I was having a look at The Gospel Coalition’s lovely website when I came across this section in their doctrinal statement:

“God’s New People: We believe that God’s new covenant people have already come to the heavenly Jerusalem; they are already seated with Christ in the heavenlies. This universal church is manifest in local churches of which Christ is the only Head; thus each “local church” is, in fact, the church, the household of God, the assembly of the living God, and the pillar and foundation of the truth.”

This sounds exactly like the theology of church that we’ve been taught here at Moore College and which we refer to as the Knox-Robinson doctrine of church (after our former principal and vice-principal who loved to speak of the church in this kind of way).

The thing is, I was under the impression that this view was one of our rather idiosyncratic ‘Sydney’ things – and yet here it is – signed by all the big name American evangelicals.

what did I miss?

I’m reading for an essay on John Howard Yoder’s ethics and I found this pretty amusing.

“Mr. Yoder’s stance reached a wide theological audience when his book The Politics of Jesus was published in 1972. But his analyses of Christian attitudes toward the state, of pacifism and of major theologians like Reinhold Niebuhr and Karl Barth had been gaining notice since the 1950’s.

Mr. Yoder first drafted a 50-page critique of Barth’s views on pacifism while a doctoral student under Barth at the University of Basel in Switzerland–and he gave a copy to Barth shortly before Barth was to be on the panel conducting Mr. Yoder’s final oral examination.”
from: http://theology.nd.edu/people/research/yoder-john/

It is an encouraging read. John is a great leader, a gospel hearted man and a clear thinker. You see it in this article as John wrestles with the tension of conserving what must not change and strategically adapting to best serve the cause of Christ in the here and now.

And it is an exciting read. I love Moore College. I love studying here and I love the people I’m studying with. And the responses John flags- for the college to evolve with flexibility, a focus on preaching and mission, and engagement with the wider Christian community without compromising what it has always done best- paint a bright future.

Everything you hear and read on this passage brings up the ‘tension’ with Paul and his gospel of justification by faith alone and not by works. They explain how Paul and James are not in conflict. Both apostles are in agreement. James is not talking about how a person is justified, but about what true faith looks like. “We are saved by faith alone, but saving faith is never alone.” This is all very helpful.

But one verse has always bugged me. “24 You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone.” It just sounds like too much of a contradiction. I think I’ve lived with it by imagining that James is being a bit sloppy with his language here. If we read it in context we see that James and Paul do agree and had James and Paul been able to get together and talk about it they would have come up with a joint declaration in which Paul would have persuaded James of the importance of using such an all important term like justification with greater precision. In other words – a version of Luther’s solution to the problem.

But tonight I saw something that I hadn’t noticed before. James is not saying ‘a man is justified by works and not by faith alone’. I’ve been reading ‘you see …’ as some English colloquialism meaning something like ‘the point is …’.

Maybe he is saying ‘You SEE that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone.” Which is saying something very different, very much in line with the rest of the passage and not nearly as uncomfortable in the same Bible as Ephesians 2:8.

So, is that a legitimate exegetical move or is it a bit too convenient?