What Is the Gospel? Part 2

What is the gospel?  As I discussed in my previous post, most “evangelical” Christians have a ready answer to this question: the “gospel” (derived from the Old English gōdspel, “good story, glad tidings” [i.e., gōd + spel{l}], a formal equivalent of the ecclesiastical Latin evangelium, itself derived from the Greek eὐaggelion)[i]  is the “good news” of what God has accomplished in Christ for the “salvation” of individual sinners, and the means whereby such sinners participate in the benefits of what Christ accomplished.  My own experience, as one raised in a fundamentalist/evangelical environment with a theology professor father, led me to understand the gospel in terms of the combined message of the doctrines of penal, substitutionary atonement and justification by faith alone.

Interestingly, this “soterian” approach cuts across the various party lines that continue to fester like an open wound on the fissiparous phenomenon we call “Protestantism.”  It doesn’t matter whether one is Lutheran or Reformed, Arminian or Calvinist—evangelical Protestants almost uniformly understand the “gospel” to be a message related to individualistic soteriology, most often in terms of the classic Protestant doctrine of justification. 

Now the doctrines of penal substitution and justification by faith alone are, I believe, taught clearly in the New Testament, not least by the Apostle Paul.  And—I must make this clear—these teachings are very good news indeed for sinners like me who couldn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of avoiding such a fate based on any “righteousness” I could muster on my own. Nevertheless, to assume these doctrines constitute what the Bible means by the term “gospel” begs the historical and exegetical question.  Moreover, to do so short-circuits possible implications of the “good news” for how believers in the gospel ought to act in the world.  It is precisely this assumed understanding of the gospel that Scot McKnight targets in his recent book, The King Jesus Gospel.[ii]   In its place, Professor McKnight argues for a story gospel in which the biblical “story” of Jesus completes, or brings to a climax, the larger biblical narrative of Israel.

The place to start our investigation, as is so often the case, is with the terminology itself, specifically the Greek terms eὐaggέlion  (“gospel”) and eὐaggelίzw/ eὐaggelίzomai  (“I announce good news”).[iii]  Two plausible backgrounds have been suggested.

The first proposed background is that of the Greco-Roman world.  The earliest recorded use of the term refers to the reward given to one who brought good tidings of victory on the battlefield.[iv] The term then became used more specifically of the “victory message” itself, and in time was applied in the context of the imperial cult to such events as the birth and accession of the emperor.[v]

Note, in particular, the famous example relating to the accession of Octavius (Augustus) found on the Priene Inscription (Asia Minor), dated to 9 B.C.:

It seemed good to the Greeks of Asia, in the opinion of the high priest Apollonius of Menophilus Azanitus: ‘Since Providence, which has ordered all things and is deeply interested in our life, has set in most perfect order by giving us Augustus, whom she filled with virtue that he might benefit humankind, sending him as a savior [σωτήρ], both for us and for our descendants, that he might end war and arrange all things, and since he, Caesar, by his appearance…. surpassing all previous benefactors, and not even leaving to posterity any hope of surpassing what he has done, and since the birthday of the god [τοῦ θεοῦ] Augustus was the beginning of the good tidings [εὐαγγέλιον] for the world that came by reason of him…

Consider also the following quotation from Plutarch’s (1^st century A.D.) Moralia (347 d-e):

Why, as we are told, the Spartans merely sent meat from the public commons to the man who brought glad tidings [εὐαγγέλιον] of the victory in Mantineia which Thucydides describes! And indeed the compilers of histories are, as it were, reporters of great exploits who are gifted with the faculty of felicitous speech, and achieve success in their writing through the beauty and force of their narration; and to them those who first encountered and recorded the events [εὐαγγέλιον] are indebted for a pleasing retelling of them.

Finally, note the following from the pen of the first-century Jewish historian, Josephus, writing of the accession of Vespasian (Jewish War 4.618):

Fame carried [the news about Vespasian] abroad more suddenly than one could have thought, that he was emperor over the east, upon which every city kept festivals, and celebrated sacrifices and oblations for such good news [εὐαγγέλια].

The second proposed background, as one might imagine, is the Jewish scriptures. One complicating factor is that the singular noun eὐaggέlion is nowhere found in the Greek translation of the OT (the LXX). The Hebrew noun b^eśōrȃ is rendered by the neuter plural tὰ eὐaggelίa (2 Kgdms 4:10—“messenger’s reward;” 4 Kgdms 7:9—“good news”) and the feminine singular ἡ eὐaggelίa (2 Kgdms 18:20, 22, 25, 27; 4 Kgdms 7:9—“good news”).

It is here that the contribution of the cognate verb  eὐaggelίzomai is potentially very significant. Most relevant is the following series of prophecies in Isaiah 40-66, where the verb is used to render the Hebrew verb biśśar:

            Get you up to a high mountain,

            O Zion, herald of good news;

            Lift up your voice with strength,

            O Jerusalem, herald of good news;

            Lift it up, fear not;

            Say to the cities of Judah,

            “Behold, your God!” (Isa 40:9, ESV).

            I was the first to say to Zion, “Behold, here they are!”

            And I give to Jerusalem a herald of good news. (41:27, ESV)

            How delightful it is to see approaching over the mountains

the feet of a messenger who announces peace,

a messenger who brings good news, who announces deliverance,

who says to Zion, “Your God reigns!” (52:7, NET)

A multitude of camels shall cover you,

The young camels of Midian and Ephah;

All those from Sheba shall come.

They shall bring gold and frankincense;

and shall bring good news, the praises of the LORD. (60:6, ESV)

The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me,

because the LORD has anointed me

to bring good news to the poor;

he has sent me to bind the brokenhearted,

to proclaim liberty to the captives,

and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;

to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor,

and the day of vengeance of our God;

to comfort all who mourn.” (61:1-2, ESV)[vi]

These texts are all of a piece. The “good news” that is heralded has a specific content geared to the exiled Jewish people in captivity in Babylon: the prophet proclaims glad tidings of two interrelated, hoped-for events, namely, Yahweh’s enthronement in Zion and Israel’s return from exile in a new Exodus.  If indeed these texts provide the background of the New Testament gospel, the implicit point would be that God had, in the “Christ event,” fulfilled the scriptural hopes of Israel, and that this “good news” for Israel was simultaneously ”good news” for the whole world.

Scholars, as might be expected, take various positions on the proposed background. Most vocal in support of the derivation from the Hellenistic ruler-cult is Georg Strecker, based both on his somewhat tendentious distinction between “secular” and “religious” uses of the terms, and his (somewhat) irrelevant observation that Isaiah doesn’t use the noun form of the root.

