Disciples must Avoid Minolationism (Part 1)
Wednesday, 30 May 2007 08:21
When teaching and discipling one of the issues is that comes up is that people sometimes separate the act of learning Christian theology from Authentic Christianity. Authentic Christianity is a single thing. You don’t separate teaching from other elements because Authentic Christianity is a single thing. Yes it has different elements, but these elements never are isolated by themselves. I see this over and over – disciples wanted to know theology apart from a congregation of believers, or with out respect to their own affections and walk with God.
As I am readying through “Systematic Theology – Biblical and Historical” by Robert Duncan Culver, I resonated with him when he compared authentic Christianity to a chemical compound such as sulphuric acid (H2SO4). H H2SO4 is not 2 parts hydrogen, one of sulphur, and four of oxygen, somehow mixed together in a glass beaker. It is a single thing in which there are three elements so integrated as to form a substance different from anyone of three alone, and from anything else. The distinctive features of Christianity are really of little importance singly. I call the isolation of certain disciplemaking ministries and actions from other distinctive features of Authentic Christianity is “Minolation.” The elements of authentic Christianity must be always united and so integrated in our lives and teaching that to see them separated would be of little important to us. Minolation must be avoided. The Great commission commands us to teach people to observe or obey all that Jesus Commands and not just teach knowledge or doctrine. Doctrine properly taught is never in isolation from other believers, the world, the church, and God and his mighty acts in history and today.
Dr. Culver says that explicit in scripture there are 4 integrated elements that are together in authentic Christian religion.. They include:
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Certain Acts of God in History, or redemption;
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The meaning of those acts of God as set forth in Holy Scripture, or Doctrines;
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The lives of countless believers, the Christians themselves through the ages but particularly those alive today; and
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The congregations of believers throughout the world, the churches, or, considered in their spiritual oneness, the church.
Briefly Robert Culvers explains each of these indivisible crucial elements of Authentic Christianity.
Redemption - Christianity has been rendered what is is by what God did a long time ago. We can rehearse the history of Redemption or salvation that God became man in the person of Jesus Christ and died for our sins.
Culver says,
What God did in the redemptive career of Jesus of Nazareth was a consummation of events of God’s doing from eternity past, through all the preparatory history of the Old Testament and p to the point when “in the fullness of time… God sent forth his son” (Gal. 4:4 ). … The element Christianity calls history (events which happened, not mere reports o them) in our religion accounts in large part for the preponderance of narrative in most of the Bible up to the Epistles in the New Testament….
Doctrine – The events of biblical salvation history – God’s acts of redemptions – have meaning. They must be interpreted. The statement of fact of Christ’s death with meaning it has for the world of sinful people is a statement of Christian doctrine. We call it the doctrine of atonement. The Gospel is an account of something that happened and the meaning of that happening was set forth then was Christian Doctrine. Event and meaning must be joined in a absolutely indissoluble union or there is no Christianity. Doctrine is not just assertions and interpretation of religious experience. This is backwards. Experience comes from Doctrine and not the other way around. Martin Luther first learned the doctrine of Justification of David and Paul on the grounds of Jesus’ shed blood, appropriated by faith alone, and then after believing appropriating the righteousness of God he had a wonderful Christian religious experience. Other teachings in scriptures are called doctrines because they are revealed truths that help us place meaning to events of history
The Lives of Countless Believers – We must tie redemptive history and the meaning of it to our own life. We seek in this ay after essential and true religion (see Phil 1:20 , 21; Gal. 2:20 ). The dynamics of the Christian life are on display beginning with the first chapter of Acts through the end of Revelation. IN a nutshell the elements were constant attention (proskarterountes) to apostolic doctrine (didachē), to the fellowship (koinōnia), to the special central fact of worship (i.e. ‘the breaking of bread’), to their prayers together (Acts 2:41-42 , 4:23-41) and to their public testimony (Acts 43-47 and 5:12-42). These were irresistible to outsiders, purifying to insiders and enviable to competitors for the hearts of mankind. What set the early Christians apart was the moral quality of their lives in clncert with the love one for another, and care for the welfare of all mankind.
An Institution – Church, Churches, and Organization – Believers have a corporate life together. In pilgrims Progress by John Bunyan, Christian is introduced to the great house built by the Lord of the hill for the relief and security of pilgrims. There he became equated \with Prudence, Piety, and Charity, was furnished companionship and nourishment, and sent on his way toward the celestial destination with the full armor of God. People today and yesterday linked themselves in visible associations see themselves as members of a world wide spiritual commonwealth of believers, and it is this church which is his body that God fills all in all (Eph. 1:22-23 ). The unity of believers both locally and universally is so central in New Testament Christianity that our religion can neither be discussed nor possessed with reference to it. There is no such thing as having Christ, or loving, admiring or confessing Him without similar participation in “the church.” This is of Christ’s determination. We can never separate the history of Christianity from the history from the church.
