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Forever
a Pilgrim
Being incarnational, revelation
is developmental. God worked through all manner of human forms of
expression and cultures in the hundreds of years during which the Bible was
composed. So he continues to do. Time has not been frozen. There is no one
sacred language and no one sacred culture. Christianity’s repudiation of
Judaism and its affirmation of its universality in the very first years of
its existence at the Council of Jerusalem was of theological/religious
profundity equal to Nicea and Chalcedon and whichever other Council one
cares to mention. God’s interaction with humanity has not been halted. God
has indeed spoken definitively in his Word which is the Bible, and in each
culture and language that Word has to be constantly re-understood; and it
is against that Word that each society and culture has to be judged. It is a dynamic interaction in which
fresh insights and understanding constantly arise and develop.
‘Our preaching of the reign of God today should not
include the preaching
of an outmoded way of life for fear of its effect
upon the message itself and
on those who hear it…….Jesus himself spoke in the
language and the
imagery of
his age; precisely because of this
he was able to make the
nearness
and the certainty of the reign of God seem so real and so urgent.’
(H.Kung.
ibid.p.64)
Christian theology and
morality therefore are never static. They are forever on the move, forever
a pilgrim, forever searching and exploring. The New Testament is very short
on precise prescriptions and in this respect it is very unlike the Koran.
Its moral admonitions are mainly of a very general nature. ‘What must I do
to gain eternal life? Love God and they neighbour as thyself. Who is my
neighbour? A man went down from Jericho
to Jerusalem….’ Or take 1 Cor.
13. Christ spoke mainly, though not course not always, in generalities and
used parables, which are not detailed prescriptions but principles which we
are left to apply in our own circumstances.
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