In recent decades, due largely to the painstaking work of Stuhlmacher,[vii] scholars have increasingly inclined to the view that the New Testament “gospel” must be understood in light of the Isaianic prophecies cited above.[viii]  I tend to agree, as will become obvious in later posts. But one wonders whether a choice is necessary, and that exegetes have been asked to place themselves on the horns of a false dilemma. Certainly (as we shall see), both Paul and Mark present the gospel as the fulfillment of Israel’s scriptural hopes. Nevertheless, both of these authors also wrote to people living in the Roman Empire who were steeped in the language of imperial “good news,” and who necessarily would have captured clear the implications to be found in the confession that the crucified Messiah had been raised to be universal Lord.

The term “gospel” occurs 76 times in the New Testament, 60 of which are found in the Pauline corpus.[ix]  Paul is also the earliest writer to use the term.[x]  It is also Paul who provides us with the earliest confessional summary of the gospel as he had been taught it after his conversion no more than three years after the death and resurrection of Jesus (1 Cor 15:3-5).  Nevertheless, one can only conjecture whether or not Paul received this message as “the gospel,” even if, as Rikki Watts persuasively argues, the content of this gospel derives from the earliest proclamation of the Palestinian church.[xi]

Indeed, the consistent use of the singular eὐaggέlion rather than the pervasive plural forms found in both the LXX and pagan texts is suggestive. Could the singular form be a neologism of sorts, designed by Paul himself to designate the story of Jesus as the “good news” par excellence which trumps all other glad tidings proclaimed in the Roman world?[xii]

In our next post, we will begin our discussion of Paul’s gospel by turning to 1 Corinthians 15, where the earliest gospel confession is found.

---

[i] Cf. e.g., http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/gospel.

[ii] Scot McKnight, The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011).

[iii] Standard discussions include those of Gerhard Friedrich, “eὐaggέlion, ktl,” TDNT 2:707-37; Georg Strecker, “eὐaggέlion,” EDNT 2:70-74; U. Becker, “Gospel,” NIDNTT 2:110-15; and especially Peter Stuhlmacher, Das paulinischen Evangelium. I. Vorgeschichte (FRLANT 95; Gӧttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1968).

[iv] Homer, Od. xiv.156.

[v] Cf. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/wordfreq?lang=greek&lookup=eu%29agge%2Flion. For English translations. Cf. the list compiled by Glen Davis at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/archives/2010/02/25/pre-christian-uses-of-gospel.

[vi] This Isaianic hope was alive and well in first-century Judaism, as is clear from both the (Pharisaic) Psalms of Solomon 11 (text to be found in James H. Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha.II. Expansions of the ‘Old Testament’ and Legends, Wisdom and Philosophical Literature, Prayers, Psalms and Odes, Fragments of Lost Judaeo-Hellenistic Works [Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1985] 661-62) and the sectarian Dead Sea Scrolls (1QH 18.14-15; 11QMelch 2.4-13 [texts in Florentino García Martínez, The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated: The Qumran Texts in English {2d ed.; transl. Wilfred G. E. Watson; Leiden: Brill, 1994} 359 {cited as column XXIII}; 139-40]).

[vii] Stuhlmacher, Das paulinischen Evangelium, 109-79.

[viii] See especially Rikki E. Watts, Isaiah’s New Exodus in Mark (WUNT 2; Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck] 1997); James D. G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998) 164-69; C. C. Broyles, “Gospel (Good News),” in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels (ed. Joel B. Green and Scot McKnight; Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP, 1992) 282-86.

[ix] Other than in Paul, the term is found in Mark (8x), Matthew (4x), Acts (2x), 1 Peter (1x), and Revelation (1x).

[x] He uses the term 7 times in Galatians, which I take to have been written ca. A.D. 49.

[xi] Watts, New Exodus in Mark, 96-99.

[xii] As suggested by Dunn, Theology, 167.

Lawrence Summers and the Future of American "Higher" Education

Over the weekend Scot McKnight drew my attention to a piece in the New York Times by former Clinton Treasury Secretary and Harvard President Lawrence Summers entitled "What You (Really) Need to Know." This article, though brief, read like a horror story to yours truly, a paleolithic academic if ever there was one.

In the article Summers contemplates the challenges American higher education faces as it seeks to prepare young people for their roles in a rapidly changing world. The list of guesses and hopes he provides for how education will overcome its inherent inertia and change in future includes the following:

• Education will be more about how to process information and less about imparting it. Because of advances in technology, factual mastery of subjects will become less and less important.
• Because of the explosion of knowledge and "what businesses and what governments do," more tasks will and should be accomplished via collaboration rather than by individual effort.
• Because of new technologies, professors should be "freed" of the responsibility to prepare materials for their classes. It "makes sense" that professors use video materials from the "clearest" and "most lucid" of teachers in their field instead of "having thousands of separate efforts."
• Instead of traditional "passive" learning via lectures, reading, and evaluation of content mastery, professors should encourage the "dynamic" ethos of "active learning classrooms," where they "interact" with their students through the use of media and "collaborative experiences."
• Because of English's emergence as a global language, it is not "clear that the substantial investment necessary to speak a foreign tongue is universally worthwhile." After all, over time it will become less "essential" for doing business or resolving conflicts overseas.
• Courses of study will place much more emphasis on the analysis of data.

Simply repeating Summers's main ideas inexorably raises my blood pressure and induces pity for future generations of students, for I have no doubt that such policies will inevitably be implemented, more likely sooner rather than later.

Summers's ideas, it seems to me, are liable to criticism on a number of fronts. First, and most importantly, Summers has capitulated entirely to a utilitarian view of knowledge, what I like to call "the tyranny of the practical." This is where most Americans instinctively fall in line behind Summers. In the past I always asked my freshman college students what the purpose of a college education was, and the response—almost to a person—was immediate: "To get a good paying job." Of course, this response didn't surprise me in that young people are constantly bombarded with the notion that college education is essential to their future prosperity. But this begs the question on a number of fronts.

What is the purpose of higher learning? I do not mean to suggest that future employment is not part of the equation. But such is only a part and not, I would suggest, the most important part. Higher education is, first and foremost, about the life of the mind. Knowledge, as John Henry Cardinal Newman argued, is intrinsically "useful." This applies especially to subjects such as the arts, languages, and the humanities, which are so under attack today in both America and Britain (one thinks here of F. F. Bruce's scathing dedication of one of his last books to the Department of Classics at the University of Aberdeen, where he studied in the 1930s, but was "axed" due to the policies of Margaret Thatcher). Any attempt to "make" knowledge useful, or to pursue only those courses of study perceived to be useful, misunderstands the mission of the university and, more importantly, transforms its character from that of an academic institution to that of a polytechnic institute. Such thinking has even infected theological institutions and Bible Colleges, most of which have capitulated to growing pressures to focus less on "theoretical" courses and more on practical "ministry." The result, as I once was so impolitic as to suggest, is a "college" that increasingly takes on the characteristics of a "vo-tech for ministry." Such does not bode well for future Christian education.

