The Gospel is Good News! In Darrell Bock’s new book, he provides a rich Biblical and Theological discussion of the Good News. This is a clear, crisp, and deeply biblical discussion of the message our world needs to hear (and only 176 pages!).
“What is the GOSPEL? Perhaps that seems like a foolish question. But Dr. Darrell Bock believes that the modern day Church is confused about what the Gospel really is.
“The gospel represents the Jesus community’s core email to the world. Yet when I hear some people preach the gospel today, I am not sure I hear its presentation as good news. Sometimes, I hear a therapeutic call – that God will make us feel better or prosper more. Other times, I hear so much about Jesus paying for sin that the gospel seems limited to transacting debt removal, a kind of spiritual root canal. Still other times, I hear a presentation that makes the gospel seem more about avoiding something from God versus experiencing something with Him. Other presentations make me think Jesus came to change politics in the world. Such political presentations make me wonder why God did not send Jesus to Rome rather than Jerusalem. None of these is the gospel I see in the Scripture, though some are closer than others.” – Darrell Bock, Recovering the Lost Gospel”
C.S. Lewis’ classic series, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, opens this friday. And it is getting some headlines. ABC has an interesting article: “Case in point is Liam Neeson, who voices Aslan, the resurrected lion in the upcoming film. The actor said at a news conference last week that his character doesn’t necessarily represent Christ. That might be news to Lewis, though, who wrote the opposite before he died in 1963….”Aslan symbolizes a Christlike figure, but he also symbolizes for me Mohammed, Buddha and all the great spiritual leaders and prophets over the centuries,” Neeson said.
Really?
Ahh yes…the old “all religions basically teach the same thing” and “that may be true for you but not for me” slogans at work once again in pop-culture. But this is instructive–look at what Neeson says: “but he also symbolizes for me Mohammed…” He subjectivizes the claim. He is no longer talking about reality out there somewhere (objective reality) but rather his own preferences, feelings, and tastes (subjective). As a matter of historical record it would be hard to find two historical figures more different than Jesus (who forgave and died for his enemies) and Mohammed (who killed his enemies and died for no one). I don’t say this because I am a Christian or because I want to belittle Islam–this is simply a fact of history. And, regardless of preferences, no one (not even celebrities with cool voices) has the ability or authority to redefine reality according to their own desires.
I came across a helpful article on this by Philosopher of Religion, Doug Groothuis:
Muslims and Christians both worship one God, and many would argue that they are the same God. Are they?
Muslims and Christians: How to Get Along?
They both believe in one personal and transcendent God who has sent his prophets into the world. They both believe in sacred writings that record the prophetic revelations. They both believe that Jesus was a prophet who was sinless and born of a virgin. And they both worship with these beliefs firmly in place. We are speaking of Muslims and Christians, whose members comprise the two largest monotheistic religions in the world.
In the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Americans have become fascinated with the beliefs and practices of Islam, which is thefastest growing religion in the world, with approximately 1.3 billion adherents. Increasingly, Muslims are immigrating to the West. In various American cities, it is not uncommon to find mosques — many of them newlybuilt — and to see women in the traditional Muslim dress mingling with American women dressed quite differently.
In light of this, many Westerners wonder what do Muslims believe and why. They also question the relationship between Islam and Christianity. Do Muslims and Christians worship the same God, but merely in different ways? Should Christians seek to present their beliefs to Muslims in the hope that the Muslim might forsake Islam and embrace Christianity? Or is this simply a waste of time at best or rude at worst?
Many instruct us to be “tolerant” and to refrain from “proselytizing” anyone. In the name of tolerance, some people say that Christians and Muslims should coexist without trying to convert (or otherwise challenge) each other because “Christians and Muslims worship the same God.” This, many believe, should be good enough for Muslims and Christians. Many also believe this arrangement is good enough for the God they both worship as well. If both religions worship the same God, why should they worry about each other’s spiritual state?
Religion, God and Truth
If indeed Muslims and Christians worship the same God, there would be little need for disagreement, dialogue, and debate between them. If I am satisfied to shop at one grocery store and you are satisfied to shop at another store, why should I try to convince you to shop at my store or vice versa? Do not both stores provide the food we need, even if each sells different brands? The analogy is tidy, but does it really fit? Deeper questions need to be raised if we are to settle the question of whether Christians and Muslims worship the same God. First, what are the essential teachings of Christianity and Islam? Second,what does each religion teach about worshipping its God? Third, what does each religion teach about the other religion? That is, do the core teachings of Islam and Christianity assure their adherents that members of the other religion are fine as they are because both religions “worship the same God”?
In When Religion Becomes Evil (Harper. San Francisco, 2002), Charles Kimball argues that Christians and Muslims do indeed worship the same God. Kimball rightly observes that truth claims are foundational for religion. But he claims that believers err when they hold their religious beliefs in a “rigid” or “absolute” manner. So, he argues, when some Christians criticize the Islamic view of God (Allah) as deficient, they reveal their ignorance and bigotry. Kimball asserts that “there is simply no ambiguity here. Jews, Christians, and Muslims are talking about the same deity” (p. 50). This is because the Qur’an affirms that Allah inspired the Hebrew prophets and Jesus. Moreover, the Arabic word “Allah” means “God.” Are Professor Kimball and so many others who echo similar themes correct? In search of a reasonable answer, we will briefly consider the three questions from the last paragraph.
