I’ve been reading up on evangelical history in preparation for a new course this fall and the definition of ‘evangelicalism’ is still proving elusive. I am getting some exposure to some of the main thinkers that have shaped the movement as a whole.
One of the most significant evangelical theologians of the past half-century has been Millard Erickson and it is in the summary of Erickson that I’ve been reading that I’m finding one of the more confusing elements of evangelical theology. Early on Erickson says that the starting point for theology is the effort to hold the beliefs that Jesus held and taught and to explain and organize those beliefs.
Later on he offers a definition of evangelicalism itself: “Evangelicalism is, at its core, a view of the nature of salvation. According to evangelicalism, salvation involves regeneration, a supernatural transformation based upon Jesus Christ’s atoning death and received through an exercise of faith in him.”
This is a fairly standard definition of salvation. It’s the one that I grew up with and I think it would strike most evangelicals as fairly close to the heart of the issue. The problem is it wasn’t a belief that Jesus held or taught. If we take Erickson’s earlier definition of theology as the business of “explaining the beliefs that Jesus held and taught” then the evangelical definition of salvation is slightly off the mark, or at least out of order.
If we take Jesus’ own teaching as our starting point for our idea of salvation then we would have to start with his teaching of the kingdom of God. Jesus did not preach a gospel of individual forgiveness of sins based on his atoning death. He couldn’t have, he hadn’t died yet. We may eventually come to that idea eventually but it’s not where we should start.
Jesus believed that, in his own life and ministry, God’s kingdom, God’s ‘world’ was drawing near to ours. This is based on the basic Jewish belief that one day God would finally rule his people (not in some ’spiritual’ sense but literally, from Jerusalem) and eradicate evil once and for all. The present age would give way to a future ‘golden age’ in which all the evils of the present would be overcome. There was not a strong sense of an ‘afterlife’ at this point, the idea was that the golden age would be this world (particularly the national life of Israel) without the problems.
Jesus announced that this transition was happening and that it was happening in him. He announced that God’s rule was at hand. The problem was that it looked different than anyone had expected. Instead of overthrowing of Roman authority, Jesus taught love of enemies, instead of eradicating evil, Jesus took the worst of it on himself and triumphed over it through, paradoxically, the power of self-sacrificing love.
I think we have to start here. Jesus’ message was a message about this kind of kingdom. It was an invitation to join it and to see the kingdom as the focal point of all of human existence - both here and now and as the future our world is heading toward.
In my opinion the standard evangelical definition of salvation obscures this point. It’s not that I don’t believe that my participation in this kingdom is based on my faith in Christ - I do. It’s just that this definition has led to the oversimplification that ’salvation’ is about individual souls getting into heaven through the mechanism of faith in Christ. That leads to a tragic disconnect between ‘the kingdom’ and our lives here and now.
I agree with Erickson that Christian theology should start with Jesus. I’m not sure that evangelical theology has always been faithful to that task.
I like this, Gil. I have always wondered about this issue especially in light of the “gospel” (good news). According to Jesus, the good news was the kingdom coming near, and I believe he was referring to his presence in the world, which at the time, like you said, had nothing yet to do with his death.
I have always wondered about the “on/off” switch mentality of salvation. What is it about Jesus that turns us from the “off” position to the “on” position? What exactly changed my destiny to be suddenly “heaven-bound?” And was that happening in the lives of Galileans while Jesus was proclaiming the kingdom?
Jeff,
I don’t think the ‘heaven-bound’ question would have occurred to the Galileans you mention. The people who were attracted to Jesus were attracted because of what they saw in his life and teaching. I would see these as signs of the kind of kingdom Jesus was bringing and so people’s ‘faith in Christ’ was a statement of their allegiance to that kingdom.
so when God shows up in a human body is he any closer than he was before? You know what I mean? Is Jesus really proclaim some new status of God intimacy with mankind? Or is that status essentially the same? What does the new covenant really mean? Is Jesus intention to forge a brand new way of understanding a relationship with God or was he essentially trying to get back to something far more basic - a type of renewal of an old covenant/contract that God had with humanity?
Dale,
I think the term ‘covenant’ is often misunderstood. We tend to define it as ‘the way an individual gets right with God’ and then read that definition back onto Israel in the Old Testament and Jesus in the New. The term still has its uses but we have to be clear on what we mean by it.
I like the way you put it as “forging a brand new way of understanding a relationship with God.” The covenant, as Israel would have understood it had to do with a privileged status before God based on ethnic identity and religious separation. In that light Jesus did offer a brand new way of understanding what God was up to.
I guess I’m just trying to push at the definition of salvation as a private contract between me and God whereby I get heaven and he gets my faith. It seems to be bigger than that to me.
yeah i think you’re right Gil. your comments and thoughts made me think/wonder about prophesy. Often prophesy only seems to bear significance in it’s predictive role. Most evangelical teaching would put the Abrahamic covenant in that category as well, as a predictive instrument of Christ, etc. But I think we miss something if we don’t recognize prophesy’s prescriptive power as well. So then its easy to see how we can dimish the OT’s importance in teaching/spiritual instruction. But the OT was central to Jesus teaching and to pluck him out of that contextual format by devaluing the OT is to dimish Jesus message. So if the task of theology is “the effort to hold the beliefs that Jesus held and taught”, we have to honor Jesus’ rootedness in the ancient texts.
Jesus invitation to Kingdom life, his establishment of ‘the new covenant’ feels more like he is trying to get back to the original God - Human contract of, let’s say, the Garden: A reminder that God wants to walk and talk with us in an intimate way, intergral to the success of life.
I think you are right to challenge the ‘private contract’ aspect of salvation. To me that concept comes from an over emphasis and skewed view of Pauline literature. I wonder for instance how your students would define salvation if they only had the OT as their source material. My feeling is that salvation would apply to a totally other aspect of life than the eternal destiny of the soul.