How Do We “Frame” The Gospel?

Lately, I have been intrigued with how we “frame” the gospel. Which is just another way of saying how we present the gospel to others?

I saw a very good movie last night, it was I am Legend with Will Smith. I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I entered the theater.  I didn’t know that I would be seeing a movie about the gospel.

For those of you who don’t know I am Legend is about a scientist who thinks that he cures cancer only to realize that it destroys 95% of mankind and he is left alone.

There are numerous scenes with quite blatant parallels to Jesus Christ.  However, within the last 25 minutes of the movie the story boils down to a resolution. Not to ruin the movie for anyone but in the last scenes, we have a savior, blood as the cure, and the redemption of mankind. I was gripped last night by the portrayal of Will Smith in one of the final scenes as he took the “enemy” head on in a fight to save the little humanity that remained. It was quite reminiscent of the scene at the cross from God’s perspective.

Which leads me to some interesting questions. Have we in our attempts to “boil” down the gospel to sin, Jesus on the Cross, believe in Him, go to heaven when you die, have we also in the same stroke taken away the power of the gospel? It seems to me that we have. I am not saying that those things are not important, rather these important elements are to remain in the story in which they were told.  When we strip out the story and make it into a mental check list, we rob the gospel of the power to communicate its power.

Point being, if i tell you about a scientist who tried to save the world and ended up destroying it. You would barely begin to understand the movie “I Am Legened”

Maybe in the same way when we strip the narrative out of the gospel, we only begin to understand “The Jesus Story”

 

Galatians Rediscovered 2

In this post we will begin to exam the placement of Galatians within the community of New Testament Epistles.

It is always important as an exegete of scripture to determine as accurately as one can the date of the epistle they are studying. This time and place markers are of major importance as one begins to study any epistle. For Galatians this is of even greater importance.

I will bypass most of the polluted air that surrounds the various dating of many New Testament books and put forth the widely held theory. Other than the Book of James, Galatians is regarded to be one of the earliest epistles. On the other end of the spectrum, Hebrews is generally regarded to be one of the books written last with the exception of Revelation.

One may ask…how is this relevant to the discussion of Galatians? This issue is of prime importance to the interpretation of Galatians. One of the easiest pitfalls to fall into in interpretation is to allow former revelation (i.e. Hebrews) to invade and influence our interpretation of an earlier book (i.e. Galatians). The point being here that as we seek to rebuild the audience Paul was writing to we cannot forget that the churches of Galatia did not have later revelation. So as we come to discussion of “the law” in Galatians we cannot allow the theology of Hebrews to influence the theology of Galatians. This is not to dismiss the Theology of Hebrews, but to see how the “progress” of revelation happened. This allows us to correctly interpret Galatians in the “then and there” context.

Another key element in the discussion of the setting and date of Galatians is Paul’s missionary journeys. As we retrace the steps of Paul we see that He had just completed his first missionary journey where he visited primarily Gentile cities. After preaching the gospel in Pergamum, Iconium, Lystra, Derby and Antioch there were a host of new Gentile converts. This provided an interesting challenge to a very Jewish Christianity. The key question now was how were these new Gentile converts going to come into the community of believers that were primarily Jewish?

Tomorrow’s post will seek to answer that question.

 

Galatians Rediscovered 1

Galatians has been under constant scrutiny for about the past 30 years. A new generation of scholars have approached this text unlike previous generations before. Previously the landscape of Galatians was dominated by the thought of Martin Luther. But in light of the New Perspective on Paul, new light has been shed onto this book.

First, we must understand how we got to where we are.

Martin Luther was a German Monk who was most noted for his 95 Theses that he Nailed to the door in Wittenburg. As one’ studies the life of Martin Luther one will see that he had a deep agonizing struggle with the question of “how does one stand righteous before God?”In his personal plight to find his answer he was reading through the books of Romans and Galatians, where he stumbled upon Galatians 3:10 where he read “all who rely on the works of the law are cursed.” Luther being deeply trenched in Catholicism finally understood that he could not work his way to God. His conscience finally found the relief that he had been seeking and his revolt against the Catholic Church began. As Luther read through Galatians he found great solace in the words of Paul, understanding their situations to be the same…but were they? Almost every commentary and teaching on the book of Galatians have reflected this line of thought. Like Luther, Paul was under the sad tyrannical works based law who needed to stop working his way to God and place his faith in Jesus.

The Seismic Shift

The premier work that was the foundational for much of the NPP was E.P Sander’s “Paul and Palestinian Judaism” which was published in 1977. Sander’s work brought much needed life into Pauline theology. While his work was not appreciated as much by some, many scholars benefited from his work. The primary thesis of this work was Paul was not arguing against “rabbinic legalism” as he had been painted by Luther. Rather in Sander’s words Paul was arguing the issues of how one enters into the people of God. This new found insight birthed a whole new generation of scholars as well as a library full of literature on Paul. While Sander’s did not coin the term “New Perspective on Paul” (James D.G. Dunn was responsible for that one) he did expose a major weakness in the “traditional” view of Paul.
The next post will focus on chronology of the New Testament and Galatians position within that time line.

 

Scholarly Winds

The title of my blog denotes the purpose of it. The purpose of this blog is to invoke critical thinking when it comes to biblical issues and promote critical interaction. I’m hoping to devote the primary purpose of this blog to discussing scholarly issues relating to the biblical text and biblical theology.

From time to time I may cover certain critical cultural issues as they arise.Book reviews as well as responses to other blogs and evangelical leaders may find their way into the blog as well.

I hope that all who peruse this blog will be challenged to think critically and interact with biblical topics.

Also, on the right pane of my blog i will keep a list of my papers that I write throughout my time here at Seminary.