Jacque Tati's PlayTime

Playtime (1967) is the most ambitiously complex comedic film ever made. It is an epic, cinematic, and sui generis achievement that puts it in the same league as Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia, Sokurov’s Russian Ark, Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Shaney’s Joe Versus the Volcano.

Jacque Tati (1907-1982) was a French comedic actor and filmmaker who achieved international stardom with his films, Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot (Monsieur Hulot's Holiday) and Mon Oncle (My Uncle), both starring his character Mr. Hulot, a good-natured and helpful man who clumsily fumbles through an increasingly impersonal world. Both films are cinematic classics (the last winning an Oscar for best foreign language film) that put him in the comparable league of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. Yet, like both Chaplin and Keaton, Tati had artistic ambition that raised him above his contemporaries. He wished to articulate to cinema his own comedic conception of the modern world. With nearly ten years of planning and three of filming, Tati achieved his complete cinematic vision with the most immense complexity and with the most devastating consequences to his life.

Playtime is a film about how modern life - and modern architecture in particular - manipulates human behavior and our conceptions to the point of stale and rigid routine. Most importantly, it is about how the inevitable breakdown of modern life can lead to the reintroduction of people’s original, premodern freedom, exuberance, and playfulness. As one critic has asserted, Playtime is about how the curve comes to reassert itself over the straight line.

Shot on 70mm film for widescreen viewing, there are very few close-up shots. Instead, Tati invites the viewer to scan the screen and observe the everyday humors of modern life, often happening simultaneously at different spots. There are no real laugh-out-loud moments but hundreds of smiles. Similarly, there are no real main characters, but nearly a hundred minor characters each with their own story line that can be traced throughout the film, if just on the periphery and in incidental shots. Only the American tourist Barbara and Hulot himself could be identified as main characters. However, they are infrequent in their appearances. Indeed, Tati teasingly supplies the early parts of the film with numerous faux Hulots who pop up now and again on the periphery and are often misidentified as such by other characters.

Though ostensibly in color, the palette of the film is in whites, grays, and light blues, giving a near black-and-white texture to the film. Furthermore, almost all the humor comes as visual jokes, as if it were a silent film. But there are hundreds of these visual gags, often several happening at the same time, subtly at different points on the screen. Sometimes these jokes are building off previous jokes or only make sense if you have been following the story of a minor character throughout the film. As one critic noted, Playtime is a film to be seen not just multiple times but from multiple perspectives. I myself have seen the film numerous times over the past two decades, and I’ve always come away with a new gag from a new viewing. In this regard, its tone, style, and complexity approximate Renoir’s La Règle du Jeu, Chaplain’s Modern Times, Fellini’s Otto e mezzo, Gilliam’s Brazil, and James Joyce’s novel, Ulysses.

The film is set into six sequences:

The Airport: An American tour group (including the woman, Barbara) arrives at the ultra-modern and impersonal Orly Airport. Many of the characters walk in rigid steps, along straight lines, turning at abrupt 90-degree angles, completely defined by the surrounding architecture that dictates their movements.

The Offices: M. Hulot arrives at one of the glass and steel buildings for an important meeting but gets lost in a maze of disguised rooms and offices, eventually stumbling into a trade exhibition of lookalike business office designs and furniture nearly identical to those in the rest of the building. Many of the buildings are made of glass walls which deprives the individual of privacy, but ironically separates him from others.

The Trade Exhibition: Old world Paris with its Eiffel Tower and flower shops have been abandoned and shrunk to reflections and periphery to make way for the modern world of consumerism. M. Hulot and the American tourists are introduced to the latest modern gadgets, including a door that slams "in golden silence" and a broom with headlights.

The Apartments: As night falls, M. Hulot meets an old friend who invites him to his sparsely furnished, ultra-modern and glass-fronted flat. This sequence is filmed entirely from the street, observing Hulot and other building residents through uncurtained floor-to-ceiling picture windows.

