IBI Newsletter Summer 2010

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Patrick Mitchel interviewed author, speaker, blogger and lecturer Scot McKnight on his recent visit to IBI.

Patrick Mitchel: Scot, you are here in Ireland talking about ‘The Earliest Christian Gospel’ (which will be a new book In the Beginning was the Gospel). In the last couple of days you’ve unpacked the pretty provocative thesis that the ‘traditional evangelical gospel’ has distorted the biblical gospel. Can you summarise your argument in a nutshell?

Scot McKnight: Now I’m going to spill the beans. I think Tom Wright got this right; we equate the word ‘gospel’ with our understanding of the ‘plan of salvation’ which means ‘how I personally can respond to the offer of salvation in Christ’. I think most evangelicals think that is the gospel.

Well, as a result of studying the New Testament, I became convinced that there are dimensions of what Paul thinks is the gospel and of what the early apostles in the book of Acts preach as the gospel that simply are not a part of how we preach the gospel. For instance, they were very much focused on resurrection. They didn’t focus on us being sinners and our need to accept Jesus’ death. Instead they proclaimed that Israel’s story (the hope of the Bible story) is now fulfilled in Jesus as Messiah and Lord through his life, through his death, through his resurrection, through his exaltation, through the sending of the Spirit. This is the good news that God has now wrapped up history. If we want to participate in this good news and get salvation we must repent and believe and be baptised. That was their understanding of the gospel.

I think our traditional evangelical gospel touches on some of those dimensions but there are many aspects that we have simply ignored in Western evangelicalism. In many ways I think we have thinned the gospel down to a superficial level and I want to create a conversation about what the apostles actually said the gospel was.


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