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Great Things of the Gospel

     From the beginnings of the Christian faith in Jerusalem about 2,000 years ago, followers of Christ lived, proclaimed and defended the truthfulness of Jesus' teachings. Indeed, many were eyewitnesses of his earthly ministry, his death on the cross and resurrection from the dead. Besides that, theyn were commanded to do so and to take the message--what they considered to be good news--to the remotest part of the earth. However, just what was the "message" they were to take--what was the meaning of the things to which they were eyewitnesses?

     To get that right in our era involves getting to the most reliable sources of what Jesus taught his followers, and get as best we can just how that "good news" was meant to be understood. This requires we get the most reliable sources of what Jesus and his apostolic leadership taught. The best sources we have today of Jesus' teaching are the canonical New Testament books of the Bible. There were later apocraphal accounts of his teachings, but the oldest and most realiable accounts were first century copies of the four gospel accounts, Mathew, Mark, Luke and John. Following Christ's assension to heaven and his giving his disciples, soon to become apostles, the 'great commission', we begin to see in the book of Luke/Acts the progress of the early church leadership took in living, proclaiming and defending what came to be known as the good news of the gospel. We also have early manuscripts of apostolic teaching, some of which apparently predate those gospels (like the letters of Paul).

     Getting what was meant by those teachings involves doing one's best to understand the writers of the gospels, the writers of the New Testament and, indeed, the writers of the whole Bible (OT & NT) meant to say; that is, not just what was said, but what was meant. That involves following the kinds of hermeneutical principles one would use to understand any document that was written in another era, to a different immediate audience, and written by different authors and the like of that. Caution needs to be exercised to make sure that one's hermenutical principles are not faulty in any discernable way.

     Christians and others have been working on this project for literally centuries and what has emerged is both a body of canonical texts and a work of whatt we call orthodox theology; however, there is also a body of work that we call hetereodoxical. Not that there aren't disagreements on what is considered important orthodox teachings, we do generally accept orthodox Christian teachings, expressed in many of the creeds of the relatively early church fathers and followers.

     By contrast, we do not accept what we consider to be the heterodox teachings that tend to base (but are not limited to) their interpretations based on anti-supernatural assumptions, and typically alleged corruptions to the narrative by 'myths'. For example, the development of the so-called 'mythicists' who allege that there was no historical Jesus at all. They assert and argue that whatever our understanding is of "him" has their foundations in the myths that existed in that part of the world prior to the emergence of Christian faith.

     Other, more scholarly skepticism of the NT narrative, is mainly about the historical Jesus' narrative being encrusted with 'myths.' They hold there was an historical Jesus that they wish to demythologize! The proximate roots of that movement can be traced most prominently to the 18th century 'Enlightenment' thinkers like Hume and Kant. This more scholarly criticsm advocated that Reason did not have the capacity to know Truth in itself, but at best only the subjective 'appearance' or perception of truth. Part of that legacy involved the thinking that what we can know of the historical Jesus is at best encrusted with local myths, and that corruption came by way of supernatural and cultural myths which attached themselves or were attached to the story, so much so, we can hardly recognize the historical Jesus--who they believe really did live.

     We discuss this seriously elsewhere on this site, but in summary we wish to say we are unconvinced by the two kinds of  "mythological" interpretations of Jesus--the 'all myth view' and the 'encrusted myth view'. Instead, we argue elsewhere that similarties between the Jesus narrative of the New Testament and mystery religions of earlier Mesopottamia are upon close examination greatly exagerated and there is not a good reason to think that the Jesus narrative of the NT is either plagarism or made-up wholesale. There are better explanations for any apparent similarities. We also argue that the more scholarly accepted criticism of the historical Jesus that began in the 18th century, even though it cannot as easily be dismissed, still is based on an unwarranted anti-supernaturalism and an account of Reason that is rife with self-referential incoherencies.

     Having only gestured here to those issues because of length, we now can get to the point of what this piece is about--what is the so-called 'good news' we call the gospel that orthodoxy approves of and what's so great about it?

     Understanding the gospel is better understood in its historical and theological context--that is, better understood in  the metanarrative into which the narrative we are interested in emerged. One way to characterize this larger story into which the gospel emerged has been defined in terms of God's interaction with his Creation.

     Terms that have been used to explain the skeleton of this story have included terms and demarcations that include things like, "the Creation", "the Fall", "Redemption", and the "Consummation". The details of this explanation are still argued, but for our purposes we want to say, this explanation of the grand story is that God created a good thing, our universe and those who inhabit it; that in giving His creatures moral innocence (not limited to humans, but to include other divine creatures like angels) there occurred a corrupting rebellion (a freely chosen one) of those creatures toward Him.

     There were consequences to that rebellion that included the 'spiritual death' or separation from God for those creatures and their progeny and the need for atonement and reconcilation with God their Creator. Orthodox believers hold that while Jesus was "involved" before the redemption of our era, his role in redemption was more fully revealed in the narrative of the life and teachings of Christ. That is, we think the historical Jesus was the incarnation of God, that by his sinless life in the flesh, He was qualfied to provide an expiation, propriation, and atonement for the corrupted Creation and created creatures. And, that He did by dying on the cross, that is, dying as a substitute for the sinners and the sins of the whole world. This provided the opportunity that God could in fact be both just and the justifier of his fallen Creation. This death on the cross and substitutionary atonement and resurrection of Jesus inuagurated the Kingdom of God in this world at that time, but that this "period" in which we live is not a fully realized redemption. The fully realized redemption will be consummated when Jesus comes again to bring to completion the full redemption of Creation and His creatures in a New Heaven and New Earth.

     This narrative has been described by some as the greatest story ever told. Others like the Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga have claimed that this story of God becoming flesh, suffering the humilation of the cross for the redemption of all of Creation is the greatest story that could EVER BE told. That's why we Christians are so excited to both live as followers of Christ and to proclaim, explain and defend these great things and the great truths of the gospel!

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