Many Christians in North America would define the gospel in this way: Humans were lost in sin. We were all headed for everlasting hell. God sent His (and the God of this version of the gospel is always a He) Son to take our deserved punishment. Since Jesus was innocent and divine, he was the only appropriate candidate to assuage the wrath of God. Jesus died in our place. God’s honor and wrath were satisfied by this horrific suffering and death. Anyone willing to believe in Jesus and his salvific death would be saved – which meant that instead of being punished forever in hell (an eternal concentration camp characterized by hopelessness and torture), such a person could escape the trials and tribulations of this world and the condemnation of a wrathful God and go to heaven to enjoy everlasting bliss. I suggest that this is the gospel according to many tens of millions of Christians.
The only problem is that this interpretation of Jesus’ death did not even exist in the first thousand years of church history. This theory of atonement is known as Penal Substitutionary Atonement and is one of the foundational beliefs in all Christian fundamentalist and most conservative Evangelical churches. Many Christians assume this is what the New Testament means by gospel. They also assume Paul was one of the leading proponents of such an interpretation. But such assumptions are completely wrong. Yes, Paul believed in the resurrection of Jesus and in the future resurrection of humans and all creation. But the gospel he embraced and preached had little to do with dying and going to heaven.
To appreciate Paul’s understanding of the gospel (and everything else about Paul for that matter), we must remember that Paul was a Jew. He was born a Jew and died a Jew. He never abandoned his Jewish faith. Neither did he believe that God had abandoned or rejected Her people. In fact, he had a firm hope that “all Israel will be saved.” (Romans 11:26) All of his theology, including his assumptions about the gospel, must be seen in the light of his Jewish faith. The faith of Paul, like that of millions of Jews in his time, was intimately and foundationally based in the great overriding story of Yahweh’s relationship with and promises to Her people. So, what was that crucial and indispensable story?
We could begin with the four major covenants found in the Hebrew Scriptures:
- In Genesis after the flood story, God makes a covenant with Noah, his descendants, all future humankind, and every part of creation. (I think it’s telling that the first covenant mentioned in the Bible includes creation.) In that rainbow covenant, God says that She now understands the propensity of humans for sin. Instead of annihilating the human race and creation, God chooses to work with flawed humans and an earth marred by human sin. This covenant is not restricted to one person, nation, race, or geographical area. It is a universal covenant including every part of creation.
- The second covenant in the Bible is found in Genesis 12 and 15 and involves God’s choice of an aged couple, Abraham and Sarah, to become God’s solution to the confused, fragmented, and arrogant peoples who now are scattered all over the earth after the Tower of Babel fiasco. How can God ever unite humanity in healing, just, peaceful ways? How can scattered and alienated peoples ever become a community reflecting the image and will of their Creator? The Abrahamic Covenant says that God will bless all the nations of the world through Abraham, Sarah, and their descendants. The new nation Israel will become the means for reconciling and blessing all the families of the earth. This new nation is chosen to become God’s blessing to all the world.
- The third covenant in the Bible is the Mosaic Covenant forged at Mt. Sinai when emancipated Hebrew slaves became God’s covenantal partners. The Torah (laws) given at Sinai was all based on the liberation of Hebrew slaves and the justice that such liberation suggested. Forever, Israel was to remember they were slaves in Egypt and that God set them free. From such kindness and compassion, the people of Israel were to learn a most important lesson. Justice and compassion were indispensable parts of any authentic faith they may cherish. The widow, orphan, poor, and immigrants were among the most vulnerable in the ancient world. How Israel treated these individuals would determine its status before the liberating God Yahweh. Neglecting such persons amounted to a rejection of the covenant made at Sinai. The Exodus must always be the memory which shaped the future of Israel. Justice and compassion were non-negotiable parts of the Mosaic covenant. Israel was to become a “kingdom of priests” as they mediated God’s liberating blessing to all peoples of the world. Animals and the earth itself are included in this covenant as shown in the Sabbath commandments. The land and the animals are to benefit from the rest of Sabbath and the Sabbatical Year.
- The fourth covenant in the Hebrew Scriptures is the Davidic Covenant. According to this covenant, God has chosen the house of David to rule Israel forever. Davidic kings maintained that this covenant was unconditional. No matter what errors the house of David may make, God would never reject these kings as rulers of Israel. God has chosen them as Her viceroys and sons and the Temple and Jerusalem as God’s dwelling place. Under God’s protection, they were to remain inviolate in perpetuity. These Davidic kings received a divine mandate to seek and establish shalom and justice in Israel and eventually throughout the world. In time the hope developed that a Davidic king would come who would fulfill all the promises of God. When that time came, the whole earth would turn to Israel for guidance as all peoples embraced the Torah of God and the world could become one. Cosmic shalom would occur in such a way that war would be no more; all resources would be used for the common good; and creation itself would enter into a new dimension of existence which omitted predation and fear. These promises later served as the basis for the hope of a Messiah who would usher in the final stage of God’s plan to reconcile, bless, and dwell with humanity and creation in intimate ways.
