Bootstrap wrote:Can you say more about how he comes to that conclusion? Are there New Testament passages that he sees as an admonition to build a culture, or equate the Kingdom of God with a culture? Is he thinking of culture in a way that is radically different from the way I am?Hats Off wrote:One of Jonathon Stoll's conclusion was that you can't separate faith and culture in the plain Anabaptist setting. Culture is driven or informed by faith. The culture to a large extent is how faith is lived out.
I can't speak to the plain Anabaptist setting, I have too little experience with it. I grew up with a different kind of cultural Christianity where everyone I knew went to church and we all thought we were living as good Christians but we didn't know how to be disciples. The fervent faith of our grandparents and the culture they had created wasn't doing it for me.
I was very influenced by a book called "The Problem with Wineskins" - here's a quote:
I worry that any cultural Christianity might become wineskin Christianity. Do plain Anabaptists have ways of protecting against that danger?God is a God of newness. On the one hand he is the Ancient of Days, “the Father of Lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (Jas. 1:17), and Jesus Christ is “the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb. 13:8). But this does not mean that God is static or stationary. The history of God’s people in the Bible and the history of the Christian Church show just the opposite. In every age the true biblical gospel is a message of newness and renewal.
God has not stopped doing new things. The Bible says, “We wait for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells” (2 Pet.3:13). Many of the Old Testament prophecies already cited were fulfilled in part with the coming of Christ and the birth of the church, but the prophetic fund has not yet been exhausted. Unfulfilled prophecies and promises of new things remain. At the end of the Bible God is still saying, “Behold, I make all things new” (Rev. 21:5).
Every age knows the temptation to forget that the gospel is ever new. We try to contain the new wine of the gospel in old wineskins — outmoded traditions, obsolete philosophies, creaking institutions, old habits. But with time the old wineskins begin to bind the gospel. Then they must burst, and the power of the gospel pour forth once more. Many times this has happened in the history of the church. Human nature wants to conserve, but the divine nature is to renew. it seems almost a law that things initially created to aid the gospel eventually become obstacles — old wineskins. Then God has to destroy or abandon them so that the gospel wine can renew man’s world once again.
I am sorry Boot, but red flags go up within me regarding this influence, from this writer. I have seen the 'old wineskins vs new wineskins' used to justify all kinds of thinking in Christendom and to me it is error when I consider the correct interpretation of that passage in Matthew 9, and I am very uncomfortable about anyone straying from the original interpretation of what Jesus was saying- it is not to be conveyed as 'relevance' -
from my OSB:
The old garment and the old wineskins stand for the Old Covenant and the Law viewed as imperfect and temporary; the new wineskins ae the New Covenant and those in Christ. The new wine is the Holy Spirit dwelling within renewed people, who cannot be constrained by the old precepts of the Law"
Perhaps there is a prinicple that can be applied, I just prefer to focus on what Jesus was teaching here- old covenant vs new covenant- when you read the previous scriptures leading up to Vs 17 n Matthew 9, you can understand the ancient interpretation and I don't think it is to be applied the way so many are using it today.