Journeys In Between

Is Jesus God?

One of the profound challenges we face as Christians, I think, is the unacknowledged ignorance many non-Christians have about the Bible.

I don't know how many of you have experienced this, but, over the years I have come across heaps and heaps of people who thought they knew heaps and heaps about the Bible and what's in it and how it should be interpreted and how it came to be when in fact they knew very, very little. In encountering this, it is not the ignorance I find problematic, it is the fact that it is unacknowledged, that it is denied, that there is no beginner's mind.

One of the persistent misconceptions, courtesy of fiction author Dan Brown, seems to be the notion that the early Christians didn't acknowledge Jesus as God, that that didn't happen until Constantine ruined everything at the Council of Nicea in 325AD. Nasty old Constantine, he couldn't get anything right. Right? The problem is, one only need read New Testament passages like Hebrews 1:8-9 and John 20:28, written much earlier, to see how unfounded such a notion that is. And this is the problem, that so many people think they know the Bible without having read it, wrestled with it or deeply meditated on it. It almost makes me wonder if we should go back to printing them all in the original Greek so people could finally and honestly admit, "It's all Greek to me". Then we would finally have an honest and authentic starting point.

The Gospel in Romans 1

Just some more reflections on the gospel here.

Since the letter of Paul to the Romans is a critical source for Reformation theology I suppose I would be remiss not to include it in the discussion. So, what does Paul have to say explicitly in Romans? Well, we don't have to look far. Paul introduces the gospel in the very first paragraph:

Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God— the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures regarding his Son, who as to his human nature was a descendant of David, and who through the Spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord. Through him and for his name's sake, we received grace and apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith. And you also are among those who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.

And not a word about atonement theology - penal substitution, Christus Victor or anything. Now of course I am aware that Paul has a lot to say about justification by faith and atonement later on in this letter - so again, don't hear me dismissing atonement as unimportant - but I think it is important to recognize that Paul could speak of the gospel without mentioning them, even here. So I reiterate the point that while atonement theology is connected to the gospel in important ways it is not, in and of itself, the gospel. And this has obvious implications for evangelism, at least I hope they're obvious.

Oh, and just in case this is missed, observe how the Spirit is mentioned right up front, and how a call to a transformed lifestyle, as a consequence of faith, is included as implications of this gospel.

What is the gospel?

Continuing my thread on the gospel I thought I would quote some of these thoughts by Graeme Goldsworthy in Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics:

The gospel is what we must believe in order to be saved. To believe the gospel is to put one's trust and confidence in the person and work of Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord. To preach the gospel is faithfully to proclaim that historical event, along with the God-given interpretation of that event. It cannot be stressed too much that to confuse the gospel with certain important things that go hand in hand with it is to invite theological, hermeneutical and spiritual confusion. Such ingredients of preaching and teaching that we might want to link with the gospel would include the need for the gospel (sin and judgment), the means of receiving the benefits of the gospel (faith and repentance), the results or fruits of the gospel (regeneration, conversion, sanctification, glorification) and the results of rejecting it (wrath, judgment, hell).  These, however we define and proclaim them, are not in themselves the gospel. If something is not what God did in and through the historical Jesus two thousand years ago, it is not the gospel. Thus Christians cannot "live the gospel", as they are often exhorted to do. They can only believe it, proclaim it and seek to live consistently with it. Only Jesus lived (and died) the gospel. It is a once-for-all finished and perfected event done for us by another.

The Gospel begins with the Resurrection

With all the recent conversation I've been having with different people about Reformed theology, missional theology, emergent theology and just what do each of us mean by loaded terms like "the gospel", I thought it was worth spending some more time talking about what I understand as "the gospel".

Well, first and foremost, it's the good news that Jesus is risen from the dead (see Romans 10:9).

I was recently reading another post by an Orthodox blogger which I thought expressed it rather well:

The resurrection of Christ from the dead is in fact the first real Gospel proclamation - “Christ is risen!” This is where the particularly Christian message begins. It is only after His resurrection and after the apostles had begun proclaiming the resurrection that they saw a need to record the Master’s teachings and the events which made up His life. Christianity thus begins with the Good News that “Christ is risen from the dead!”

Now I recommend you read the rest of that article as well but at this point I am cautious that misunderstanding might creep in. "Is Matt denying justification by faith? Is he downplaying the atoning significance of the cross?" Well no, of course not, the resurrection without the crucifixion is like a plot twist without a plot. I think the crucifixion and the life that precipitated it has major significance for how we understand Jesus, our relationship with our Creator and how we live our lives.

What I am alluding to however, is this, that the various atonment metaphors we find in the New Testament are all post-resurrection insights. That while the crucifixion chronologically preceded the resurrection, witnessing to the resurrection chronologically preceded detailed development of atonement theology. Atonement theology may therefore be thought of as an important dimension of the good news, but I don't see it as the good news in a totalistic sense, or in the most original sense. The good news in its most raw and original form was that proclaimed by Mary Magdalene, "I have seen the Lord!" And I feel uplifted just being on the receiving end of that message.