Archive for August, 2010

Gospel-centeredness, Jesus, and Social Action

I recently attended the Bible Faculty Summit conference on Christology which was held this year at Maranatha Baptist College.  I delivered a paper entitled “Gospel-centeredness, Jesus, and Social Action.”  In that paper I critique Richard Stearns’ recent book A Hole in our Gospel and the writings of N. T. Wright.  In the former, I show that the definition of the gospel has been expanded wrongfully to include the so-called social gospel.  In the latter, I show that the implications of the gospel are inappropriately expanded in the social direction.

In doing this analysis, I wanted to support social action for Christians (which I believe in) and not just have a knee-jerk response to liberal social gospel ethics.  However, I wanted the Bible’s teaching to clearly draw the parameters and definitions.  Although I greatly respect Stearns’ desire for more social action on the part of Christians,  I do not believe that this need justifies expanding the biblical definition of the gospel.  I have provided an excerpt below of my critique of Stearns.  I am doing some additions to the paper.  I hope to post a link to the completed work when I am finished.

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Life & Weddings

I have been silent for awhile on my blog.  I had good reason.  I was on the road quite a bit and much of it for good family reasons.  The highlight of it all was my son Phil’s wedding to Leah.  It is such a blessing when your son chooses well.  His mother and I are proud of him.  Hopefully now as we approach the Fall semester I will be back in the swing of things for blogging.