The Gospel Plus
By George “Chip” Hammond
In October, Bethel celebrated Reformation Day with several of our sister churches. I began marking Reformation Day more than 20 years ago with an event in my home for anyone who wanted to attend, which included a carry-in dinner, a viewing of the move Luther, and a discussion afterward.
Over the years the event became so big I could no longer host it in my home, and it was moved to the church building. As word spread, more of our churches attended. Presently the event hosted by Bethel includes presentations by three to five speakers and congregational representation from five Orthodox Presbyterian Churches.
Reformation Day marks the recovery of the gospel. The word “gospel” simply means “good news.” The “good news” is that the Kingdom of God has arrived because the King has arrived (Mark 1:15). That Kingdom is different from every other kingdom on the face of the earth (John 18:36). It is now an invisible kingdom to all but those who are born again (John 3:3), but at the return of the King it will crush out of existence every earthly kingdom (Daniel 2:44, 1 Corinthians 15:24). In the meantime, Christians live as strangers and aliens in this world, a world of which we are not a part (John 17:16, Hebrews 11:13, 1 Peter 1:1, 2:11).
All the kings of this age (world) are and must be, to one degree or another, hostile to The King (1 Corinthians 2:8) because his agenda is, and always will be, a benevolent threat to theirs. The citizens of the Kingdom of God are those who have been reconciled to God through Jesus Christ and have been given the ministry of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:19). They are the ambassadors of this Kingdom. Their mission is to announce amnesty and pardon to all who will hear, and to prodigally invite everyone to come into his Kingdom (2 Corinthians 5:17-20). The invitation is the gospel: Jesus died for our sins, and rose again to give us new life, and calls us to trust in him. It is by faith alone that we are justified. Nothing else is needed. Being reconciled to God certainly and necessarily changes us. But our justification before God is by faith (Romans 3:26, 28, 5:1, Galatians 2:16, 3:24).
What the Reformation was all about
There were many reforming movements that led up to the historic event we call the Protestant Reformation, and all of them had the same impetus: the Roman Catholic Church had become corrupt in its practices, from the Vatican on down. While the Protestant Reformation began in this way (Luther’s Ninety-five Theses took issue with practice, not doctrine) the renewed interest in the Bible itself led to a tectonic shift in understanding: it was not merely the morals, but the message – the gospel itself – that had been corrupted.
The Roman Church was teaching that people are justified – made right with God – based on faith plus something else. The usual formulation of it is “faith plus works,” but not all works are the same. There are two kinds of “works.”
There are what Paul calls “the works of the law” (Romans 3:28). These are the works that God himself prescribed in his Word. We may make a distinction between the ceremonial laws (which are passe because what and who they foreshadowed has now come) and the civil laws of Israel (“which expired together with the state of that people”); and the moral law which binds all people in all ages. But keeping God’s moral law (to whatever degree anyone can) cannot justify us before God. Even if we could keep it perfectly, Jesus taught us that “When you have done all that you were commanded, you should say, 'We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty'" (Luke 17:10).
The other works prescribed by the Roman Church, however, were mere traditions. There were traditional rituals to observe, traditional clothes to wear, traditional songs to sing, traditional prayers to make. None of these were prescribed by God’s Word. They grew up by tradition. Not all of them were bad traditions (some were), but the point is that people were being told that to be pleasing to God, they had to believe in Christ and keep these traditions.
At this point it’s worth noting how easy it is to become the thing we react against. The initial criticism of Medieval Scholasticism was eventually replaced for a time by a Protestant Scholasticism. Some of those whose forbears railed against the tyranny of the Latin Vulgate because its language was not understood by the common people became the advocates for retaining the King James Version, regardless of the fact that its language is not understood by the common people (interestingly, this “Authorized version,” was authorized by the king to quell the desires of those who wanted reform in the English church. As the government-mandated and approved translation, it was deliberately meant to mute those of the Bible’s teachings which the king found inconvenient. Because of this it was never accepted by the Puritans, who persisted in preferring the Geneva Bible).
There were also the “accidents” of worship – those aspects of worship which are not specifically prescribed by the Bible, such as when the congregation speaks or sings together, and when it is spoken for, or on behalf of. In Roman Catholicism the liturgy became in inviolable form. But after their initial critique, it became evident that Protestants were capable of the same. The antics of an aging Samuel Miller, the great Princeton professor, standing alone at times in the worship, or refusing to stand when others did, in protest that some of the adiaphora (matters of indifference) of the worship service had changed from what he was traditionally used stands as a sad illustration.
