Paul S. Dixon, Pastor
Ladd Hill Bible Church
Wilsonville, Oregon
On Mon, 28 Jul 1997 09:18:28 -0400 (EDT) "James H. Vellenga"
<jhv0@mailhost.viewlogic.com> writes:
>
>>From Jonathan Robie (Thanks again, Jonathan, for your penetrating
>questions):
>>
>> There is definitely a continuation of the discussion of thought with
>the
>> "one or two", "two" and "two or three" , and your interpretation
>makes sense
>> to me in general. I tend to be leaning that way myself right now,
>but I'm
>> having difficulties reconciling the certainty of verses 18 - 19,
>which would
>> seem to indicate that we have the authority to bring every single
>person to
>> repentence, with verse 17, which is clear about what to do if
>someone does
>> not repent.
>>
>
>OK, let me suggest an alternative interpretation from the point of
>view
>of an analytical Evangelical predestinarian free-will charismatic who
>believes in the ongoing guidance of the church both individually and
>more especially collectively.
>
>_If_ one can accept the premise that "God still speaks" with specific
>guidance for specific situations, then the passage no longer has to be
>a
>question as to whether we can bend God to our desires, but as to how
>the
>church goes about carrying out God's desires in specific situations.
>
>One of the dangers inherent in a working belief in ongoing guidance is
>the evident finiteness and fallibility of each of us. For this
>reason,
>in order to discern the will of God, we need constantly to be
>submitting
>our understandings (whether abstract or particular) to other members
>of
>the Christian (and for that matter, non-Christian) community. It is
>for
>this purpose that one cannot rest with solo rebuking -- for that
>matter,
>my rebuke may be wrong or "out of time." And certainly when it comes
>to
>discipline (binding and loosing), no individual short of Christ
>himself
>should have the gall to carry out that discipline on his or her own.
>
>What this means for verses 18-19 is that the "authority" comes from
>the
>"authorization" of hearing God's direction jointly, so that when we
>exercise a discipline (or a freeing) we find that it is something that
>was already set up in the heavenly realms -- i.e., what we bind on
>earth
>will turn out already to have been bound in heaven, while what we
>loose
>on earth will similarly turn out to have been loosed in heaven.
>
>So what we have here is a dialectic, an interactive process, God
>choosing to work through fallible human agents who, aware of their
>fallibility, work together to discern his desire and carry it out --
>with all the authority that being his agents gives them.
>
>>From this point of view, vv. 18-19 do _not_ give the church the
>authority "to bring every single person to repentance" simply because
>the church is dependent first of all on God's disposing and only
>secondarily on our own willingness to join forces with him.
>
>Nonetheless, it remains a scary passage, because of the evident
>facility
>with which even collegial leadership can go astray, and it remains
>incumbent on every group to exercise discipline (as Carl has already
>suggested) only with the gravest of humility.
>
>Regards,
>j.v.
>