More importantly, and perniciously, is that the relentless pressure to conform educational models to the economic workplace of the global economy. What this fosters is the assumption that what is societally valued and rewarded financially is what is most important for life in the world. In other words, educational philosophy has worldview formation as its ineluctable companion. The result of utilitarianism, of course, is the economization of life, where the pursuit of money is assumed to be the summum bonum, and those who either can't or desire not to compete are left to the margins of society. This headlong rush to Philistia is not, I would argue, a good thing.

Second, Summers is uncritical in his praise of the benefits of modern technology. Yes, the time is coming when the contents of the Library of Congress and the Bodleian Library will be at anyone's fingertips. That will certainly both aid and complicate research. But I fail to see how this will excuse any self-respecting student of the requirement to assimilate as much content knowledge as one can.

All of us can recall humorous (at one level) instances where people have needed calculators to solve elementary problems of addition or multiplication. This, however, is not always a matter of comic relief. Technology, you see, comes at a cost. Even books came with the hidden cost of the deterioration of human memory capabilities. Yet high level thinking demands a body of content knowledge as its foundation. It's nice to have a mass of information at one's fingertips, but it's nicer—and more intellectually advantageous—to have the knowledge in one's brain. This is one reason why the current trend in theological education to reduce Greek and Hebrew requirements, if not to eliminate them entirely, is, in my opinion, disastrous policy.

Third, Summers's advocacy of a "dynamic" and collaborative educational environment is potentially disastrous for genuine scholarly training in a host of disciplines. The first thing that jumps out is his rationale for promoting collaboration: it's the way things are done in business and in government. Since people will spend their working lives collaborating on projects, it makes sense, so the argument goes, to jump start the process in college. Wrong! There is no substitute for an individual wrestling with issues and coming to one's own, hard-fought opinion on a subject. I certainly don't mean to suggest that collaboration is always wrong, let alone that people don't benefit from wrestling with issues in group contexts. Nevertheless, I am convinced by my decades of experience in academia that such collaborative efforts are valuable only after individuals have done the hard work necessary to form intelligent provisional and personal opinions on the subject matter. This, of course, works better the higher the academic level, culminating in the standard doctoral seminars. My experience has taught me, however, that such collaborative efforts are rarely effective (or fair to better students) in lower-level undergraduate contexts.

Likewise, Summers's disdain for traditional, "passive" educational models is nothing new to anyone who has had to endure courses in educational theory. To be sure, many people struggle with lectures and hefty amounts of solitary reading. That is why a good teacher will refrain from exclusive utilization of these methods. Nevertheless, many students, including a large proportion of more academically gifted ones, do learn best by means of the traditional approach. I, for one, have always benefited most from times of solitary reflection on matters introduced in lectures and voluminous required reading. At the same time, I rarely benefited from what, to me, were excruciating "active learning environments." 

Teaching method is often dictated by the instructional content and aims of the course. Perhaps in Summers's field of economics such "dynamic" learning is optimal. I have a hard time imagining such a scenario in the fields of history and Biblical Studies, especially in lower-level classes in which the students don't have an assimilated body of content knowledge to use as a foundation for application and/or practice (of course, history and religious studies are two disciplines increasingly considered passe in modern educational contexts). Some students may indeed find "traditional" instruction "boring." If so, that is at least potentially the fault of the professor. Any professor worth her salary should be so animated by the subject matter that begetting such derived interest in her charges should come as a matter of course. Maybe what we need more of are scholar-teachers for whom class instruction is as important as their research interests. I thank God for such mentors as Harold Hoehner who modeled that paradigm for me.

What Is the Gospel? Part 1

What is the gospel?

If you, like I, were raised in an "evangelical" church, you might think of this as the question with the ultimate "no-brainer" answer, the theological equivalent of the arithmetical sum of 2 + 2. After all, the designation "evangelical" is derived from the Greek term euangelion ("gospel"), and has been used since the time of Martin Luther in the 16th century to distinguish the Protestant church (die evangelische Kirche) from the Roman Catholic church because of its ostensibly more scripturally faithful understanding of the gospel.

Indeed, as a young Christian I took for granted both the centrality and foundational significance of the gospel. More importantly, I took for granted the belief that my circle of Christians—those who worshipped at churches like Grace Chapel in Havertown, Pennsylvania, and who took their theological cues from institutions like Philadelphia College of Bible and Dallas Theological Seminary—had the "biblical" answer to the question of how to define and articulate it.

I assumed, like all in my circles, that the "gospel" was to be understood as the "message of salvation." In particular, the "gospel" was defined as the good news of what God had done in Christ's (never "Jesus'") death and (in some articulations) resurrection to "make possible" the salvation of individual human beings, and how a person "appropriates" what Christ had accomplished so as to benefit from it. In other words, the gospel, as I was taught it, was the combined message of the doctrines of penal, substitutionary atonement and justification by faith alone.

Now, I wholeheartedly affirm both of these doctrines as central to my understanding of the faith, not least as articulated by the Apostle Paul. And such an understanding had the heuristic value of distinguishing the "gospel" Christianity of my experience—whether in its Lutheran, Reformed, or Anabaptist manifestations—from both Roman Catholicism and the "modernist" Protestants who located the heart of the faith in Jesus' ethical teaching rather than in his atoning death and bodily resurrection.

Nevertheless, four problems presented themselves to my understanding. For one, we were obsessed with the issue of the "clarity" of the gospel. By that was meant clarity in expressing what a person must "do" to be "saved." This meant, of course, that we had to strive hard to disabuse the notion that "good works" played any role in salvation. Now this is true in that there is nothing a human being can do to "earn" or merit God's favor or be pronounced "not guilty" at the bar of his just judgment. As St. Paul teaches, we are "justified by faith" alone (Rom 3:28—Luther, by the way, was "justified" to insert allein in his translation of the verse). The "righteousness" that avails before God is given to us as a gift of grace.

This concern to eliminate "works," salutary though it was, had some unfortunate consequences. Texts such as Ephesians 2:10, which teach the necessity (and theological inevitability) of good works for believers, were marginalized. Romans 2, which teaches that "the doers of the law ... will be justified," didn't fit on the so-called "Romans Road," so it was either ignored or reinterpreted tendentiously. And James 2 remained as embarrassing for us as it was for Martin Luther himself.

