I suggested in part 1 of this review that conventional evangelical or Reformed constructions of the gospel, such as Dan Phillips’ The World-Tilting Gospel, take no account of the Old Testament story of the people of God from Abraham to Antiochus Epiphanes. It is not enough to treat the Old Testament as a compendium of allegories, typologies and prophecies pointing to the fulfilment of God’s plan of salvation in Jesus. The good news that is proclaimed in slightly divergent ways by Jesus, the early disciples and Paul presupposes, and should not be disconnected from, an ongoing historical narrative. Perhaps more surprisingly the same point needs to be made with respect to the “kingdom of God”.
And what happened to the kingdom of God?
There is remarkably little in The World-Tilting Gospel about the “kingdom of God”. We are told that we must repent and believe because the kingdom of God is at hand; and Nicodemus is told that he cannot see the kingdom of God unless he is born again. But Phillips’ gospel appears to encompass only the repent and believe part or the being born again part. In only one passage, as far as I can tell, does he indicate what he understands by the kingdom of God, which for Jesus was at hand and which Nicodemus could expect to see if he were born again:
Far from scrapping the concept of perfect human rule over creation, Jesus is the Agent of its realization. Jesus’ first recorded sermon in Matthew is short and to the point: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt. 4:17). This planet still would come under the rule of God, with a man at the helm—but that man would not be Adam the first, but Adam the last (1 Cor. 15:45).
Where our father Adam failed miserably in every respect, Jesus would succeed. Jesus would subdue the earth and rule it. He would eventually people the earth with His “staff,” as it were. He would fill the earth with His spiritual seed, those alive because of Christ (Isa. 53:10), people the earth with His “staff,” as it were. He would fill the earth with His spiritual seed, those alive because of Christ (Isa. 53:10). (114)
The “kingdom of heaven” here appears to refer to the eventual perfect rule of God over his creation. I think this is a misunderstanding of the kingdom language in the Gospels, but even if we allow it to stand, there is a gaping hole in Phillips’ argument. The good news that Jesus calls Israel to believe is precisely that the kingdom of God is at hand (Mk. 1:15). There is no separation of the repent and believe part—as a matter of personal salvation—from the expectation that the kingdom is imminent.
It is another example of how the gospel of personal salvation gets isolated from its narrative context. When Jesus says that the kingdom of God is at hand, he means that YHWH is about to act on behalf of his covenant people in relation to the nations that menace them. The notion is to be filled out by reference to such Old Testament texts as Psalm 2, Isaiah 52:7-10 and Daniel 7. We cannot talk about good news in the Gospels without relating it to the underlying but inescapable national story.
Phillips’ gospel has very little to do with the kingdom, and certainly not with a kingdom that was at hand, which means it has very little to say about the communal and political dimensions of the existence of the people of God—and one wonders, therefore, in what sense it can honestly be described as world-tilting.
In both of your articles about this book references to John 3:16 have come up. I think it's a perfect place to make this point. Was Jesus being unfair to Nicodemus by chiding him for not knowing that he had to be born again? Where in the Old Testament was Nicodemus supposed to have been instructed that he needed to be supernaturally reborn in the sense understood by most American Evangelicals? (hint: I doubt you'll find it anywhere, which is why most people are sympathetic to Nicodemus scratching his head on the issue)
I think the answer to that is that Jesus wasn't telling you in 2011 to be born again in some mystical fashion. He was telling a Jew, a member of the nation of Israel, in ~30AD, and a leader of the teachers of Israel, that HE had to be reborn. What would that have meant to him? His original birthright meant tremendous priviledge. That would have meant giving up his citizenship and position of priviledge in Israel under the Mosaic Law. It would have made him an outcast because he would have abandoned his previous citizenship. Where was he supposed to have known from the Old Testament (and Moses per other portions of the book of John) that this was going to some day be expected of the faithful remnant? Try Deuteronomy 32 (also Ezekiel and Jeremiah). In addition, one of Jesus' favorite Psalms which he quotes on the cross ends with a call to join a new nation, to be born into a different nation implying a different status of privildge from the old one.
In other words, if you don't understand the story of Israel and the expectation that one day it will be superceded by a new people under a New Covenant, and the requirement that you be born again into that covenant, you can not understand the idea of being "born again" in John 3:16. The promised Kingdom of God does not exist outside of this New Covenant (you might look at it as the new constitution for the covenant), so confusion on the transition from the old constitution to the new one will necessarily mean confusion on the role of the Kingdom of God. It's no wonder it's not emphasized under the author's system.
i've been thinking about a theme common to several of your posts that i wish i could elaborate on more or explore the implications of. You seem to talk a lot about truth being divorced from narrative and history. Basically, abstraction is somehow a bad thing.
This has a ring of truth to it. And i'm thinking here of how much of theology is presented with a strong tinge of Enlightenment distance and observation--just a report of mechanism, causal chains, and raw materials. Now my suspicion is that this is a problem generally--that in still carrying on this 'Kantian distance' approach to understanding things, we miss out on a lot of deeper understanding of not just the Bible but many things in general. In fact, perhaps we mangle much of the things we investigate altogether on account of trying to 'abstract it out of history.'
Maybe you don't mean to make this kind of point any broader than the narrative of Scripture itself. Or maybe i'm understanding the terms differently than you intend. If so, i'd love for you to elaborate on this.
i've been trying to think hard on two sorts of questions. (1) Truth being somehow inherently historical or perspectival wouldn't necessarily lead to relativism, would it? (2) When we do abstract mechanism/causal chain/historical events from their historical/narrative embeddedness, what is the significant stuff that we end up missing or leaving out or failing to capture?
Any thoughts on this?
--guy
@guy:
These questions really require a lot more thought than I think I’m prepared to give them at the moment. Off the top of my head, though, I would say:
1. Personally, I think all truth is relative—though not all to the same degree, practically speaking—inasmuch as it is formulated and lived by communities. Relativism is inescapable. The point is that we are a people called to believe or trust the particular narrative that we find in scripture. Arguably Christians should accept that they are properly relativists—they are a community set apart to believe differently.
2. I think the big difference here is that modern theology tends to start with an abstraction (a belief, creed, theology, gospel) and tries to create from it community and practical action, often with little success. Biblically it is the other way round: a people has to make theological sense of its existence. My feeling is that there is a whole set of dynamics and characteristics that constitute the concrete historical existence of a “chosen” people that are never understood or embraced if we begin with theology—particularly when we are dealing with the very narrow, individualistic, rationalized modern gospel.
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