to a dictionary definition to welcome or not welcome someone, you have
already lost.

Der Floss Spode

(Sometimes wrong; never in doubt)
Received on Mon Mar 20 12:02:51 2006