Most importantly, however, the concern to eliminate "works" led to grave misunderstandings of the New Testament itself. I think of two areas in particular. First, Jesus' call to discipleship was reinterpreted as a call to a "second level" of commitment, with the result that the groups "Christian" and "disciple" were no longer viewed as coterminous, despite the obvious implication of Acts 11:26. Second, despite Romans 10:9 and a host of other passages, Jesus' Lordship was divorced from his role as savior. Thus any call to acknowledge Jesus' Lordship in a "gospel" presentation was considered an unwarranted intrusion of "works" into the pure gospel of undeserved grace. The nadir of this approach occurred a generation ago in the "controversy" over John MacArthur's book, The Gospel according to Jesus, where the California pastor exposed the false dichotomy for what it was.

Concern for the clarity of the gospel led to a restricting of what biblical texts could be used. The perennial favorite, John 3:16, was of course paramount. The other "safe" text was Ephesians 2:8-9 (shorn of the inconvenient verse 10), which asserted both salvation by faith and the ineffectual nature of "works." Yet even here confusion reigned in my young head. John spoke of "believing," and Ephesians spoke of "faith" (since I didn't know Greek at the time, I was unaware that both the verb and the noun were cognate, both deriving from the pist- root). Despite this I was taught that the best way to present the gospel was to call people to "accept Jesus as their personal savior" or "trust Jesus as their personal savior." As a youth I was always confused as to why this terminology was apparently preferable to that which I found in the Bible itself. I still recall a conversation in which our youth leader, a graduate of Florida Bible College, was concerned that a friend of mine had expressed his faith in terms of his having "received" Jesus, despite the derivation of his confession from John 1:12.

The second major problem that the standard evangelical understanding of the gospel presented to me was the role of the resurrection. My pastor, a Th.D. graduate of Dallas Seminary, preferred to speak of accepting Jesus as one's personal "sin-bearer." As an avid reader of the Bible, however, I knew that St. Paul had defined the gospel in 1 Corinthians 15:3-5 in terms of Jesus' death for our sins, his burial, and his resurrection "according to the scriptures." The standard evangelical "gospel" had the death of Jesus down well, so it seemed, but appeared to leave the resurrection off to one side. How could Paul have said that Christ was "raised for our justification" (Rom 4:25), when the only seeming significance for it that I was hearing was as "proof" that Jesus was really God and/or that God had accepted the validity of his sacrifice for sin?

The third problem I encountered is one associated particularly with the dispensationalist context of my early Christian experience. For us, Paul's gospel, interpreted as the message of justification by faith, was primary, THE message par excellence needed by all people in the present age. But, as I knew, the Gospels spoke of Jesus as having taught the "gospel of the kingdom." Was this the same message as Paul's? Could it be that Jesus, like Paul, actually taught the doctrine of justification? Since evidence for that in the Synoptic Gospels is at best scarce (the parable of the tax collector and the Pharisee in Luke 18, perhaps, but nowhere else), my dispensationalist teachers had a different explanation. Jesus' "gospel of the kingdom" was the "gospel" suitable for the "dispensational" context of his earthly ministry. The good news proclaimed by Jesus, on this understanding, was his announcement that God would imminently bring about the Jews' hoped-for messianic kingdom if they repented and accepted him as their Messiah. Paul's gospel, on the other hand, was uniquely designed for the unbelieving world in the wake of the Jewish rejection that led to Jesus' passion and resurrection.

I have since rejected such an inelegant understanding of the biblical story. Nevertheless, it throws into relief a serious problem: if the "gospel" is primarily about individual salvation from sin, how can Jesus' historical announcement of the kingdom be correctly designated as "gospel?"

The fourth problem is one that stared me in the face for years without my even realizing it: If the gospel is the message of individual salvation via Jesus' death and resurrection, how is it the the apparent biographies of Jesus known as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John came to be called "Gospels?" Was the early church mistaken to thus label these documents? If not, what significance should be accorded the various narratives of Jesus' teaching and healing ministry? Was Martin Kӓhler right after all in labeling Mark as a "passion narrative with an extended introduction"?  Are these stories designed primarily for historical interest? Was Charlie Moule right when he suggested that the Gospels were "exercises in reminiscent reconstruction" designed to explain how the pre-resurrection situation of Jesus' earthly ministry led to the post-resurrection situation of the church? I would articulate the fundamental problem like this: How does the message about the coming of the kingdom of God relate to the events of Jesus' passion and resurrection? How, in other words, do kingdom and cross correlate? My dispensationalist heritage could not answer that question adequately.

I lived with these tensions for years. Indeed, it wasn't until 1997 that a little book by N. T. Wright entitled What Saint Paul Really Said jarred me out of my mental torpor. In that little, popular book, he made an astounding claim that I have since come to regard as foundational to a correct understsanding of the gospel. It is this: The gospel is not a message of "how a person 'gets saved'." It results in people "getting saved" when they believe the message, but the gospel itself is the announcement of Jesus' Lordship as a result of his death and resurrection.

Wright's thesis was elaborated and refined last fall in what I consider an essential little book by Scot McKnight entitled The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited. McKnight contends that, over the last 500 years, the Christian understanding of the "gospel" has changed to the point where it now is commonly equated with the plan of salvation and the methods of persuasion used to commend this plan. He calls this new understanding of the gospel "soterian" (from the Greek sōtēria, "salvation"). Importantly, this shift in the understanding of the gospel corresponds with a shift in emphasis away from discipling to that of gaining converts to the faith. What ultimately matters is being "in" and destined for eternity in "heaven." McKnight believes this "soterian" gospel to be deficient in that it has substituted theological propositions related to individual salvation for the story of Jesus, which is the biblical focus of the gospel in that it completes the biblical story of Israel.

McKnight ultimately lays the blame for this shift in emphasis at the feet of the Protestant Reformation. Luther and Calvin themselves, however, can only be accused of this unfairly. Luther, for example, famously defined the gospel thus: "The gospel is a story about Christ, God’s and David’s son, who died and was raised, and is established as Lord. This is the gospel in a nutshell" (p. 94). McKnight, for the most part, is clear to absolve the great reformers of explicit blame for this. Nevertheless, inasmuch as the Reformers' battles were intra-Christian disputes, one of whose major foci concerned how people were justified, it is true that they correspondingly emphasized the standing of the individual before God. As a result, the tables were set for further, less happy developments.

Thus, even though learned Reformed theologians like John Murray have insisted that the gospel message embrace "the whole counsel of God" ("The Message of Evangelism," 125), others have for all intents and purposes identified the gospel with the doctrine of justification. R. C. Sproul, for instance, articulates the gospel thus:

The Gospel is called the ‘good news’ because it addresses the most serious problem that you and I have as human beings, and that problem is simply this: God is holy and He is just, and I’m not. And at the end of my life, I’m going to stand before a just and holy God, and I’ll be judged. And I’ll be judged either on the basis of my own righteousness – or lack of it – or the righteousness of another. The good news of the Gospel is that Jesus lived a life of perfect righteousness, of perfect obedience to God, not for His own well being but for His people. He has done for me what I couldn’t possibly do for myself. But not only has He lived that life of perfect obedience, He offered Himself as a perfect sacrifice to satisfy the justice and the righteousness of God.

