I am 300 pages into Dr. Campbell's magnum opus and I kept thinking as I was reading how great minds run together. This guy is thinking about the same issues I have been thinking about....and then I realized that he is way more brilliant and competent than I, but I ran into the same conundrums because they are there, and they have been tripping up the church in one way of the other for 2 millennium.
He might say it differently or frame his argument on a life time of scholarship way out of my league, but to any preacher, any serious Christian, the realities of how our doctrines and beliefs hit the road in our discussions, our studies, or prayers, our practices are meeting the same problems.
Some people grab the elephant in one place, to switch metaphors, and ignore all the testimony that challenges their description of the issue. Its a conundrum. Here is the way Campbell states it, if the gospel is contractual on certain human response, then it is conditional, and no longer a gift or a call, yet Paul consistently presents the gospel unconditionally, ie. "while we were yet sinners" Campbell suggests we have taught an inconsistent gospel by misunderstanding Paul's description of His deliverance of mankind as an offer and not an accomplishment of Christ. Are we saved by our faith in Christ or the faith of Christ on our behalf?
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