Thursday, August 13, 2009

Congruence with the Gospels

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. - Galatians 4:4-5



N.T. Wright on Paul's "gospel" and its congruence with the Gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke and John:

...once we reinstate the Pauline emphasis, there is far less of a strange break between Paul’s ‘gospel’ and the written ‘gospels’ than there is if we suppose the former to be the announcement of a new, non-historical, way of being religious, or of finding a non-historical salvation, and the latter to represent a failure of nerve, an attempt to ground the supposedly ahistorical gospel in history after all. If we take Paul’s ‘gospel’ to denote the announcement that the true God has acted in fulfilment of his promises, sending the Messiah to die and be raised, and so ushering in the new world order in which the false gods are confronted and confounded and their adherents summoned to a new and liberating allegiance, then we may realise that that description would do fairly well for Matthew, Mark, Luke and John as well, for all their obvious differences from one another and from Paul. Mark’s Jesus (‘the time is fulfilled; the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe the gospel’) is quite at home with Paul (‘when the time had fully come, God sent forth his son…’).

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