Comments on: Missional Soteriology: Does the Missional Vision Change How People Get Saved?

By: Monday is for Missiology: How and Why is God at Work Outside the Church? By Ed Stetzer - greenhousenetwork's JimdoPage!

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 19:31:37 +0000

[...] David Fitch: Missional Soteriology: Does the Missional Vision Change How People are Saved? [...]

By: Marty Schoenleber

Marty Schoenleber — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 14:55:12 +0000

David, the link is now working so the quotes I refer to are easy to see.

I would welcome a time to sit down with you over coffee and a patristic scholar or two at our side.

By: davidfitch

davidfitch — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 03:37:39 +0000

Marty,
Thanks for the effort to gte your comment up. Without knowing the quotes and the context of the writing you’re talking about, it’s hard to know how to respond to your assertion fairly. I’ll just say however, that you can certianly find the word “proposition” on say Calvin … but it has a different meaning and does different work in its later Enlightenment development. Likeiwse individualist p[artiicpation in salvation has never been the question, it is the interrelationship with God’s greater work in the world that changes … as the Enlightenmetn begins to get worked out … most significantly on the American frontier …
Perhaps a coffee or sitting down with patristic scholars simeday might throw more light on the isse …
Blessings .. DF

By: Marty Schoenleber

Marty Schoenleber — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 15:07:47 +0000

David,

My initial post seems to have been deleted so here’s another attempt into the conversation. I have corrected the links. [These discussions are dangerous aren’t they? I always hear the echo of Acts 17:21 … “Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new.” (ESV) ]

Lord, save us from doing a lot of talking with no action.
David, I need to ‘push’ back a bit on your comment about the effects of the enlightenment. This has become a popular comment of late throughout the blogosphere but I don’t think it holds up quite as well historically as we might think. Here’s your comment:

“Yet we must not ignore the part of the protestant wing that carried forensic atonement to new individualistic heights primarily under the influence of the Enlightenment. I don’t think either Luther or Calvin imagined what modernity would eventually do in isolating and reducing the atonement to a forensic transaction between each individual and God.” David Fitch

I’m not so sure.

For a number of years I have been reading the early church fathers to find evidence of what their gospel actually was. What was preached as gospel in the first, second, third, fourth, etc centuries? It has been an exciting adventure.

What I have found is a surprising consistency and a very propositional and individualistic understanding of the gospel’s call. For example, Clement’s Letter to the Corinthians the chapters 7-9, or the epistle of Mathetes to Diognetus in the second century or in the Athanasius in the fourth century or perhaps the clearest that I have found, Anselm in the 11th century ( There are pdf files on all of these at http://radicalchurchplanting.com/evangelism.html ).

All of these “gospels” are pre-enlightenment and display a distinct individualistic tone. To be sure, it is not the only tone but they bear a remarkable similarity to some of the outlines in tracts that are used now in various evangelism training curriculums in use today.

As we explore what it means to live missionally and sacrificially in the world, (in my last church we used to call it “living passionately for and like Jesus”) let’s not lose the bold, and humbly confident heralding of the good news, while in Jesus name, we enter in all manner of service to the poor and the rich, the abused and the abusers, offering a free gospel to a world in need of a full redemption.

Enough of a push back. David, thank you for engaging in a robust discussion.

By: Little Flowers Community » Blog Archive » Becoming & Living As Christ Together

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 14:24:36 +0000

[...] it means to be missional. There are already many incredible contributions (such as these from David Fitch and Brother Maynard, to name just two). The topic has been on my mind a great deal more of late [...]

By: Marty Schoenleber

Marty Schoenleber — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 23:35:58 +0000

Just double checked the links and they are not working.

But if you go to RadicalChurchPlanting.com then to Resources and then to Evangelism, you can see all of the links.

By: Missional: Being & Living Christ Together « A Living Alternative Our Missional Pilgrimage

Sat, 13 Mar 2010 18:47:54 +0000

By: » Salvation in a Prologue to Missional Discussions ::: Subversive Influence

» Salvation in a Prologue to Missional Discussions ::: Subversive Influence — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 04:35:34 +0000

[...] David Fitch responds to Ed’s contention that salvation took a turn during the Enlightenment, saying I don’t think either Luther or Calvin imagined what modernity would eventually do in isolating and reducing the atonement to a forensic transaction between each individual and God. This view of salvation became fully flowered in American revivalistic evangelicalism. This view of salvation, I would argue, has done as much damage to the furtherance of Mission in the world as the protestant mainline development. [...]

By: Michael DeFazio

Michael DeFazio — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:29:09 +0000

no doubt, Irenaeus did a great job of emphasizing this. But the danger in saying, “Yup, that’s what Irenaeus said” is that many people say that and then categorize it as a post-biblical development. Then people either dismiss it (if they don’t give much cred to “tradition”) or give it secondary status at best. Truth is, recapitulation was Irenaeus’ way of communicating a biblical truth, reflected in both Paul and perhaps especially the Gospels (read properly). Anyhow, I know you’d not dismiss it, and of course it is Irenaean, but it’s also Pauline, etc.

By: len

len — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:45:12 +0000

Heh.. Jared also rejects the frame of the question. That is worth a discussion in itself — really difficult to discuss an issue cross-paradigms. The limits of language – language exists in sub-worlds of its own that constricts particular conversations. Theoretically, we should be able to move beyond that constriction by entering the bible’s own cadences?

I do agree that the larger telos must be kept in view — where is God taking all this? What is his larger vision for new creation? Asking these sorts of questions even subverts much of the current framing of “spiritual formation.”