Baxter Kruger
Yesterday I heard Baxter Kruger speak twice. Once to the forge interns at their intensive and the other at the forge postcard last night.
Tim has put up some great notes over here and I will highlight a few of his notes here.
The reaction to Baxter’s presentation has been mixed. Some have felt that his argument smacks of universalism and feel uncomfortable that Baxter is withdrawing from a position of Christ’s exclusivity.
“Christianity is not about receiving Jesus into our life, it is about us entering into the life of God because of Jesus coming himself into our lives. We have been given Jesus.
Our job is to capture this vision of the Trinitarian, Incarnational view of God and proclaim it to the world.”
Baxter based this argument on a number of verses but seemed to mainly focus on John 8:12 where Jesus says:
“John 8:12 - I am the light of the world (cosmos). Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.
- Jesus makes a declaration - I am the light of the cosmos.
- exclusive, politically incorrect, arrogant … true, fact.
- if we believe in Jesus we will NEVER walk in THE darkness, but will have the light of life.
- when we say who Jesus is then we are actually saying something about ourselves.”
Some of the other highlights of Baxter are picked up in Tim’s notes - particularly:
“the Jesus we’ve inherited from Western theology is very small, but in reality Jesus is bigger than all things.
the church is being squashed by religion (which tells people they are separated from God) and secular humanism (which tells people they can fix it all themselves) and needs to be about the task of making space for people to recognise who Jesus is.”
July 12th, 2006 at 2:49 pm
One of the interesting things in he presentation to the interns was that he made a few interesting alterations to the translation that was read to him without explaining them, notably the use of the word ‘cosmos’ and the extra ‘the’s he placed in the sentence.
If your going to ask for a passage and write it up on the board you should either explain your changes or not make them
July 12th, 2006 at 4:11 pm
I didn’t put this in my notes ‘cos I was concentrating on exactly what he was saying but the part of his theology that I thought was particularly unhelpful was this view that all of the cosmos has died, risen, ascended with Christ and has had the Spirit poured out on it. That’s all of creation and all of humanity. The only difference between those who are Christians and those who aren’t is that Christians have realised their new reality. The answer to the question ‘What happens when people die not having realised their new reality?’ appeared to be that they spend forever in a state of denial about this new reality. I find this hardly convincing given that these people have died, risen and ascended with Christ … so they are reconciled to God and drawn into the perfect relationship of the Trinity but just can’t see it? Not a very convincing argument against the general orthodox view, particularly against a couple of thousand years of historical Christian belief and tradition.
My 2 cents.
July 15th, 2006 at 10:04 am
I believe that Jesus is THE Way, THE Truth, and THE Life. But the question is, do you need to know this in order to walk this path? In otherwords, can you know nothing about Jesus but still be saved? He can still be THE Way, THE Truth, and THE Life - even if you don’t know it.
Do you need any knowledge to be saved?
July 18th, 2006 at 5:02 pm
I actually can’t believe that Forge got Kruger to do a talk. What are you guys thinking?! I would pay a lot of good money NOT to hear him talk at all. I went to one of his sessions a few years back which was filled with so much heresy I could not stand it any longer and walked out disgusted. I had another friend who did stay till the open question time at the end which turned out pretty volatile with a lot of people disagreeing with him - probably best that I did leave otherwise an AVO would have been in order.
July 18th, 2006 at 5:04 pm
Interesting Veritas. What did you find heretical about what Baxter was saying?
July 18th, 2006 at 5:23 pm
I have been trying to remember since seeing this topic but for the life of me I must have blocked it out. The audience was ecumenical with a fair proportion of pentecostal and baptist persuasions and from a bad memory it was like this post above mentions re promoting universalism just made my radar go bserk and I lost count how many times he used the word trinitarian (he used the word so much it became just a spacefiller - every time he used the word God he would explain the trinity again and again - we got it the first time and actually had it anyway) If I had stayed through the whole talk I would be better able to respond - sorry. I’ll do some more readiing and see if anything comes back to mind.
July 18th, 2006 at 5:38 pm
No problems, I was just interested.
July 18th, 2006 at 7:39 pm
Veritas, for what it’s worth, I found Baxter Krugar a lot better in written form than hearing him speak. Of his various books, I found “The Undoing of Adam” the more thorough theologically. If you do want to do more reading, perhaps this would be worth a look.
By the way, I don’t think Krugar is a universalist, but he would advocate that all humanity has been adopted into the relationship between Father, Son and Spirit. It is a done deal for everyone because the work of Jesus is finished. One just has to accept what already is….
July 18th, 2006 at 10:46 pm
Hey wayne - that’s an interesting concept doesn’t seem, to me, to be bibilical but I will have to think that through a bit.
July 19th, 2006 at 12:08 am
This thought is largely based on Ephesians 1:3-5 where it talks about the decision that God (Father, Son, and Spirit) made before the foundation of time to adopt us (humanity) into His family through Jesus Christ.
I reckon that’s a pretty awesome thought, to think that God wanted to include us in the relationship of Father, Son, and Spirit, and did that by becoming one of us. In Jesus our old Adam nature was put to death when He died, and when He rose, we rose with Him with a new nature, and when He ascended to the right hand of the Father, all of humanity ascended with Him (has been adopted, or included). Wow - thinking about that one will bake your noodle!
June 13th, 2007 at 2:17 am
I’m new here but I believe Kruger has it right. He is basically repeating the theology of T.F. Torrance. I think the Latin influence on Christendom has made our relationship to our creator in the likes of a contract instead of a covenant.
