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I’m reading a book, by Jonathan T. Pennington, titled “Reading the Gospels Wisely: A Narrative and Theological Introduction.”
Chapter 3 is titled: “Why Do We Need the Gospels? (Or Why Saint Paul is Not Enough)”.
Pennington’s personal prior experience: “The churches I went to didn’t preach much from or talk much about them. We talked and preached about “the gospel,” which we defined as the forgiveness of sins available through Jesus’ death and resurrection, but curiously “the Gospels” didn’t fit much into that; rather we got it from Paul.”
Pennington gives 9 reasons for why Christians need the Gospels:
1. “They have been central to the church throughout its history.”
2. “Paul and the other New Testament writers presuppose and build on the story and teaching of Jesus.”
3. “the tradition behind them are not [subsequent to most of the epistles]; they go back to the time of Jesus himself….”
4. “in them we get a more direct sense of the Bible’s great story line.”
5. “they offer a concentrated exposure to the biblical emphasis on the coming kingdom of God.”
6. “there are different languages or discourses of truth.” [Propositional doctrine vs. Story or Narrative. We need them both.]
7. The Gospels provide “in many ways a more comprehensive and paradigmatic type of map [of the truth].”
8. “encountering Jesus in the narrative helps us grow in experiential knowledge and realize that reality does not always fit into neat little boxes of “truth.”
9. “in the Gospels alone we have a personal, up-front encounter with Jesus Christ. As much as we love and need the Epistles, they are not enough.”
Some questions for discussion:
A. What are your experiences with the use of the 4 Gospels in your church?
B. Do the Gospels make you uncomfortable from the perspective that they raise questions that are not so easily explained in terms of neat doctrinal propositions?
C. Do you agree or disagree with any particular reasons given by Pennington forwhy the Church and Christians need to study the Gospels?
I think these are excellent questions.
In the Reformed world we placed a heavy emphasis on Pauline theology to construct a neat systematic theology.
I have since started putting as much weight on the Gospels..especially the Sermon on the Mount and embrace the paradoxical results from doing so.
Thanks for the point of discussion Jean.
A – We go through at least two of the Gospels every year. I can’t imagine anyone worshiping with us over time and thinking we neglect the Gospels. It’s actually hard to imagine this happening at any church, by I suppose that it does.
B – Maybe, but not in a bad way. The questions raised keep us engaged, searching for answers, finding other questions. I love it. I love the synoptical issue. I love struggling to reconcile Paul with the Gospels. I love seeing the Old Testament through the lens of the Gospels.
C – 1-6, and 9 are good. I’d have to get more info to agree on 7 and 8.
At my church I would say at least 80% of the sermons are from the Gospels.
Michael #2,
Your prior experience appears to mirror Pennington’s:
“For Protestants, especially evangelicals, especially Reformed, doctrine-oriented ones, we love Paul. Give us Romans and thirteen years to preach through it phrase by phrase, and we’ll be in heaven! We love chewy, heady doctrine – wrestling with election, justification, sanctification. We know doctrine is important, and we know that Bible makes claims about theology and how we ought to live, so we love Paul. He’s a straight shooter; he nails it on the head; he lays out the truth in powerful and straightforward ways. He provides a clear map of the theological landscape and the moral path for our lives.”
A. We go through the scripture broadly but slowly. This year, the first 151 days of the year we are reading the Psalms, and almost all the sermons are out of one of that week’s psalms. We’ll probably hit two or three more books of the bible this year, probably at least one of them from the New Testament, but we don’t study a gospel every year. Instead the pastor tries to tie whatever passage we are using to the full story of the Bible every sermon. We can count on the Christmas story every Christmas and the Passion/Crucifixtion every Easter.
B. Not really. The Christian life does not seem to me readily explainable in neat doctrinal propositions. I came through philosophy to Christianity, and had to get comfortable with not being able to neatly explain “God is good” before I converted, so the Gospels aren’t any additional challenge. I also don’t think Paul is neat and easy to understand either – he is known for being hard to understand, and is often writing into unspecified local church contexts that we have to guess at before we can understand what he means. See also the new perspective on Paul and the long history of debating his interpretation.
C. Most of those reasons I could agree with. 4 and 7 I don’t really agree with. On #4, we can get reminders of the whole story line from parts of the epistles and parts of the gospels, and we can miss it in other parts of each. #7 uses a metaphor which I can’t quickly wrestle down well enough to agree or disagree with, but lean toward disagreeing with.
grberry – Good reply. Do you mind telling us what kind of church you are from?
Jean,
I would affirm everything this author has said so far…I’m putting this book on my list for future reading.
Josh: I came to Christ on the north side of 30 in a “non-denominational” church that had been planted by a Southern Baptist church. It was largely baptist, otherwise I tended to describe it as semi-this and semi-that and semi-the-other-thing. It was definitely focused on the college and immediate post-college age group.