God’s involvement with Her people appeared to come to an end in 587 BCE. That year the Babylonian army conquered Jerusalem, left the city in ruins, destroyed the Temple, and put an end to the house of David ruling Israel. Many Jews were taken into exile in far-away Babylon. For fifty years, these conquered people languished as they cried out, “How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” People feared that their covenantal relationship with Yahweh was a thing of the past. Israel, through its sins of idolatry, injustice, and arrogance, had forfeited its right to be God’s chosen people.
However, there arose a prophet who announced “good news” to those in exile. God had forgiven the people and was ready to take them home to renew their relationship with their covenantal God. This prophet, called Second Isaiah, viewed this homecoming as a Second Exodus. Just as God has led her people from Egypt to the Promised Land, so God would tenderly escort these exiles back to their homeland. But this Second Exodus would be different from the first. “Remember not the former things, nor consider things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing!” (Isaiah 43:18-19) God, the everlasting Creator, was focused on the future, not the past. A new creative act was in the making. The prophet promised that God would return to Zion as King, Israel would become an independent nation never again to be ruled by pagans, the Temple would be gloriously and properly rebuilt, and the people would enter into a new era of blessing and obedience as they fulfilled the expectations from the previous covenants to become a “light unto the nations.” Such faithfulness would usher in an age of universal shalom for all peoples and all creation.
There was only one problem—the only part of these promises which became true was the return from exile. The Temple was never properly rebuilt, and the high priests who ran the Temple were illegitimate. The Messiah had not come. The heathen nations had not been subdued. The gentiles were not streaming to Jerusalem to learn the Torah. Israel itself was still mired in sin and compromise. With the exception of the brief rule of the Maccabees, the Jews would be under the heels of one pagan power after another: Persia, Alexander the Great, the Ptolemies, the Seleucids, and the Romans. For over 500 years, the Jews hoped for the promises of Second Isaiah to be fulfilled. Yes, they had returned from Babylon, but they were still “in exile” enjoying no independence and chaffing under the cruel yoke of pagan rulers.
By the time of Jesus and Paul, many of the Jews expected Yahweh to act decisively in history and bring to fruition all the long-awaited promises that would vindicate Israel, bring about cosmic shalom, and lead the whole world to submit to Israel’s monotheistic God. We know from writings dating from the first century CE that such hopes among Jews were cherished and widespread. Many Jews believed God would anoint a Messiah to inaugurate this great event in history. There is mention of at least a dozen would-be messiahs in the years during and after Jesus. Most of the Jews were on tiptoe waiting for God to return as King—their King and King of the cosmos. They were eagerly expecting the promises of Second Isaiah and Daniel to be fulfilled. Their Bible was a story in search of an ending. Many Jews believed that ending was upon them. (In light of this expectation, we can understand why Jews in Galilee and Judea were so excited by Jesus and his message that the Kingdom/Rule/Presence of God was arriving with and through him.)
So, where does Saul/Paul fit in all this expectation. (Paul was known by two names: Saul and Paul. Saul was his Jewish name while Paul was his Roman name. For convenience, I will refer to the apostle as Saul before his Damascus Road experience and Paul after that experience.) Saul described himself prior to his meeting Christ on the Damascus Road as “circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law a Pharisee, as to zeal a persecutor of the church, as to righteousness under the law, blameless.” (Philippians 3: 5-6) He was not just a Pharisee; he was among the strictest of Pharisees.
During the reign of Herod the Great (36-4 BCE), two divisions of Pharisees emerged. One was led by Rabbi Shammai and the other by Rabbi Hillel. Shammai and his followers might be characterized as Jewish right-wingers who believed that God wanted the Jews to be free from pagan rule and to have Yahweh alone as Israel’s master. They nurtured a zeal for a holy revolution in which the pagans would be defeated once and for all and renegade Jews would either be brought into line or destroyed with the pagans. Their zeal was about acting as God’s agent to rid Israel of corruption and freeing the Jews from pagan rule. They believed God was calling them to help bring the ancient promises to fruition. Violence and coercion were legitimate means to accomplish this end. (Hillel was the more moderate Pharisee. He and his followers were more of a “live and let live” group who believed that through their personal piety and devotion to Yahweh and the Torah, they were preparing Israel for the coming of God as King. After the second great Jewish war (132-135 CE), the Shammaites lost their following and the Hillites laid the foundation for the synagogue Judaism which continues to this day. Jesus and Hillel had a lot in common. We err when we group all Pharisees into one monolithic group and accuse them of hypocrisy and ruthless rigidity.)
