What is an Awakening?

I just read this last night, and I believe it sums up what a spriritual awakening is very nicely:

Those members of the Church who passively accept what they have been taught as “revealed truth” seem to be unaware of the fact that their view of “faith” is hampered by an age-long tradition which has misunderstood the meaning of “faith”, regarding it not as “encounter” with the Living Christ, but as the acceptance of “revealed truths”.

The truth which broke through at the Reformation (though later it was again obscured) of the personal character of faith, as “encounter” with Christ, means liberation from the rigidity and ethical sterility of orthodoxy, and sets us free to have a faith which is based on nothing save the Love of God revealed in Jesus Christ. This truth alone can preserve us from sterile “theologizing” and from clericalism, and awaken in the Church a missionary and pastoral spirit.—Emil Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, v–vi

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So, we could say that Emil Brunner gives his endorsement to what has been happening at Asbury for the last 2 weeks, couldn't we? People are encountering the living Christ, not being content with simply revealed truths.

Interesting isn't it, that some of those who claim to cling the most to theological rightness miss the truth that Brunner caught.

Just an
</idle musing>