History, History, History
Paul, a bond-servant of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which He promised beforehand through His prophets in the holy Scriptures, Romans 1:1-2 NASB
The gospel of God– “It cannot be stressed too much that the biblical expression of the gospel is an historical event as God acts on behalf of his people to save. The gospel is the holy history worked out in the life and death of Christ. The gospel is not man’s response to this event, nor is it the work of God in us now as he regenerates and sanctifies the believer. So in the Old Testament the ‘gospel’ is the declaration of what God did ‘out there’ and ‘back there’ at a fixed place and time in history.”[1]
Goldsworthy’s statement needs to be read aloud every week in the community. As our culture attempts to either remove or rewrite history to fit political agendas, we are also in the throes of losing the vital connection between ancient history and current belief. Dwight Pryor makes this point when he speaks about Paul’s idea of the proclamation. The gospel is not the good news of Jesus dying on the cross. It isn’t even the evangelical declaration of forgiveness. Those are sub-categories of the true euangélion (good news). The real message is “God’s actions in history.” We must remember that Paul’s Hebraic background means “the basic sense might seem to be simply ‘to deliver a message,’ but the stem itself contains the element of joy, so that announcing a victory is a common use and the messenger views himself as the bearer of good tidings.”[2] The gospel is about the victory of God. The victory over sin. The victory over death. The victory over the enemy. The gospel is good news because it proclaims that God wins, and His purposes for His people will come to fruition. Yes, His son is a vital part of this message, but the message is not limited to the death and resurrection of Yeshua. To reduce the gospel to something akin to the “four spiritual laws” is a truncated travesty.
The pivotal point of turning in evangelical thinking which demands close attention is the change that has taken place from the Protestant emphasis upon the objective facts of the gospel in history, to the mediaeval emphasis on the inner life. The evangelical who sees the inward transformation work of the Spirit as the key element of Christianity will soon lose contact with the historic faith and the historic gospel. At the same time he will come to neglect the historical acts of God in the Old Testament. The Christ enthroned in the human heart loses his own incarnate humanity, and the humanity of the Old Testament history will be soon discarded so that the “inner spiritual” meanings may be applied to the “inner spiritual” life of the Christian.
The crisis of the Old Testament today is only another form of the crisis of the Protestant faith. Inner-directed Christianity, which reduces the gospel to the level of every other religion of the inner man, might well use a text from the Apocrypha to serve as its own epitaph for the Reformers:
There are others who are unremembered;
They are dead, and it is as though they had never existed.”[3]
Does this make you wonder about the salvation approach of many contemporary religious organizations? Doesn’t raising your hand or coming forward act in much the same way as repentance did for the Essenes? Isn’t it a social identification badge rather than a connection to the God of Israel? And what are the results? A “saved” civilization without a spiritual compass?
Topical Index: gospel, euangélion, Graeme Goldsworthy, Romans 1:1-2
[1]Graeme Goldsworthy, Gospel and Kingdom, p. 65, footnote 2.
[2]Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1985). Theological Dictionary of the New Testament(267). Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans.
[3]Graeme Goldworthy, Gospel and Kingdom: A Christian Interpretation of the Old Testament, p. 113.
Hello Skip and all those who are in attendance. The gospel of God, this should not be a stunning fact. What we have just read heard and seen with our eyes, it’s not only a historical account, or futuristic phenomenon, but an actual.Happening,……..
A status of. Current event. if God was in the beginning and, in the beginning was God, and the Word was God, and we are be holding . Him,. Today. this brings me to my knees, and on my face. That God would choose any individual. Including myself, to spread this event, this truth, while it is still available, if it ceases to exist, then God himself would cease to exist. Yet he can close the ears eyes and heart period, of mankind to receive it. Our God is Holy, ( separate ) ……( so should we be ).
Folks please answer me this one question…. In your own words, and experience , ( maybe this is where skip is headed.)
How did the Untouchable God, become so remote and almost forgotten, even in the believer’s life?
B.B.
I will give you the short (very short) answer. Greek philosophy penetrated Christian (and some rabbinic) thought and pushed God into the transcendental sphere. Then it became necessary to invent a bridge between the God-far-removed and the human condition. The solution? A God-man, not unknown in the time of the early Church, as there were a lot of political figures who were elevated to God status. Notice that this is NOT necessary at all in the Tanakh. God is intimately involved in the lives of His people. But once Greek philosophy became the central pillar of Christian thought, all this changed. I leave the rest to you to research.
