I was at a conference last week where the question was asked:
What is the Gospel?
The question was refined to include these questions:
If Jesus is the answer, what is the question?
If Jesus is the solution, what is the problem?
About Me
- Pascalian Awakenings
- I am OCD about my cat. She is OCD about my being OCD about her. I am an INTJ.
4 comments:
Dang those are some seriously loaded questions. You could go anywhere with those. I wouldn't even know where to start...
Bryan
Bryan,
Yeah...I've been thinking about it for about a week. I think it is going to become one of those on-going projects.
Scot McKnight asked it at the Emergent Conference.
That McKnight is trouble!!! Him and his emergent hooey-phooey blah blah blah friends!
Bryan
Really though the first question is a bit easier to answer but not much. I mean if you read any translation, euangelion is translated as either good news or gospel. I was looking at the NRSV and gospel is almost totally a Pauline word. And then if I looked up good news it was all over the Gospels and Acts. Then jump over to the NIV and it mixes the usage all up so that gospel and goodnews is not so easily separated.
I think where I find a hard time come to a biblically faithful explanation of what the Gospel meant/means is trying to find out if it had different usages with different authors. Did Jesus mean something slightly different than Paul? Did the meaning of Gospel evolve into much more from the usage of Jesus in the Gospels to Paul's (and the later churches)?
But the problem with that idea is that if Paul's usage reflects the churches later developed understanding of the Gospel, the Gospels were written after Paul's letters and it seems that those later views of the meaning of the gospel would be imported into the Gospels and when read understood by later readers to mean the later developed meaning of gospel (sorry if that makes no sense: )
It seems that the gospel is the message about God's salvation for mankind that climaxes in the incarnation, the crucifixion, resurrection and ascension of Jesus as well as the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the hope for the future resurrection.
And to faithfully proclaim that message it would have to be rooted in God's Acts in history starting with creation, the fall, the choosing of people to reveal God through and bring salvation to the world (starting with Abraham and going through Moses and the judges and the kings). It would then go on to the failure of that people and their punishment and exile. Then going on from there to that people's restoration and salvation announced by Jesus (the good news that he brought Israel). Then it would talk about the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus and it's effecting of true salvation (from sin and death). Then it would go on to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and how salvation has extended to the gentiles too as it had always been intended to do since the calling of Abraham ('the nations will be blessed in you'); and God forming one people made up of Jews and gentiles. And then you could go on from there to talk about the churches mission in the world, and the resurrection and the consummation.
Some might want to shorten it down and saying the Gospel is that Jesus died for our sins or whatever, but the problem with that is that it's like jumping into the 4th act of a play and having no idea who this Jesus guy is and why he died and why it was for my sins.
Now maybe you could jump into the 4th act and say Jesus died for our sins and then go forward and talk about how he's coming back and then jump to the beginning of the story to creation and then talk about the fall etc... But that would be like watching a Tarintino flick (Pulp Fiction) and although it's great as a movie and don't know if it's the best method for communicating the Gospel ;) It could be but I don't know.
So I guess whatever we explain the Gospel as we should try to make sure that we are really communicating the whole message of it so that people truly see why it is not only good news for them but for the world.
Sorry for the rant. It's early.
Bryan
Post a Comment