- First, Keller is so smart and so well-read. The footnotes section at the end of each chapter could make up their own book, and a good book it would be!
- Second, the idea of church and how we 'do' church continues to evolve and become much more allusive, especially as our culture develops and evolves. As humans, we constantly want to categorize churches (and people for that matter) as liberal or conservative, progressive or fundamental, as focused on saving souls or feeding the hungry. Keller's book moves away from these "either-or" distinctions and instead moves towards including the best of both perspectives.
It's a big book, and since I don't like long posts, I'm breaking the takeaways into smaller pieces. Here's part 1:
- Contextualization
is not --- as is often argued ---
“giving people what they want to hear”.
Rather it is giving people the Bible’s answers, which they may not
at all want to hear, to questions about life that people in their particular
time and place are asking, in language and forms they can comprehend, and
through appeals and arguments with force they can feel, even if they
reject them.
- Here
is a beautiful paradox that is easy to miss: the fact that we must express
universal truth in a particular cultural context does not mean that the
truth itself is somehow lost or less universal.
- There
is no universal presentation of the gospel for all people
Part 2 tomorrow . . .
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