Thank you.. skip for your brief tick on my question it is most of what I thought, but thank you again for the guidelines
…and Yeshua became God.
Skip, in your reply to Brett, you said, “Then it became necessary to invent a bridge between the God-far-removed and the human condition. The solution? A God-man, not unknown in the time of the early Church, as there were a lot of political figures who were elevated to God status. Notice that this is NOT necessary at all in the Tanakh.”
Not sure I’m understanding you correctly, but, are you suggesting we don’t need a bridge? All the prophetic verses in the Tanakh about the Messiah’s coming seem to indicate we do. In the Torah, YHVH was very clear that, along with repentance, He expected sacrifices (a bridge so to speak)…sometimes blood, sometimes grain. As our High Priest, Yeshua now replaces all the sacrifices that were mandated and took place in the Temple.
Let me clarify. As a result of Greek philosophy, GOD was pushed into the transcendental realm. All you need to discover that is a quick review of the via negativa of Aquinas. That God, the God of “attributes,” is so far removed from human existence that every attribute is a DENIAL of human being. Yet the categories of Aquinas remain the bedrock for understanding the nature of God in Christian thought. But the Tanakh isn’t like this at all. In it God is very much like human beings. He remembers, He repents, He laughs, He cries, He feels joy and sadness. He comes down to “see” what’s happening. Now most Christian thinking is very unhappy with these sorts of expressions because God IS TRANSCENDENT (assumption) and therefore HE CAN’T BE LIKE US. As a result, all of these expressions in the Tanakh are called “anthropomorphisms.” That is, they aren’t really about God at all. They are just there to make us FEEL as if God knows us. But, of course, this is not the view of the Tanakh. I don’t need to explain that to you. You see that.
Now, if God (YHVH) is so transcendent as to be totally removed from the human condition, then we are left with an enormous problem. How can we relate to such a god? Answer: we can’t! So we need an intermediary, a man (like us) who is also God. This is the role of the divine 2nd person of the Trinity – to be the intermediary. But notice that this was NOT necessary when God was described as in the Tanakh.
Now to your point. The Messiah, and the sacrifices and all the rest of things related to REPAIR of the relationship, do not act as intermediaries. They act as AGENTS and AGENCIES of restoration. The Altar is not an intermediary between us and God. Its purpose is to provide a place where we encounter God. It has no status as divine independently of its purpose. Not so with Jesus as God/Man. Perhaps “bridge” was the wrong word for there is a sense in which sacrifices are a bridge, but they are not divine in and of themselves. They only provide a means for us to come into contact with the One True God. Jesus as Messiah (Jewish) functions in the same way. He manifests YHVH to us. But as soon as Christianity pushed God into the stratosphere, Jesus as GOD became necessary, not as God’s agent but as God Himself since otherwise there was no means for human beings to connect with God.
Does this help?
Just to round out the discussion, isn’t the argument that God CANNOT descend into humanity rather dependent upon that whole notion that God is wholly other? I have yet to see anybody – and I do mean anybody – who has been willing or able to explain to me why God cannot do that EXCEPT as the idea that He is wholly other than us. The God of the OT, I am totally with you, does not seem to be that kind of God at all. I am still interested to see somebody explain to me why God cannot be human, too. Especially if He is already walking and quacking and emoting like us (tongue in cheek).
I see both sides ‘needing’ God to be transcendent for their arguments to hold water. In fact, I have suspected this is the foundation that keeps the entire argument going.
P.S. Just to clarify, the ‘proof’ the ‘other’ side uses ( to whit: a transcendent God HAS to have an intermediary to relate to us) does not necessarily make that entire side ‘wrong’, which I feel you are asking me to believe. (This is just another assumption, of which there are more unspoken ones – on both sides – that I feel don’t stand the test of veracity). My head hurts when I feel I am being asked to assume stuff like this.
I think the ‘need’ for a God-man intermediary in a transcendent sense does not negate in any way the possibility that there might be a God-man, regardless of WHY people may or may not say there ‘needs’ to be one. The God-man does not rise or fall according to the arguments for or against Him. Including this one. I think only history – NOT philosophy – can answer to what is or is not the case, here. Could we try on a different platform?
