The New Perspective sort of sees Paul as stating that it's the 'Church' who God is deeming to be His in-the-right people.
Does N. T. Wright see being sprinkled with water as a baby as an important mark that they belong to that People?
If Wright does, and if that's correct, and John Wesley preached that such people, once adults, yet needed to be born again - what then might Wright think about Wesley's perspective and career? Has Wright said much?
John Wesley's Aldersgate experience had roots in the German Moravian movement; and came to life during a reading of Luther - all of this was very 'Reformation' in its perspective compared with New Perspective. From that night onwards Wesley's passion was to announce that you must be born again, seemingly irrespective of infant-sprinkling.
Curiously though, Wesley himself persisted in believing that the Anglican Church even with its infant-sprinkling was the closest thing anywhere in the world at the time to the structure of the primitive Church: he just felt it needed to be infused with some real life. And he was barred from many Anglican pulpits because of it.
So I wonder how even Wesley understood the relationship between baptism and being born again, let alone how Wright might understand it and what Wright might therefore think of Wesley.
Wesley's evangelicalism seemed to be concerned with getting individuals born again, saved, first up. Is that a proper priority in evangelicalism? If that is a proper priority, how then can we avoid allowing the New Perspective, with all its good points, to inadvertently take us away from making the first thing the first thing? Or is that over-moralising one's anthropology. And if it is proper, what might that say about sprinkling infants. For example, would it mean that baptism should instead be part of/follow believing?
Can the New Perspective keep me focused on seeing individuals get saved - or does the New Perspective regard that as just a bit too much of a Reformation-era concept.
Anglicanism at its inception didn't come about so much because of a sense of a need for individual salvation like some of the German Reformation movements seemed to - it basically retained a high view of the ecclesia only transferred the head of the ecclesia from Rome to King Henry VIII. Is that true?
Does the New Perspective have to take us back to a pre-Reformation type view of Church-membership, baptism, being born again, our role in the world and their inter-relationship? Or can we say that Paul was able to say what he said about the collective Church (as the New Perspective brings out) only because it is true in the inner experience of individuals in the church first (and that the Reformation, Evangelical revivals, believers-baptism, and Pentecostalism helped revive that)?
What I'm getting at is this: should I treat church-membership, marked by infant-sprinkling, as a mark of salvation, and so assume that church-members who were sprinkled when they were babies are most-likely already saved, and focus instead on something else - like seeing them grow in knowledge perhaps; or seeing them get filled with the Spirit; or seeing them find their role in the world; or should the focus of evangelicalism for most people be things like the arts, education, health, justice, civil rights, foreign debt, the environment and other Left-leaning activism - or should I instead be concerned with getting individuals to have a personal, inner experience of salvation first, as a priority, even if some of them are already christened church-members?
Does N. T. Wright see being sprinkled with water as a baby as an important mark that they belong to that People?
If Wright does, and if that's correct, and John Wesley preached that such people, once adults, yet needed to be born again - what then might Wright think about Wesley's perspective and career? Has Wright said much?
John Wesley's Aldersgate experience had roots in the German Moravian movement; and came to life during a reading of Luther - all of this was very 'Reformation' in its perspective compared with New Perspective. From that night onwards Wesley's passion was to announce that you must be born again, seemingly irrespective of infant-sprinkling.
Curiously though, Wesley himself persisted in believing that the Anglican Church even with its infant-sprinkling was the closest thing anywhere in the world at the time to the structure of the primitive Church: he just felt it needed to be infused with some real life. And he was barred from many Anglican pulpits because of it.
So I wonder how even Wesley understood the relationship between baptism and being born again, let alone how Wright might understand it and what Wright might therefore think of Wesley.
Wesley's evangelicalism seemed to be concerned with getting individuals born again, saved, first up. Is that a proper priority in evangelicalism? If that is a proper priority, how then can we avoid allowing the New Perspective, with all its good points, to inadvertently take us away from making the first thing the first thing? Or is that over-moralising one's anthropology. And if it is proper, what might that say about sprinkling infants. For example, would it mean that baptism should instead be part of/follow believing?
Can the New Perspective keep me focused on seeing individuals get saved - or does the New Perspective regard that as just a bit too much of a Reformation-era concept.
Anglicanism at its inception didn't come about so much because of a sense of a need for individual salvation like some of the German Reformation movements seemed to - it basically retained a high view of the ecclesia only transferred the head of the ecclesia from Rome to King Henry VIII. Is that true?
Does the New Perspective have to take us back to a pre-Reformation type view of Church-membership, baptism, being born again, our role in the world and their inter-relationship? Or can we say that Paul was able to say what he said about the collective Church (as the New Perspective brings out) only because it is true in the inner experience of individuals in the church first (and that the Reformation, Evangelical revivals, believers-baptism, and Pentecostalism helped revive that)?
What I'm getting at is this: should I treat church-membership, marked by infant-sprinkling, as a mark of salvation, and so assume that church-members who were sprinkled when they were babies are most-likely already saved, and focus instead on something else - like seeing them grow in knowledge perhaps; or seeing them get filled with the Spirit; or seeing them find their role in the world; or should the focus of evangelicalism for most people be things like the arts, education, health, justice, civil rights, foreign debt, the environment and other Left-leaning activism - or should I instead be concerned with getting individuals to have a personal, inner experience of salvation first, as a priority, even if some of them are already christened church-members?
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