I ran across this interesting quote from Bruce Shelley this morning (from Church History in Plain Language, p. 52). He makes a comparison between Gnosticism and the spirit of every age to try to wed Christianity to the prevailing popular enlightened ideas of the culture in an effort to make it more appealing. I post this as a warning to all of us to make sure we are looking to an “Unadjusted Gospel.”
Gnosticism holds an important lesson for all Christians who attempt to disentangle the gospel from its involvement with “barbaric and outmoded” Jewish notions about God and history. It speaks to all who try to raise Christianity from the level of faith to a higher realm of intelligent knowledge and so raise its attractiveness to important people. In his effort to reconcile Christ and the gospel with the science and philosophy of his day, the gnostic denied the Event and lost the gospel. Just as nineteenth-century defenders of the faith tried to present Jesus Christ in terms of evolution, so the gnostic interpreted the Savior in light of the fascinating ideas of the enlightened men of his day. But the attempt to tie the gospel to the latest theories of men is self-defeating. Nothing is as fleeting in history as the latest theories that flourish among the enlightened, and nothing can be more quickly dismissed by later generations.
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