I’ve been doing quite a bit of reading on the Apostle Paul this Summer. It’s been amazing. Doing so has forced me to revisit this basic question: what is the gospel? Christians have creeds with exact formulas that help us understand the doctrines of the incarnation of Jesus, the Trinity, and other less important matters. But we do not have a creed that concretely defines what the gospel is. If you ask different Christians for a definition, you will get various responses. Some will be contradictory to each other. Others will be complementary. The denominational group one belongs to will frame and shape your answer accordingly. A Catholic/Orthodox will give you a very different formulation of the gospel than, say, an American Evangelical.

What is the gospel (at it’s simplest) based just on the Bible?

“Jesus is the Christ” is the BASIC gospel message in the Bible. See Acts 5:42; 8:4-5; 9:22; 17:2-3; 18:5, 28.

The New Testament obviously elaborates and expands on that by explaining the meaning and significance of the Messiahship of Jesus. The Apostle PAUL is the person who we are most indebted to for helping us understand/live the gospel. What is the gospel according to the Apostle Paul? Is there someone who could summarize his message in one sentence? Michael Gorman does just that. Let’s see how he summarizes Paul’s gospel:

Paul preached, and then explained in various pastoral, community-forming letters, a narrative, apocalyptic, theopolitical gospel (1) in continuity with the story of Israel and (2) in distinction to the imperial gospel of Rome (and analogous powers) that was centered on God’s crucified and exalted Messiah Jesus, whose incarnation, life, and death by crucifixion were validated and vindicated by God in his resurrection and exaltation as Lord, which inaugurated the new age or new creation in which all members of this diverse but consistently covenantally dysfunctional human race who respond in self-abandoning and self-committing faith thereby participate in Christ’s death and resurrection and are (1) justified, or restored to right covenant relations with God and with others; (2) incorporated into a particular manifestation of Christ the Lord’s body on earth, the church, which is an alternative community to the status-quo human communities committed to and governed by Caesar (and analogous rulers) and by values contrary to the gospel; and (3) infused both individually and corporately by the Spirit of God’s Son so that they may lead “bifocal” lives, focused both back on Christ’s first coming and ahead to his second, consisting of Christlike, cruciform (cross-shaped) (1) faith and (2) hope toward God and (3) love toward both neighbors and enemies (a love marked by peaceableness and inclusion), in joyful anticipation of (1) the return of Christ, (2) the resurrection of the dead to eternal life, and (3) the renewal of the entire creation.

There it is. Paul’s gospel in one long, complex sentence!

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man is there among you who, when his son asks for a loaf, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, he will not give him a snake, will he? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him!  [Mathew 7:7-11, NASB]

Jesus’ words are both the source of incredible consolation as well frustration to millions of Christians. The main reason for this, I argue, is because of preachers who teach the bible without adequately and critically interpreting it. It is not enough to preach and teach the bible. We must train believers to think and reason theologically. I intend to do just this in this post.

Does everyone who asks really receive? Does everyone who seeks find?? Is the door opened to everyone who knocks??? That’s what Jesus says in Matthew 7. But what does our experience in this world teach us?

I think it is obvious that faith often asks, seeks, and knocks to no avail. It is fine to be pious, to be full of faith, to claim the promises of God, to pray for and expect divine assistance. But to me there is something even better than this sort of faith: unconditional faithfulness to God. Let me show you what I mean by using two passages from the Old Testament: one from Daniel, and the other from Habakkuk.

But even if He does not…

Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied to the king, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to give you an answer concerning this matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire; and He will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But even if He does not, let it be known to you, O king, that we are not going to serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.”  – Daniel 3:16-18

This passage concerns the story of Daniel’s three friends who refused to bow down and worship some huge golden image in defiance of the orders of Nebuchadnezzar. They believed God to be able to save them. But they were committed to being faithful to the exclusive worship of God, even if this meant death for them. They were thrown into the fire, and miraculously saved from it. We can surmise that they were confident that God would save them. But more than anything they were determined to die as martyrs if need be. Obedience was better than life to them. This is a very radical way to live. Even if God did not choose to save them, they were determined to be faithful to God to the point of death.

I heard and my inward parts trembled,

At the sound my lips quivered.

Decay enters my bones,

And in my place I tremble.

Because I must wait quietly for the day of distress,

For the people to arise who will invade us.

Though the fig tree should not blossom

And there be no fruit on the vines,

Though the yield of the olive should fail

And the fields produce no food,

Though the flock should be cut off from the fold

And there be no cattle in the stalls,

Yet I will exult in the Lord,

I will rejoice in the God of my salvation.

The Lord God is my strength,

And He has made my feet like hinds’ feet,

And makes me walk on my high places.

–Habakkuk 3.16-19

I’m not going to spend time going over the background to the book of Habakkuk. The words speak for themselves: he is committed to exulting the Lord, rejoicing in the God of his salvation, even when material blessings are absent, even when things are not going well. Can we do that? Can we rejoice in our God, even when we can barely pay the bills? Even when we are sick? Even when our prayers go unanswered?

