Faulty Fundamentalism
By John R. Gavazzoni

Few are the instances of resistance comparable to that found among Christian Fundamentalists when they... scholar, and non-scholar alike... are confronted by their seriously flawed fundamental doctrines re: how God relates to man in the face of man's sin, and in re: to the disposition of God as to how, when, and where He chooses to grant His presence.

As to how God relates to man in bondage to sin, both in scholarly and in layman's terms, God is seen as being reactively offended by man's condition, in spite of the fact that said condition was situationally inevitable. Not to jump too far ahead, but it was in the plan that man should fall, for the ultimate goal of man, in union with Christ, to be raised up with Him and to sit with Him at the right hand of The Majesty on High, even above all the heavens, required a complementary catalytic descent. Without a full descent there could be no full ascent.

There is not a hint in the gospel records of Jesus, God's Son, who is the radiance-effect of God's glory, the exact image (living Imprint) of God's nature, of Jesus ever relating to sinners as pseudo-orthodoxy insists. Not only did our Lord not avoid being among "publicans and sinners," but was disposed to be found among them full of understanding and compassion, rather than, as fundamentally assumed, their near-presence offended His holiness. He loved them all unconditionally, and that love is the essence of His Holiness. He is holy, because He is Love.

Do we find in the Genesis record of God's response (not reaction) to Adam's disobedience, God entering the scene with an attitude of fierce anger, accusing Adam of such intolerable behavior that traumatized His holiness? Did God "show up" all upset over Adam and Eve becoming a huge problem in respect to God's purpose and plan for humanity? Nay, nay. No such indication in the record.

Rather, "Adam, where art thou?" Rather, "who told you you were naked?" "Did you eat of the fruit I commanded you not to?" Rather than some kind of reaction like, "I find you an offense in the face of my holiness," simply [now the consequence], "dying, thou shalt die." Not, "don't you realize you've taken the first step toward everlasting abandonment by Me to a tortured existence unless I can come up with a solution?"

Instead, in response to their sense of having become shamefully naked, He clothes them. Not, "so suffer your shame, it's what you deserve." Hardly minutes into the conversation over the situation, the Lord promises that, as it were, He has everything under control, and the Seed of the woman would victoriously bruise the head of the serpent and the last [final] enemy to be defeated would be the consequential death they had incurred. Enmity would reign between the Seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent until Jesus would end man's enmity against God by His death.

The Old Testament record of this situation being played out representatively in God's relationship with ancient Israel reveals that while it is true that God confronted their insistent rebellion time and time again, YET ALWAYS, following up with the promise to change their enmity toward Him to responding to His love with loving devotion: a response induced by the initiation of His love. They simply were ignorant of the love behind all His dealings with them, presuming a reactive disposition on His part that did not exist.

At the heart of this whole matter is the presumption that man's fall has required God to be reconciled to man from God's side in order for man to be reconciled to God from his side. No such teaching by Jesus or His apostles. Always, the requirement is for man to be reconciled to God due to the enmity of his carnal mind so full of misunderstanding of the ways of God. God never changed His attitude, His moral posture toward man following Adam's disobedience, rather He remained unchangeably conciliatory toward sinners. He does not need to be conciliated.

Which brings us to that abominable doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement, or as it was called in fundamentalist circles back when the Lord called me to Himself, vicarious substitutionary atonement. What possibly could project a distortion upon the reputation of God as a God who cannot, will not, forgive sin without having his holiness satisfied by inflicting pain on the sinner until He has sufficiently vented His rage against the offending sinner. That's exactly the God NOT seen in Jesus' relationship with sinners, and His teaching on man forgiving man included no requirement that the offended one has the right to inflict pain on the offender before forgiveness can be granted.

Finally, and I've dealt with this in several articles over the years, but I'm pressed to address it again, i.e., the presumption that in some sense Jesus, following His death and resurrection, returned to heaven so as to be somehow less than present than when He walked among us in the flesh. It's all about clumsy, sloppy translation of our Lord's words about His going and coming. One must suspect, not only translation clumsiness, but an agenda that seeks to keep Jesus far off and only with us in Spirit.

Hello!!! He is NOW, the life-giving Spirit indwelling the believer making His life our life. He promised to send the Spirit of Truth while identifying Himself AS THE TRUTH. He said He would not leave them comfortless, (as orphans), He would come to them. What He promised was that in going away He would concurrently be coming again to them in a new, intimate relationship where together they would be the greater Christ of the New Covenant, Christ the Head of His corporate body, and we the members of that body. Paul wrote, "so also IS Christ.'

An absent Jesus is an intolerable presumption. Without what I call redundantly His presently, present presence, all we have is dead religion, one more system of a moral and ethical religious construct. Christ is our Life. Without His real Presence we remain dead in trespasses and sins. Jonathan Mitchell in his translation of the New Testament gives us more precisely what Jesus said about His departure. It's not, "if I go away....," it's "and if I journey on, I am continuously coming again to you...."

Please, dear reader, get this straight. He continuously comes to us AS PRESENT. He, to coin a word, "presences" among us and within us. From the Mirror translation, we are God's address, the Father in the Son and the Son in us, a holy habitation of God in the Spirit. A basic translation problem is about where the Greek should be translated as presence, rather than as coming. Go ahead, check Strong's Exhaustive Concordance. The Greek word can convey coming or presence.