The Royal Garden: This sequence takes up almost the entire second half of the film. It is the most complex sequence in the film and a tour de force of visual gags - so much is going on at once, building upon each other, breaking down, climaxing in joyful destruction. At the opening night of a new restaurant, Hulot reunites with several characters he has periodically encountered during the day, along with a few new ones, including a nostalgic ballad singer and a boisterous American businessman. This is the turning point of the film in which the curve officially reasserts itself and the characters rediscover the liberty of abandoning the firm structures of modernity.

The Carousel of Cars: Hulot buys Barbara two small gifts as mementos of Paris before her departure. In the midst of a complex ballet of cars in a traffic circle portrayed as if an amusement park, the tourists' bus returns to the airport.

Though Playtime was a critical success, it was a massive and expensive commercial failure, eventually resulting in Tati's bankruptcy. Nevertheless, despite its resulting devastation, Tati produced one of the greatest comedic achievements in cinematic history. It was the quintessential expression of Tati’s genius as a filmmaker and, as he himself said, the exact film he had intended to make.

The Shekinah Glory

(More from a discussion about the presence of God in the Temple)

The ancient Hebrews believed that the creator god was omnipresent. However, his omnipresence was distinguished from physical theophanies (Gen 18:1–3) and/or shekinah glories (Exod 19:16-18; 24:16-18; 40:34-38; 1 Kin 8:10-11; 2 Chron 7:1). It was the shekinah glory (perceived as a cloud) that resided in the Temple, which Ezekiel saw departing (Ezek 10), and which did not return. However, the shekinah glory did not have to be present to accept sacrifices (1 Kin 18:30-39; 1 Sam 7:9; Deut 27:4ff [Josh 8:30]; Judg 6:24). Naturally, this had to be the case when the kingdom was divided between northern Israel and southern Judah. But - and this is very important – it was Jesus himself who the ultimate shekinah glory and proper theophany.

This is why John says the Word became flesh, made his dwelling among us (literally, “tabernacled among us”), and they beheld his glory (John 1:14). When Jesus cleanses the Temple in John’s Gospel, he says that if they destroy this temple, he will rebuild it in 3 days (2:19). John notes that Jesus was referring to his own body (2:21). Jesus was literally the walking shekinah glory presence of God. He was the Temple of the God where the fullness of God dwelt. This is why Jesus can say, “something greater than the Temple is here” (Matt 12:6). If for no other reason, the presence of God was not in the Temple because it was Jesus.

Again, the presence of God left the Temple (Ezek 10). There is no indication that it ever returned. This is one reason the pagan Roman general Pompey could entered the Holy of Holies without harm (63 BCE). The rabbinic literature (such as the Babylonian Talmud) also state that the divine presence was not there. However, Malachi 3:1 predicted that God would one day return and reappear in his Temple. Mark begins his Gospel quoting the first half of this verse (1:2) and then Isaiah 40:3 (1:3). Mark attributes God coming to the appearance of Jesus. In Matthew 21:5, the author cites the Zechariah 9:9 prophecy about God returning when Jesus enters Jerusalem. When Jesus enters the Temple he fulfills the Malachi 3:1 prophecy.

So, no, the presence of God was not dwelling in the Second Temple, even though God was accepting its sacrifices. Rather, the presence was Jesus who was God returning to his people.

This is actually important stuff, involving incarnation, exile, the forgiveness of sins, the defeat of fallen Powers, and the setting up of God’s kingdom. And it’s all stuff that is historically grounded in the Old Testament and New writers, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the rabbinic literature, and even the Roman historians.

The Meaning of Jesus' Cleansing of the Temple

I was asked the following questions about Jesus' cleansing of the Temple.

“You mentioned the Temple cleansing(s). What do you make of Jesus's words/actions there?

And the post-exilic Jews did not believe God was at the Temple?”

Here are my replies.

