Last Post from SA and Tim Keller

I’m leaving for the airport in about an hour to head of to the States and so for the next two weeks I’ll be blogging from there and hopefully, in the second week, blogging from the Resurgence Conference at Mars Hill in Seattle.

Before I go though I thought I should just point your attention to the website for Tim Keller’s new book ‘The Reason for God‘. There’s a little intro video on the site as well as a number of mp3 snippets for download on various issues relating to the belief in God. For those of you who have been following the whole universality post you might want to check out this site because it contains short talks by Tim Keller on issues like the exclusivity of Christianity. So go check it.

Complete the Sentence: Universalism

A number of emails have been coming to me from Andre Walters concerning the issue of universal spirituality. Andre has a fairly universal perspective on spirituality and morality, and whilst he does maintain that Jesus is his ultimate exemplar, he does find God present ‘everywhere equally’. In dialogue with him I framed the reason why I do not hold such a universalist approach. My reason is simply that my understanding of spirituality and morality is centered upon the person and work (culminating in the Cross) of Jesus Christ and him alone. Now I have not as yet had a chance to respond to him and give a more meaty reasoning behind those convictions, but I’ve noticed that Andre has taken an interest in the whole subject and so I thought I’d help him out.

Andre seems to be interested in how to relate issues of tolerance and acceptance with the exclusive nature of historic evangelicalism. Now opening a post to discussing these issues can end in a stream of essays from people explaining their points of view. So instead I have a plan to summarize the whole process. You may only post a comment on this post if you first complete the following sentence: I am not a universalist because… or alternatively: I am a universalist because…

Please keep your comments short – essays will be deleted! I’ll start:

I am not a universalist because I don’t think Jesus was a universalist.