Indeed, I once heard Sproul claim that the gospel hasn't been preached unless the classic Reformed doctrine of "double imputation" is included as an essential element. This, I assume, is just Sproul being Sproul, so I have chosen to take what he says with a pinch of salt. What is more important, however, is that he has effectively narrowed the focus of the gospel in the way McKnight targets as inadequate.

According to McKnight—and there an be no real dispute—the real culprit in the demise of the fuller, biblical gospel is 19th century American revivalism. The 18th century, both in America and Britain, witnessed a heightened emphasis on the role of human decision in the conversion event/process. The full flowering of this occurred in the wake of the Second Great Awakening. This resulted, first of all, in the conscious attempt to summarize the gospel as succinctly as possible. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does open up the possibility of reductionism and oversimplification. For example, I once heard Bob Godfrey say that D. L. Moody claimed the ability to "write the gospel on a dime." I, for one, would have liked to see that, but am not optimistic that he could have done so and retained much genuine biblical truth. In the 20th century, the most famous example of the attempt to summarize the gospel as a brief set of propositions surely Campus Crusade's "Four Spiritual Laws."  Once again, it is not wrong to summarize the New Testament's "plan of salvation." What has happened, however, is that the assumption that such a plan is the gospel has stood in the way of an appreciation for what the Bible itself calls the "good news."

The second result of such a reduction of the gospel is an increased emphasis on methods of persuasion in presenting the gospel. The results, as are well known, have not been pretty: psychological ploys, overly emotional music, altar calls, and—worst of all—downplaying the hard sayings of Jesus and the New Testament authors so as not to turn people off. This begs the question: Is this the best way to fulfill Jesus' commission to "make disciples of all nations?"

Over the next couple of weeks my intention is to look at the New Testament carefully to determine what, in fact, the gospel is. I hope to use exegesis of the major relevant passages in Paul and the Gospels to test McKnight's thesis about the inadequacy of the so-called "soterian" gospel. I do this, not as a mere antiquarian exercise, but because the subject is indeed of first importance (as Paul himself says in 1 Corinthians 15:3). And not only that. How we articulate the gospel has far-reaching consequences on how we live out our faith as kingdom citizens in the midst of the present evil age.

Reflections on John Piper and "Masculine Christianity"

"Unfortunate."

This a propos adjective was used by a friend the other day to describe Mitt Romney's comment that he "wasn't concerned about the very poor." My friend, a Romney supporter, understood well that this turn of phrase, taken in isolation, could be used as a blanket statement and thus distort what in actuality is a more nuanced, well thought out position.

"Unfortunate" is also a fitting description for much of what the famous neo-Calvinist Baptist pastor John Piper said this past week in an address at the 2012 Desiring God Pastor's Conference. I had fully intended to begin my discussion of the gospel today. My plans, however, changed yesterday afternoon when, in the space of 15 minutes, I received an e-mail from my daughter and read the blog of Rachel Held Evans in which Piper's comments were made public.

Confession: I have an ambivalent attitude towards Piper. On the one hand, I have much appreciated his early academic work, especially his Munich dissertation on Jesus' Love Command and his exegetical study of Romans 9:1-23 (though I have always found his definition of God's "righteousness" as "his unwavering commitment to act for the sake of his glory" curious, to say the least). On the other hand, his forays into a type of pietism toward which I am constitutionally indisposed, and his somewhat strident advocacy of fundamentalist positions on "Biblical Manhood and Womanhood" and total abstinence from alcohol, leave me scratching my head in frustration.

Piper's unfortunate comments came in the context of an address on the virtues of the 19th century Anglican Bishop, John Charles Ryle (whom he characterizes as "frank" and "manly"). Ryle, according to Piper, embodied the type of "manly" leadership that the church needs today if it is to recover the "masculine feel" characteristic of authentic Christianity. In Piper's own words:

From all of this, I conclude that God has given Christianity a masculine feel. And, being a God of love, he has done it for the maximum flourishing of men and women. He did not create women to languish, or be frustrated, or in any way to suffer or fall short of full and lasting joy, in a masculine Christianity. She is a fellow heir of the grace of life (1 Peter 3:7). From which I infer that the fullest flourishing of women and men takes place in churches and families where Christianity has this God-ordained, masculine feel. For the sake of the glory of women, and for the sake of the security and joy of children, God has made Christianity to have a masculine feel. He has ordained for the church a masculine ministry. ...

What I mean by “masculine Christianity,” or “masculine ministry,” or “Christianity with a masculine feel,” is this:

Theology and church and mission are marked by overarching godly male leadership in the spirit of Christ, with an ethos of tender-hearted strength, and contrite courage, and risk-taking decisiveness, and readiness to sacrifice for the sake of leading, protecting, and providing for the community—all of which is possible only through the death and resurrection of Jesus. It’s the feel of a great, majestic God, who by his redeeming work in Jesus Christ, inclines men to take humble, Christ-exalting initiative, and inclines women to come alongside the men with joyful support, intelligent helpfulness, and fruitful partnership in the work.

Piper concludes his address by listing eight traits of what he describes as a "masculine" ministry." These are as follows:

1. A masculine ministry believes that it is more fitting that men take the lash of criticism that must come in a public ministry, than to unnecessarily expose women to this assault.


2. A masculine ministry seizes on full-orbed, biblical doctrine with a view to teaching it to the church and pressing it with courage into the lives of the people.


3. A masculine ministry brings out the more rugged aspects of the Christian life and presses them on the conscience of the church with a demeanor that accords with their proportion in Scripture.

4. A masculine ministry takes up heavy and painful realities in the Bible, and puts them forward to those who may not want to hear them.

5. A masculine ministry heralds the truth of Scripture, with urgency and forcefulness and penetrating conviction, to the world and in the regular worship services of the church.

6. A masculine ministry welcomes the challenges and costs of strong, courageous leadership without complaint or self-pity with a view to putting in place principles and structures and plans and people to carry a whole church into joyful fruitfulness.

7. A masculine ministry publicly and privately advocates for the vital and manifold ministries of women in the life and mission of the church.

8. A masculine ministry models for the church the protection, nourishing, and cherishing of a wife and children as part of the high calling of leadership.