Often times the words of Jesus are to be read as you would something in the book of Proverbs: as generalizations, not as binding promises that you can claim and count on them not going unfulfilled. It is a good thing to pray. It is good to seek for what we want and knock on the doors of opportunity. It is better to entrust yourself to God and not worry so much about whether your prayers are answered or not. This will often be painful, often be met with accusations of faithlessness, and often drive you  through seasons of apparent godforsakeness. So be it. Let us have the resolve of Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, and Habakkuk.

Let us pray for a faith like Mary’s who prayed like this:

My soul exalts the Lord,

And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.

It’s been about five weeks since I was welcomed back into the Catholic Church. Some people were happy for me. Others were disappointed, as they saw me as someone with unwavering Protestant convictions. I still hold to many such convictions. I have just added a few Catholic convictions to my minimalist set of beliefs.

The Catholic Church is not a perfect fit for me, but I decided to join it in large part believing this to be the best path forward for my family: my wife is a former Catholic. My son goes to a Catholic school. And so forth. Were I a single man, I would probably have become Eastern Orthodox instead. This would be a much better fit for me.

If it weren’t for Richard Rohr and other contemplative Catholics, I don’t think I would have ever even considered returning. I am still happy I decided to join the Catholic Church, but I am not now nor do I ever expect to become a Catholic who is zealous for the Papacy, devotion to Mary and the Saints, the Rosary, and so forth. I have been so deeply formed by Reformed Theology (think Karl Barth, Thomas F. Torrance, and Jurgen Moltmann) that I cannot ever come to accept many Catholic teachings and practices. I see many Catholic teachings and practices as theologically permissible, historically supportable, but not necessarily essential to the gospel of Jesus Christ, the core of Christian Faith.

When I think about my faith I think mostly in terms of theological labels, rather than ecclesiastical ones. I consider myself a Christian first, a Universalist second, and a Catholic thirdly and almost exclusively in the sense that I belong to and am an active member of a local Catholic parish.

When you become a Universalist, a lot of things that used to be of extreme importance are relegated to being of relative importance. Being a Christian is of extreme importance to me. Being Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Evangelical, or Pentecostal is always a secondary matter for me.

The two great theological questions that I have wrestled with for decades at this point are:

1. Will God save all without exception?

2. Is God’s grace completely free and unconditional??

I answer both in the affirmative, knowing full well that a lot of the tradition, a lot of the Bible, and most of the churches deny both. But in my view you cannot truly have a good news gospel without affirming both. The questions just raised above are of utmost importance to me. They define the core of my faith, and religious practice. I am not interested in old, worn out debates between Protestants and Catholics. Both are right in many respects. Both are wrong in many respects. What I aim to do is to synthesize the two in my own life and move forward, now as member of the Catholic Church, later perhaps once again as a member of a Protestant Church. Who knows? I’m no one of any ecclesial significance. I am not ordained. I am not a scholar. Nor am I even a deacon anywhere!

At the moment all I am really doing is to heed the advice from the Apostle Paul:

Now about your love for one another we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other. And in fact, you do love all of God’s family throughout Macedonia. Yet we urge you, brothers and sisters, to do so more and more, and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.

–1 Thessalonians 4:9-12

The harsh judgments of humanity against the actual performance of Christianity are with us for the rest of history. All peoIt is never a black-and-white story, although our dualistic minds (on either side!) want to make it so. You can, however, know the dark side and history of Christianity and still happily be a Christian. (I count myself among this group!) But it takes a contemplative or nondual mind, which does not allow you denial but teaches you integration, reconciliation, and forgiveness. ple need to do is Google, and they will know what really seems to have happened.

You must build your tent somewhere in this world, and there is no pedestal of purity on which to stand apart and above. “Blood cries out from” every plot of land on this earth (Genesis 410). It is only our egos that want and demand such superiority. Religion tends to start with “purity codes” of one type or another, but it must not end there.

–Father Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ: how a forgotten reality can change everything we see, hope for, and believe; page 206

This is one of the most powerful passages in the best book I have ever read. Either you understand what he says or you don’t.

Today I officially returned to the Catholic Church.

I was baptized into the church as an infant, but later ended up getting rebaptized as a freshman in college when I was still seventeen. A very fundamentalist campus ministry convinced me that my infant baptism had not been valid 🤣, and so I ended up becoming a Protestant for a bit more than the next twenty years. Reading the work of Fr. Richard Rohr and David Bentley Hart showed me I no longer needed a Protestant faith in order to thrive spiritually and intellectually as a Christian.

I confessed the creed before Father Paul & Father Carlos this evening. A few talks with Fr. Paul preceded this, of course, but that is all it took for me.

I can now say I am a Roman Catholic. I’m happy, but I know this “conversion” of sorts can be viewed both as a joyful event and also as a triggering event, depending on people’s religious experiences and convictions. Like the Ethiopian eunuch, today I too went home rejoicing. Thanks be to God.