All Christians make choices about private finance, vocation, and economics.
With the discharge of two new books from the Religion & Works Sequence, Wholesome and Rich? A Biblical-Theological Response to the Prosperity Gospel and Wealthy in Good Deeds: A Biblical Response to Poverty by the Church and by Society, the Religion & Work Mission needs to assist Christians suppose via these “extraordinary” life choices from a biblical perspective.
In a latest occasion in The Bookstore at Southern, Rob Plummer, professor at Southern and common editor of the Religion & Works collection, mentioned Scripture’s sensible educating on wealth and prosperity with authors and Southern college members: James Hamilton, Timothy Paul Jones, and Michael Pohlman.
Hamilton, Outdated Testomony professor at Southern, critiqued the prosperity gospel and mentioned Proverbs and Ecclesiastes supply a extra satisfying imaginative and prescient for all times.
“Knowledge is healthier for you than cash,” Hamilton mentioned. “What you actually need is to expertise God and to take pleasure in his goodness in his means. If you understand God, he’ll present every little thing you want, and you may belief and be content material along with his provision. The well being, wealth, and prosperity gospel misses all of that.”
Marxist ideology, then again, strips the world of all issues sacred and reduces every little thing all the way down to energy relationships.
“These secular concepts function on the concept that cash is a supreme good,” Hamilton mentioned. “The knowledge in Proverbs and Ecclesiastes calls this self-importance. We all know from the knowledge literature that the one approach to have which means is to take pleasure in God’s good items.”
Plummer additionally interviewed Jones, professor of apologetics and philosophy at Southern. Jones sought to recuperate historic knowledge for our trendy context, arguing that the ethics of the early church present a mannequin for ecclesial apologetics.
“The church is an argument for the Christian religion,” Jones mentioned. “We don’t simply serve to create alternatives to share the gospel, however we must always dwell in a means that our lives are inexplicable with out the presence of God. The early church took loving their neighbor critically and demonstrated the reality of their beliefs by their ethics.”
To repair the moral lack in lots of Christians, church buildings should return to Scripture and deal with the theological roots behind caring for the poor.
“Our lives ought to be so soaked with Scripture the place each second Scripture leaks out of us,” Jones mentioned. “Fallacious theology will work itself out in fallacious apply. Generally we attempt to get the outward expression proper with out seeing the theological fact behind the ethics.”
Mike Pohlman, professor of Christian preaching, argued {that a} Pauline view of struggling conflicts with a well being and wealth gospel.
“The prosperity gospel is the tragic information that God exists not for his personal glory however to your appetites,” Pohlman mentioned. “The prosperity gospel sanctifies vices like greed and coveting and turns the true gospel into an idol, and the idol is us.”
The important thing to understanding Pauline struggling, in response to Pohlman, is seeing it because the design of God. Paul’s phrases in Romans 8:17 educate that the believer enters into glory via struggling.
“The means to get to glory embrace the cross,” Pohlman mentioned. “Solely Christianity affords hope moderately than band-aids for the bleeding arteries of our struggling.”
For extra info on the Religion & Work Mission, go to the web site.
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