ere’s a couple of jewels from a podcast I heard a couple of weeks ago:
Atonement is a non-negotiable concept. What do you put in its place? What happens is the gospel becomes “I can have a personal relationship with Jesus.” The devil has a personal relationship with Jesus! What kind of a personal relationship with Jesus, and what is the ground of that personal relationship? Obviously being a Christian involves having a personal relationship with Jesus, but there’s content to that relationship that defines that relationship and to just call it a personal relationship I don’t think is very helpful.
R. C. Sproul on The White Horse Inn; An Interview with R. C. Sproul, from September 7, 2008
And then there’s this. The quote is even more powerful when you realize its author is a theologian from a mainline denomination.
You just haven’t said “salvation” when you say “self-esteem.” Thank you, Robert Schuler. And you haven’t said “the good news of Jesus Christ” when you’ve said “I have found a way to help your marriage work.” In Christianity you’ve got to sit and learn the language.You’ve got to sit and learn the vocabulary, and the grammar. Christianity in a way is like learning a new language, and if you’ve ever tried to learn French, you know you’re not just learning different labels. You’re learning a different culture. You’re moving through the words into a different world. So I’m not much on the translation mode. That is the old, I think now, discredited liberal project of the 19th and early 20th century that many of us mainliners realize takes you nowhere. It’s an incredible thinning out of the gospel. It is so disheartening to see evangelicals now jumping on that and buying it. We’re all liberals now.
William Willimon, on The White Horse Inn; An Interview with R. C. Sproul, from Septermber 7, 2008.
