Andre van Rheede van Oudtshoorn

Perth Bible College · Practical Theology

There is a natural tendency in the church to idealise the historical Jesus. This may lead to believers turning Jesus into an ideal moral or religious exemplar or lead to a prosperity gospel by predominantly focusing on the miraculous power and accomplishments of the earthly Jesus. This depiction of Jesus is in sharp contrast to the rejected and cru...

Preaching from the prophets entails more than distilling a set of general principles from the text and applying it to our situation. Preaching from prophetic texts calls for prophetic preaching – sermons which are able to disrupt the listeners' own definitions of reality and interpretation of current events and issues. Without this the church has e...

This article proposes that Genesis 1-11 recasts the myths of Israel's neighbours within a new theological historical framework to undermine the underlying world-view which makes myth-making possible. In order for the text to operate as intended the stories in Genesis 1-11 should first be treated as myths. Genesis 1-11, in contrast to the mythologic...

John's Gospel is marked by a complete absence of demons. This is not due to John reflecting a more secular worldview than the Synoptics. In John's Gospel, a composite figure called "the devil" has replaced the demons. The devil is said to be a liar and a murderer, which stands in sharp contrast to Jesus, who is depicted as the author of truth and l...

Postmodernism challenges the idea of any foundational truth on which theoretical and operational systems may be built. This has led to a meta-ethical revision of the presuppositions underlying different ethical systems. This article offers a meta-ethical critique of the possibility of constructing a Christian ethical system. It is argued that the g...

This article considers the church from a semiotic and systems-theory perspective as a revelatory symbol of the salvation-historical acts of God for and in the world. The church, as a communicative field of encounter between God and humans as well as between humans amongst each other, creates space for symbols that may be utilised to realise further...

General revelation is used by Paul to show why all people stand under the judgement and anger of God. In this article I plead for an expansion of Neil Ormerod's metaphysical transcendent epistemological frame to include a theological immanent epistemological frame. The rational metaphysical conversion that Ormerod pleads for is shown to be inadequa...

Jesus' imperatives in the Sermon on the Mount continue to play a significant role in Christian ethical discussions. The tension between the radical demands of Jesus and the impossibility of living this out within the everyday world has been noted by many scholars. In this article, an eschatological-ontological model, based on the social constructio...

This article develops a non-linear model of the ordo salutis with Christ at the centre. It shows that each individual event is a manifestation of what Christ has done and a call to faith in him. Faith is shown to comprise of consensus (agreement) and fiducia (trust). Through this model, the creative tension between the objective (indicative) and th...

The command to pray invites believers to critically engage with their broken reality with a view of transforming it in the light of the new reality in which they participate in Christ. Practical theology, operating in the context of the bi-polar and tense relationship between theory and praxis, should be expanded to accommodate prayer as the inner...

How to cite this article: Van Oudtshoorn, D.A., 2013, 'Onherhaalbaar, onontdoenbaar: Die doop as simbool van eenheid in die kerk', HTS Teologiese Studies/ Theological Studies 69(1), Art. #1168, 7 pages. http:// dx. Irrevocably singular: Baptism as a symbol of unity in the church. In this article I conduct a phenomenological analysis of the concept...

3 John is the shortest book in the New Testament. It seems to lack specific doctrinal content and it is thus often neglected. This article employs a socio-narrative analysis to place the letter within a broader narrative framework. It then considers how the letter poetically restructures the original narrative sequence to serve its persuasive inten...

When do we encounter God in the Pauline imperatives, or when is it Paul, the man of his times, that we are dealing with? This article develops a model to help us determine the reach of the imperatives into our socio-cultural context today. The imperatives are shown to be more than ad hoc injunctions but, rather, legitimate expressions of the new sy...

Thesis (D. Th)--University of South Africa, Pretoria 1988.