It's Monday today and I am hoping I could start anew. I went into the library this morning and looked at the book I that might be helpful to make my brain alive again. I found Clark Pinnock's Flame of Love: A Theology of the Holy Spirit
. It seems like a very good book. Opening a few pages I read this fascinating paragraph:If Christians are to be effective in mission, they must offer a faith that is vibrant and alive. People who want to meet God and will not be satisfied with religion that only preaches and moralizes. Knowing about God is not the same as knowing God. Christianity was born on the day of Pentecost because a question was asked about a transforming experience: "What does thie means?" (Acts 2:12). Speaking about God is meaningful only if there is an encounter with God back of it. Only by attending to the Spirit are we going to be able to move beyond sterile, rationalistic, powerless religion and recover the intimacy with God our generation longs for.
.jpg)
2 comments:
It is a long time since I read Flame of Love but do remember it being a good book. If I remember correctly I Pinnock spends a lot of the opening chapter arguing why the Holy Spirit is feminine only to then suggest that since referring the the Spirit in the feminine would annoy a lot of evangelicals he would just use male language. That annoyed me quite a lot.
If you're interested I wrote a brief post on Pinnock after his death here: http://nicodemist.wordpress.com/2010/09/04/clark-pinnock-1937-2010/
Don't worry about the dissertation, having second thoughts was common for me.
Wow, thats a fantastic quote. I can't agree more. I read recently another blog post on theology of missions and while i couldn't disagree with anything in it because it was all very biblical, it just lacked any passion. Theology of missions can be very cold and hard AND Biblical at the same time in a scholarly way but i don't think many people come to faith just by air tight Bible based theology. The pharisees had that issue i think.
Post a Comment