Matthew Bates has now written two books (Salvation by Allegiance Alone and Gospel Allegiance) which erupted with something like magic for me. Somehow, from a synthesis of the dark corridors of my own exegetical and theological observations, curricular outlines for teaching, and personal experiences—poof!—an accessible literary product materialized. So similar to my own observations that I must assume either that Bates stole my notes and perfected the art of mind-reading, or that he and I are familiar with the same literature and believe the constellation of developments within New Testament studies point in similar directions.
I mention Bates because he makes a critical observation for today, and it comes from no Catholic bias (he’s Protestant): “I have had many conversations about faith and the gospel. So I can say with some confidence that those who consider it a false and risky quest to rethink the gospel usually do so because they regard the true gospel as pure and simple” (Gospel Allegiance, 16).
There it is. Did you notice? The Great Evangelical Assumption (GEA).
In discussions with evangelicals, a common assumption makes itself known rather quickly. It becomes apparent because it affects the evangelical’s basic approach to assessing truth claims, and it pertains to whether or not the gospel is “simple”. Catholicism, in particular, strikes the evangelical, and often the Protestant more broadly, as . . . well, overly complicated.
The assumption in play is that God would neither create a complex gospel nor leave anything but a straightforward and readily accessible gospel for us. And the presupposition further underneath is that God, as a fair and just God, would never complicate the process of discovering the gospel because all people should have equal access to the truth.
I was a Protestant evangelical for over twenty years and was educated at an evangelical seminary, so I’ve spoken with many evangelicals and many evangelical pastors. So let me affirm that it was indeed a key theological presupposition, a syllogism buried way down in the evangelical mindset: If God wants all people to be saved (premise #1), and God is able to accomplish what He sets out to achieve (premise #2), the gospel must be readily accessible to all people (conclusion).
Such an idea does stand to the American evangelical reason. I was just unaware of how off-base (and “me”-centric) this conviction really was. Why off-base?
For starters, how should we think about people in distant lands who have never heard the name Jesus? The gospel in those places cannot be said to be “simple” for the very simple reason that it is neither present nor accessible. Nor can we escape the conundrum by thinking, “Well, the gospel is simple, even if it hasn’t yet come to a place,” because its inaccessibility (even if for some) troubles the narrative in the same way as does a more complicated gospel.
If the gospel isn’t accessible to everyone, and equally accessible to everyone, our assumptions about what God’s fairness really means requires reconsideration. Historically, equal access has evidently not been God’s chief priority–perhaps not even a priority. Consider the non-Jewish world before Christ–they had no access to the gospel. Consider the Jewish world before Christ–they also had no access to the gospel, and their covenant would probably defy the modern evangelical’s standards for “simple”. For example, the Jewish Law probably contains over 600 commandments, statutes, and/or regulations. We are not exactly certain about the number because the Law was codified in language, and language requires interpretation. We’re not even in agreement about how to enumerate and understand the Ten Commandments.
Or consider those who lived since Christ came but who never heard the gospel or have incomplete or erroneous ideas of it. None of this seems simple, and all of it demonstrates that the gospel has not been equally accessible. If this has been God’s actual modus operandi within history, is it really such a stretch to extend this principle of targeted (not universal) accessibility to the reading of God’s Word? That is, doesn’t the very fact of our interpretive disagreements mean that the truths of Scripture are not equally accessible to everyone?
This and similar realizations have deleterious effects on the idea that the gospel is simple, but they will only come once we’ve stepped away from our milieu, with its assumptions, so we can fairly evaluate the picture. My meager aim is simply to complicate the narrative of simplicity. The hope is that this will at least be a starting point for those who would begin to reconsider the GEA.
Confusion about the Gospel Suggests that It’s Not Simple
If you were to ask ten modern Christians, even Christian pastors, to define the gospel, not only would you get a variety of answers (see, for example, the catalogue in Greg Gilbert’s What Is the Gospel?, 2010), but you are also bound to get a confusion of categories and more heat than light. Let’s focus on the multiple conceptions of the gospel in the wild and upon the confusion of categories that is often in play within evangelicalism.
