Transcript Robert Linthicum  The power of the world's evil is far greater than the sins of its individuals.  We need a biblical theology that is equal.

Robert Linthicum
 The
power of the world's evil is far
greater than the sins of its
individuals.
 We
need a biblical theology that is
equal to the challenge of social and
individual sin.
 To
bring about systemic change in the
world, individuals, structures and
values are all part of the equation.
For further study, see Naming The Powers, Unmasking the Powers,
Engaging the Powers by Walter Wink.
OT Overview of What the World
Should Look like
 Deuteronomy
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
as a template
Relationship is central
Societal functions facilitated by institutions
where all people have reasonable access to
“basic life”
Equity that serves all the people—systems
that affirm human effort, but protect against
human greed
The Shalom Community
 A comprehensive
community concerned
with wholeness
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Bodily health—Ps. 38:3
Security and strength—Judges 6:23; Deut.
10:19
Long life ending in natural death—Gen. 15:15
Prosperity and abundance—Job 5:18-26; Ps.
37:11
What keeps going wrong
with the picture
Deuteronomy paints?
Jesus’ proclamation of
the Kingdom is a final
and complete vision of
the intention of
Deuteronomy 15.
All those under the tyranny of…
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Self-destructive personal decisions that
separate us from God
Oppressive systems that have robbed us
of human dignity
Lives lived under a law that could not yield
abundant life
The lost vision of Deut. 15
…now have access to the good news
of the kingdom.
“If theology and ethics are linked
together in the Jewish tradition
reflected in the Old Testament, so is
the move between moral principle
and its specification in concrete
action. Jesus provides cases for real
life application of theology and ethics
to concrete situations.”
Murray Dempster in Mission as Transformation, p. 62
CASE 1
Treatment of Those Unlike Our Group
Luke 10:25-37
 Note
Jesus combines love of God
(Deut. 6:4-5) with love of neighbor
(Lev. 19:18) toward a unified
commandment.
 Jesus lets the marginalized define
who the neighbor was—not the
“established lawyer.”
CASE 2
Exploitation of Women
Mt. 19:3-9; Mk 10:2-12
 Rather
than get caught in a flurry of legal
citations, Jesus focuses on men and
women in God’s own image
 You can’t use Mosaic law to dehumanize
women
 Men and women deserve fidelity in
marriage—anything less and you get the
same kind of betrayal always present in
adultery
CASE 3
Payment of the Poll Tax
Mk 12:13-17
 We
are all valuable because we bear the
image of God
 What
bears the image of Caesar belong to
Caesar, but what bears the image of God
is God’s and cannot be trumped by
Caesar.
CASE 4
Underemployed, Unemployed
and the Poor
Mt. 20:1-5
 Verses
 Do
13-15—The crux of the issue
you begrudge my generosity?
 God’s
bounty is His to give whether
you merit it or not—generosity is the
character of God
CASE 5
Dignity of Children
Mark 10:13-15
 Not
a romantic view of “little people”
 A clear
declaration by Jesus that
where God reigns, the unimportant
and powerless are recipients of the
blessing of the Kingdom.
Paul and the Church
1. Church—an eschatological community
2. Eschatological framework—eternal
concerns—destiny as a focus
3. Eschatological salvation through death
and resurrection of Christ
4. Jesus, as Messiah, Lord and Son of
God, is the focus of this people.
Paul, the Church, and the Kingdom
 Foundation—A gracious
and merciful God who
is full of love toward all.
fulfillment of God’s promises
as already begun but not yet completed.
 Framework—The
 Focus—Jesus
accomplished eschatological
salvation for humanity through his death and
resurrection.
 Fruit—the
church, as an eschatological
community. becomes God’s new covenant
people.
If the church is going to be effective in our
postmodern world, we need to stop paying
mere lip service to the Spirit and to
recapture Paul’s perspective: the Spirit as
the experienced, empowering return of
God’s own personal presence in and
among us, who enables us to live as a
radically eschatological people in the
present world while we await the
consummation. All the rest, including fruit
and gifts (that is, ethical life and
charismatic utterances in worship), serve
to that end.”
Gordon Fee in Paul, the Spirit and the People of God
Holism and Prioritism
A Dialogue by David Hesselgrave
 The
Christian Gospel is true news and
good news.
 Both
Isaiah and Jesus intended that the
good news to the poor had first to do with
the salvation of sinners.
 Christian
mission has to do with making
known the true and good Gospel of Christ
to those separated from centers of Gospel
knowledge and influences.
 We
are not absolved from our
responsibility to respond compassionately
to the needy, but the primary concern of
our Lord is meeting spiritual needs and
physical and social needs.
 Strategies
and people should be
focused on those providentially
prepared to hear, understand and
respond to the Gospel.
“The poor are given hope of relief in
the future and even now by means of
the themes of eschatological reversal
and economic repentance. But the
final theme, economic discipleship,
points to the priority that even the poor
must give to the spiritual good news.
The last poor person we meet in Luke
is the destitute widow who gives to
God through the temple treasure “all
that she had” (21:3).
Jesus, by approval of her act,
relativizes the physical-economic
need in favor of the spiritual. In
Luke’s gospel the final word about the
poor is not the good news of what
they will receive to alleviate their
need, but the challenge of what they
must give as part of the life of radical
discipleship in devotion to Jesus.”
William J. Larkin as quoted in Paradigms in Conflict
by David J. Hesselgrave
 There
are good people and convincing
arguments to be made on all facets of the
holism and prioritism argument
 www.emsweb.org

