Christian Origins from a Cuban

Check the site for this great new book!

download notes from house of learning for Canon

Licona vs. Puckett (2012) from Mike Licona on Vimeo.

William Lane Craig points to three factors that make for a sound argument.

1. The premises must be true.
2. The conclusion must follow from the premises by the rules of logic.
3. The premises must be more plausible than their negations.

Just got word that Keener’s massive volume, Miracles will be coming out for Kindle sometime right after the new year.

I prefer to have this hefty volume in a digital edition for searching and clicking on KEENER footnotes.

“For Christians Jesus was the miracle working Son of God. For later, hostile Jews he was a magician. Josephus stands in the middle: for him Jesus was a wise man and a performer of extraordinary deeds.”

Geza Vermes, Professor of Jewish studies, Oxford

Although not really a Pharisee himself, he was closest to the Pharisees of the school of Hillel, who preached love, but he pointed the way further to unconditional love – even of one’s enemies and of sinners.

David Flusser

A new journal, ‘Early Christianity’ has commenced, and hurtado reviews here.

Hurtado reviews the dialogue at his blog here

Logos has recently released the Perseus collection

Jim West reviews the Perseus collection here

Phil Long reviews here

The gospel is the announcement that God has revealed his kingdom and opened it up to sinners through the birth, teaching, miracles, death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, who will one day return to overthrow evil and consummate the kingdom for eternity.

When the plan gets separated from the story, the plan almost always becomes abstract, propositional, logical, rational, and philosophical and, most importantly, de-storified and unbiblical. When we separate the Plan of Salvation from the story, we cut ourselves off from the story that identifies us and tells our past and tells our future. We separate ourselves from Jesus and turn the Christian faith into a System of Salvation.

Part I here

In Ch. 3 McKnight lays out 4 categories. 

1. The Story of Israel/the Bible.
2. The Story of Jesus.
3. The Plan of Salvation
4. Method of Persuasion.

And asks:

“Which of these four categories would you apply the term gospel to?”

He argues that these four categories are connected and ought to build on top of one another.

Like this

Mcknight argues that:

“without the story of Israel, the story of Jesus makes no sense, and without the story of Jesus, the plan of salvation makes no sense.”

Mcknight opines on the Plan of Salvation:

“sometimes we are so singularly focused on the personal-Plan-of-Salvation and how-we-get-saved that we eliminate the Story of Israel and the Story of Jesus altogether.”

again:

“The Plan of Salvation and the Method of Persuasion have been given so much weight they are crushing and have crushed the Story of Israel and the Story of Jesus.”

Like this:

again:

“Our Method of Persuasion is shaped by a salvation culture (rather than a gospel culture) and is designed from first to last to get people to make a decision so they can come safely inside the boundary lines of the church.”

And Mcknight argues on the Story of Israel/Jesus, “without the Israel and Jesus story there is no gospel, and if we ignore that story, the gospel gets distorted, and that is

just what has happened in salvation cultures.”

 In sum:

Salvation cultures have

• Focused on methods of Persuasion, rather than the persuasive content of the gospel.
• Have equated the Plan of Salvation with either the Story of Israel or the Story of Jesus & distorted the gospel and at times even ruined the Story.

the Plan of Salvation

• is not the apostolic gospel.
• The Plan of Salvation emerges from the Story of Israel/Bible and from the Story of Jesus

 Personal Thoughts

It is unfortunate when the method of persuasion becomes the focus of evangelistic curriculum. The curriculum then aids the student in rendering the ‘unintelligible’ plan of salvation persuasive. Why not just make sure our people understand who Jesus is, what he thought, and taught?  I like where McKight is headed so far. Can we not infer from the beginning of Mark’s gospel, that the gospel is the story of Jesus who is the climax of the TaNaK? I think we can.

Mcknight is convinced that because, by and large we think the gospel is the Plan of Salvation, and because we preach the Plan of Salvation as the gospel, we are not actually preaching the gospel. I agree. Trying to persuade people to believe a few propositional truths about the ‘plan of salvation’ rather than introducing them to the person and work of Jesus is a bit weird, and unlike what the apostles were doing. Indeed the apostles gospel was thoroughly story bound and Christological.

Anyone who seeks to deny completely Paul’s commitment to the earthly figure of the crucified Jesus makes him a docetic theologian.

Hengel

 A review of Scott Mcknight’s “The King Jesus Gospel”

In ch. 1 Mcknight argues well that the evangelical church often gets the gospel wrong. 

Excerpt:

I think we’ve got the gospel wrong, or at least our current understanding is only a pale reflection of the gospel of Jesus and the apostles….  I believe the word gospel has been hijacked by what we believe about “personal salvation,” and the gospel itself has been reshaped to facilitate making “decisions.” The result of this hijacking is that the word gospel no longer means in our world what it originally meant to either Jesus or the apostles.

In ch. 2 Mcknight distinguishes between a Gospel culture (euangelion) and a salvation (soterian) culture 

Excerpt:

In this book I will be contending firmly that we evangelicals (as a whole) are not really “evangelical” in the sense of the apostolic gospel, but instead we are soterians. Here’s why I say we are more soterian than evangelical: we evangelicals (mistakenly) equate the word gospel with the word salvation. Hence, we are really “salvationists.” When we evangelicals see the word gospel, our instinct is to think (personal) “salvation.” We are wired this way. But these two words don’t mean the same thing, and this book will do its best to show the differences.

What has happened is that we have created a “salvation culture” and mistakenly assumed it is a “gospel culture.” 

Mcknight’s plea, in ch.1 &2, is that we go back to the NT and appreciate the distinction in our evangelistic words and methods! I agree. Stay tuned for the rest of the book.