I think the Temple cleansing (Matt 21:12–17; Mark 11:15–19; Luke 19:45–48) was a prophetic act symbolizing and proclaiming imminent judgment. Jesus quotes from two Old Testament prophecies: Isaiah 56:7 and Jeremiah 7:11. The first verse is from a prophetic oracle about God bringing together Gentiles, foreigners, eunuchs, and outcasts from all the world, from all nations, to worship him, not excluding anyone because of their ethnicity or station in life. That’s God’s intention for the Temple. If you read the entire prophetic oracle of Jeremiah 7 though, you learn that it’s about God preparing to bring down judgment upon the whole of Judah for its sins against God and man. This prophecy was fulfilled with the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 587 BCE.

Put together with his actions to temporarily halt the legitimate business of the Temple, it seems that Jesus’ intention was to enact a prophetic oracle announcing God’s imminent judgment upon the Temple itself and Israel in general. This prophecy was fulfilled with the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 CE. This interpretation is strengthened by the episode being bracketed by Jesus’ withering of the fig tree for not bearing fruit (Mark 11:12-14, 20-12). God is visiting his chosen people and they have not borne fruit. Note, many of Jesus’ parables are about an authority figure returning to check up on his subordinates (Mark 12:1-11; 13:33-37; Matt 25:14-30).

Now both the Greek version of Jeremiah 7:11 and in Mark 11:17, the word used for robbers/thieves is lestes. In Mark 14:48, when the crowds come to arrest Jesus and take him to be crucified, Jesus says, “Have you come out with swords and clubs to arrest me, as you would against a robber (lestes)?” In Mark 15:27, it is recorded that “They crucified two robbers (lestes) with him, one on his right and one on his left.”

The Romans put Jesus to death between two robbers or brigands, all deemed revolutionary by Roman authorities and deserving of a death reserved for those who went up against the Empire and were to be made an example to everyone else (Mark 15:7). This was the same death that Roman meted out to the Jews who revolted during the First Jewish-Roman War (66-73 CE) when Roman soldiers were crucifying upwards of 500 Jews a day and when the Temple was permanently destroyed. It was general and future Caesar, Titus, who refused to accept the wreath of victory for winning the war, saying, “There is no merit in vanquishing a people forsaken by their own God."

On a certain level, Jesus’ crucifixion was a final enacted parable showing what the final exile would look like. It would be Rome destroying the Temple and the Jewish people as a nation and crucifying them like revolutionary robbers (lestes). When Jesus is carrying his cross and the woman wail, he replies, “Do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children … For if people do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?” (Luke 23:26-31). Basically, Jesus is saying, “If the Romans are doing this to one who is innocent, what do you think they will do to those who truly are guilty of insurrection.”

Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple is him proclaiming destruction because God’s people were exclusionary, violent revolutionaries. This is why when Jesus approaches Jerusalem, all he can do is weep that they didn’t accept peace (Luke 19:41-44). This is why many of Jesus’ teachings are about peace and loving enemies (Matt 5-7); yes, they were eternal truths, but they also had immediate, urgent applications.

Whether or not post-Exilic Jews believed God was at the Temple is a matter of debate. The OT prophetic writings definitely say that God left the Temple (Ezek 10); that was why Babylon could destroy it. There isn’t any indication that he ever returned. The Temple was rebuilt (Ezra 6:15-16), but there’s no story of the glory returning as when it first came (2 Chronicles 7:1). The departure of God was one of the consequences of the exile, but it’s also the case that, while the physical exile ended, a spiritual exile continued (Deut 30; Ezra 9:7; Neh 9:36-37; Dan 9:24-25), though this is also hotly debated. For the first century Jew, the biggest indication that exile was still in effect and God had not returned would be that Israel was under foreign, pagan rule. This is why I lean against the idea that there was a general Jewish belief that God was currently residing in the Temple in the first century CE.