The Letter to Diognetus
In about the year A.D. 130 a letter was sent to one “Diognetus” by someone who identified himself only as “one who is a disciple of the apostles.” Because the vocabulary tracks closely with what is found in John’s writings (the Gospel, three epistles, and Revelation), many scholars believe that the writer, like Polycarp and Papias, was a disciple of the apostle John. The letter gives tremendous insight into what the early post-apostolic church looked like:
For the Christians are distinguished from other men neither by country, nor language, nor by the customs which they observe. For they do not inhabit cities of their own, nor employ a peculiar form of speech, nor lead a life of any uniqueness. The course of conduct they follow has not been devised by any speculation or deliberation of inquisitive men, nor do they like some proclaim themselves the advocates of any human doctrines. But inhabiting Greek as well as barbarian cities, according to the situation of each of them, they follow the customs of the natives in respect to clothing, food, and the rest of their ordinary conduct; in doing so they display to us their wonderful and confessedly striking method of life. They dwell in their own countries, but as sojourners. As citizens they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as foreigners. Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers. They marry as do others; they beget children, but they do not abort their offspring. They have a common table, but not a common bed. They are in the flesh, but they do not live after the flesh. They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven. They obey the prescribed laws but surpass those laws by their lives. They love all men but are persecuted by all. . . They are insulted and repay the insult with honor. They do good yet are punished as evildoers. When punished they rejoice as if made alive. They are assailed by Jews as foreigners and persecuted by the Greeks, yet those who hate them are unable to assign any reason for their hatred.
The Christians of the author’s day did not stand out in any way to the casual observer. Unlike ancient or modern orthodox Jews, they didn’t dress or speak differently than others. They ate the same foods, spoke the same languages, and in all things not sinful shared a common life with those they lived among.
Historians such as Bruce Shelley indicate that this is the reason why Christianity spread so quickly in its early days. Unlike Judaism (and later Islam), becoming a Christian did not require one to learn a different language, or eat different foods, or observe holidays that distinguished them from the cultures around.
The early Christians observed the same holidays as the cultures they lived in, and where those holidays conflicted with their faith, rather than shun them they coopted them. Thus, Saturnalia became Christmas, the feast of the goddess Esther became Easter, and the Galic celebration of Sauin became the Eve of All Saints Day (Hallow E’en).
But then a strange thing happened. The observation of these days which sprung from the liberty of the Christian faith became its binding. By the late Middle Ages, rightness with God was understood to be brought about by the gospel plus, the “plus” being, among other things, attendance at the Christmas mass, the Easter mass, and the mass on the Eve of All Saints Day.
The Gospel in a Pluralist Society
Lesslie Newbigin (1909-1998) was a minister and theologian in the Scottish Presbyterian Church. He was a missionary to India from the 1950s to the 1970s. In his book The Gospel in a Pluralist Society he noted that on Christmas Day in the Ramakrishna monastery the Hindu monks would offer worship before a picture of Jesus. Newbigin wrote, “To me, as a foreign missionary, it was obvious that this was not a step toward the conversion of India. It was the cooption of Jesus into the Hindu worldview. . . Jesus had been domesticated into the Hindu worldview.”
Newbigin said that it was not until he returned to his native Britain that he realized that Western Europe, including the evangelical Christian sector of Western Europe, had done the same. They had coopted Jesus into a Western worldview and had domesticated him. The challenge of Newbegin’s book is to examine and become aware of where we have coopted and domesticated Jesus.
The issue is tradition. Tradition is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the Reformation was a movement against tradition. On the other hand, we can’t escape tradition. We speak of “the Christian tradition,” and we can break it down further to the “Western Christian tradition,” the “Roman Catholic tradition,” and “the Reformed tradition.”
The Reformed tradition (of which Newbigin was a part) has many facets, including traditional church building décor, traditional dress, traditional music, and traditional practices surrounding the Lord’s Table, to name a few. Many aspects of these are adiaphora. Much of our worship practice is, as our fathers in the faith observed, a matter of “circumstances common to human actions and societies, which are to be ordered by the light of nature and Christian prudence, according to the general rules of the Word.”
The power of the early church had been precisely in the fact that it was “tradition-less.” The council at Jerusalem in Acts 15 had seen to it. Jewish culture and tradition would not be attached to the custodial organization of the Kingdom of God. The Diognetus letter observed that “The Christians are distinguished from other men neither by language, nor by the customs which they observe. But inhabiting Greek as well as barbarian cities, according to the situation of each of them, they follow the customs of the natives in respect to clothing, food, and the rest of their ordinary conduct.”
