Showing posts with label Stephen Williams. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stephen Williams. Show all posts

Thursday, October 02, 2008

Rejecting reconciliation not revelation

Most modern Christian apologetics is a response to the Enlightenment and its apparent rejection of Christian revelation in favour of rationalism.

[...]

This reading of the history of Western thought has been challenged by Stephen Williams in his book, Revelation and Reconciliation. Williams argues that modern atheism has its roots elsewhere. The rejection of revelation is only a symptom of an underlying problem. The real problem is the rejection of the idea or reconciliation and all that is implicit in that idea: moral accountability to the Creator, human helplessness, and reconciliation with God through a substitutionary sacrifice. The underlying issue was not a rejection of the possibility of revelation, but a rejection of the actuality of revelation.

(pp.159-161, Tim Chester & Steve Timmis, Total Church: A radical reshaping around gospel and community, IVP)

I think it is right that the Enlightenment was not firstly a rejection of supernaturalism and so revelation. I think it had more to do with rejection of authority (rather than reconciliation). Having said that, God's saving action is where his authority is most clearly demonstrated (that was what the OT writers thought, e.g. Exodus 7:5, and NT writers followed when they said that 'Jesus is Lord').