TOD 02.13.08

Driving to work yesterday, I saw a church sign that said, “Christianity is a work in progress.” Being the oppositional thinker that I am, I immediately thought that some people would defiantly reply, “No, Christianity is a finished work of Jesus Christ.” But, of course, there’s no reason we can’t affirm both statements with equal vigor.

An important principle of philosophy is that you cannot simultaneously affirm and deny the same idea, so long as you mean them in the same way. Yet precisely such variation is the issue here. Christ indeed finished the sacrificial system and atoned for all sins forever on the cross. But the evidence of the transformation that this completed work accomplishes in our lives is a gradual and continuous manifestation of Christlikeness.

The danger of being highly invested in a doctrinal dispute is that you too easily view all statements as taking a side in that conflict. Just because a statement can be taken the wrong way doesn’t mean that it cannot be taken a right way.
Posted by at

1 comment:

Stan said...

Just wondering "out loud" here, Andrew, but the "important principle of philosophy" that you cite is standard, Aristotelean logic, is it not? A thing cannot be both A and not A at the same time and in the same sense. But to claim that "Christianity is a work in progress" and "Christianity is a finished work of Jesus Christ" wouldn't fall under that, would it? The two statements refer to two different "times", two different "senses". We are positionally "in Christ", born again, made righteous, justified, and that is finished. We are practically in work (what we call "sanctification"). So they are two different senses and, thus, wouldn't fall under the classification of contradiction ... would they?

February 13, 2008 at 6:28 AM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)