gathered together …

Originally posted on November 19, 2008 – by Andre Piet

It sometimes happens that interesting reports can also be found on the ‘church news’ page. Today I gathered a number of them for you from Nederlands Dagblad.

Pastor relieved of office after struggle with doctrine

ENKHUIZEN – The Reformed (Liberated) evangelization pastor Rev. Ton de Ruiter from Enkhuizen has, at his own request, been relieved of the office of pastor. He struggles with the Reformed doctrine of justification.

De Ruiter: “The core question for me is: Can God only forgive if a substitute payment is made? That touches on the question: what did Jesus do for me on Golgotha?” The argument that through Jesus’ sacrifice God’s righteousness is satisfied, as the Heidelberg Catechism formulates it, the pastor says he cannot find anywhere in the Bible. And: “Is God’s grace diminished if He forgives ‘freely’? I do not think so. Look at the parables of the righteous king or of the prodigal son. The king remits a debt, the father embraces his lost son; nowhere do I read that payment still has to be made.” He himself comes to the conclusion that Jesus on Golgotha did not bring reconciliation through payment, but through the definitive victory over Satan, sin, and death.

ND article

This man has examined the Bible and has (rightly!) come to the conclusion that the Reformed confession on this point does not accord with Scripture. It is possible that he will discover even more… Moreover, he is honest enough to face the consequences of this and to lay down his office. Bravo for this courageous pastor!

why God allows suffering

Dr. Stefan Paas will give a lecture this evening in a series of sixteen apologetic lectures organized by a number of churches in Delft. Here is a fragment:

… if someone cannot see any meaning in suffering that he or she observes, that does not yet mean that it has no meaning. It is quite possible that the reality behind this suffering is so complex that the reasons for the suffering are simply beyond our grasp. God may have reasons that far surpass our understanding. Indeed, that is to be expected if God is indeed almighty and omniscient.

Existentially, such an argument is difficult for us to digest. When it concerns the murder of six million Jews, I experience every attempt to suggest that this could in some way be part of a higher plan as distasteful. But that is at the same time precisely the core of the argument: we always respond from our existence, and that existence is precisely human and limited. Therefore our revulsion toward this kind of suffering and toward attempts to ‘justify’ it is existentially very understandable, but that is not a refutation of the argument.

ND article

Paas hits the nail on the head! On the Goedbericht forum at the time, quite a bit of commotion often arose following the proposition that GOD is the Creator of good and evil (Isa. 45:7) and that He has made everything for His purpose. “Even the wicked for the day of evil,” says Proverbs 16:4. Time and again reference was then made to atrocities such as the Holocaust or the rape of a child, in which one cannot imagine that such things could also form part of a higher plan. Dr. Paas rightly observes that such people, however sympathetic and understandable they may be, reason only from their own limitation.

the whole of humanity…

Mechteld Jansen, who as newly appointed extraordinary professor of missiology at the Protestant Theological University in Utrecht delivered an inaugural lecture, remarked the following:

No one, individual or group, may claim the promises of God only for themselves or deny them to others on the basis of outwardly visible or invisible characteristics. (…) Mission continues to impress upon the churches that God’s promises apply to the whole of humanity…

Mission is also risky for the churches, for just imagine that we might get all kinds of ‘Jesus fans’ added to us. Or imagine that the gospel gives wings to all kinds of people in disadvantaged situations, who are not particularly inclined to adapt themselves to perfumed-at-five-to-ten Sunday service attenders.

ND article

It is good that from this angle as well, the narrow-minded salvation-egoism of so many who dutifully sit in church on Sundays is being punctured. Well, so many… It is especially many who have been turned off by this, which is why church pews are nowadays so strikingly empty.

Delen: