Scot McKnight asks this question in his second post discussing Greg Boyd’s new book, The Myth of a Christian Religion: Losing Your Religion for the Beauty of a Revolution:

How central to the gospel and to the Christian faith is following Jesus? Is a Christian someone who follows Jesus? Or, would you define “Christian” in another way? How would you define it?

Go by Scot’s blog to read and comment on those and some other great questions posed by Scot about Boyd’s book. Here’s my comment:

On the first set of questions, yes, following Jesus is central to the Christian (little Christ) faith and to the gospel, IMO. Are we called to trust the atonement? Yes. But that is only one facet of trusting Jesus, which is the focus of the New Testament. Putting our faith in him simultaneously includes trusting his atonement, his resurrection, his promises, his teachings, his plan for overcoming evil, his Spirit, his ongoing leadership, joining his people, etc. The gospel is at the core, the proclamation of a person, the “Christ”-ened King, and his great deeds and plan for the world. This gospel calls us to quit working against him (because of what we all naturally trust and love) and start trusting, loving and following him above all.

But Luther defined “gospel”, despite the much larger NT usage, as “properly nothing else” than our justification. (Very odd for a founder of the ’sola scriptura’ movement.) Our idea of God’s “salvation” has also been similarly whittled down from the much larger biblical usage of that term to our legal status alone. Our “orthodoxy”, our ‘right teaching’ or ‘right belief’ of Christianity only includes facts about Jesus, generally speaking, but no teachings of Jesus. I think it is hard to understate how thoroughly, at least in its core concepts and our mental mapping of the faith, that we have divorced being a Christian from becoming a little Christ. Kudos to Boyd and the many others that point this out.

The following is an excerpt from one of several posts at i-monk’s blog interviewing Bryan Cross, who is a thoughtful Catholic philosopher and apologist.  My reason for posting this has nothing to do with Bryan’s Catholicism; I’m personally ambivalent about that landing place for him within the Body.  But his story within the protestant church is one that I think many will resonate with.  All church leaders should hear his story and be mindful of the stumbling blocks that we can so easily set before people, like the ones that were set before Bryan. 

During my undergraduate education at the University of Michigan, I was exposed to Christians of all different traditions, and this raised a number of questions for me. By the end of my senior year, I was reading various books on theology, and I became convinced that Reformed covenantal theology was more biblical than the dispensational theology in which I had been raised. For the following three years my wife and I led an international student fellowship composed of students from Eastern Michigan University and the University of Michigan. During that time I continued to read books on Reformed theology. By the end of that three years, I came to see that if I was going to be a pastor, I needed much better theological training. So we moved to St. Louis where I studied at Covenant Theological Seminary for four years, earning an M.Div.

In my last year of seminary, I took a graduate philosophy class at Saint Louis University on the metaphysics of Thomas Aquinas. Studying Aquinas raised many questions regarding the Reformed tradition. I couldn’t answer those questions at the time, but it was clear to me that there was at least a deep tension between the philosophical and theological positions and methods of the Reformers, and those of Aquinas. I had hoped that a rigorous study of the biblical languages and exegesis would provide the means to resolve interpretive disagreements between the Christian traditions. I had poured myself into exegesis with that hope, so much so that at graduation the seminary faculty honored me with the exegesis award. But I began to see the implicit role that philosophy was playing in our interpretation of Scripture. My belief as a seminarian was that other Christian traditions didn’t agree with us (Presbyterians) primarily because they didn’t know exegesis as well as we did. At the seminary we believed that exegesis was on our side, that it was exegesis that validated our position over and against that of all the other Christian traditions. But when I began to see the degree to which philosophy was playing an implicit role in our interpretation of Scripture, my beliefs that exegesis was a neutral objective science, and that it was sufficient to adjudicate interpretive disputes, began to crumble. So I decided to study philosophy, in order to get a better understanding of the relation of philosophy to theology throughout the history of the Church. If I couldn’t avoid bringing philosophy into exegesis, at least I was going to do my best to bring in true philosophy.

I completed the internship required for ordination and continued to teach Sunday school at the Presbyterian church we were attending. But at that point I decided not to pursue ordination, because for me there were too many theological questions unanswered. Two years after finishing seminary, my youngest daughter went through a very seriousness illness, and during the following year I went through what I would call an intellectual crisis concerning theology and the ecclesial practice of Christianity. It wasn’t a personal faith-crisis; my belief in Christ and love for Him was never in question. At the time, I couldn’t have explained exactly what was the problem. Anglicanism and Catholicism were not even on my conceptual horizon. I knew that I didn’t want to go to church to hear any more “man-talk,” i.e. opinions of men. If church were primarily about “man-talk,” I could go to the library and find much more erudite thinkers and writers. With what I was learning from ancient philosophers and medieval theologians, I found myself mentally refuting sermons point-by-point as they were being delivered during every service. Of course I knew we are not supposed to forsake the assembling of ourselves together, and yet existentially I couldn’t see any good reason to “go to church.” At one point I stopped going to church altogether because I was so frustrated with the whole scene, a scene that to me seemed spiritually vacuous and human-centered in its continual “man-talk.”

Eventually a friend of mine suggested that I visit an Anglican church, so I did. I went by myself. It was completely different. It was quiet and reverent before the liturgy began. The liturgy itself was beautiful, rich, and meaningful. Here for the first time I found freedom from “man-talk.” There was no personality at the front of the church with a microphone, saying whatever came into his head at that moment. There was no speculative exegesis or theological argumentation which I could critically dismantle. The liturgy is God’s speech spoken back to Him by His people or by one representing them. Of course Holy Communion is the climax of the liturgy, and it too is not “man-talk.” In this sacrament God was speaking to me not through words and propositions, but through a physical action, giving Himself to me in a very intimate way. This was not something toward which I could take a critical, disengaged stance. I could only receive it humbly and gratefully. In that respect, this sacrament almost bypassed my intellect and went straight to my heart. We received Holy Communion at the front of the church, on our knees. The very form of worship communicated something altogether different from the way of taking communion I had previously known. I found God to be present there in the beauty, reverence and silence of the liturgy. In that sacredness my heart, which had been starved under a diet of mere propositions, was drawn anew toward God.

Thankfully, Bryan eventually came back to the Body instead of staying out permanently.  We need to know that there are people in the congregation more studied than we are, smarter than we are, even more mature than we are.  And we need to know there are the opposite as well.  For all these folks we need to exercise humility and not put forward our words as God’s.  We need to know the difference, say the difference and find ways to minimize our words and maximize God’s.  Lastly, we need to learn and increase our own appreciation for the many ways God speaks outside of a sermon.  We should treasure these and give them appropriate space among the meetings of God’s people.

The following quote is from Scot McKnight, from the opening post discussing Greg Boyd’s new book: The Myth of a Christian Religion: Losing Your Religion for the Beauty of a Revolution.  Hear, O evangelical church:

The reason there are Greg Boyds in this world is because American evangelicalism has been a thin remix of Romans, a religion shaped too much by a simplistic gospel and too rarely shaped by the robust kingdom vision of Jesus that itself gave rise to a much more robust gospel in Paul. (Emphasis added)

Scot goes on to ask some great questions.  Feel free to join the conversation.

Elizabeth O’Connor, via Inward-Outward, on the fear of being hurt; truly one of Evil’s better tactics to divide and conquer:

Somehow we keep our lives so well hidden from one another that we do not guess that we are not alone. Distrust is among our subtle illnesses. We were given hearts for “reciprocal trust,” but fear has built high walls. We are afraid of being hurt, and when we talk, we make ourselves vulnerable. What we say can be used against us or betray our loyalty to another, and so we add isolation to our own burden and the burden of others.

No time for a full post on how best for all concerned to view leaders in a church, but I will firmly say that this bit of biblical study (make sure you read all the biblical uses towards the end) and this bit speak volumes (that often go unsaid . . . I wonder why?).  Let’s hear what these biblical words are often saying and then listen to Jesus again (and again) and let it all simmer for several hours, maybe even weeks and years.  Then maybe even think about good marriages you know: do husbands (or wives, for that matter) lead by command and exercise authority over their spouses, or by service, by putting the other family members first and by persuasion based on their demonstrated character?  I know, it ain’t rocket science.  I’m glad someone is finally getting the word out that the bible’s own language says the same thing that we all acknowledge in healthy marriages.

For anyone looking for an audio bible (or for anyone who has looked before and been disappointed) let me recommend The Bible Experience. In my opinion, it’s fantastic.  The overall quality of the production and attention to detail is top-notch, but more importantly for me, the actors involved attempt to give authentic human reaction to what takes place in the passages, which has challenged and helped me to appreciate anew the significance of what scripture records, particularly in the gospels.

At the recommendation of a Lutheran brother and for my own edification, I am reading through the Lutheran Confessions (not necessarily in order). [Brief disclaimer: While I'm not a fan of several distinctives of reformed or Lutheran theology which will be clear here, I am, more importantly, a fan of folks in those camps.  I've been raised in the camps spawned by the reformation and still enjoy their company.  This is not a venue to bash such folks; it is a venue to discuss ideas that shape our thinking and practice.] 

Part V of the Large Catechism of the Lutheran Confessions is titled “Of the Law and the Gospel.”  It only consists of 11 paragraphs (for which I am very grateful), the first of which lays out the issue of: 

Whether the preaching of the Holy Gospel is properly not only a preaching of grace, which announces the forgiveness of sins, but also a preaching of repentance and reproof, rebuking unbelief, which, they say, is rebuked not in the Law, but alone through the Gospel. (Emphasis added.)

