Home > Work > Faith Speaking Understanding: Performing the Drama of Doctrine
21 " the church, like television, is always educating; the only question is, What is it teaching? "
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer , Faith Speaking Understanding: Performing the Drama of Doctrine
22 " What is the message? Can faith bereft of specific beliefs speak understanding? If so, understanding of what? My concern is that the only thing Cox has to say to young people seeking spirituality is “Do good.”13 But why should we do good? And what is the good if it is not somehow rooted in the nature and work of God? Cox’s Age of the Spirit needs a normative Word. For while belief without faith is empty, faith without belief is blind. "
23 " The long-term challenge for disciples, however, is to represent the gospel not by seeking literally to duplicate past scenes but rather by continuing to follow Jesus into the present in ways that are both faithful and (necessarily) creative. "
24 " Doctrine is less theoretical than it is theatrical, a matter of doing—speaking and showing—what we have heard and understood. "
25 " when the church responds to the word of God as it ought, the church demonstrates the love of God and the mind of Christ, in word and in deed. Just as the church comes to understand the love of God by attending to the story of Jesus and getting caught up in the gospel story, so the church in turn renders that story intelligible when it lives out the truth of the gospel. "
26 " To act out truth—to correspond to what is—is ultimately to participate in the way and life of Jesus Christ, the one who is truth incarnate: the embodied word, wisdom, and love of God. "
27 " North Americans think they know how to speak Christian, but what they say is actually a gross distortion. Either people do not know Christian words at all, or they have heard them but do not know what they mean, or they think they know what they mean when in fact they mean something completely different. "
28 " The distinct experiential end in question in the church, communion with God and others, neither justifies nor fits many marketing means. The increase of the kingdom of God owes more to the work of the Spirit than to Madison Avenue. "
29 " In one sense, the “fourth wall” perfectly suits the Age of the Enlightenment and the privilege it accorded to critical distance, abstraction, and neutral observation (i.e., “theory”). However, even in the church there is often a tendency to erect a “fourth wall” between what leaders do at the front of the church and what happens in the congregation. The fourth wall here functions not as a theatrical convention but rather as an obstacle to genuine worship insofar as it cordons off the congregation from the doxological action. "
30 " If actions speak louder than words, it is because they lend the weight of behavior (real assent) to belief (nominal assent). "
31 " does belief that fails to issue in behavior count as genuine witness (and understanding) or not? "
32 " The gospel (and this is a theme to which we shall frequently return) is not only good but great news: testimony to God’s great saving act in Jesus Christ, a doing “than which nothing greater can be conceived. "