duval said:
Bunyan has defined the gospel: I Cor.15:1-4. True!! In a nutshell, thats IT. Now, how do I obey the gospel?
God bless,
duval
For Paul, the “gospel†is effectively the announcement that Jesus Christ is the Davidic Messiah whose resurrection constitutes Him as Lord of all the world:
In contrast to this, we have the (admittedly) widely accepted idea that the gospel is the news that people can be saved through faith in Jesus Christ.
However, what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15 about the nature of the gospel is inconsistent with the view that the gospel is simply the good news that people can be saved through faith in Jesus.
Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, 2by which also you are saved,...
Paul says people have received the gospel and that they “stand in itâ€. He then says that the gospel is the
means - the “by which†that produces salvation. If the gospel is simply a statement about how one gets saved, then it would not make sense for Paul to use this “means†or “by which†terminology.
Imagine someone who believed that the gospel is news that we are saved (from death) by drug X. If we then import that concept into the structure of the Pauline text, we get:
Now I make known to you, brethren, the news that you are saved from death by drug X which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, 2by which also you are saved from death,...
This makes no sense at all. The key point here is that the “by which†terminology clearly imposes a “cause-effect†structure on what Paul is saying. We would never say that our deliverance from death by drug X is the
cause of our being saved from death – there is a fundamental tautology here, since the effect “being saved from death†is being attributed a
cause that includes the very effect in question. We have
already been told how we have been saved from death – by drug X. So it makes no sense to
then say this is a cause or a “by which†for our being delivered from death.
What makes sense is to have a cause that is entirely
distinct from the stated effect. So note how the following statements
do make sense:
Now I make known to you, brethren, the news that qualified doctors have developed a drug X which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, 2by which also you are saved from death,...
Now I make known to you, brethren, the news that doctors have been given authority to give a drug X which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, 2by which also you are saved from death,...
Returning to the issue of the real gospel, Paul
cannot be saying that the gospel is the news that you can saved by faith in Jesus since it would not make sense for him to
then say “as a result of this, you are saved†or “this is something by which, you are savedâ€.
Note the parallels to Romans 1:16-17. The gospel there is described as:
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes,…
I was being charitably incorrect earlier when I said this text is consistent with a reading where the gospel is the message of “salvation by faithâ€. That leads to a similar problem. If we substitute this conventional take on what the gospel is, we get:
For I am not ashamed of the news that one can be saved by faith, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes,…
The exact same tautology is present here. In this case, the phrase “it is the power of†introduces the same “cause-effect†structure as per 1 Cor 15. It cannot be that “being saved by faith†is the power to be saved. It has to be something
else, something that can be properly placed with this kind of linguistic construct, something like:
For I am not ashamed of the news that Jesus has been raised from the dead and is Lord, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes,…
So in both the Romans text and the 1 Corinthians text, the notion that the “gospel†is the news that one can be saved by faith is unworkable. I will go with the definition given in Romans 1:2-4, that Jesus is the Davidic Messiah and Lord of the Universe in virtue of his being raised from the dead. If we insert such a definition in both Romans 1:16 and 1 Corinthians 15, there is no tautology at all and a perfectly coherent cause-effect relationship between the content of the gospel and one of its results, is generated.