Spiritual and Religious: The Gospel in an Age of Paganism by Tom Wright

Author:Tom Wright
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Christian
ISBN: 0281072841
Published: 2017-05-17T23:00:00+00:00

The leading theologians of the first Christian centuries, whom we sometimes call the early church fathers, implemented that agenda. Believing that they were doing so with the guidance of the Spirit of Jesus, they totally rejected assimilation. They refused to turn Christianity into a variant form of paganism. Equally, they rejected dualism, especially of the ‘gnostic’ sort. Offered a religion that meant escaping from the good created order into a purely ‘spiritual’ sphere, they emphatically declined. In response to paganism’s multiplicity of gods and goddesses, they developed and articulated the belief that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God who had revealed himself in Jesus of Nazareth and by the Spirit, was indeed the One God who stood over against the pagan gods. At the same time, they found that this God was best spoken of in language which reflected an irreducible threeness as well as a basic oneness. They worked out, in short, what we call the doctrine of the Trinity. They did not regard this doctrine as a piece of abstract, take-it-or-leave-it speculation. As far as they were concerned, it was the truth that made the world go round.

We shall return to the Trinity in more detail at the end of this book. For the moment we must ask: where does this new vision of God come from, and what are its implications? In the light of the previous two chapters, it should be clear that the new vision of God stems from the cross and resurrection of Jesus, and from the early church’s belief that the God who had revealed himself in this way had, further, given his own Spirit to live within and empower his people. This is summed up in John’s remarkable vision on the island of Patmos:

I was in the spirit on the Lord’s Day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet …

So I turned to see the voice that was speaking with me. As I turned, I saw seven golden lampstands, and in the middle of the lampstands ‘one like a son of man’, wearing a full-length robe and with a golden belt across his chest. His head and his hair were white, white like wool, white like snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like exquisite brass, refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of many waters. He was holding seven stars in his right hand, and a sharp two-edged sword was coming out of his mouth. The sight of him was like the sun when it shines with full power. When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though I was dead.

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