Okay, I know you are all just hanging on the edge of your seats waiting to hear my pronouncements Re: Kruger. Anyway, perhaps at least I wonât receive the devastating silence that I did on my LAST book report:
Some of what Kruger wrote in The Great Dance was nice. Like, âThere has never been an act of God that was not the act of Father, Son, and Spirit.â Meaning they never act outside the knowledge of each other. Makes me think of a good marriage.
Kruger would think of fellowship or community.
HOWEVER, he also said that the holiness of God does not include âlaw and order, crime and punishment, blind and cold justice. Reconceived within this stainless steel world of pure law holiness came to mean legal perfection or moral rectitude. This notion of holiness was then taken back into the doctrine of God and substituted (by Western theology) for the Trinity as the deepest truth about Godâthe driving force of divine existence.â Kruger only accepts in his definition of holiness things such as âjoy,,,fullnessâloveâmutual delight and passion, sheer togetherness of their (Trinity) relationship, its intimacy, harmony, wholeness, wonder, beauty, health and rightness..â In other words, Kruger rejects all the ânegativesâ of the justice side of God and accepts only the positive goodies. This is so New Age that I donât think I even have to point that out. Kruger is unbalanced from the start.
I have no response (can you believe it?) , This was a problem for me, as well BUT I cannot make a decision about Krugers theological position without more information. I have a Masters thesis that is twice as thick as his treatise --- there must be more and there is.
Kruger then goes on to encapsulate the typical gospel message of âthe human race fell into sin and is liable to punishment. Jesus Christâcomes to satisfy the holiness and justice of God. On the crossâpunishment is poured out upon him. Godâs justice is satisfied and we are forgivenâlegally clean.â He then goes to say that this is âdisastrously wrongâ. âGone is the great dance of the Trinity and the astonishing vision of the Father, Son and Spirit reaching out to share their life and glory with us.â (Well, what does he think Jesus Christ wasâchopped liver???) âIn its place we have a divine legalist who is extremely upset over human failure and sin, and we have Jesus coming to rescue us from God. The death of Jesus us now aimed at God rather than at human corruption and alienation. Jesus comes to do something to God, to satisfy his white-glove legalities, even to change God so that we can be forgiven.â And worst of all, Kruger states, âThis shift from the centrality of Jesus Christ to the centrality of the cross is the great sin of the Western Church and the greatest sin of all disasters.â
I think a healthy discussion about the Cross, the Living Christ, the continuing work of God in Christ bring man from the beginnings of his creation to the after-life conclusion God has always had in mind -- would bring to bear on Kruger's comments. In all of his words, Kruger is trying to put the living Christ at the centre of the Christian experience.
No scripture? He's high church. They are not, typically, Bible thumpers. It is a style of speaking or writing. I prefer meaningful thumping but, in my community of friends, I usually get nothing more than proof-texting. Which is better?
I could stop right there and ask youâwho can possibly have a saving relationship with Christ with such a belief? I think no one.
Kruger says that âWe hear a lot about forgiveness, but very little about the staggering reality of our inclusion in Jesusâ relationship with his Father in Spirit.â (Obviously Kruger has never had the charismatic experience.)
I'm charismatic -- and I agree with Kruger. If I were to ask my brothers, tell me something about the forgiveness we have in Christ, I would get a fairly decent answer. If I then asked, tell me something about the sense of community that draws us further into the Divine Community, the response would not be as thorough.
âWhen people speak of Christ as the Mediator, they mean that he stands between an angry God and sinful people and straightens out the legal mess. Gone is the vision that he is the point of union between divine human life. Gone is the vision that he is the connection between the Trinity and humans and he mediate the Triune life of God to us.â I donât know what planet Kruger inhabitsâbut the very lack of the experience that he says people have who believe in the âlegalistâ God is exactly the kind of relationship I have always experienced since coming to Christ through that very legalist God that he says prevents it!
Keep in mind that Kruger is speaking from his base and his own personal experience. I was raised in a hell fire and damnation religious setting and all of what Kruger says in the above is true with that picture in mind.
Obviously Kruger has never had a saving experience,
Over the line on this one. Either God is the judge or he is not. Kruger has had an experience. He would define that experience differently than I would but that does not negate the reality of the experience. He serves the Lord Jesus. Let's say, for argument sake, that he does not have it all right. Who on this list does? I missed that.
has no
understanding of the crux of the salvation message because it is abhorrent to his sensitive sensibilities, and so he has bypassed the very core of the gospel to create a new, cross-less âglorious relationshipâ without the Blood that purchases this very thing and fills us with the Holy Spiritâwho alone can convey spiritual understanding of the spiritual concepts that Kruger does not understand.
It seems that you are saying that because Kruger has a different understanding than you, he does not have the Holy Spirit. My charismatic experience does not include "tongues," and I am perfectly comfortable with that. My wife has that gift. Same Spirit -- different experience and different understanding at some level.
He claims that thru the âlegalistâ gospel âThere is no Trinity in it, no divine life, no divine dance. It is just human. Our lives and the totality of our human existence fall under the heading of âordinaryâ.â
If you stopped here, I would say that this is what I believe, as well. The legalist gospel is everywhere. Charels Finney and Holy Hubert are great examples of this kind of legalism.
I find it absurd that he thinks one can circumvent the cross and find any
true joy and satisfaction in lifeâand certainly anything beyond thatâwhich I have long experienced THROUGH the cross! Certainly the Trinity!
Circumvent the cross? I missed that in the book. Reference please?
Kruger claims that Jesus took on the same fallen nature that all other human beings have been born with. I donât even find a problem with that statement, as long as he does not claim that Jesus ever sinned. This to me is not worth arguing aboutâalthough Iâm sure it is alarming to others.
He makes no such argument. As you probably know, I do not believe in the fallen nature of man. I do not find it taught anywhere in scripture. What I do find is the creation of a man who has choices (God has no choice when it comes to sin), being brought to a holy completion in the righteousness of Christ.
Kruger goes on to describe all the delights of life when one enters into the same understanding of the Trinity as he has discovered. I found it odd that he thought such thoughts were a new way of life that only he had discovered, such as the joy one takes is others, and in oneâs work and leisure, and in the creation around us. If he only knew, Kruger has no monopoly on the delights of walking in Christâsomething I discovered many decades ago, and which Brother Lawrence described in the 1700âs in The Practice of the Presence of Christ. Somehow, though, Iâm left with the feeling that Krugerâs delights are more in his mind than in his actual experience (just like his salvation relationship with Christ.)
No, no , no. Again, he speaks from his experience with the Church. If we did not travel, some would never know a forest, others would have no concept of a meadow. These realities would not exist, in a practical sense, in mind of the indvidual observer. A description of their particular worlds would be quite different but not really contradictory. Al la Kruger and Izzy.
a brother
John
The amazing thing about Kruger is that he comes up with all of this, and the absolute topper: that what happened to Christ happened to the whole human race; ie: âIf he goes down, the cosmos goes down. If he dies, then we die.â In other words, the whole human race was born-again because Jesus went down and came foth from the grace and âthe human race came forth with him, quickened with new life, born again in the Spirit into a living hope. Whe he ascended to the Father, he took the whole human race with himââand they were all âembraced and included in the great dance.â We were all ârecreated in the Holy Spiritâ.
Please tell that to the parents of the 200 children who were just slaughtered by terrorists in Russia.
All of this with not one scriptural reference.
I could go on and on. But need I?