Christianity and Islam: The Claims, the Logic, and the Differences
First, what are the teachings that each religion takes to be absolutely true? Although Islam and Christianity are both monotheistic, their views of God differ considerably. Islam denies (MORE)
In 1945, fifty two papyri were discovered at Nag Hammadi in Lower Egypt and some of these texts had the word ‘gospel’ in the title. Now Scholars have known about these and other 2nd – 4th century documents for a long time, but only recently has the general public been introduced to them. This has caused quite a bit of controversy and speculation. Why?
Our culture is generally skeptical of authority and enjoys a good conspiracy theory; sprinkle in some high definition documentaries around Easter and Christmas with titles like ‘Banned Books of the Bible’ and the recipe for confusion is complete. Was there a cover up by the Church? Were we lied to about Jesus?
These so called ‘lost gospels’ fall into two categories: (1) New Testament Apocrypha (2) Gnostic writings.
Apocrypha means ‘hidden things’. These writings tried to fill in the gaps about two periods of Jesus’ life—his childhood and the three days between his death and resurrection. The motivations for these works ranges from entertainment to the comprehensive redefinition of the Jesus revealed in the 1st century writings of the New Testament.
The first time I heard about these ‘lost gospels’, it honestly made me nervous…until I read them. The juiciest of the apocryphal writings is probably the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. Here are some things I discovered about Jesus’ childhood: he called a child an “unrighteous, irreverent idiot” (3:1-3). Another child bumped into Jesus, which aggravated him so much that Jesus struck him dead (4:1-2). Evidently those who provoked childhood Jesus fell dead a lot (14:3). No, I’m not making this up.
Then there are the Gnostic writings. Gnosticism can get kind of complicated, so here is a chart to help give you the basics of how different it was from the worldview of the New Testament (the Greek word gnosis means ‘knowledge’).
Orthodox Christianity
Gnosticism
Only One God and Creator
Multiple Creators
The World, Body, Soul, and Spirit are Good
The World and Body are Evil.Only Spirit and Soul are Good
Jesus is Fully Human and Fully Divine
Jesus Only Appeared Human; He Was Only a Spirit Being
Jesus Came to Restore Relationships Broken by Sin
Ignorance, not Sin is the Ultimate Problem
Faith in Christ Brings Salvation (available to all)
“Special Knowledge” Brings Salvation (available to only a few)
The two most popular examples of Gnostic writings are the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Judas (yes, that Judas). Scholars are still debating Judas’s role in the betrayal of Jesus in this new gospel, but it is clear that he gets special access to some secret revelation from Jesus that the other disciples did not have.
The Gospel of Thomas wins the most scandalous passage award: “Simon Peter said to them, ‘Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life.’ Jesus said, ‘I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven’” (Saying 114). Again, not making this stuff up. Both of these documents were written long after the time of Jesus and his earliest followers.
The bottom line. These gospels were not lost to the early church; early Christians knew about them and rejected them for good reasons (cf. Irenaeus in A.D. 180). While historically interesting, these so called ‘lost gospels’ offer us nothing significant about the historical Jesus. The writings in the New Testament are still the earliest and most reliable witnesses to the words and works of Jesus.
For more on this and other issues exploring the truth of Christianity, see:
Here is a helpful post by Philosopher of Science, Angus Menuge:
Should science by governed by methodological materialism?That is, should scientists assume that only undirected causes can figure in their theories and explanations?If the answer to these questions is yes, then there can be no such thing as teleological science or intelligent design.But is methodological materialism a defensible approach to science, or might it prevent scientists from discovering important truths about the natural world? In my contribution to The Waning of Materialism (OUP, 2010), edited by Robert Koons and George Bealer, I consider twelve of the most common arguments in favor of methodological materialism and show that none of them is convincing.
Of these arguments, perhaps the most prevalent is the “God of the gaps” charge, according to which invoking something other than a material cause is an argument from ignorance which, like a bad script writer, cites a deus ex machina to save our account from difficulty.Not only materialists, but also many Christian thinkers, like Francis Collins, worry that appeal to intelligent design commits the God of the gaps fallacy.
As I argue, however, not only is an inference to an intelligent cause not the same as an inference to the supernatural, it is a mistake to assume that all gap arguments are bad, or that only theists make them.If a gap argument is based solely on ignorance of what might explain some phenomenon, then indeed it is a bad argument.But there are many good gap arguments which are made both by scientific materialists and proponents of intelligent design.For example, there is a gap between the fact of dinosaur extinction and processes known to be at work on earth at the time.Materialist scientists reasonably proposed that asteroid impact would bridge the gap, and went on to find independent confirmation of this hypothesis (shocked quartz in the Cretaceous boundary).Likewise, there may be a gap between a student’s musical ability and the CD he produces, leading one to conclude that he relied on the creative intelligence of other artists, something confirmed by further study of the tracks on the CD.
As Stephen Meyer has argued in his Signature in the Cell, intelligent design argues in just the same way, claiming not merely that the material categories of chance and necessity (singly or in combination) are unable to explain the complex specified information in DNA, but also that in our experience, intelligent agents are the only known causes of such information.The argument is based on what we know about causal powers, not on what we do not know about them.
Since the inference is based on known causal powers, we learn that the cause is intelligent, but only further assumptions or data can tell us whether that intelligence is immanent in nature or supernatural.It is a serious mistake to confuse intelligent design with theistic science, and the argument that since some proponents of design believe that the designer is God, that is what they are claiming can be inferred from the data, is a sophomoric intensional fallacy.By a similar argument (more…)