What's Tony Thinking

Is It the True Gospel?

Embedded here is the link to the audio/ video of the 3rd session of “What’s Theology Got To Do With It?” We focus on the chapters on Scripture and the Trinity.

I introduce the chapter on the Trinity, which I call “Keeping Your Balance,” with four questions which theology and theologians ask in service to the church and to the ministry/ proclamation of congregations.

• Is it the true gospel?
• Is it the whole gospel?
• Is it the gospel for today?
• What difference does it make?

These are not questions that are asked all that much today, especially the first two. Our questions tend to be more self-referential. Does the message I hear help me? Does it work for me? Do I like it?

While these more self-referential questions are understandable, they may not be the right questions or even particularly helpful ones. There’s a little of the customer is king here. Jesus, not the customer, is our king. And a strange king he is!

In addition, those of a liberal bent tend to be wary of questions of categories like true and false. We defer to “what is true for me” or “true for you.” Which leaves a vacuum when it comes to truth, a vacuum that those of a more authoritarian bent are only too happy to fill.

Today’s most prevalent false gospel tends to be the one we have mentioned on several occasions in these webinar sessions, Pelagianism. So named for the British monk, Pelagius, who argued that human beings attain salvation by their own good works and the application of their will. Augustine called that “cruel optimism.”

Pelagian assumptions then lead to questions like, “How can you say that a really good person of another faith won’t get into heaven?” “You’re telling me Gandhi won’t go to heaven?” Notice that such questions assume that one’s eternal destiny is based on how good or bad you are in your mortal life.

Popular, but not the gospel. The true gospel is the gospel of grace — God’s one-way love. We are saved — in this life or for a life to come — by God’s mercy and God’s grace poured out in Jesus Christ for sinners and to break the powers of Sin and Evil.

If you’re up for a fuller exploration of this, in relation to Ben Franklin and his virtues project, check out this beautiful article from Mockingbird.

The church is thus not “the good people,” but in Francis Spufford’s line, “the international league of the guilty.” We gather as those who know our need of grace and forgiveness. We gather like those in recovery movements who know we are people who have hurt ourselves and others, but that this is not the last word. As I quoted from a hymn a couple weeks ago,