Bathsheba and David: Covenant, Kingship, and Context

A minor controversy erupted on social media last week among evangelicals, particularly of the Southern Baptist variety, over the issue of whether King David had sexually assaulted Bathsheba in the story recounted in 2 Samuel 11-12. People on both sides of the question have passionate opinions about the subject – often coming down (probably unfairly) on whether one is either a strict complementarian or whether one favors soft complementarianism and egalitarianism. The subject of complementarianism has found itself enmeshed within the broader context of the #MeToo and #ChurchToo movements in which evangelicals are assessing and debating matters of power, authority, hierarchy, gender, and sex. Understandably, topics within complementarianism can overlap with those of sexual harassment, sexual coercion, and sexual assault. Again, it’s natural that such subjects would arouse passionate opinions and responses, even with the topic of whether an assault took place 3,000 years ago. I’m reminded of previous decades, during the early, heated eras of the Conservative Resurgence, when the meaning of inerrancy led Southern Baptists to rage over whether Melchizedek was a pagan priest and whether one should use the definite article in front of the designation Satan. What should have been matters of academic inquiry went straight to 11 and became front line battles for the heart and soul of the SBC, the bible, and the gospel.

While no one denies that David ordered the murder of Uriah (which is given straightforwardly), the question of whether David assaulted or coerced Bathsheba against her will, or simply used his power to engage in a mutually consenting adulterous liaison, can be less than straightforward if not ambiguous. Such ambiguity calls for tolerance and mercy on both sides of the question as we all wrestle with an important and timely topic. Mockery and ridicule of differing opinions speak low of the cause of Christ and the gospel.

Much of the twitter vitriol came to a head when Denny Burk wrote upon the matter on his website with the article, Adultery or Rape? What happened between David and Bathsheba? I find myself sympathetic to his argument that David had not assaulted Bathsheba. Burk is approaching the topic from a more academic point of view, looking at the story from a strictly biblical, narrative framework. To summarize Burk’s argument in brief: If the bible had intended to describe a sexual assault, it would have presented it in a biblical manner, which would use the ideas of Deuteronomy 22:23-27. For a clear example, see the accompanying story of Amnon and Tamar in 2 Samuel 13. Whatever ambiguity arises from our current reading stems from a modern conception of sexual assault and power relations that is foreign to the biblical conception.[1]

I think Burk’s argument is fair and sound even if I disagree with it, which is why I was sympathetic to his take. It is a legitimate position, and he does not deserve the childish ridicule heaped upon him. Granted, such mockery manifests itself due to his prominent position within the strict complementarian movement. It seems few can engage his biblical argument outside of that context.

Those who hold a contrary opinion of the story, however, have no less of a biblical argument. They are looking at the story less from a narrative framework and more from a practical, realized event. To summarize the argument in brief: Bathsheba would not have cried out because she realized she had no option in the matter given David’s position of power, particularly over her husband, Uriah. The general legalities of Deuteronomy 22:23-27 do not apply to the particulars of this situation.

Again, I think this is a fair, sound, and legitimate reading of the story even if I disagree with it. Those who hold it do not deserve to be slandered as if denying the sufficiency of Scripture or seeking to undermine the doctrine of complementarianism. I am quite sympathetic to the sexual assault reading as I am to Burk’s traditional reading of adultery. Both are attempts to engage the story with a high biblical standard of seriousness. I appreciate both. Nevertheless, these are two frameworks looking past each other.

My own personal framework for understanding the story is gospel-oriented in which I combine egalitarianism and an understanding of power relations with a scholarly and narrative conception. I began studying 2 Samuel 11-12 while at seminary. I read the David and Bathsheba story and noted its similarities with the explicitly-rendered account of Amnon’s assault on Tamar (chapter 13) and surmised that David’s refusal to hold his son accountable stemmed from his own guilt of a similar sin. I speculated that the writer of the stories had intentionally left David’s assault implicit. I went back and forth on what the true interpretation of this story is for some time, sometimes favoring the assault assessment and other times favoring the adultery one. However, while noting the similarities between the Bathsheba and Tamar accounts, it was the dissimilarities that finally led me to conclude that David did not commit assault.

