“When will it become clear to the geocentrists?”

So asks N. T. Wright in his book Justification, likening those who hold the “old perspective” on Paul’s gospel to anyone who insists that the sun revolves around the earth because that’s what they see looking up in the sky (Justification, 95).

THE COPERNICAN ANGST OF N. T. WRIGHT

I expect that many Christians might not think that a book with the title 40 Questions about Christians and Biblical Law would be that helpful for their daily Christian lives. After all, the law is not the most enticing subject. Further, we are “not under the law” as members of the new covenant, right?

Well-known and widely-respected New Testament scholar Thomas Schreiner would beg to differ.

I recall a class discussion in seminary about the prosperity gospel and its popularity in North American churches today. The conversation jumped from Benny Hinn to TBN to Joyce Meyer in just a couple of minutes. The class consensus was that hardcore prosperity teachings were so “out there” that they would easily be dismissed by the church members we would be serving. Our professor pushed back: “You’d be surprised at how much prosperity-tainted teaching is in conservative churches.” He was right.

The explosive growth of Christianity in Africa and South America has led many observers to speak of this demographic shift as creating a new Christendom. Unfortunately, the teaching that has fueled growth in these areas has been tainted by an American-style prosperity emphasis that focuses on health and wealth at the expense of sin, redemption, and repentance.

A PLEA TO REJECT THE PROSPERITY GOSPEL

In his 1998 book Losing Our Virtue, David Wells comments that systematic theologies are more commonly written for the academy than for the church. To do the latter, he says, “would require that theology understand the life of the Church as well as the way life in the postmodern world works, and not simply orient itself to the preoccupations of the academic guild” (10).

When Don Quixote embarked on his quest for the impossible, it was a humorous and tragic adventure. He tilted at windmills which he thought were giants. He looked at peasant girls and saw noble ladies. And he thought an old dilapidated tavern was a castle. Obviously, Quixote was carrying “a few bricks short of a load.”