Session 4: Tammie

#1
If left with a focus on the Moses (law) and Christ, both during his ministry on earth and in the days following his resurrection during which he appeared to the apostles, the church remains an outgrowth of the Jewish faith in which righteousness is attained by continuing to observe the law. It is understood by those brought up in the Jewish tradition and those outsiders who are familiar with the traditions. A focus on the righteousness through faith as exhibited in the continuity from Adam (through whom death came to the world) to Abraham (to whom the promise was made) to Christ (through whom life entered the world and the promise was fulfilled) offers a broader view of the gospel as a message of grace imparted to all, thus breaking down barriers between races, traditions, social class and any other conceivable category of people.

#2
In the first century, the idea that righteousness comes through faith and not through the keeping of the law means that one's position in the church is not conditional upon an individual's status under the old covenant. In today's terms, an ecclesiology of grace opens the doors of the church to all. It shatters the faulty notion that one has to do certain things to be accepted by Christ and by extension the church. The problem is that we in the church have to live up to that notion and accept people as those under the promise that has been fulfilled through grace rather than looking at them as people who need to cross their "t"s and dot their "i"s before entering into the community. Further, as Anderson discusses in the latter portion of chapter 3, this grace is also manifested in the gifts given to those in the church and in allowing the Spirit to move freely in the church.

#3
Working in a postmodern context, the ECM relies more on experience than on a linear pattern of logic and reason. That alone allows the ECM to be able to accept the Bible as the word of God at face value as they see the proof of the Bible's truths in the effect it has upon the people who engage it, study it and live it. This corresponds to the naive realism that Anderson describes in the writings of Paul and in the gospel accounts of the life of Christ in which knowledge was a "subjective experience of an objective reality." Paul, like the ECM of today, claimed the authority of lives changed. So, the ECM simply accepts the Bible as the word of God and sets about to do what it says, as Anderson describes on page 59, becomes "too busy doing kingdom of God work to spend time on such issues."

#4
Christian education for me was probably typical for a child growing up in the church. We were taught about God through the usual stories of Noah and the Ark, David and Goliath, Daniel and the lions den, etc. It was often the telling of a Bible story with a moral tagged on the end. As I entered junior and senior high, the knowledge base expanded into the epistles, but still often focused on a moral application for life. In a sense, that wasn't so bad, but it was more instruction in the vein of "ought to" and "should" than in finding the ways God reveals himself to us everyday (thereby teaching us to know him) whether in his word, in the actions of the people around us or in the wonders of creation. Religious ministry and instruction becomes caught up in the principles and guidelines, but it seems revelational ministry allows people to learn from example and experience. Jesus' ministry was rife with such encounters as he healed people who were not able to tell you much about Jesus' teachings, but they knew what he had done for them. Revelations to Paul, as he described in his letters, formed the basis of his ministry and were moments to which he referred in letters as he established his authority. The ECM, with its emphasis on missio Dei, works out the word of God and, by extension, creates opportunities for its people to encounter God.