A Fuller Expression of the Gospel

I was reading today a few articles on N.T. Wright and his view of narrative theology. I came across one article that took him to task for a less than clear conception of penal substitutionary atonement theology. I sympathize with the articles frustration over the ambiguity of Wright's position, though it is obvious that we come down on separate sides when it comes to the validity of the doctrine. Nevertheless, what really struck me about the article was the author's dissatisfaction with Wright's book "Simply Christian" in that it did not explain the basic Gospel -- "Christ died for our sins."

This is a bit of a bugaboo for me. One of my criticisms of most conception of the Gospel message, particularly the more popular understandings, is that they are extremely narrow formulations, completely devoid of the narrative thrust of the Bible. In effect, to say the basic Gospel is "Christ died for our sins" is like saying that WWII was about liberating Poland from Nazi Germany. The saying captures the part but not the whole.

Granted, a full expression of the Gospel (like the one I humbly suggest below) does not fit on a bumper sticker or key ring. If one was to simply reduce the Gospel to its purest essence it would be the following: "The Gospel is the Good News of the coming of the Kingdom of God" (Matt 4:23; 9:35; 24:14; Mark 1:14). This was the Gospel that Jesus proclaimed and would have been readily understood by his Jewish contemporaries.  

However, outside of first century Palestine, we, like the gentiles of the era, depend upon the apostles to flesh out the meaning of this good news and explain it as it related to the story of Israel.

Therefore, the following should be understood: "The Gospel is the Good News of the coming of the Kingdom of God (Matt 4:23; 9:35; 24:14; Mark 1:14), that God has broken definitively into history and the world (Luke 4:18) with power (1Th 1:5) and grace (Acts 20:24; Eph 1:13) in the person and work of Jesus the Christ (1Th 3:2; 2Th 1:8; Gal 1:7; 1Cor 9:12; 2Cor 2:12; Rom 1:9; Phl 1:27), who is the first fruits of the resurrection (1Cor 15:20, 23), bringing Justice (Rom 2:16), Peace (Eph 6:15), and Healing (Matt 4:23; 9:35) to the World and the offer of Salvation (Rom 1:16) for Repentance and Faith (Mark 1:14; Acts 15:7) to all peoples, fulfilling the God’s promise to Abraham (Rom 4:13; Acts 7:17; Gal 3:29) and inaugurating New Creation (Gal 6:15) and the summing up of all things in Christ (Eph 1:10)."

I think this definition offers a far fuller and more accurate expression of the Gospel and how it was encapsulated by Jesus' original audience.

Meta-Narratives and the Christian Worldview

Meta-narratives are generally defined as a comprehensive explanation of historical meaning, experience or knowledge, which offers a society, culture, or movement legitimization through the anticipated completion of a (as yet unrealized) master idea.

One of the chief characteristics of post-modernity is a incredulity towards meta-narratives based upon the belief that they are created and reinforced by power structures seeking self-validation and are therefore untrustworthy.

I am not necessarily adverse to this critique of meta-narratives insofar as it rightly addresses the issue of grand stories told by a group of people in order to legitimize a particular worldview or privilege.

However, I do believe that meta-narratives are fundamentally useful and should not be dismissed offhand but rather critiqued on the basis of how close they correspond to known reality.

Nevertheless, meta-narratives are too often used for social and epistemic validation and are the driving force buttressing a particularly cherished worldview.

Christianity, of course, has its own meta-narrative told through the stories of the Bible, the person of Jesus, and the Gospel message. However, the main difference between the Christian narrative and most others is that instead of a meta-narrative propping up a worldview, Christianity is a narrative in search of a worldview. It's a complete reverse. Christianity already has a definitive, over-arching story to be told and understood; it is not telling new stories in order to validate a pre-existing social order or conception. At most, Christians are continually re-examining the established story in hopes of creating a worldview and social order that corresponds with the narrative.

This is why telling the grand narrative of God's redeeming work to our children is so central to establishing  a proper worldview for Kingdom work. Without a proper foundation in a proper, grand narrative, children will develop worldviews (usually unauthentic, self-serving worldviews) and then seek the stories, the narratives, and the "truths" that seems to best validate that worldview. The worldview is now buttressing the ego.

Ultimately, all false narratives crack and eventually crumble when unavoidably confronted with reality, casting doubt upon the worldview and threatening the individual's self-validating conception.

It is at this critical juncture that the individual has a choice: either 1) to pursue the truth in the submission of the self towards a relationship with God in Christ and adopting the proper meta-narrative or 2) to try continuing with a false, deteriorating narrative with spurious thinking, self-justification, cognitive dissonance, and a reprobate mind.

Difficulty with the Translation אֶרֶץ ('erets)

One of the more confusing aspect of the Bible is the translation of the two words: אֶרֶץ ('erets) and γῆ (gē). Both words have a few different translations but are generally translated as either "earth" or "land". Here is where the confusion comes in with translations:

Some of the prophecies of the Old Testament predict that God will wipe a people from the 'erets. If a Bible version translates the word as "earth" then the prophecy is often interpreted as not having occurred (i.e., God has not wiped these particular people from the earth). However, if the word is translated as "land" then it can be showed that these people were expelled  and can be proven that the prophecy was fulfilled.

