McKnight 5: Gospel of Paul

Moving on to chapter 4 now of Scot McKnight's King Jesus Gospel.  Previous chapter reviews include:

Intro: Evangelism Explosion
Chap 1: The Big Question: What is the Gospel?
Chap 2: Gospel Culture vs Salvation Culture
Chap 3: From Salvation to Story

Now, Chap. 4: "The Apostolic Gospel of Paul"  In this chapter we hit pay dirt, in my opinion.  First my summary then my thoughts.

Although it is not the only reason McKnight starts with 1 Corinthians 15, I think it was good strategy to start here.  Why?  Because Paul is exactly where those who equate "gospel" with "how to get saved" think they have their strongest evidence.  But as Scot indicates, this is not the heart of what Paul had in the bubble over his head when he used the word "gospel."

In 1 Corinthians 15:1-5, Paul reminds the Corinthians of the good news that, not only he announced but that he was passing on as something he received from believers before him (i.e., the first apostles).  What Paul goes on to present is the story of Jesus' death and resurrection.  Scot argues that this story is what Paul means when he mentions the gospel, the good news.  The story consists of four parts: 1) the death of Jesus, 2) the burial of Jesus, 3) the resurrection of Jesus, and 4) the appearances of Jesus.

He then makes 8 points.  I won't mention them all but some of the most important include the fact that Paul didn't come up with this himself (49) and that the gospel is the resolution and fulfillment of Israel's story and promises (51).  He draws this latter point from the recurring mention that these things happened "according to the Scriptures."  Salvation flows from the gospel as a result, but is not what the gospel itself is.

An important quote for Scot from Tom Wright appears here: "I am perfectly comfortable with what people normally mean when they say 'the gospel.'  I just don't think it is what Paul means" (What Saint Paul Really Said, a great place to begin studying Paul, by the way, although you might also like one of mine off to the right ;-)

So, Scot summarizes: "Every time Paul mentions 'gospel' in his letters... he is referring to this four-line gospel."  His main warning, and here I completely agree, is that the other focus has inevitably led evangelicalism to make the gospel be about "me and my own personal salvation" (62).  This tendency does indeed have New Testament theology completely out of focus.

The gospel is the good news about Jesus and the kingdom of God.  That's good news for me too, but I'm an incredibly minor character in the story.
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My additional thoughts:
First, I very much agree with what Scot says at the beginning of the chapter about where you begin such discussions being very important.  Hermeneutically, I would put it this way: because the biblical texts are texts of particularity, texts written in differing, specific contexts, we have to map them to each other.  One thing I insist on is that we must allow that not only may different books have a different nuance or even meaning to the word "gospel," but Paul himself cannot be assumed to mean the same thing every time he uses a word.

To map particular texts and passages to each other, especially when we find diversity of nuance or meaning, we must choose an "Archimedian point" from which to integrate them.  This means either 1) choosing one of the passages as the controlling passage and mapping the others to it or 2) choosing an ideological point "beside" the text from which we integrate the particular texts.  Scot is writing a popular book, so I suppose these musings of mine have more to do with my own hermeneutical pet peeves about flattening out the nuances of particular texts in the name of an overall biblical theology.

Secondly, with the phrase, "according to the scriptures" I come back to what I was saying in the last post about the difference between grands récits and petits récits.  Does this phrase in Paul here mean to evoke some entire story of Israel or does it more function along the lines of a proof text?  In my opinion, the NT authors used OT Scripture much more along the lines of proof texts than in terms of the kinds of grand story we as Christians see there.

Again, I am not hereby rejecting the "grand Christian narrative" reading of the OT.  I'm just saying I'm not sure that Paul conceptualized the story bits in such a grand, unified fashion.  It is appropriate theologizing beside the text, drawn from pieces and hints in the text, but never quite done so holistically in the text, in my opinion.

Finally, I tip my hat to Scot's completely accurate observation that when Paul says Christ died "for our sins," Paul does not say how Jesus' death did something for our sins (51).  It is a reminder that to see some systematic "penal substitution" here is to overread the text, to be unaware of the dictionary you are bringing to the words.

Impact of Free Will/Determinism on other areas...

Your sense of human freedom usually has immense implications for other areas of your life. Say you believe God directly determines many if not most things that happen in your life.[1] Say you believe God also predetermines whether you will believe or not. This sense of determinism will often bleed over into other areas of your view of the world. You might emphasize the absolute authority and sovereignty of God, along with justice as the key dimension of God’s nature. On the other hand, a person who believes in free will tends to see love as the primary way God currently relates to the world, with an emphasis on helping us grow and come to make the right choices.

While none of us is completely consistent with our ideas, these views of God will tend to play themselves out in other areas of our lives, like how we raise our children or how we vote. [2] A person for whom God’s justice is so prominent may tend to respond to a child’s disobedience with an immediate and wrathful response, a focus on punishment of wrongdoing. The person for whom God’s mercy is more prominent may see disobedience as the child inflicting harm on him or herself, a moment when the child needs to learn something for his or her own good.

Similarly, the person who emphasizes God’s justice may see it as a duty to try to make the laws of the land mirror as much as possible divine law. Such a person will emphasize preaching against sin, since sin is an effrontery to God’s justice. The person who believes in free will, on the other hand, will not likely feel as much compulsion to force the rest of the world to follow God’s will. After all, they believe God created a world in which we can choose to disobey him. They would focus more on influencing others for good than in trying to force it.

[1] Many of those who believe in predestination, of course, do not believe that God pre-determines everything.  Many believe he only determines one’s ultimate salvation.  Popularly, however, many Christians believe that God orchestrates even little things in our lives to give them direction and purpose.

[2] Not to mention other areas of our belief system. For example, Calvinists tend to emphasize the idea of “penal substitution.” It is the sense that because God’s justice is so absolute, God must exact the precise amount of penalty for any sin. God cannot simply have mercy on someone. For Calvin, Christ not only took our punishment, including his descent into hell. For Calvin, Christ experienced the exact amount of punishment justice demanded of every individual God predestined for forgiveness.

Others see such a mathematical sense of God’s justice as absurd. God is God, and in the parables, Jesus presents a God who has the authority to forgive sins simply on his own authority. For example, Joel Green and Mark Baker point out in Rediscovering the Scandal of the Cross that the Parable of the Prodigal Son says nothing about the father having to arrange someone to pay for the debts of the younger son (***). The father has the authority simply to forgive the son, with no payment made at all.
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What have I missed?