Philadelphia Camp 2008: The Chosen Generation

Our three day summer camp in Philadelphia was absolutely terrific. I will reflect on my summer on a later post. Here is my presentation on "Becoming the Chosen Generation." Enjoy!

CHOSEN

-Steve K.

What was so new? continued...

This covenant relationship the Jews had with the God of Abraham was crystallized in the Law of Moses given on Mount Sinai. However, the Jews’ reception of that Law did not imply that God was therefore legalistic. Faith in the loving God who actively intervened in history presupposed the reception of the Law (Rom. 4:12). Christ says on the Mount, “Do not think I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill” (Matt 5:17). Christ’s Gospel message was primarily one of return-return to the heart and soul of that which underpinned God’s relationship with Israel for millennia, namely Faith. The direct corollary of this understanding was the reception of Christ the person as the fulfillment of that past, and consequently the foundation of the future. The Jew’s history, then, is understood as a single seamless narrative of God working Salvation for all mankind in His own time.

more later...

Steve K.

What was so new?

What was so new about the message of Jesus Christ? Was the “good news” preached by the Apostles throughout the world something utterly revolutionary? Two thousand years after the fact, we know the historical Jesus to be a particularly radical figure who preached compassion for the poor and love for one’s enemy; the figure who as a matter of Faith suffered and died on the Cross in order to rise on the third day. Christ’s ministry appears to be drastically different from that of the Jewish authorities of His day. In the Incarnation the same God who had been carrying on an exclusive relationship with the Hebrews since the dawn of Creation seems to have taken matters into a completely different direction. Assuming however, that God is both unchanging and true to His words, perhaps what is really radical in Christ’s ministry is not how vastly different His message was from that which had previously been taught. Perhaps instead, what was so innovative about the Gospel message was how perfectly Christ’s words and deeds embodied and illuminated the Hebrew tradition as handed down through thousands of years of Israel’s covenant relationship with God.

...(more forthcoming)

Steve K.

I don't have a problem with culture...

...in fact I'm very much pro-culture! But culture is a dynamic thing. I don't understand it completely in the abstract. It's everyone being what they are, where they are, when they are. I don't live according to a particular definition. I live as I see fit and leave it up to the historians to figure out what, exactly, me and 'everyone like me' were really like.
-Steve K.

G.K. Chesterton FREE MP3s!

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Thanks to Dawn Eden for the H.T.