Different Conceptions of the Gospel
Sometimes the gospel is defined in essentially this way: “Faith in Jesus saves.” Other times it is elaborated by an exclusive emphasis on faith: “Faith alone in Jesus alone saves.” And yet another way it is articulated would be: “Faith alone in Jesus alone, and in the idea that faith alone in Jesus alone saves, saves.” The uninitiated may find the third assertion incredible. After all, doesn’t its second clause seem to contradict the first? It is, nevertheless, a very common belief among evangelicals. And while some would stake salvation itself upon it, many more would stake a proper understanding of the gospel upon it.
Others would present the gospel as a four-part process: (1) the personal recognition of sin and lostness; (2) understanding the penalty of that sin; (3) understanding Christ as one who has paid the penalty on your behalf; and (4) believing that he has done so for me. Two curiosities are on full display here: the choice to distill all the biblical testimony into four basic ideas, and the choice of which four components are actually selected.
How do we arbitrate between these options? Well, one would think that some association with the Greek noun euangelion or verb euangelizo within Scripture would be consulted for what gets included, but even a cursory glance at the facts ruin that theory. For example, in Paul’s famous summary of the gospel message in 1 Cor. 15, we see that other aspects attend what intellectual property is proper to the gospel: that Christ was buried, raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, to the twelve, to more than five hundred at once, to James, to all the apostles, and to Paul.
Now, you might ask, “What has the fact that he was buried and then raised on the third day, as Scripture testified, and a list of who he appeared to, have to do with getting saved? Surely you don’t have to know to whom Jesus appeared to be saved, right?! Don’t these historical tidbits seem secondary and optional?”
Well, now we come down to it. If you expect the gospel to be reducible to a quick, marketable message, with very little intellectual content, and where every aspect of that content must be directly related to what is happening to you, then you might be tempted to think the historical details are superfluous, non-necessary, or incidental to salvation. But shouldn’t it give us pause to read that Paul himself claims that such details are of “first importance”? We must seriously ask ourselves whether our expectations for what the gospel ought to be and how it ought to be understood, packaged, and communicated are sourced in Scripture or whether they come from somewhere else, say, our cultural assumptions, our traditions, our good intentions, or even our imaginations. What if they come from someplace darker or its collusion with our culture or traditions (Gal. 1.8)?
Moreover, not everything associated with the gospel in the Gospel accounts are associated with the gospel in Paul’s writings, and we must allow for the other apostles to report that good news using other language. For example, what about synonymous terms or phrases or different concepts that are nevertheless related to the good news about Jesus? Can’t the biblical authors discuss the many aspects of the gospel without always explicitly using the term “gospel”?
Taking a step back, the encompassing problem afoot is that the biblical authors associate many ideas with the gospel, and even the very Greek words for “gospel” and “to preach the gospel” are not technical terms. They do not always signify a fixed content or message. Sometimes they just mean whatever the good news in a given situation is (e.g., 1 Thess. 3.6). Moreover, the gospel is associated with many ideas and requirements. In some places it is faith (Acts 15.7). In others it is obedience (Rom. 10.16, 2 Cor. 9.13; 2 Thess. 1.8; Heb. 4.6; 1 Peter 4.17), repentance (Acts 14.15), baptism (Acts 8.12), discipleship (Acts 14.21), peace (Acts 10.36; Eph. 6.15), partnership (Phil. 1.5), grace (Acts 20.24), judgment (Rom. 2.16), mystery (Rom. 16.25; Eph. 6.19), deference (1 Cor. 4.15, 9.12), reception (1 Cor. 15.1; 2 Cor. 11.4), standing (1 Cor. 15.1), confession/testimony (2 Cor. 9.13), reform in the form of love and obedience (1 Peter 1.22-25), confession of sin and shunning of sin (1 John 1.5-2.1), and even the lady who anointed Jesus feet at the home of Simon the Leper (Matt. 26.6-13).
