Skip to main content

How the Spirit helps us to discern the truth

Acts 15.28-29
The Baptist missionary David Kerrigan writes, ‘While the core of the [Christian] faith [always remains] unchanged, God’s Spirit… [constantly reveals] new truths.’ At least that’s what St Luke believed.[1]

‘In Acts 15 we’re told that the mission of the church [had] reached a boundary place. Gentiles [were] becoming believers and the church leaders [were] trying to work out whether the Jewish laws’ they had hitherto obeyed were ‘mandatory for’ everyone or a matter of culture and tradition which the Gentiles were free to ignore. 

At an historic Council in Jerusalem, 'a renewed theology [emerged] in which the church leaders declared, “It has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to impose on you no further burden than these essentials…”’

‘Here,’ says David Kerrigan,'We see… theology sparking mission, and mission demanding a courageous re-examination of theology’ through ‘wise leadership, scriptural reflection and, above all, the com­munal discernment of [what] the Holy Spirit’ is saying to us.

‘To this day,’ he goes on, 'Mission and theology enjoy the same interplay. In past generations, missionaries encountered polygamy in Africa and caste divisions in India, and had to formulate fresh... responses to [these] new situations. Today, [whenever] the Church engages with politics, science, economics or the arts, we need to explore each [one] in the light of both inherited and emerging theological insight[s], and not be afraid to do so. [So] sexuality, IVF, climate change, genetic screening and assisted dying are [all] issues where the Church needs to debate wisely, study scripture deeply and discern the mind of Christ through the Holy Spirit.’

Inevitably this means that we will sometimes disagree about what the Spirit is saying.What seems good to some Christians will seem a step too far for others. The Council of Jerusalem decreed that meat which had been offered to idols when it was butchered couldn't be purchased and eaten afterwards by Christians. Later Paul changed his mind about that and said it could be eaten by Christians, so long as they didn't upset more traditional-minded members of their congregation.

Today we face the same delicate decisions. We will sometimes disagree about what seems good, but we have to try to do so without falling out of communion with one another or disrespecting one another. In other words, we may sometimes have to agree to disagree

[1] David Kerrigan, Guidelines, May 2017, The Bible Reading Fellowship.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I don't believe in an interventionist God

Matthew 28.1-10, 1 Corinthians 15.1-11 I like Nick Cave’s song because of its audacious first line: ‘I don’t believe in an interventionist God’. What an unlikely way to begin a love song! He once explained that he wrote the song while sitting at the back of an Anglican church where he had gone with his wife Susie, who presumably does believe in an interventionist God - at least that’s what the song says. Actually Cave has always been very interested in religion. Sometimes he calls himself a Christian, sometimes he doesn’t, depending on how the mood takes him. He once said, ‘I believe in God in spite of religion, not because of it.’ But his lyrics often include religious themes and he has also said that any true love song is a song for God. So maybe it’s no coincidence that he began this song in such an unlikely way, although he says the inspiration came to him during the sermon. The vicar was droning on about something when the first line of the song just popped into his ...
14 comments
Read more

Giotto’s Nativity and Adoration of the Shepherds

John 1.10-18 In the week before Christmas the BBC broadcast a modern version of The Nativity which attempted to retell the story with as much psychological realism as possible. So, for instance, viewers saw how Mary, and Joseph especially, struggled with their feelings. But telling the story of Jesus with psychological realism is not a new idea. It has a long tradition going back seven hundred years to the time of the Italian artist Giotto di Bondone. This nativity scene was painted in a church in Padua in about 1305. Much imitated it is one of the first attempts at psychological realism in Christian art. And what a wonderful first attempt it is - a work of genius, in fact! Whereas previously Mary and the Baby Jesus had been depicted facing outwards, or looking at their visitors, with beatific expressions fixed on their faces, Giotto dares to show them staring intently into one another’s eyes, bonding like any mother and newborn baby. Joseph, in contrast, is not looking on with quiet a...
1 comment
Read more

Luther and Loyola

James 1:17-27 Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23 Within Christianity there has always been a tension between two poles. At one end of the spectrum stands Martin Luther, who said that Christian faith is about trusting in God to put us right - or make us righteous - through the saving death of Jesus. Luther came to this conclusion when he was a professor of New Testament studies in a little town in Germany called Wittenberg. One year he decided to teach his students about Paul’s letter to the Romans and that’s when it suddenly dawned upon him that Christian faith is all about trust. At the other end of the spectrum , stands someone like Ignatius Loyola the founder of the Society of Jesus. He spent a lot of his later life in crisis, first struggling to overcome severe wounds that he had suffered when he was a soldier and then during two short periods locked up in a cell by the Spanish Inquisition. He came to believe that the Christian life is a similar sort of struggle, a lifelon...
Post a Comment
Read more