I have quoted Piper in such detail, and provided a link to the entire transcript, in order not to be accused of taking his comments out of context. Indeed, much (though not all) of what he says about "biblical" leadership is salutary in a context where courage is apparently in short supply. Moreover, I understand the context of his address. He is speaking to an audience of men who live in a culture where masculinity, though still somewhat advantageous economically, is not valued to the degree it once was. This, somewhat surprisingly, even manifests itself at times in evangelical contexts, where I have heard men disparaged for not expressing spirituality and "godliness" the way their female counterparts do. Piper indeed propounds what he describes as "masculine Christianity," but he does so in a way far less offensive than that advocated by, say, Mark Driscoll, for whom authentic Christian piety degenerates into a sort of sanctified machismo.

Of course, Piper aims to retard the influence of the growing numbers of evangelicals who, he believes, are wrongly conforming to worldly notions of male/female equality in the home and in the church. Nevertheless, I am not taking Piper to task for his forceful advocacy of so-called "complementarianism" (actually, I prefer to label it for what it is, "patriarchal hierarchicalism," obsessed as it is with gender roles and orders of authority and submission) rather than "egalitarianism" or "mutuality" (which, rightly understood, likewise embraces complementarity as per Genesis 2:18-25). Indeed, I myself fall somewhere on the spectrum between mutuality and what my friend Bill Webb calls "ultra-soft patriarchy," which gives a nod to the doomed continuance of the "present evil age," while maintaining that the gospel perspective enunciated in Galatians 3:28 ultimately overthrows patterns of authority and domination consequent upon the Fall (Gen 3:16). Nevertheless, the issue of patriarchy versus mutuality is a highly complex and delicate one involving sophisticated matters of exegesis and hermeneutics. I may not agree with Piper in all his exegetical conclusions, but his is not a position to be summarily and lightly dismissed

More to the point, one can still be a classic patriarchalist and avoid the missteps Piper makes in his address. For, you see, what Piper does is more serious than simply subordinate women in their ecclesial and domestic roles. Indeed, he explicitly prioritizes what he refers to as "masculine traits" over those he understands as "feminine traits." Christianity, in that it overwhelmingly speaks of God in masculine terms, and ordains male leadership in the church and in the home, has what he calls a "masculine feel." Hence, according to Piper, the church would do well to subordinate what he sees as "feminine" traits or characteristics to those he dubs "masculine," such as courage, forcefulness, and the impulse to provide. Contrary to what many today might think, Piper insists that this does not demean women, because only within such "masculine" structures can women truly prosper.

I beg to differ. Contra Piper, I believe what he has said is unnecessarily demeaning to women and distorts the proper way to understand their divinely-ordained place in the world. In particular, Piper's comments are, I believe, unfortunate in the following ways.

First, Piper ignores the implications of the creation of humanity as male and female to be the "image of God" (Gen 1:26-27). The best illustration of the significance of the imago dei is found in the story of Nebuchadnezzar's statue in Daniel 3:1-7. Gerhard von Rad captures the thought well:

Just as powerful earthly kings, to indicate their claim to dominion, erect an image of themselves in the provinces of their empire where they do not personally appear, so man is placed upon earth in God's image as God's sovereign emblem. He is really only God's representative, summoned to maintain and enforce God's claim to dominion over the earth. (60)

The imago dei, therefore, is not a mere function of human nature, but rather an articulation of humankind's role in the divine scheme of things. Humankind at large, male and female alike and together, serve as God's vice-regents, representing and mediating God's sovereign rule over the created order. What this means is that both "masculine" and "feminine" traits and characteristics are vital to the dominion or rule God has ordained for the human race. And this "male and female together" rule is the means by which God's sovereignty is brought to bear on what he has made. Therefore, God's own rule embraces both what we would characterize as "masculine" and "feminine" traits, neither of which can thus be privileged over the other.

Second, Piper minimizes the significance of feminine imagery applied to God in the Bible. It is of course true that God is overwhelmingly presented in the Bible as "Father" and "King" rather than "Mother" and "Queen." What is the ultimate significance of this, however? Biblical religion differs from its Ancient Near Eastern counterparts in a number of respects. Most significantly, of course, is its assertion of the incomparability and uniqueness of Israel's God, YHWH. All the "gods" of the nations are "idols" who, even if granted existence, are ontologically to be located on a plane lower than that occupied by the one true God. Furthermore, whereas the pagan gods of the surrounding cultures were sexual beings, YHWH was by definition asexual. Such epithets as "Father" and "King" are, therefore, culturally appropriate metaphors descriptive of YHWH's role as Israel's sovereign ruler and defender rather than literal references to his putative "maleness," let alone validation for a proposed supremacy of "masculine" leadership qualities.

The singularity of God has one further consequence. In the absence of female "deities," the biblical God had to function in ways that Israel's pagan neighbors normally attributed to their myriad goddesses. Daniel Kirk points to how the biblical name "El Shaddai" is more than once associated less with God's power than with his function of providing fruitfulness and fertility (Gen 35:11; 49:25). Moreover, the Old Testament uses explicitly feminine imagery when speaking of God:

You deserted the Rock, who fathered you;
you forgot the God who gave you birth. (Deut 32:18)

Listen to me, you descendants of Jacob,
all the remnant of the people of Israel,
you whom I have upheld since your birth,
and have carried since you were born. (Isa 46:3)

Can a mother forget the baby at her breast
and have no compassion on the child she has borne?
Though she may forget,
I will not forget you! (Isa 49:15)

Rachel Held Evans perceptively quotes John Calvin's Commentary on Isaiah on Isaiah 46:3, where the Reformer says: "God has manifested himself to be both Father and Mother so that we might be more aware of God’s constant presence and willingness to assist us" (p. 436, emphasis added).

Jesus even applies feminine imagery to himself in his poignant lament over Jerusalem without apparently damaging his masculine credentials:

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing. (Matt 23:37)

God, in other words, relates to his people with character traits stereotypically associated with both masculine and feminine roles. Yes, he is the creator and sovereign to whom we owe ultimate allegiance. He is our protector who has promised to bring us safely to glory after our earthly pilgrimage. Yet he is also our compassionate nurturer who feeds and nourishes us with his presence and word. Is God's compassion and mercy any less ultimate than his awesome sovereignty? In a word, No.

Third, Piper's elevation of such supposedly "masculine" traits as courage and fearlessness both succumbs to the worst of gender stereotyping and ignores the Bible's elevation of such stereotypically "feminine" virtues as meekness, gentleness, and kindness. Much could be said in this regard, but space is short. Nevertheless, I would suspect that many would consider his gender stereotyping to be, at best, quaint, or, at worst, offensive. Are fearlessness and courage limited to males? Are women by nature cowardly and cowering? Do they really only find human fulfillment within the "masculine" structures provided by patriarchalist thinking? What about Deborah the Judge? To think in contemporary terms, what about Margaret Thatcher? I would argue that Piper has correctly put his finger on aspects of leadership that may be in eclipse in certain ecclesial contexts, and which must be promoted. Courage and fearlessness are two of these. Perhaps some men today are hesistant to act in such ways because of the exigencies of their current cultural context. If so, this is a message they need to hear. But are these traits gender specific? I have to say that, in my experience, they are not. And it is offensive to pretend that they are and to label them as prototypically "masculine."