Yet traditions must of necessity arise wherever the gospel goes. When Christ became flesh, he did so with a definite color hair, a peculiar and definite shape to his nose, and he grew to a measurable height. So too when the church gathers for worship: it must do so in specific buildings with specific furniture. Clergy and laity must wear clothing, and the worship must be conducted in some language. And there will be a thousand other smaller things that must be one specific way or another. Some of these will be by default; others will be done with purpose. Some will be an attempt to follow the Bible in a realm where the Bible gives little guidance (an example of this can be seen whenever there is rendering of the tabernacle and its furniture. While the individual artists will capture the parameters of the words that describe what the tabernacle and its furnishing were to be like, the renditions are often remarkably different).
And here is precisely the place we must be on our guard that our tradition does not become a “gospel plus.” It is worth noting that while “in the days of his flesh” (Hebrews 5:7) the Son of God had a definite color hair, a peculiar and definite shape to his nose, and he grew to a measurable height, the Bible never describes these physical features. Real and physically necessary as they were, regarding the gospel itself they are matters of indifference.
What this has to do with our topic is this: in all Paul’s missionary journeys, he never stayed long (weeks or months; two years seems to have been the upper limit). Rolland Allen, missionary to China in the early twentieth century observed that Paul’s missionary method had the effect of establishing the gospel, but not a tradition. Paul preached the gospel, raised up a church, ordained elders, and then beat feet.
Allen wrote, “By contrast the nineteenth-century missionary considered it necessary to stay not merely for a lifetime, but for the lifetime of several generations of missionaries. Why? Because he did not think his work was done until the local church had developed a leadership which had mastered and internalized the culture of Europe, its theological doctrines, its administrative machinery, its architecture, its music; until there was a complete replica of ‘the home church’ equipped with everything from archdeacons to harmoniums. The young church was to be a carbon copy of the old church in England, Scotland, or Germany.”
Allen concluded from his study of Scripture and reflection on his missionary labors that the work of missions is simply that a congregation of those who respond to the gospel message should be established and furnished with a Bible, sacraments, and the apostolic ministry (appointed teachers and elders). “When these conditions are fulfilled, the missionary has done [the] job. The young church is then free to learn, as it goes and grows, how to embody the gospel in its own culture.”
This principle is true and important, though it should not be pushed to an absurd degree. Paul returned to the churches to see how they were progressing, and he wrote letters to guide them. But he did not see fit to impose traditional adiaphora upon them. While the earliest Christian observation of the Lord’s Supper used unleavened bread because the Supper had been derived from the Passover, Paul does not bat an eye that the church in Corinth used leavened bread (1 Corinthians 10, where Paul incidentally notes the Corinthian’s use of artos – leavened bread, and not azumos – unleavened bread – in their communion celebrations), nor is he phased by even some of the bizarre and propriety practices of the Corinthians in their worship (see 1 Corinthians 15:29).
Paul was able to make a distinction between what was tradition and what was gospel principle. He was zealous for gospel principle. He was indifferent to tradition. It is ironic that those who are the spiritual descendants of the Reformation, which sought to recover Paul’s careful distinction over and against the Roman Catholic Church’s adherence to tradition often now cannot distinguish between gospel principle and the adiaphora of their tradition.
The Gospel Plus is No Gospel
Like all churches in the U.S., Bethel Church is living in a post-Christian western world. Located in northern Virginia, we’re probably “poster” Christian than much of the country. We are also on the verge of having God bring a new mission field to our doorstep. It is very likely that many of these people have never been inside a church before. In their interactions with Bethel Church, what they see and what they hear will seem strange to them. It will behoove the elders and the church at large to carefully identity and have a clear conceptual distinction between the Christian Faith and our traditions.
This is not to say that the church should strive for the repristinated “traditionlessness” of the apostolic age. That is impossible, just as it would be impossible for Jesus to have had hair without color and a nose without a shape. But not to recognize the difference, to offer them “the gospel plus” our tradition, if by that we convey that the tradition is necessary to be pleasing to God, would be to deny the gospel.
We cannot escape having tradition, and we should not try to. But we must be clear about what is our tradition, and what is the gospel, lest we be “like some who proclaim themselves the advocates of human doctrines.” It will be well to ask how our traditions are viewed, and which of them are necessary for our identity.
I have been and will be praying for Bethel Church’s integration into and reception by the new community. I anticipate the great work God is going to accomplish with this new opportunity. But if the church and her message are rejected by the new community let it be only for the gospel and for the Word of God that she is rejected or despised. Let it not be for “the gospel plus.”
