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.

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.

On the Translation of the Word 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.

A Short Review of “Jesus of Nazareth: Millenarian Prophet” by Dale Allison

Today I finished reading “Jesus of Nazareth: Millenarian Prophet” by Dale Allison. I thought this book was okay in many respects. It’s primarily a new defense of the idea that Jesus was an eschatological prophet. It is a defense in the sense that Allison critiques and challenges the methods and conclusions of scholars such as John Dominic Crossan, Marcus Borg, Stephen Patterson who reject such an idea in favor of seeing Jesus as either a Jewish Cynic or aphoristic sage. It is new in the sense that Allison qualifies Jesus’ eschatology as taking the forms of millenarianism and asceticism.


Allison’s critique of the methods of Crossan et al is both thorough and enlightening. In some places, it’s fun. I’ve never taken Crossan, Borg, and their ilk seriously, but it is amusing to see them taken to the scholarly woodshed.

While I do appreciate Allison’s defense of the eschatological nature of Jesus ministry, I am not convinced that Jesus and his fledgling pre-Easter movement can or should be categorized as millenarian. At the very least, that is too broad a term to be adequately applied to Jesus’ context.

On the other hand, Allison’s examination of Jesus asceticism was thoroughly enjoyable and highly thought-provoking. In particular, I was intrigued by the notion that Jesus ascetic practices of property, money, poverty, sex, and housing were a part of his belief in a “realized eschatology” that pointed back to a pre-Fallen Edenic world and towards a New Creation. Interesting.

The place where I find the biggest fault with Allison here is his adherence to the view that Jesus did indeed expect an imminent, catastrophic end of the world. His errors: 1) He dies not sufficiently understand the characteristics, purpose, and role of apocalyptic language and literature. 2) He underestimates Jesus’ grasp of the apocalyptic. 3) He seems to maintain that any supposed popularity of misinterpretation of a literary form during its lifetime negates an author’s intentions if holding true to that form. 4) Is a common era that would take too long to explain but involves incongruity between what some scholars think that the Gospel writers did with the predictions of Jesus and what one would have expected them to do if these same scholars are correct.

Still, a very good book.

A Short Review of “The Historical Figure of Jesus” by E. P. Sanders

Last night I finished reading “The Historical Figure of Jesus” by E. P. Sanders. I did enjoy the book – admittedly, some parts more enthusiastically than others. Some of his methodology is a little stale and he is hindered because of it. I really enjoyed his analysis of the political setting of Jesus’ life in 1st century Palestine, although I think he underestimates the Jewish perception of Roman oppression.

He’s too quick to dismiss the reliability of the confrontation scenes between Jesus and his “enemies” because of the weakness of “enemy” arguments and because of the theological arrangement of such scenes by the Gospel writers. I do think this leads Sanders to minimize the tension between Jesus and the Pharisees, which is puzzling since he ends the book with such a forceful (and, in my opinion, accurate) statement of Jesus’ self-conception of his role: Jesus regarded himself as having the right to say who would be in the Kingdom of God and he held that God was acting directly and immediately through him, bypassing the Law.

While he repeatedly states how important the Scriptures were to Jesus as a first century Jew and while he agrees that Jesus was enacting some of the Old Testament prophecies (particularly in his final week), except in a far too generalized fashion, Sanders shies away from exploring Jesus’ understanding of the Scriptures and prophetic traditions and how it influenced his conception of his ministry and mission.

This is perhaps one of the reasons Sanders makes the big mistake of rejecting the idea that Jesus understood the Kingdom of God has having a present as well as a future reality. In some places I believe he violates his own methodology in order to keep Jesus’ teachings of the Kingdom to be “at hand” and never “among you.”

Where I believe Sanders gets it very right is the reason Jesus was arrested. Namely, Jesus’ enacted parable of “cleansing the Temple” was seen and rightly understood as a prophecy predicting the Temple’s utter destruction by God.

A very well written and researched book.