Moreover, even a quick glimpse at Jesus' Beatitudes in Matthew 5 or Paul's list of the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5 will expose one to the priorities of such Spirit-engendered qualities as peacemaking, meekness, gentleness, kindness, and merciful compassion. These traits are expected of all who claim the name of Christ, male and female alike. These are traits, I might add, that are just as important for leadership as the stereotypically male ones highlighted by Piper. Not surprisingly, these are also the traits because of which both Nietzsche heaped scorn on Christianity and such macho Christian Neanderthals as Driscoll deride contemporary church leadership as "limp-wristed." From my perspective, there is an awful lot of courage and authoritarian posturing in large segments of contemporary evangelicalism. What I find in short supply are the traits enumerated by Jesus and Paul, which I correspondingly think are more important for the future health of the church than the supposedly "masculine" ones lionized by Piper and his ilk.

The Wary Approach of a Philadelphian to the 2012 Baseball Season

1964 Topps Baseball Card of the First Philadelphia Team to Break My Heart

Today's Philadelphia Inquirer has an interesting article by Frank Fitzpatrick, in which he articulates the unease he, as a baby-boomer Philadelphian, has when looking ahead to the upcoming baseball season. Could the Phillies' forthcoming "heading south" to Clearwater for Spring Training be a metaphor describing the fortunes that the coming season will have in store for the club? Fitzpatrick, ever the "realist," knows that the good times will inevitably end. Might they not end sooner rather than later? And would that be a bad thing, seeing as how such could jump-start a future renaissance? Fitzpatrick writes thus:

Sorry, that's just how I'm built. I'm a Baby Boom Philadelphian, incapable of enjoying sustained success. Even on the sunniest days, I'm scanning the horizon for storm clouds. 

I've seen too many landmarks and late-season leads disappear, observed the dismantling of too many preseason dreams and urban-renewal fantasies, watched too many sports heroes and jobs leave town. 

So for me, with the 2012 Phillies on the brink of spring training, I don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. 

If, like me, your 32-ounce Wawa cup is always half-empty, it's not hard to envision a perfect storm of calamities impacting this Phillies season. 

Ryan Howard's Achilles. Chase Utley's decline. Placido Polanco's back. Joe Blanton's elbow. Cole Hamels' contract. Vance Worley's sophomore season. Jonathan Papelbon's fly ball penchant. The holes in John Mayberry Jr.'s swing. And, maybe most significantly, the team's age. 

Plenty of clouds on that Doppler radar in my head. 

I realize that not everyone here shares my inherent pessimism. Five straight NL East titles, two pennants and a World Series trophy have created a new breed of upbeat Phillies fan. 

That's just not me.

As a fellow baby-boomer Philadelphian, I have noticed a curious phenomenon over the past few years. Today's Philadelphia sports fans, particularly those under the age of 30, are most definitely not your daddy's Philadelphia fans. After all, the Phillies haven't had a losing season in a decade, have won five straight division titles, two pennants, and a World Series. Andy Reid's Eagles, despite never having taken home the Lombardi trophy, have nevertheless been fairly regular playoff participants and, at one point, captured five straight division titles. Optimism appears to run rampant in southeastern Pennsylvania and South Jersey.

I, however, have a different history. The first season I followed baseball in earnest was 1964, the year Gene Mauch's Phils managed to blow a 6.5 game lead with 12 to play by losing ten straight. When they finally managed to put together a great team in the mid-70s, they managed to get eliminated in the first round of the playoffs two straight years despite winning 101 games each season. By the time the team finally won their first World Series (in their 97th year as a franchise), I was already grown and pursuing graduate studies in Dallas. The Eagles of my youth were so bad that they managed to lose five consecutive games to the hated Cowboys by the scores of 38-17, 45-13, 34-14, 38-7, and 49-14. Yet in 1968 they managed, despite losing their first 11 games, to win two in a row to fall out of the O.J. Simpson sweepstakes ("Joe must go" indeed).

The Phillies once traded future Hall-of-Famer Ferguson Jenkins for Bob Buhl and Dick Ellsworth. Even worse, they traded Larry Bowa and future Hall-of-Famer Ryne Sandberg for Ivan DeJesus. The Eagles traded future Hall-of-Famer Sonny Jurgenson for Norm Snead. Classic Sixers trades included the following: Wilt Chamberlain for Archie Clark, Moses Malone for Jeff Ruland, and Charles Barkley for Jeff Hornacek.

Philadelphia sports fans' infamous cynicism and negativity, you see, are entirely explicable by their shared history—a history that goes back a century to the days of Connie Mack, who dismantled, not one, but two Philadelphia Athletics dynasties (1910-14, 1929-31) for cash in order to enhance his profit margins. This history, and the often bitter disappointments it engendered, is part and parcel of the worldview I developed in my youth. Rare triumphs (the '67 Sixers, the '74-'75 Flyers, the '80 Phillies) were to be cherished, but in the back of my mind was the always-nagging feeling that disaster was already afoot on the horizon.

This brings me to the present. I at times fancy myself to be one who can look at matters as "objectively" as possible. Thus I can look at the Phillies' recent history and acknowledge that they still should be viewed as the division favorite and contender for the National League pennant. The primary reason for this is the celebrated mound trio of Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, and Cole Hamels, who by themselves should guarantee a season of 90+ wins.

But I am a Philadelphian of a certain age, and worldviews are difficult to dislodge. The glass, as always, is half empty from my vantage point. I see the threat from the resurgent Marlins, the Braves, and even the Nationals. These clubs may not be the Phils' equals now, but they are closer now than they have been for some time. I see the consistent erosion of Chase Utley's abilities due to apparently irreversible injuries, which has now progressed to the point where I regretfully must consider him to be this generation's Don Mattingly. Jimmy Rollins is nowhere close to the player he used to be, and always seems to be just a 90-foot sprint away from the disabled list because of hamstring issues. Ryan Howard, even before his Achilles injury, had regressed considerably from the days where he was the game's most feared power hitter. When will he return to the lineup? And, when he does, will he be able to plant that left foot sufficiently to drive the ball as in the past? Shane Victorino, despite his massive talent, has always been too undisciplined to be included among the game's elite players. What scares me most is the creeping age of the team's two transcendent mound aces, Halladay and Lee, now 35 and 34 years old, respectively. How long can we count on them to pitch as if they were Koufax and Drysdale?