In fact, a fair assessment of verses using the term εὐαγγέλιον (“gospel”) within the New Testament would yield the strange observation that faith is rarely alone and is often not present. In light of this, is it fair to use the few verses where faith is mentioned and ignore the rest? Surely we can’t just pick and choose our verses.
Further, we must ask: What does it mean that where there is the term “gospel”, there is also “kingdom”, “repentance”, “obedience”, and other things? Among other things, it means that we must synthesize the testimony of Scripture rather than curtail it. We must acknowledge that the gospel contains more elements than we are accustomed to include and present. And who gets to decide which of these aspects are necessary for salvation and which are not? Why should they not all be?
To boil the gospel down to a simple formula or an anemic four-part summary of a few Pauline assertions is to set aside a twelve-course banquet in favor of a few kernels of corn. Sure, those kernels can still attract and feed people, but before we advertise kernels, we better make full sure that the people have no stomach for the banquet, because it is certainly more nourishing. It also would seem to me to be more appealing. And it is more nourishing and appealing because it includes a depth and richness of symbolism and practice that the kernel of corn does not. It includes, for example, love and unity. Isn’t the fullness of the gospel a greater attraction than whatever curtailment might be used for convenient presentations of it?
So we are confused about what the gospel is.
Confused about Faith and Its Part in the Gospel
Faith is the proper response to the gospel, not the gospel itself. Nearly all agree that faith is a response, but if so, can a response be included in what one is responding to without a destructive recursion? That is the confusion of categories.
Faith-as-response is borne out in all of the New Testament, even in Paul’s epistles, the textual seedbed of the Protestant Reformation. Where one assesses what exactly Paul includes in the content of “the gospel” (εὐαγγέλιον), faith is far from exclusive. Even where Paul makes it his explicit purpose to remind his audience of the gospel (1 Cor. 15.1-11), faith does not feature. The noun “faith” is mentioned down in v. 14, but the last piece of Paul’s content (as evinced by “last of all”) includes Christ’s appearance to Paul (v. 8). Even if we include Paul’s autobiographical content, we can tell he has wrapped up the content because of his tidy ending in v. 11, “this is what we preach, and this is what you believed.” Here again, belief is a response to the gospel, not a part of it.
Worse, the English reader assumes that the Greek term πίστις (which is translated “faith”) means what English readers mean by “faith” or “belief”. While πίστις can refer to an “article of faith” or “body of beliefs”, where it does, we are talking neither about the content of the gospel nor a response to it. Where it plays a role in the context of the gospel, it means “faithfulness”, “commitment”, “trust”, or in the context of a king, “allegiance”. These are all responses to something. That something is the gospel. So the term πίστις itself, if it even appears in passages featuring “the gospel” (εὐαγγέλιον), has to do with a response. For a quick and non-technical description of this issue, see the aforementioned Gospel Allegiance, chapters 1-3.
This represents confusion about what faith is and how it fits into the gospel.
Identifying the Gospel Is No Easy Matter
As it turns out, confusion is the only thing we’ve got in spades. Underlying all this confusion lies the inability to easily identify the gospel within Scripture. Even if we were to grant (which we should not) that the gospel is simple, the identification of that gospel from Scripture is not.
So we must press those who shout “simplicity” with a few questions. First, what exactly do you mean when you say the gospel is simple?: the gospel itself (conceptual simplicity), identifying that gospel from Scripture (hermeneutical simplicity), or our response to the gospel (simplicity of response)? Provided we are careful to make the proper distinctions, I think there is, at some stages, a basic simplicity of response to the gospel that’s important to our salvation, but authenticity is easily and often complicated by sin, ignorance, doubt, self-delusion, and the ambiguities of relationship. So even, perhaps especially, in the domain of experience, things are not always simple.
