The internet and sharing of ideas

I have just noticed that the latest issue of Christian counterculture (which I have just posted on) has clearly been written by a reader of A Caneday's blog, Wood Chips and Text Musings, as it has used the exact same quotes from NT Wright and TF Torrence. The TF Torrence quote coming from a old Briefing article now online. On top of that the quotes obviously came from one of the authors' books originally.

I just think its a very funny example of how the way people think is dependent on such a long chain of other peoples thought, going back to the beginning of time. Sometimes they admit their source sometimes they don't, sometimes they may not even be sure where they got it from, but whatever happens no (hu)man is an island. Blogging is quite transparent on this, containing an awful lot of explicit references to other peoples thoughts.

The quotes are worth reproducing once more I think, as they are quite good.

The Gospel must be preached in an evangelical way, that is, in accordance with the nature and content of the Gospel of free grace, else it is "another Gospel." It is not faith that justifies us, but Christ in whom we have faith. But the history of Protestantism shows that it is possible to speak of justification by faith in such a way that the emphasis is shifted from "Christ" to "me," so that what becomes finally important is "my faith," "my decision,", "my conversion," and not really Christ himself.

T. F. Torrance, God and Rationality

Nothing I haven't heard before but well put nonetheless.

It is important to stress, as Paul would do himself were he not so muzzled by his interpreters, that when he referred to "the gospel" he was not talking about a scheme of soteriology. Nor was he offering people a new way of being what we would call "religious". Despite the way Protestantism has used the phrase (making it denote, as it never does in Paul, the doctrine of justification by faith), for Paul "the gospel" is the announcement that the crucified and risen Jesus of Nazareth is Israel's Messiah and the world's Lord. It is, in other words, the thoroughly Jewish, and indeed Isaianic, message which challenges the royal and imperial messages in Paul's world.

N. T. Wright

Caneday links the Wright quote as coming from a lecture entitled Paul's Gospel and Caesar's Empire which seems to have been slightly adapted by Christian counterculture in their latest issue.

Phew! four posts in one day, have I nothing better to do?