Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Gospel Forms?
Justin Taylor links to a Tim Keller piece in Leadership called, "The Gospel in All its Forms":
I have spent the last several years trying to find a Chesterton quote I think I read. (If anybody has a hint - please sing out!) Anyway, in it, Chesterton talks about how religion, and specifically Christian religion, is the only thing properly balanced to be what it needs to be to whom needs it in the circumstances they find themselves in. I have phrased that very badly, but it is something of a corollary to the Apostle Paul's:
The different nature of Peter and Paul's gospel forms may not be reconciled, but Peter and Paul were reconciled.
Efforts to intellectually reconcile different gospel forms are doomed to failure, but with the power of the Holy Spirit, efforts to reconcile the holders of those forms need not be.
At the base of such efforts to reconcile people lie the essential understanding that no matter how much we know, we do not know enough. The "forms" are not the truth because the total truth is beyond our comprehension. Our intellectual capabilities are limited.
My response to the problems Keller rightly cites is not to reconcile the different views, but to confess my own lack of humility concerning what I hold to be true.
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The gospel has been described as a pool in which a toddler can wade and yet an elephant can swim. It is both simple enough to tell to a child and profound enough for the greatest minds to explore. Indeed, even angels never tire of looking into it (1 Peter 1:12). Humans are by no means angels, however, so rather than contemplating it, we argue about it.As I read through the rest of Keller's thoughts, I could not help but be struck about how our categories and summaries are often as much obstacles as they are aids. Keller's opening about our human, not angelic, nature is so right on, that it emphasizes the futility of the remainder of the article because he tries to reformulate the categories somehow.
A generation ago evangelicals agreed on "the simple gospel": (1) God made you and wants to have a relationship with you, (2) but your sin separates you from God. (3) Jesus took the punishment your sins deserved, (4) so if you repent from sins and trust in him for your salvation, you will be forgiven, justified, and accepted freely by grace, and indwelt with his Spirit until you die and go to heaven.
There are today at least two major criticisms of this simple formulation. Many say that it is too individualistic, that Christ's salvation is not so much to bring individual happiness as to bring peace, justice, and a new creation. A second criticism is that there is no one "simple gospel" because "everything is contextual" and the Bible itself contains many gospel presentations that exist in tension with each other.
I have spent the last several years trying to find a Chesterton quote I think I read. (If anybody has a hint - please sing out!) Anyway, in it, Chesterton talks about how religion, and specifically Christian religion, is the only thing properly balanced to be what it needs to be to whom needs it in the circumstances they find themselves in. I have phrased that very badly, but it is something of a corollary to the Apostle Paul's:
1 Cor 9:22 - To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak; I have become all things to all men, that I may by all means save some.Implicit in Paul's utterance, and Chesterton's writing (if I remember correctly) is the thought that the biblical narrative, "the gospel" if you will, is just not that simple. Keller successfully argues that there is but a single "gospel":
Now hundreds of websites of young Christian leaders complain that the older evangelical church spent too much time reading Romans rather than Jesus' declaration that "the kingdom of God is at hand." But to be true to first-century Christians' own understanding of the gospel, I believe we must side with Dodd over Dunn. Paul is emphatic that the gospel he presents is the same as the one preached by the Jerusalem apostles. "Whether it was I or they," Paul says, referring to Peter and the others, "so we preached and so you believed" (1 Cor. 15:10-11). This statement assumes a single body of gospel content.But he then goes on to try and reduce that gospel to a few bullet points. The gospel is indeed unified, but to achieve that unity it is far more complex that can possibly be summarized in a few bullet points. Keller tries to handle this by discussing "forms" of the gospel, but this remains a unity of a few simple messages. He tries to unify the few forms he cites, but even that effort excludes others. It just is not that simple. The formulation he uses, "one gospel, many forms" does track some biblical language, but I think it messes the bigger point. The unity of the gospel lies not in ideas, but in people.
The different nature of Peter and Paul's gospel forms may not be reconciled, but Peter and Paul were reconciled.
Efforts to intellectually reconcile different gospel forms are doomed to failure, but with the power of the Holy Spirit, efforts to reconcile the holders of those forms need not be.
At the base of such efforts to reconcile people lie the essential understanding that no matter how much we know, we do not know enough. The "forms" are not the truth because the total truth is beyond our comprehension. Our intellectual capabilities are limited.
My response to the problems Keller rightly cites is not to reconcile the different views, but to confess my own lack of humility concerning what I hold to be true.
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