Moreover, what is even meant by “simple”? What is simple to one is difficult for another. Everybody has a different idea about what is simple, and this isn’t merely theoretical. Precisely our disagreements about the gospel have resulted in hundreds of Christian denominations. If things were so simple, this would not be.
The truth is that humans are complex, and relationships are complicated. Language may be labyrinthine, and theology is nuanced. Interpretation can be intricate. The New Testament epistles were all written in response to occasions that existed at that time, and occasional literature is rarely simple to interpret. We cannot even decide upon how to approach the problem. There isn’t even consensus about what Paul’s gospel is, let alone any accepted gospel of the New Testament. We have a number of competing options because the data can be integrated in various ways. This is another way of saying that gospel discovery is not simple. For further reading on this, see Douglas Campbell’s The Quest for Paul’s Gospel and/or James Dunn’s Unity and Diversity in the New Testament.
The Real Gospel and the Real Issue
The gospel is multi-faceted. It has various dimensions: content, impetus, results/benefits, promises, end states, responses, etc. It enjoys various motifs with complicated relationships between them: forgiveness, justification, sanctification, participation, atonement, union with Christ, etc. The gospel is also sometimes paradoxical and intricate, able to save the tax collector and prostitute while reprimanding the righteous. And however multi-faceted and intricate, I am nevertheless happy about it because it’s the recipe for the unmaking of evil and the renovation of the world, and all the best recipes use a precision of ingredients, in proper order and relation to the whole, to bring out multiple flavors and entice multiple senses.
No, the real issue in play is that our expectations for simplicity don’t match reality. Those expectations may stem from a good desire to be sure about what it is that saves, but we’re just looking for it in the wrong place (i.e., conceptual or hermeneutical simplicity).
What we really mean when we say that the gospel must be simple is that it must be intuitive to me and marketable with an elevator speech. We can sometimes tend to rely in unhealthy ways upon the dictates of modern advertising: anything that isn’t marketable quickly isn’t marketable, and if it’s not marketable, it’s not commercially viable. We must be careful not to reject all that isn’t intuitive because genuine learning is the assimilation of foreign concepts, and it is simply arrogance that motivates such a posture. Impossible that an educated person like me has never heard of this! Impossible that my inexhaustible experience, refined outlook, and operating assumptions might be wrong about an intuition or two!
It is not so difficult to see, in this situation, that the individual has taken center stage instead of the community. “It must be intuitive to me. If must be simple for me. It must be easily and quickly communicable to have merit.” This is fundamentally a self-centered position from which to approach interpretation, and it is what I meant by “me-centric” at the start of this article. It also exhibits a basic failure to recognize that our bent affects our interpretation. And our bent is affected by our time, our culture, and those sins within us that limit our horizon to ourselves (e.g., our concupiscence and self-focus). Mustn’t this all boil down either to hubris or to a basic failure to properly integrate the teaching of Scripture that sin refers not merely to that active force that crouches at our door seeking to devour but also to the tragic limitations of our nature, perspectives, and intuitions?
Speaking at a broader and more fundamental level, how should our intuitions be formed, and why should we presuppose simplicity when all the evidence points to the contrary? When one considers, in increasing order of magnitude, the complicated Jewish Law (which gives us a covenantal precedent), the incredible intricacy of the universe, or the unfathomable complexity that inheres within the Godhead, all expressions of divine love, doesn’t it severely strain the working assumption that a loving Creator prefers simplicity? At the very least, the GEA makes for a strange and counterintuitive starting assumption, and the burden of proof should fall on those who presuppose this basic incommensurability.
Like most meaningful things in the world, the gospel isn’t simple, not by everyone’s standards, and it isn’t simple to identify within Scripture. Don’t our divisions provide all the evidence we need?
Lord, may the presumption of simplicity and constricted vision be cast upon the coals of truth and burned away. May we find the humility to give the sometimes complicated thoughts of our ancestral and contemporary brothers and sisters as much consideration as our own. Wasn’t it our very own Paul who said, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves” (Philippians 2:3)?