The scaffolding round the spire

I rather like Tom Wright's introduction to an early book of his -New Tasks for a Renewed Church' . Writing theology can be 'a bit like erecting scaffolding round a (church) spire. For some of the time, it may seem to obscure the sharp image of the church's witness etched against the secular images all around it. But theology, and biblical study do not exist for their own sake (though, like a good scaffolder, we theologians sometimes take pride in our work). They exist to get the church back into shape for the tasks it needs to perform.'

His main argument is that :-
>We face a new set of challenges to the church-significantly different from the challenges Christians have received and responded too in recent decades. These challeneges are not new in themselves and there is wisdom from the past to draw on.
> The various movements of renewal have been preparing us for these challenges; - renewal of Christian interest in ecumenism, in liturgy, in the Holy Spirit, in biblical study, in social and political action, and many other things.----'There are new tasks facing us , and a renewed church can face up to them in the knowledge that, through the wise provision of her Lord, she is in principle equal to them.'
> 'The new tasks for the renewed church demand a new look at, and perhaps understanding of, the question: What is our Gospel? The answer to this question is found 'in a new examination of the basic story of Jesus, understanding it within the Jewish context of the time.'
This is of course the question which Tom Wright (or TD Wright when writing for scholars!) has been exploring for many years in many books and papers since this book was published (1992)

What is Truth?

This was the question which Alison Morgan asked herself- 'the crucial question of all time'. Jesus, she decided is the Truth-and the Way and the Life- but what does this mean? It is like when a pebble drops into a pond and the splash ripples out across the pond to the edges; God is at the centre and the circumference. So the truth starts with God and continues on. From the moment of impact a dialogue between you and God begins and never ends - and it is in words-
Jesus is the Word. When John wrote this in Greek he used the word Logos. For the Greek Philosophers who used it, Logos was a principle or force, a statement about the universe.' Jerome's translation into Latin was Verbum - and verb is a 'doing' word. God did, God does and God will do. Jesus the Word is truth. 'This truth is the driving force, the creative force which comes from God, through Christ, into the matter of the universe and into the spirit man. This truth is the ultimate principle of reality.'
So 'since the ascension of Jesus and the subsequent coming of the Holy Spirit, we all have the potential to speak out the word of God, and in so doing be part of his creative purposes.'

But 'often the power of God has not been noticeably present among Christians-
'Truth is the power of God in the universe, but is it the force that pulses through the church?'
Sadly she concludes that often it is not. We have lost touch with the dynamic power of the Gospel in the West.

'We stand, in the church, at the end of a long process of accommodation in which we have unconsciously sought to harmonise the gospel with the assumptions of our culture. a culture which in abandoning the quest for absolute truth has embraced a new set of values - rationalist, materialist, technological and reductionist. The effect has been that we have gradually turned the gospel from something subversive and life-changing to something tamed, packaged and institutionalised; from something expressed in words of power, to something conveyed, if it is conveyed at all, in words of information. The gospel has been squeezed out from under the platform of ur lives and become merely a picture on the wall, familiar but essentially unrelated to everyday reality. We must learn again to turn the word into a language, a living language that can speak into the assumptions of our culture just as Jesus spoke  into the assumptions of his, and in so doing and in so doing can do what he promised to do:
If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth,and the truth will make you free.'   John 8;31-32

Taken from the introduction to 'THE WILD GOSPEL bringing truth to life' by Alison Morgan