{"id":683,"date":"2008-04-04T16:16:26","date_gmt":"2008-04-05T00:16:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/2008\/04\/04\/more-dialogue-sightings\/"},"modified":"2008-04-04T16:16:26","modified_gmt":"2008-04-05T00:16:26","slug":"more-dialogue-sightings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/2008\/04\/04\/more-dialogue-sightings\/","title":{"rendered":"more ‘dialogue’ sightings"},"content":{"rendered":"

Running the risk of additional misunderstanding, I note today another emergence of the “d” word. It is used in a CT LiveBlog article, “The Politics of Proselytization<\/a>“. The article comes to no conclusion, but is hopeful, apparently, that somehow everyone can get along. The issue is illustrated by the offense some have taken over a Good Friday prayer by the Pope:<\/p>\n

\n

Let us pray for the Jews. May the Lord our God enlighten their hearts so that they may acknowledge Jesus Christ, the savior of all men…Almighty and everlasting God, you who want all men to be saved and to reach the awareness of the truth, graciously grant that, with the fullness of peoples entering into your church, all Israel may be saved.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

We don’t agree with the Pope, or dialogue with him either, but we do agree with this prayer. Apparently the Pope hasn’t figured out dialog either, since he regularly gets himself into un-PC imbroglios like this.<\/p>\n

But CT is all about dialog. It is, after all, their<\/em> word. So we learn from the article that Richard Mouw is all for dialogue<\/a> (no surprise) but<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Stan Guthrie apparently is less so<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mouw’s article is entitled “An Open-Handed Gospel” with this subtitle: ‘We have to decide whether we have a stingy or a generous God.’ In it, he tells a story of being at a meeting where a Rabbi prays for King Hussein of Jordan. Mouw’s assessment:<\/p>\n

\n

As an evangelical Christian, I said, I believe with all my heart that the God I worship, the God of Abraham, looked down on that scene, where a descendent of Isaac gave a blessing to a descendent of Ishmael, and smiled and said, “That’s good! That’s the way I want things to be!” I’m not entirely clear about how to work this into my theology, I confessed, but I’m willing to live with some mystery in thinking about that encounter.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That’s a dialoguer for you. Never certain. Always open to seeing something, some common ground in the other side.<\/p>\n

Guthrie, on the other hand, writes on this subject “Why Evangelize the Jews?: God’s chosen people need Jesus as much as we do.” In it he says:<\/p>\n

\n

I love and respect the Jewish people and their faith. After all, Jesus was a Jew, and Christianity is firmly rooted in the Hebrew Scriptures. Certainly the Holocaust and the church’s horrific anti-Semitism have changed the context for evangelism. We have much for which to apologize. But we cannot apologize for the gospel, which is Good News for Jewish people precisely because they\u2014like all human beings\u2014need Jesus. Paul, a Hebrew of Hebrews, said plainly, “What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. for \u2026 all, both Jews and Greeks, are under the power of sin.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This sounds a good deal less ‘dialogue-ish’, eh? But it isn’t, really. See Guthrie’s concluding paragraph (and he is writing for CT<\/em>…)<\/p>\n

\n

As we continue the good works of dialogue<\/strong> and practical ministries among our Jewish neighbors, let’s renew our commitment to also sensitively but forthrightly persuade them to receive the Good News.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And in the LiveBlog article where I started, I see this:<\/p>\n

\n

With regard to the issue of evangelizing the Jews, I’m also pleased that in response to the World Evangelical Alliance’s recent statement that ran in The New York Times<\/em>, “The Gospel and the Jewish People: An Evangelical Statement,”<\/a> we’ve decided to host an exchange between Stan Guthrie and Rabbi Yehiel E. Poupko, Judaic Scholar at the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago, on the very topic of Christian Evangelism and Judaism.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Dialogue, it seems, is alive and well at CT<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Now I say all that to say this: Dialogue is more than just talking to someone else. It is certainly not discussing (or arguing) alternate points of view and the one in the right persuading the one in the wrong of the truth. It is not a discussion that reaches an impasse where people ‘agree to disagree’.<\/p>\n

When fundamentalist types are in a discussion with evangelicals over some issue or other, that isn’t dialogue, even if an evangelical uses the word. But when they do – shouldn’t fundamentalists be aware of the connotations and repudiate it, at least.<\/p>\n

I have used this expression in the past: “I don’t dialogue, I debate.” It is not that I think my views are infallible (as if!), but that I am unwilling to concede that Biblically informed views are wrong unless I can be convinced from the Scriptures<\/em>. If I have a Biblically informed point of view and enter into a debate with someone holding a different point of view, my objective is to correct his thinking, not come to a mutual understanding.<\/p>\n

In such a debate, I may at some point withdraw from the argument, having said all that can be said. Some might calling this ‘agreeing to disagree’. It usually isn’t that. It is a tactical retreat, a pause for reflection in hopes of winning the battle another day.<\/p>\n

There is a great cause in which we are engaged. I was just reading the account of the crucifixion in the Synoptics. What a Lord we serve! When men deviate from a faithful witness for Him, how can we ‘dialogue’ with them?<\/p>\n

\"don_sig\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Running the risk of additional misunderstanding, I note today another emergence of the “d” word. It is used in a CT LiveBlog article, “The Politics of Proselytization“. The article comes to no conclusion, but is hopeful, apparently, that somehow everyone can get along. The issue is illustrated by the offense some have taken over a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[77,44],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2fYWj-b1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}