A few years ago I and my family switched to a Baptist church with a youth group. Officially, it is affiliated with both the Conservative Baptists and the Southern Baptists locally/regionally for fellowship not for governance. The Conservatives get a plate on the door – the Southern’s are more present regionally and are actually interacted with more. In theory, we could not now become an affiliate of the Conservative Baptists because we have and welcome female elders. Our pastor was originally ordained in the American Baptists. Weekly attendance, including kids and youth runs about 80 odd lately plus or minus, with a multi-generational, multi-racial, multi-class mix. Located between some major colleges, we draw some from them, more from the graduate students than the undergraduates, though some of them also.
Originally it was an 1870s mission outreach of the First Baptist Church in town (about a 10-15 minute walk away), offering a Sunday School to the children of the dockworkers. Eventually the Sunday School workers formed a separate church, which thrived for almost a hundred years despite some setbacks (pastor tried and executed for murder, later a church split, that sort of thing), but eventually shrank so small that they called in the Conservative Baptists to do a replant.
While there is a huge city around us, we aren’t that good at outreach and need to get better.
We’re dealing with a homeless crisis here in the bay area. It’s bad. Very bad. I see camps popping up all over the place. Some get rousted. New ones pop up. A local pastor and an organization are stepping in. Sometimes it’s to replace tents and belongings that the cops take. I’ve seen mini camps spring up on city streets. The larger ones are under overpasses.
On the other side, a lot of the homeless are hoarders, and the camps get out of control with the junk.
The richest part of the nation, and we have this problem, yet it’s not so easy to solve. There are a lot of dynamics in play, and varying levels of homelessness. I see the people living in RVs all over the place. At least they have shelter other than tarps.
New Victor, it isn’t just in your area and has been heavy on my mind and heart for a while now … I had thought about posting here today on open blog – in light of all the concern here for the undocumented among us, i’ve been wondering how many of the Phxp peeps have this on their radar… so glad you posted this
There are homeless camps in every city now … Cities are passing ordinances prohibiting parking an RV on the street overnight because there are so many …. When working people can no longer keep a roof over their heads, there is something insidious and evil going on … these people are no longer solely our druggies and dropouts, although there are too many of those folk….
Churches in the Puget Sound area have taken turns hosting camps, but that isnt the answer…
Popped in to say hi…The New Victor, I’ll be in your neck of the woods tomorrow. Unbelievable what folks suffer in “rich” California.
In comment #1, I mentioned a book I am reading, by Jonathan T. Pennington, titled “Reading the Gospels Wisely: A Narrative and Theological Introduction.”
For anyone who might like to learn more before or without purchasing the book, the following U Tube lecture by Pennington provides a good synopsis of why the Gospels are of essential value for the Church and Christian faith formation and discipleship and how to read them wisely. The video is high quality and his speaking skills are very good too.
I love Puget Sound. My buddy lives in port Townsend. That area is on my list of places to retire. The trouble is differentiating, since “the homeless” aren’t one group for the same reasons. My mother, suffering from multiple mental illnesses, was like a homeless person with property, and she trashed it, being a Hoarder. We were kind of homeless in my teen years, slept in a car, in a shelter, lived in a cab over camper, but that was due to her choices. As the adult protective services worker told me last year, “we can’t just grab your milk from her property. People have rights, ” even though everyone knew that was what needed to be done.
The RV people are often tech workers, making what are considered good salaries in the rest of the country. I suppose they could rent rooms…
The mentally ill and such are “the least of these.” I haven’t been able to volunteer with the outreach in a while, but I got the sense that a lot are beaten down by life, a different cohort than the posters here, for example, even if a lot here have been beaten down by life.
Some are perps, some are also victims (illicit sex trade, drugs). My ex attended a workshop this weekend for women. The illicit sex trade is a big problem around here. Hollister (south of San Jose) is a hot spot.
Is like The Matrix: another world exists right next to us, and it’s bad. Very bad.
New Victor, it sounds like you have a frame of reference that gives you an understanding of what we are seeing now
Such sorrowful things aren’t new, but the proliferation doesn’t seem to bother most of us and that bothers me… our nation will soon be a giant Calcutta at the rate we are now declining into what must be called “castes” for want of a better definition of our polarizing social make up
How this national change places, accomodates the Church, i’m not sure
But this is the weekend open blog, so it is a good place to ponder such…
Port Townsend is an interesting, historic place… a littke further west down the road is Squim with a little more sunshine ? lots to do to make one’s retirement relaxed and enjoyable… We retired to the east side of the Cascades and between high techs moving in and folk mkving in after selling Seattle real estate for ten times what they paid for it twenty years ago … things are hopping …. Port Townsend would be a better choice today
I saw the usual suspects near the flea market today, soliciting money for a funeral at the stop light. I see these guys every few months in other parts of town. It was next to homeless tents set up on the street that the cops have let be for months now. The funeral is an obvious scam. I didn’t donate, but still thought “give to everyone who asks of you.” I saw a group of millennials try the same thing at the local supermarket. They did that for three months. A scam. What does our Lord command us to do? Give without question. Tough choice, given the legitimate giving choices which are plentiful….