My head still tells me to relax, that the likelihood remains that the Phils are the class of the division at least in the short term. The Philadelphian in my heart warns me, however, to be afraid, very afraid indeed. Critical realist though I am, I have not yet been able to extricate myself from the horror story that has indelibly left its imprint on my personal narrative. That being said, it's only 16 days till pitchers and catchers report to Clearwater. May that day arrive swiftly!

On Presuppositions and Changing One's Mind

The other day I read with some amusement an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, endorsed by sixteen scientists, which argued that "there's no compelling scientific argument" to "panic" about so-called Global Warming. At one level this is as amusing as the perennial "debates" in the popular media between "critical scholars" and "traditionalists" over some aspect or other of biblical teaching about the historical Jesus. The vast majority of the WSJ's readers are not trained scientists, just as almost all readers of Time and Newsweek are not trained ancient historians or biblical scholars. Such popularizing of complex scholarly discussions is salutary in that it exposes the masses to the intellectual developments of the academy. But—and here's the rub—such discussions are of little argumentative value. The reason for this is simple: people respond positively or negatively to such ideas based on whether or not they are predisposed to believe or disbelieve them. Those predisposed, for whatever reason, to accept the newer research conclusions will accept them without much thought. On the other hand, those for whom the newer scholarly ideas are inconvenient will resist those ideas no matter the strength of the evidence or the degree of scholarly consensus involved.

This is where the WSJ example produces added amusement. For, you see, the WSJ earlier refused to publish a letter signed by 255 members of the United States National Academy of Sciences which articulated the threat of climate change. The WSJ is undoubtedly within its rights as a private entity to publish what it wants in accordance with its editorial viewpoint. That is exactly the point, however. The reasons for the WSJ's scepticism about climate change have less to do with the scientific merits of the case (I myself am unqualified to judge, but, as an academic, I have my suspicions) than with the perceived economic consequences for business if the US were to adopt policy designed to counteract global warming.

What this example points to is the determinative value of preunderstandings and presuppositions. People respond to the world around them, and process new ideas and information, through the interpretive grid of the worldview that defines who they are intellectually. And worldviews are not easily altered or dislodged.

Consider the most intractable divisions within evangelical Christianity: Calvinism vs. Arminianism, charismatic "cessationism" vs. continuationism, the historicity and literary genre of Genesis 1-3, and many others. What causes these divisions? There are many learned scholars who have published on each side of the various divides, and have argued strongly that theirs is the only view that merits the description "biblical." I myself have clearly articulated views on each of these matters. Can the differences of opinion simply be attributed to the quality of scholarship involved? Hardly. For every Don Carson there is a Howard Marshall. For every Richard Gaffin there is a Gordon Fee. Could it be a simple matter of faithfulness, that those who adhere to a more "conservative" position thereby show themselves more honoring to God and scripture? At times, perhaps. But as one who knows Bruce Waltke, I have a very difficult time believing he registers lower on the faithfulness meter than Al Mohler.

I would suggest that a combination of innate temperament and acquired worldview combine to predispose people to the views they hold on these issues, and that this combination inevitably colors the way they read and interpret scripture. Those with a more "liberal" bent more readily accept newer ideas and interpretations, whether or not such ideas are worthy of adoption. The result, as often as not, is a sort of "trendiness" that can, at times, reach comic proportions. On the other hand, those with a more "conservative" bent and upbringing are naturally more resistant to new ideas, particularly those that overthrow received traditions that define who they are spiritually.

I was raised in a conservative, indeed fundamentalist, environment. I remember well the wariness many of my formative teachers had about my professors at Dallas Seminary who sported Ph.D.s from Oxford, Cambridge, Aberdeen, Basel, and Sheffield. Would not such "worldly" learning affect their faithfulness to scripture? (In a word, the answer was "No"). Such scepticism mirrors that of many today who ironically skewer academicians, whose conclusions they don't like, with the accusation of ideological bias. Nevertheless, even the most strident of conservatives have a more ambivalent attitude towards scholarship, especially when such "worldly" learning can be used both to enhance academic respectability and to defend time-honored, traditional views. One immediately thinks of the old fundamentalist champion, Edward F. Hill, who defended the indefensible by advocating the Textus Receptus despite having earned a Th.D. at Harvard under the direction of Henry Cadbury. More recently, strict confessionalists have found a champion in Guy Prentiss Waters, whose perceived authority on the New Perspective on Paul is enhanced by his having studied under E. P. Sanders for his Ph.D. at Duke, but whose critique of the New Perspective is, in my view as well as that of Nick Perrin, both tendentious and uncharitable toward those with whom he disagrees.

Back in December, Scot McKnight asked a simple yet profound question in this regard: What would it take to change your mind? The mere fact that preunderstandings inevitably color interpretation might explain empirical interpretive pluralism, but it by no means pronounces on the desirability of such pluralism or invalidates the place of argument in academic discussion. Over the years I have often told my students that much, if not most, of what they assume the Bible to teach is probably at least partially mistaken—in part due to their reading of the Bible through the grid of an assumed American worldview. (I also warned them that a good portion of what I taught is likely wrong, but that unfortunately I was not privy to where I was mistaken). As a teacher, it was my responsibility to train their minds so that they might allow evidence to play the decisive role in forming their views, even to the point where their worldview might have to be altered. It is a truism that our self-involvement in all intellectual matters renders pure, modernist objectivity impossible. Yes, indeed. But we are likewise not enslaved to our subjectivity. Nor does such necessary subjectivity render all opinions equally valid.

Such changing of the mind can be existentially difficult, as all who have undergone it can testify. Changing one's long-held and theology-defining views of "eschatology" or "soteriology," like switching political parties, is, after all, not like switching pizza toppings from pepperoni to sausage. Moreover, because most of us are not immune to the pressure of the regnant, such changing of the mind should not be done precipitantly. Only when it becomes too difficult intellectually to continue "kicking against the goads" does it become safe to do so. But when this happens, we must, like Luther at Worms, step out boldly yet humbly in pursuit and defense of the truth as we understand it. Such changing of the mind can, as I also know firsthand, be professionally difficult. Yet only a coward succumbs to the pressure of intellectual expediency.

In answer to McKnight's question, I hope the answer you would provide is "an honest assessment of the preponderance of the evidence." I would like to ask a related, more important question: How willing are you to change your mind about important biblical and theological issues? Only when intellectual honesty is paired with a willingness, when necessary, to change can true advancement in knowledge come.

Over the next couple of weeks I will be discussing an issue whose foundational importance is matched by contemporary divergence of opinion concerning its articulation. This issue is the Christian gospel itself. Many voices are currently claiming that a reformulation is in order. Others are, no less loudly, calling for retrenchment around traditional definitions derived from the Protestant Reformation. Is this change we can believe in? Why or why not? And if so, are we willing to embrace it?