http://www.dake.com/ems/bulletins/OB_Fall_07.pdf

http://www.dake.com/ems/bulletins/hesselgrave.htm
National Kingdom Idea:
Modern Kingdom
Eschatological
Kingdom Idea:
1st Century Sadducees
and Modern Jews
Millennial Kingdom
Idea
Widely held until
Augustine; modern
premillenarians
Schweitzer (Delusion)
Karl Barth
Emil Brunner
(Supra-historical)
Liberal Social
Kingdom Idea:
J. F. D. Maurice
Charles Kingsley
Shailer Matthews
W. Rauschenbusch
Bromley Oxman
The
Kingdom
of God
Celestial (heaven)
Kingdom Idea
Popular view of
numerous Christians
Ecclesiastical
Kingdom Idea:
Moral Kingdom Idea:
Immanuel Kant
Spiritual (heart)
Kingdom Idea:
Popular View:
A. B. Bruce
Roman Catholics
(Visible church);
Reformers (invisible
church)
 Before
you react, always ask the
questions:


Why does this person take the perspective
they do?
What event(s) might have triggered this
perspective?
Model for Keeping your Equilibrium
1. Personal relationship with Jesus Christ
2. Develop a personal and corporate ethic
3. Understand the ethics of love—the ethics of
God’s reign must wait for the final
consummation, but in its reality, kingdom
ethics can be participated in here and now.
4. The actual social context is not a starting point,
rather an insertion in to the ministry process as
a result of the spiritual, radical transformation
we have undergone.
Model for Keeping your Equilibrium
cont.
Emphasis not only on the poor, but anywhere
we find human need. Love is the great
equalizer.
The kingdom of God which will consummate at
the end of this age has already broken into the
present.
5.
6.
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Dynamically active among all people
Those submitted to the rule of the King can expect
to be agents of the kingdom for justice and
redemption
The redeemed community will stand as a sign-post
declaring for all to hear that the kingdom of God has
come.
Doug Petersen in Called and Empowered, p. 56
Baptism of the Spirit and Its Social
Implications of Empowerment
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Doug Petersen— A Moral Imagination: Pentecostals
and Social Concern in Latin America (See Moodle)
Not by Might, Nor By Power—Regnum Books
Pentecostalism and Social Transformation: A Global
Analysis (University of California Press, 2007) Donald E.
Miller, Tetsunao Yanamori
Murray Dempster has done the most comprehensive work
at connecting a Pentecostal social ethic to Spirit baptism.
See “The Structure of Christian Ethic Informed by
Pentecostal Experience: Soundings in the Moral
Significance of Glossolalia” in The Spirit and
Spirituality, eds. Wonsuk Ma and Robert P. Menzies (NY:
T&T International, 2007), 108-140.
 The
Baptism of the Spirit provides:
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Democratization of religious life
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The promise of physical and social healing
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Compassion for the socially alienated
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Practice of spiritual empowerment
Framework for Evaluating
the Gospel
“The Pentecost narrative is the story of the
transfer of the charismatic Spirit from Jesus to
the disciples. In other words, having become
the exclusive bearer of the Holy Spirit at His
baptism, Jesus becomes the giver of the Spirit at
Pentecost…By this transfer of the Spirit, the
disciples become the heirs and successors to
the earthly charismatic ministry of Jesus that is,
because Jesus has poured out the charismatic
Spirit upon them the disciples will continue to do
and teach those things which Jesus began to do
and teach (Acts 1:1).”
Murray Dempster in Called and Empowered, p. 23
Kerygmatic Lens

The kerygmatic ministry of the church, from the
Pentecost/kingdom perspective, aims at calling
the poor and all who are in need to experience a
profound personal conversion in which God’s
reign become the transforming center of
life…One of the most effective ways the church
validates the gospel is by translating the “truths”
it proclaims in the kerygma into the way it
structures and lives out its own congregational
life.
Murray Dempster in Called and Empowered, p. 27
Koinoniac Lens
 Aims
at embodying in its own life and
activities a partial picture of what life looks
like where God reigns
 The church takes on it responsibility to be
a witnessing community, a countercommunity, a moral community, and an
anticipatory community.
Murray Dempster in Called and Empowered, p. 32
Diakonic Lens

The church attempts to foster a greater measure
of justice for all people, especially the persons
Jesus identified in his kingdom manifesto—the
poor, the captives, the blind, and the oppressed
(Lk. 4:18-19)
 Transforming power of God experienced at
conversion is manifested in the world through
church’s moral deeds of caring for the welfare of
the needy and the church’s programs of social
action aimed at changing the social system
Murray Dempster in Called and Empowered, p. 38