The column by Joe Fleener (NZ Baptist, July), “The Word uses words,” feels incomplete. One feels one has come in on the middle of a discussion, without knowing where it began, and that we have left it before it reached its conclusion. 

I am quite happy to agree that we need to both talk and live our faith. Generally, however, the problem is too much talk and not enough living the faith. I don’t know that I have met anyone who is “just” living the faith without any attempt to explain why they are doing it!

However my biggest problem comes with the last two paragraphs: “The Gospel truth that must be proclaimed is propositional.” I beg your pardon? My faith is not based on propositions to be adhered to! My faith is based on a relationship. I don’t deny the propositions. They help me to define and understand the relationship that I have experienced. 

Historically the propositions of our faith grew out of the attempt to understand and explain the relationship that the believers experienced. They cannot and must not take the place of the relationship. When the Gospel that is proclaimed becomes propositional then we are in danger of going back to living under law, and, like the Pharisees, debating the minutiae of the law.

 Joe quotes 2 Timothy 2:8, but please put this in the context of the whole chapter! “Timothy, my child, Jesus Christ is kind, and you must let him make you strong”; “If we died with Christ, we will live with him. ... If we are not faithful, he will still be faithful. Christ cannot deny who he is” (2 Timothy 2:1, 11, 13 CEV). These are the words of relationship to be experienced, not of propositions to be accepted as beyond debate.

Joe concludes, “If we deny the need for teaching propositional truth, we have immediately lost the only God-given, authoritative medium for the proclamation of the Gospel.” I beg to disagree strongly. One of my favourite verses of scripture has always been 2 Timothy 1:12, “I am full of confidence, because I know whom I have trusted, and I am sure that he is able to keep safe until that day what he has entrusted to me.” 

Here is the relationship into which I entered when I accepted Christ as my saviour and Lord, and this is the relationship in which I continue to trust. The proclamation of the Gospel must begin by pointing to the relationship that God wants to have with us, not with the authoritative proclamation of propositions.

 – Paul Thompson
Karori, Wellington