To start with, try Nelson Pike, God and Timelessness. It is probably out of print long ago, but it is the seminal work on the incommersuability of the transcend God of Aquinas and the human God of Moses.
I went and looked at summaries of it, etc. as best I could and would love to read it, too, of course.
My question is about how hard it seems to be for us to get away from the cosmic view (that includes both our notion of heaven as well as earth) that actions (functions) WITHIN time (form) , etc. are defined BY that time, vs. the thought that perhaps time – like gravity, say – could just be what the aftereffects of action look like instead of the boundaries of what action is ‘possible’. What would it look like if we really did start over with the paradigm thing?
If form is determined by function (which turns our Greek-based paradigm essentially on its head) , then space/time, too (for they are always found together, are they not?), could be determined by the actions of the love/life that we find existing ‘in’ it. Time/space then could well be a side effect of reality, and not a determinant of it.
In that case, God, Who invented all dimensions, including the third/fourth ones, is FOLLOWED by that time/space/creation instead of being constrained by it. Wait; wouldn’t that correspond to His action of “speaking” His life into that creation? And isn’t that on a continual basis? Which is the tail and which is the dog? Does life follow (is bounded by) time/space (Greek view) or does time/space (and all other dimensions, too) follow life?
If that is the case, then faith, as the correct response to such a reality, really has the only way to relate properly to it. Everybody else is, literally, one step behind. Back there in the unchangeable ‘past’ (“death”) of space/time.
Of course God’s existence, then, could not be found within such a construction, but would also then, likewise not have to be ‘outside’ it, either. Both views fall on their face if form follows function, for both depend on EITHER the ‘form’ of time OR the ‘form’ of timelessness to define ‘God’, right? But if God’s actions (love, or connection with creation) result in a continuing stream of time/space, then He is equally ‘in’ it as well as ‘outside’ it, for both ‘forms’ lose their significance as far as a definition of God if both are bounded instead by His ACTIONS (function) of His faith. God’s love operates within time/creation just fine, but we will never find His love without Himself, for I think that love IS Himself; given to His creation in a gift we cannot comprehend.
Faith, then, will never be found within creation, for faith IS the action of creation, and we have been issued an invitation to participate. Why is it so hard for us to accept? I suspect it is because we are still trying to ‘find’ faith within the reality the flesh can perceive, but faith is what that reality is being built out of. I guess that would make faith ‘timeless’, too?
Glad you took liberal advantage of ” “. As you are well aware, describing time in terms of “in” or “out” is a spatialization fallacy. That is part of our problem. We, as Westerners, think of time as if it were a “spatial” dimension. At least that’s the way we describe it. Part of the reason we do that is because of the meta-grammar of our language. But that’s not the only reason.
It is only the beginning of woes!
Camille Anna Paglia is an American academic and social critic. Paglia has been a professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, She is also a Lesbian and avowed atheist. In her book “Sexual Persona” she writes “The Greeks made god’s in the image of man, the Hebrews made men in the image of god”…
WOW. Give me the reference please
Camille Paglia “Sexual Persona” She is brilliant..
Camille is amazing. Says stuff you’d never expect.
Thanks.
Being of Hebrew decent I am biased to the quote….lol
Brett, I tend to find myself consistently standing back in the Garden before those two trees of knowing. The tree of ” Life” and the “Tree of the Knowledge of good and evil”. While I agree entirely with Skips comments in pointing at the Greeks. It seems to me they simply lived on the fruit of independent human reason= the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, rather than the fruit of interdependent reasoning= living on the fruit of the “Tree of Life” that is life in Messiah… Interdependence with YeHoVaH…
Call it what you will it to me it remains the main choice, the big deal, the main issue of our existence on this planet. And that choice has not changed since the foundations of the earth. It’s what we personally do with it and then how our cultures and institutions express that choice, particularly the religious institutions that is the issue herein. Just who is working in them to create the confusion, to provide the tempting fruit or re-interpretation of the facts?
I agree as ever with Lauri ta “The entire system of righteousness has been repeatedly hijacked historically, and it seems clear that it is being set up to be heisted once again…. as Skip points out, is a hallmark of paganism and false religion, is a Trojan horse that has been highly successful in the past.” Well yah, same problem, same adversary = relying on ourselves rather than on our creator for the way to “live and move and have our being”.