2 Samuel 11 is a brutal chapter of epic failure, corruption, with lasting, horrific consequences, that, from a human standpoint, nearly derails God’s plan to save creation from sin and evil. The stakes are extremely high here and about as serious as it gets. And because the stakes are so high, the narrative offers a shockingly blunt assessment of what occurred. The author holds nothing back, explicitly detailing every sin David committed. David is the preeminent warrior-king, yet he doesn’t go to war with his soldiers (v. 1). He lusts after a woman who wasn’t his wife (vv. 2-3). He uses his power as king to send for Bathsheba (v. 4). At the very least, he knowingly has sex with a married woman (vv. 3-4). He tries to cover up his crime through deception, feigning interest in warfare (vv. 6-8). He uses his power to urge one of his own elite soldiers, the righteous foreigner Uriah, to violate his own principles (vv. 8-13). He uses his power to get Uriah drunk (v. 13). Failing all else, he uses his power to arrange the murder of Uriah and, by consequence, several other men (vv. 15-17, 24). He uses his power to involve his nephew-commander in the murder plot (14-21). David then feigns sorrow (v. 25). Finally, he takes Bathsheba as his wife (v. 27). God calls it evil (v. 27). Every sordid detail of this grotesque story is explicitly spelled out, even the collateral damage. Yet, at no time in this account does the author state that David used his power to coerce Bathsheba into sex. Such an event is not even implied; it must be assumed. It won’t do to say that the writer is unaware of issues concerning power, consent, coercion, and sex, because he deals with those very subjects in chapter 13. There, the heir to throne of Israel uses his power and position of privilege to deceitfully arrange a situation in which to coerce his half-sister into sex. Failing that, he assaults her. He then uses his power to force her away. If the knowledgeable writer is explicit in chapter 13, then why not in 11? Matters of power, coercion, and consent are not unfamiliar concepts to the biblical writers. Look at Genesis 39:7-15. There, the wife of an Egyptian officer of the Pharaoh attempts to use her power to coerce one of her slaves into sex, eventually grabbing him, attempting to pull him close to her. When she fails, she seeks either revenge or cover-up, using her privileged position of power to falsely accuse her slave of assault and have him put in jail. The ancients were well-aware of such abuse of power. So, because of the author’s knowledge of the subjects of power, coercion, sex, and consent and the lack of its reference in an otherwise brutally explicit account of power abuse, I believe that David did not use his position of power to coerce Bathsheba into sex. This was many horrific things, but it wasn’t sexual assault.[2]

If Bathsheba consented to sex with David without coercion, the question is often asked, then why wasn’t she punished for adultery. While the text may provide some answers about the consequences of her actions, such conclusions would only be moot speculations and not the focus of the story. Bathsheba remains a relatively passive character at this point in the narrative. There is no indication in chapter 11 that she is a scheming social climber using her “feminine wiles” to ascend to the heights of power. I recommend Marg Mowczko’s A Sympathetic Look at Bathsheba. Regardless, whatever mistakes she may have made, they fail in comparison to that of David, whose character and crimes are the focus of the story.