So because of this little translational detail, there are many Christians who have misinterpreted the Bible and are waiting for particular events that occurred thousands of years ago.

"Candle in the Wind", by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn

I finished reading Alexandr Solzhenitsyn's play "Candle in the Wind", which I found in a nice little bookshop in Newport.

The story is basically about the professional and personal lives of scientists and mathematicians working at a biocybernetics institute and how they differ in their reactions to the amorality of their work. But essentially, the meaning of the work is to examine movements of materialism divorced from the spiritual, particularly the purposes and uses of science by the state, and how such socialistic statism suppresses the human soul.

These themes of materialism and the dehumanizing effects of socialism are all common to Solzhenitsyn. Indeed, Solzhenitsyn, as the last great Russian writer of modernity, is the successor of Tolstoy in his focus on the simplicity of the individual soul seeking maturation (specifically the spiritual) amidst the forces of modernity, particularly materialism and socialism.

Naturally, being a Russian from the Soviet period, Solzhenitsyn's stories are located within Russia and explore spiritual themes in the context of a socialist society (much like Pasternak, Akhmatova, and Bulgakov). However, in "Candle in the Wind", Solzhenitsyn intentionally places his story in a nameless state devoid of identifying cultural markers in order to create a more international feel and universal quality. How effective he is with this technique is open for criticism. Personally, I think the universal quality of his theme itself would lift the story out of a Soviet context and unto a broader, international stage.

I was quite reminded of the plays of Tom Stoppard, particularly the critique of socialism, the analogies of science, mixed with wit and the personal lives of the characters. I particularly loved the first few lines:

Maurice: One of the main criteria for judging people's taste is cheese. What cheese do you prefer, Alex?

Alex: I'm no connoisseur, Uncle, they're all the same to me.

Maurice: All the same? You really are a savage, then!

"Candle in the Wind" is a minor work by a major writer. It's a quick read and a good primer for his more expansive works.

Freedom or Death, by Nikos Kazantzakis

Today I finished reading "Freedom or Death", by Nikos  Kazantzakis. I've been a huge fan of Kazantzakis for many years now and was glad that I finally got around to reading this particular work.

Ostensibly, the book is about the rebellion of the Cretans against the Ottoman Empire in the year 1889, seen through the eyes of Captain Michales.

Kazantzakis, of course, goes deeper, meditating upon the Cretan psyche in terms of its identity, nationalism, religion, and character.

I also think that there is an undercurrent of the ever-present Minoan ethos that figures so prominently in most of Kazantzakis' works (he was born in Crete). Strip away the philosophical and cultural flourishes of a Kazantzakis work and you'll find a pre-historic, earthy, almost proto-mythic quality that reduces humanity to the simplicity of a life/death dichotomy. Such a philosophical bent is not untypical of modernist writers but it seems always more heightened with Kazantzakis.

I think you also find such thinking in the Old Testament wisdom literature of Ecclesiastes and Job. The Book of Job in particular has as its base point the understanding that the individual human exists for a brief moment between two abysses and that the only positive choice is a full leap of faith into the creator God.

Kazanzakis, like many of the best modernist writers, understood the situation of man as existing between two voids, but, unfortunately, unlike writers such as Hermann Broch, he rejected the positive choice of falling into the infinity of God but instead embraced and explored a synthesis of life-death as an alternative to God.

So I don't agree with Kazantzaki's conclusions, but I greatly appreciate and am interested in his exploration of the theme of man's primal, existential situation.

All in all, I think that "Freedom or Death" is a very good book, though I don't think that it rises to the levels of other such Kazantzakis' works such as "The Greek Passion", "The Last Temptation", or "The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel". It is certainly better than the vastly over-rated "Zorba the Greek".

"Sin" in 2 Corinthians 5:21

I've been doing a study on 2 Corinthians 5:21, specifically about the odd saying that "God made him who had no sin [i.e. Jesus] to be sin for us". This verse has traditionally been interpreted to mean that by some mystical transference God turned Jesus into sin during the crucifixion in order to be substitutionally punished for the sins of humanity. However, I had noticed that several of the better, scholarly translations of the New Testament add a footnote to the second occurrence of "sin" (hamartia) in verse 21, indicating that it can be translated as "sin-offering".

The reason for this is that the Old Testament uses the same word (chatta'ath) for both "sin" and "sin-offering". Only contexts determines the usage.

Therefore, we get a translation of Leviticus 4:3: "If the anointed priest sins, bringing guilt on the people, he must bring to the Lord a young bull without defect as a 'sin offering' [chatta'ath] for the 'sin' [chatta'ath] he has committed."

Now when the Hebrew Bible was translated into the Greek Septuagint (LXX), the translators rendered chatta'ath as hamartia.

With this in mind, the  atonement context of 2 Corinthians 5:21 suggests that Paul intended the second use of hamartia to be understood as "sin-offering" instead of "sin".

It makes more sense to think of God considering the sin-less Jesus an offering for sin than actually somehow turning him into sin.