I shudder to wonder what the spiritual atmosphere on the planet was actually like before that glorious day at calvery. I am sure we have no ability to actually comprehend life before the Cross. Just glad ” I live and move and have my being” after that day not before…
The gospel reduced to a “social identification badge”? Smacks of the plight of the average citizen of the Dark Ages, who knew little to nothing of the history of “God’s victory”, but was required to ‘belong’ and ‘prove’ it by endless actions of “inner spirituality”.
Also sounds a lot like the average world citizen of today, who, once again, knows little of the history of God’s victory, but is being groomed to accept a mere status symbol in the form of, again, “inner spirituality” as ‘proof’ of, well, what, at that point, is he or she being taught to belong to? Something that only takes a token grovel? Could we, at some point, perhaps call that grovel a “mark of the beast”; which could be the ultimate social id badge?
The entire system of righteousness has been repeatedly hijacked historically, and it seems clear that it is being set up to be heisted once again. This business of “inner spirituality”, which, as Skip points out, is a hallmark of paganism and false religion, is a Trojan horse that has been highly successful in the past. If we studied history it might be rather clear that it bodes no good to see this monster raising its head again.
This is off topic. Though one has got to love a resilient man I just have question. Two days ago you invoked such genuine empathy, support and deep concern from people.More comments than I seen in a long time.Yet the very next day it’s like it never happened. It’s almost( for lack of a better word) bi-polar or were you embarrassed. Maybe I am the only one who thinks this way if so disregard.
I don’t write in daily succession. In fact, I write well ahead due to the potential of internet failures. So the piece on Leave No Trace was actually written on that day and inserted into the other already scheduled material. I rather doubt that I am bi-polar. 🙂
Have to admit your actual writings on that day can be more powerful than your successive writings in advance. Maybe you could do more? Makes me see you as a real person not just a talking head??
Agreed. But then, are you ready for a raw view of life? Day to day is often much more brittle, more searching, more vulnerable. The academic is safe. The poet isn’t.
So you prefer the safe world of academia. If you only choose to eek out an occasional poet side of you then maybe you rather be a talking head it is safe. Somehow I find that very sad.
Maybe you’re too quick to judge and don’t really know me.
I agree maybe I am,but you brought it up. I think a lot of you,but commenting when I dont see how you see is a lesson in futility. Your come back answers are always there. Once a viewer awhile back said don’t debate you,guess I am a very slow learner. I think I will go back to just reading as I did for a couple of years before commenting.
I didn’t mean to shut you off, but dialogue often involves the need to clarify assumptions. And most of us are not just “one” person. We have personas that show up in different ways for different groups. On the blog you see more than one of me. They are all me, of course, but that’s because I wear a lot of different hats, as do the rest of us.
A “saved” civilization without a spiritual compass?
This Skip is a very interesting statement rather than question.
I once heard a preacher say that the error made today is that we hope on the works of those gone before us rather than seeking and becoming the Jesus of today….
I was confused at the time but can understand today how we easily rely on preaching the saving grace of Yeshua rather than demonstrating it.
It is this manifestation of God’s will which I read in the OT as the history of the lives of the servants of God during those eras.
As you said a few days ago you will take the Sabbatical rest when the time is right. Paul and James made similar statements. Work till the crown is given. Run till the race is completed (not to win). Make no provision for the flesh. Etc.
Until the time that God’s will is revealed through our lifestyle I think we may be of this ‘saved’ group without a spiritual compass. We need to be the redeemed or reborn vessels of grace and saving power rather than teachers of it.
Deeds speak louder and create results. Words create ideals that are easily lost or forgotten when we hear another message or easier way to remain as we are… As change is hard and very often painful as we need to confront the demons that are keeping as distanced from God.
Thank you for a thought provoking reminder.
By the way Skip, I am re- reading David Lambert’s book .my critque still stands but that may be my bias and I maybe totally wrong won’t be the first time or the last. I have bias’s and so do you on authors we may prefer and yes it can stand in the way.Differing views don’t bother me unless it ends in a knock out “right fighting”argument than it’s a lose lose situation.
In the the third citation, Goldworthy writes, “the change that has taken place from the Protestant emphasis upon the objective facts of the gospel in history, to the mediaeval emphasis on the inner life. ”
Is that correct? I expected to read that the change was from mediaeval… to Protestant…”
No, it’s correct. Goldworthy is pointing out that SINCE the Protestant Reformation the evangelical church has moved in the direction of INNER experience rather than objective history.