Ultimately, this story is about the kingship of Israel and God’s covenant to deal with sin and evil and save creation. At this point in history, God has elected Israel as his special people and is moving them forward with the covenantal promise that the entire world will be blessed through them (Gen 12, 15, and 17). God must get Israel to the place where the promise is fulfilled but also must do so through fallen, sinful people. God didn’t want Israel to have a human king (1 Sam 8:7), but the sins of the people made it necessary (Judg 21:25). Nevertheless, God has already worked kingship into his overall covenantal plan. The Davidic line of kings has already been predicted in Genesis 49:10 and Numbers 24:17-19. God establishes it with David in 2 Samuel 7:8-17 (see v. 16 especially). In 2 Samuel 11, because of his actions, David has put this covenantal plan in jeopardy. Nathan’s parable is about sheep, but it concerns kingship. David was a shepherd (1 Sam 16:13). When God makes his covenant with David, he mentions that David was a shepherd, implying that the way he pastored sheep, he is to pastor Israel (2 Sam 7:8). The parable implicates David as having abused his power as king. God’s chosen king has become the abuser of power that God (through Samuel) warned the people about when they asked for a king (1 Sam 8:9-18). The results are disastrous. Nathan predicts that violence and evil will rise from David’s own household (2 Sam 12:10-11), which was fulfilled in the subsequent actions of Amnon and Absalom. The prophet also predicts that people will lie with David’s wives in plain sight of everyone (1 Sam 12:11-12), which was fulfilled in 1 Samuel 16:20-23. This last fulfillment is significant. When Absalom takes Jerusalem, he’s declared king and enjoys David’s concubines, an act which is indicative of assuming the position and prerogatives of the king (2 Sam 3:7; 12:8; 1 Kin 2:22-23). God works all this out and sets the Davidic line straight (ironically, through Bathsheba’s son, Solomon), but the human uncertainty is profound for the reader and was obviously excruciating for the people involved. Nevertheless, covenant and kingship are the foci of the story. Ultimately, it is through a Davidic messiah that power abuse is ended (Ps 110; Eph 1:20-22; Phil 2:8-11; 1 Cor 15:24; Col 1:13; 2:10, 15; Jude 1:25; Rev 2:26-27; 12:10; Matt 9:8; 21:23; Mark 3:15; John 5:27; 17:2).

Life situations can be more complex and ambiguous than clear-cut black and white. David could have abused his position of authority at the same time Bathsheba could have fully consented without coercion. As a real, historic person, she could have had a range of complex thoughts, emotions, and agendas, all situational, conflicted, and contradictory. Nevertheless, regardless of guilt or innocence in any matters of her life, God was able to use her for his ultimate kingly and covenantal purposes (Matt 1:6).

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[1] Importantly, I know of egalitarians who deem David’s crime as rape who nevertheless agree with Burk on this latter point.

[2] I would add that Nathan’s characterization of David’s crimes and the accompanying punishment suggest something less than coercion or assault was involved (12:9, 11-12).

Happy Gospel Day

Back in 2005, I found myself, like so many other Southern Baptists, both dismayed and frustrated by the overall decline in baptisms throughout the convention – a decline that continues till today! If baptisms are an indicator of evangelistic success, then Southern Baptists were failing on a massive scale. The question was, what should be done to rectify this denominational decline?

It is God himself, of course, through his Spirit who calls individuals unto repentance and faith by transformation. However, for our part, most importantly, the Spirit moves individuals predominately through our proclamation of the gospel. Therefore, before I examined issues of contemporary methodology and past denominational decisions, I thought it appropriate to go back to square one and study the meaning of the gospel.

One thing I noticed was that Christian leaders frequently mentioned the gospel but rarely explicitly explained what it was. What exactly is the gospel? The average Christian says something to the effect that the good news is that “God punished Jesus so that I wouldn’t have to go to hell.” Many of the required systematic theologies at seminaries did not provide a definition. The BFM2000 mentions the gospel seven times but never defines it. When leaders do attempt an exposition it’s usually communicated in vague generalities of what Christ accomplished but without specificity. It appeared to me that what our leaders said was of central importance to our faith was, in practice, either a secondary issue at best or something few could accurately articulate. I speculated that perhaps SBC evangelism was declining in today’s world because we weren’t accurately defining what the gospel was so that the Spirit could effectively move individuals to repentance and faith. So, what was the gospel? I decided to go back to the Scriptures.

My method was simple enough. In order to learn how the Bible itself defined the gospel, I studied every instance of euaggelion and euaggelizō in the New Testament, starting with Jesus himself. The conclusion was and is self-evident from Jesus, the Gospel writers, Paul, and the other apostles: the gospel is first and foremost the good news of the kingdom of God and Jesus Christ as its king. While personal  salvation is a part of the gospel, it, along with peace and healing, is a subset of the overall news that God rules and reigns through Jesus.

