QUOTES
+ On the Covnet list Glenn Wolf reminded me of a John Stott quote I had read years ago: "It is comparatively easy to be faithful if we do not care about being contemporary, and easy also to be contemporary if we do not bother to be faithful. It is the search for a combination of truth and relevance which is exacting. Yet nothing else can save us from an insensitive loyalty to formulae and shibboleths on the one hand, and from a treasonable disloyalty to the revelation of God on the other." (Christian Mission in the Modern World -- Yes, it's still in print -- 27 years later)

+ I'm just finishing up What Does It Mean to Be Saved? (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, John G. Stackhouse, Jr. 2002). This is a collection of essays intent on "broadening evangelical horizons of salvation." Half of the writers have some kind of connection to Regent College in Vancouver., B.C. The first essay by Rikk Watts on The New Exodus/New Creational Restoration of the Image of God is worth the cost of the whole book plus some.

Loren Wilkinson has a good chapter entitled Christians Should Be Converted Pagans. This quote is from that essay. “Neo-paganism, I believe is an attempt to recover an aspect of being human that is central to the gospel but is often obscured – that is, we cannot be fully human until our restored relationship with the Creator results in a restored relationship not only with other men and women but also with the rest of creation, which is seen and accepted as a divine gift. Paganism (old and new) sees that divine gift as the only essential revelation, and harmony with creation and its resident gods or spirits as the only salvation. Thus, paganism is forever inadequate for the wholeness its believers seek. But inasmuch as paganism does have open eyes to the gift-nature of creation, it glimpses a truth to which Christians are sometimes blind. Our culture is being tilted toward paganism as much by an inadequate understanding and modeling by Christians of the creational scope of salvation as by pagan perversity and hardness of heart.” (p. 154)