June 13th, 2007 at 9:52 am
Rom 8:28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.
For those who love Him, for those He called…the Sovereignty of God is beyond us and I am actually very happy with that…far easier to trust as a child on that basis.
I have no problems with the whole Trinitarian stuff - sounds good to me - but the stuff about:
“….the part of his theology that I thought was particularly unhelpful was this view that all of the cosmos has died, risen, ascended with Christ and has had the Spirit poured out on it. That’s all of creation and all of humanity. The only difference between those who are Christians and those who aren’t is that Christians have realised their new reality. The answer to the question ‘What happens when people die not having realised their new reality?’ appeared to be that they spend forever in a state of denial about this new reality.”
What about every knee shall bow?
What about those people He never knew despite their good works?
What about the Lazarus who died and wanted to go back and tell his brothers they got it all wrong?
Like it or not Scripture does talk about the people of God, and the people who are not - wailing, gnashing of teeth etc….
The people who live in darkness and run from the light…
It wouldn’t be too hard to go thru Scripture and find a whole bunch of things that work against this.
Sounds to me like Hinduism with a Christian face.
Cheers
MN
June 13th, 2007 at 11:01 am
And Jesus said unto them, “And whom do you say that I am?”
They replied,
“You are the totaliter aliter, the vestigious trinitatum who speaks to us in the modality of Christo-monism.”
” You are the impossible possibility who brings to us, your children of light and children of darkness, the overwhelming roughness’ in the midst of our fraught condition of estrangement and brokenness in the contiguity and existential anxieties of our ontological relationships.
“You are he who heals our ambiguities and overcomes the split of angst and existential estrangement; you are he who speaks of the theonomous viewpoint of the analogia entis, the analogy of our being and the ground of all possibilities.
“You are my Oppressed One, my soul’s shalom, the One who was, who is, and who shall be, who has never left us alone in the struggle, the event of liberation in the lives of the oppressed struggling for freedom, and whose blackness is both literal and symbolic.”
And Jesus replied, “Huh?”
June 13th, 2007 at 11:34 pm
Huh indeed (I think I just read that priceless joke at Maggie Dawn’s)
Baxter Krugar rings warning bells for me as does anyone who goes on a speaking circuit (and has a ministry which has resources only for the paying customers) based around one issue.
I would also say, using the translation of ‘Perichoresis’ of to ‘dance around’ to build a whole theology of some ‘dance with God’ reeks of what I call “theology by etymology” to me rather than a real engagement with what the Church Fathers who used that term meant to explain and explore (even if I leave behind modern theologians for now).
I am not familiar with this guy’s work save for a few comments etc I have read on the internet but the modus operandi throws up red lights for me. (As it did for early Christians who warned against certain “travelling prophets”)
One other thing. Here we are discussing on other threads the relationship between right thinking and right action and yet…and yet…(can anyone else see the disconnect and irony here?)
June 14th, 2007 at 2:06 pm
That is precisley where I got the joke from Saint - good to see yuou visitng some of my blog haunts - I lvoe Maggi Dawn, brilliant thinker. I’m using her idea about the tent in church at Sunday nights gathering, I’ll take photos and if anyone wants a lok at them and the notes for liturgy and some stuff I have designed sedn me an email here
June 21st, 2007 at 2:53 pm
On reading the above comments, I can only ask the following of the readers. Do you believe that God sent Jesus to die for all, or only for some? Do you believe that when Jesus hung on the cross, he was doing so for some, and not others? When John records that God so loved the world, he sent his only son………, that the world only meant some? Do you believe that God has two faces- one of love and one of hate? Election is an issue no doubt. But the election relates to all, not some. If this is true, the decision to follow Christ is one made by us, and not him. Remember, he gave us a choice, a free will. Or did he? If you believe in devine election of the saints, my final question is- are you one of the elect? Are you sure? How do you know? Are you basing that on YOUR choice to love God, or something else?
If I can make one further comment about adoption referred to above. As an adoptive father, I feel I understand completely the adoption of mankind by God. As a father, it was my choice to adopt my son. My son did not have a choice in that at all. It was from my fathers heart that I chose to adopt him. Out of love for him. This boy then became my son, my adopted son with full privileges as my other children- because of my choice- not his. But now that he is older and has understanding, HE has a choice. Does he embrace my fatherhood, or does he reject my fatherhood. It is HIS decision- not mine. Can you see the fathers heart of God in this? He embraces all, but leaves the return embrace to us.
Baxter is a universalist as far as this goes, Jesus died for all. The grace of God is for all- universally. But there is still a choice to be made by us.
And finally- “the good news is good for all, or it’s not good news at all”
June 22nd, 2007 at 2:21 pm
It is amazing that when ever someone preaches about God’s universal love and action for the whole human race, people response by saying yea BUT. Baxter Kruger, Torrance, Barth and other pastors/lecturers I know are always being accursed of universalism when speaking about the wonderful work that our great high priest Jesus has done and is continually doing for the whole human race. Why cant we just rest (Heb 4) and trust? Our minds are always going back to who is in and who is out. The thing is why can we just rejoice and be blessed what God has done.
The second point I would like to make is that we always seem to make it always about choice. If I am invited to a wedding, the point is not my choice to go but the importance is two people being in love and committing their lives to each other and the couple invited to share their special moment.
Also the word choice is not emotive enough to express the response that we make when we encounter the Good News. All the Christians I know cant express in words the awe when they find out that God loves them. Something to consider is for all of us is to use more emotive language to reflect in a stronger way what God has done.