Again, the evidence for me was obvious, explicit, clear, and conclusive. Since then I’ve discovered other mainstream, conservative biblical scholars who have arrived at a similar conclusion, noting that our popular conception of the gospel as purely about personal salvation is reductionistic. I’ve written on the subject in numerous places and at numerous times. For example:

Getting the Gospel Right: Correcting the PopularMisconception about the Message of the Gospel

The Good News of Psalm 110: An Easter Sermon

Forgiveness of Sins Seventy Times Seven

Government, Violence, and the Gospel

Jesus and the “Harrowing of Hell”: An Interpretation of 1Peter 3:18-22

First Peter and Fighting Oppressive Injustice

Psalm 22: A Key to Interpreting the Crucifixion of Jesus

Nevertheless, it was on October 4^th, 2005 that I reached this conclusion that the gospel is the good news of the coming of the Kingdom of God and Jesus as its king. Other than the highly suspicious fact that the overwhelming majority of Christians (both leaders and laity) had been getting the gospel wrong for so long, my immediate thought was that perhaps our evangelism efforts were deficient because so was our understanding of the gospel. What I wasn’t expecting was how my new understanding would dramatically affect my conception of the Faith.

The Bible is an enormous collection of seemingly disparate theological works by numerous authors of varying genres, cultures, and eras assembled from written and oral traditions over a period of 2,000 years. Furthermore, various Christian traditions have attempted to express its contents in various ways over another two millennia. It has been the efforts of systematic and biblical theologians to make sense of the documents by bringing it into a coherent conceptual framework whose whole explains its part and its parts explain its whole.

When I began to conceptualize the gospel as the kingdom of God and Jesus as its king, many of the disparate elements of the bible began to come together into a cohesive whole: covenant, Torah, justification by faith, resurrection, new creation, powers and principalities, corporate solidarity, amillennialism, atonement, egalitarianism, enthronement, authority, submission, sermon on the mount ethics, prayer, suffering, government, natural law, Baptist distinctives, soul competency, idolatry, the supposed differences between Paul and the Gospels, the supposed differences between Paul and James, church methodology, and passages such as Genesis 1-3, 12, 15 and 17; 2 Samuel 7; Psalms 2, 22, 110; Isaiah 40-55; Daniel 7; Mark 1:1-3; John 20; Acts 7; Romans 8; 1 Corinthians 15; Ephesians 1; Philippians 2:6-11; 1 Peter 3:17-22; and Revelation 21-22 all began to come together in a great outworking of what God had been doing throughout history. When I looked at other mainstream, conservative scholars who had arrived at a similar conception of the gospel, I saw that they had arrived at similar conclusions about these disparate elements. It seemed that conceptualizing the gospel as the Kingdom of God and Jesus as its king inevitably led to a common cohesion.

But apart from this coherent conceptualization of biblical theology, I soon noticed other personal benefits. I now had more optimism, joy, patience, forgiveness, faith, and less worry and anxiety – all directly traced back to my conceptualization of the gospel to God’s Kingdom and his Son as King.

There’s a reason why the disciples rejoiced at the gospel. There’s a reason why they went out in Spirit-filled faith proclaiming it in power and optimism, willing to suffer all things. There’s a reason they were successful. There’s a reason why Paul was converted and shook to the core by the gospel. There’s a reason why the early Christians were able to rejoice at martyrdom and change an empire. There’s a reason why the closer a body of believers gets closer to the true gospel the more successful they are in furthering the Kingdom of God. You can plot the success in real, tangible ways. You can plot it in baptisms, church growth, and discipleship. Success in ministry advancing the Kingdom of God isn’t a random occurrence devoid of our theological conceptions and methodologies. Any person, minister, church, ministry, church, and denomination can see success and expand the Kingdom, increasing baptisms, the closer they approach the true gospel.

This is why I celebrate October 4^th as Happy Gospel Day.