Saul was typical of Shammaite Pharisees. He confesses that he persecuted the Jewish Christians in an attempt to force them back into the fold of the traditional faith. He simply could not accept that Jesus was the Messiah. Jesus’ death on the cross was scandalous. The Messiah was supposed to overthrow Roman rule, return Israel to the strict and narrow way of Shammaite Judaism, reform the Temple, and bring all gentiles into submission to the Torah of God. If violence was needed to achieved these goals, so be it. In Saul’s mind, the end justified any means necessary to prepare God’s people and the world for the fulfillment of these ancient promises. Jesus had done none of this. But once Saul met the resurrected Jesus on the Damascus Road, his whole world was turned upside down. He reports that it took him three years in Arabia and Damascus to process the shock he experienced that dramatic day. He accepted that Jesus was the Messiah. (If God had raised Jesus from the dead, God was validating Jesus’ identity as Messiah. We must remember that no Jew expected a single individual to be resurrected in history. Resurrection occurred at the end of history and was a communal event. Paul and the early church assumed, at least initially, that Jesus’ resurrection was the beginning of a universal resurrection which would occur very soon. With this expectation, the early church lived in what has been called “the eighth day of creatin.” In other words, the new creation had begun with Jesus’ resurrection and those following Jesus were already experiencing that newness.) And if Jesus was the God’s Anointed One Israel had been waiting for over many centuries, then Jesus was also Lord of the world and all creation. Saul, now Paul, had to jettison his old way of thinking and embrace a radically new paradigm.
It’s important to see that Paul still lived within the Jewish story as told above. He just came to believe that the great event Israel had been waiting for had already happened in the Christ event (the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus). God had defeated death and sin through unconditional, indiscriminate, self-giving, and everlasting love. Through that love, supremely revealed in the cross and resurrection of Jesus as God’s deep solidarity with sinful humanity and a marred creation, Yahweh had fulfilled all of Her promises. We can only imagine what kind of “conversion and repentance” Paul had to undergo as he now saw how wrong he had been about God, Jesus, and Jesus’ followers. If the Christ Event was what Israel and the whole of creation had been waiting for, then it was time for the gentiles to come into the fold of God’s people. This movement and blessing had been promised as far back as Sarah and Abraham. Facilitating such grace was the original mission of Israel. Instead of gentiles streaming to Jerusalem to learn and submit to the Torah, Paul would go out to the wider world. (For Paul, the Torah, which had served a noble and necessary purpose and had been the guiding principle of his religion, was replaced by a faith and fidelity to Jesus as Lord. Jesus was the ultimate fulfillment of all that God had intended in the Torah. Gentiles need not embrace the Torah to become a part of the Jesus movement. Torah had given way to trust in and fidelity to the way and person of Jesus.) In one of the greatest ironies of all time, Saul the persecutor of the church and a Pharisee zealous to see the gentiles defeated and brought into submission by a militaristic Messiah now became “an apostle to the gentiles” spending the rest of his life announcing the good news/gospel of how God had become King and Lord through Jesus, the crucified and resurrected Christ. A central part of that announcement was the very grace Paul had experienced—a grace which both humbled and emboldened him to give his all, including his life, to this surprising God present and revealed through Jesus.
So, Paul remained a Jew all his life. But he interpreted his faith, including the promises of Yahweh found In Second Isaiah, other prophets, the Psalms, the Exodus, the call of Abraham and Sarah, and the rainbow covenant associated with Noah in light of the Christ Event—the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. What then did Paul mean by the gospel? We will answer that question in part two of “Paul and the Gospel.” For now, please take the time to realize how Jewish Paul’s faith was both before and after his Damascus Road experience. Such was the faith of all the early Christians, almost all of whom were Jews. They simply believed that the great event Israel had been waiting for over many centuries had already happened with Jesus. The new creation had already begun with Jesus’ death and resurrection. They were a part of that radical newness, and they had so much good news/glad tidings/gospel to share.
[Much of this article is based on the insights of N. T. Wright who has written extensively on Paul. (Perhaps the easiest access to his understanding of Paul can be found in his book entitled What Saint Paul Really Said: Was Paul of Tarsus the Real Founder of Christianity? A great deal of this post is a summary of Wright’s explanation of Paul found in that book and several other of his works. Wright is recognized as one of the greatest New Testament scholars of our time. I find his exegesis of the Bible most helpful. I do not, however, agree with all his conclusions and especially all the ways he interprets the Scriptures for our time. I believe the fundamental difference between my approach to Scripture and Wright’s can be explained in this way. I see the Bible as human attempts to understand and interpret the presence and acts of God in this world. Great wisdom and truth can be found in the Bible. God can be found and can speak through those testimonies. In fact, the Bible is uniquely precious and necessary because it’s the only record we have regarding the historical Jesus. Since I believe in the incarnation and the resurrection, I must, therefore, take seriously this witness. However, this record is actually a number of testimonies based on intentional and select remembrances of Jesus. What we have is a remembered and interpreted Jesus, not an infallible and inerrant account of his life, teachings, death, and resurrection.
Each generation must interpret the Christ Event in its own way without betraying that which is essential in the original witness. As the United Church of Christ says, “God is still speaking,” and God still has much to teach us. I sense that Wright has a more conservative view of the role of Scripture in the formulation of contemporary theology. I, however, am more inclined toward a nuanced use of the Quadrilateral which employs Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience in trying to understand the Christ Event for our time and place. So, I agree with so much of Wright’s exegesis of the Bible but disagree with his theological stances on issues like lgbtq rights, the value of other faiths, and universal salvation. You may ask who am I to disagree with such a formidable scholar. I can only respond by saying that biblical scholars with credentials as impressive as Wright’s as well as many profound theologians in our day have similar problems with Wright’s contemporary and applied theology. I think God in Christ is a lot bigger and more gracious than Wright will allow.]