Right off the bat, we  can see a difficulty that never really leaves reformed theology, namely, where does the announcement that the government of God has come near (which dominates the gospels and continues in Acts as “good news”) fit in response to that question?  Unfortunately, it doesn’t really fit.  The gospel issue as framed by Luther only concerns itself with sinning.  Specifically, according to Luther, the issue is whether forgiveness of sin alone is “gospel” or whether the oft accompanying reproof of and call to repentance from sin is also “gospel.”  That’s it; it’s ”A” or “B”.  This “gospel” question is already too narrow to include the much fuller and richer ”gospel” usage of the NT that includes God’s revelation of Jesus’ lordship and his government’s agenda for re-creating the earth and the people and activities within it according to God’s desire to redeem and his sense of justice and love.  From Luther’s question, one can genuinely wonder whether the larger revelation and movement of God’s reign (which Jesus and the apostles clearly called “good news”) is ”properly” called “Gospel” in the Lutheran view.   

In the following couple of paragraphs, after naming the issue as Luther sees it, he briefly describes the now famous reformed distinction between “Law” and “Gospel.” Next, in what is perhaps the strangest paragraph of this section, Luther admits that the term “Gospel” is used differently and more broadly in the New Testament (by comparison to his Law-Gospel usage) and is recommended as such by Jesus himself and the apostles:

But since the term “Gospel” is not used in one and the same sense in the Holy Scriptures, on account of which this dissension originally arose, we believe, teach, and confess that if by the term “Gospel” is understood the entire doctrine of Christ which He proposed in His ministry, as also did His apostles (in which sense it is employed, Mark 1, 15; Acts 20, 21), it is correctly said and written that the Gospel is a preaching of repentance and of the forgiveness of sins. (Emphasis added.)

I am in complete agreement with that.  In fact, Let me add that “if” we use the term “Gospel”  in the broader, more common way that “[Jesus] proposed in his ministry as also did his apostles”, we will “correctly” say not only that the “Gospel” is an announcement of repentance and forgiveness as Luther suggests, but also an announcement of everything that God has done and has purposed to do through his Servant, the now revealed Lord of heaven and earth, Jesus.  In other words, to proclaim “the Gospel” according to the New Testament is to announce the identity, purpose, actions, and agenda of God’s chosen Lord of heaven and earth, namely Jesus.  And preachers, or announcers of this Jesus and the good news of what God is doing through him will call everyone, in light of this full, and amazing plan in Christ (which includes but goes well beyond forgiveness), to repent and trust this good news, this King. 

But that’s not the way Luther continues, which is odd for a guy that is big on “sola scriptura.”  Rather, he says, despite the larger usage of “gospel” in the scriptures by Jesus and the apostles, we get a different, preferable, view of “gospel” if we compare Luther’s own smaller concept of ”Gospel” to his (arguably larger) concept of ”Law” (for reasons he doesn’t really state in this section anyway):

But if the Law and the Gospel, likewise also Moses himself [as] a teacher of the Law and Christ as a preacher of the Gospel are contrasted with one another, we believe, teach, and confess that the Gospel is not a preaching of repentance or reproof, but properly nothing else than a preaching of consolation, and a joyful message which does not reprove or terrify, but comforts consciences against the terrors of the Law, points alone to the merit of Christ, and raises them up again by the lovely preaching of the grace and favor of God, obtained through Christ’s merit. (Emphasis added.)

I hope it is by now obvious where a significant problem may lie, aside from any circular reasoning Luther used: The Holy Scriptures (including Jesus and the apostles) talk about “Gospel” in a large, full way, Luther says, which led to “dissension” (as well as the birth of the Church, to be fair).  But if we take one particular component of that larger scriptural concept of good news, namely, the forgiveness of sins, and compare it alone with Luther’s very broad definition of “Law” (which would include not only the Mosaic law, but Jesus’ own teachings and example), then “the Gospel is properly nothing else than a preaching of consolation,” by which he means forgiveness, or justification, or not being condemned for one’s sins. 

Think about what just happened there.  Luther states that only a part of the usage by Jesus and the apostles of the term “Gospel” is “properly” called Gospel based on Lutheran systematics, namely the Law/Gospel comparitive approach. 

This creates the following situation, then:  Certainly what Lutherans declare as gospel is gospel (since it is a subset of what the New Testatment calls “gospel”).  But, unfortunately, much of what the NT would also unequivocally call “gospel,” Lutherans and many reformed would hesitate upon or even dispute, saying such announcements of God’s will and plan for earth should be called “Law.”  This results in a downgrading of everything in God’s plan, God’s dream for the world, that goes beyond forgiveness and justification from “Gospel” to “Law.”  I can’t help but see the logical connection between that theology and the silliness of “weak on sanctification” t-shirts, the idea that we are disciples of the gospel (of justification) as opposed to disciples of Jesus, and the large scale phenonmenon of what Dallas Willard has called ”bar-code faith.”  

Rather than trying to live from a concept of “gospel” that is smaller than that which Christ and his apostles announced, let’s look at the all that God has done and wants to do through Christ and start soaking in it.  Let’s take it all in as good news.  We might find that God’s love and his “gospel” go way, way beyond just forgiving us, which is really good news.