What is the gospel? How would you define it in a single sentence? This question gets bantered around quite a bit and there is more than one way to truthfully answer it. Here's an attempt that I found particularly helpful.

This is from Herman Bavinck's Reformed Dogmatics. Bavinck was a nineteenth-century Dutch neo-Calvinist theologian who left an incredible four-volume systematic theology which has only recently been fully translated into English. I'm spot-reading in it and so found this quote.
Here's what I like about it.
2. It captures the story-line of Scripture - notice creation ("creation of the Father"), fall ("devasted by sin"), redemption ("restored in the death of the Son of God"), and new creation ("re-created by the Holy Spirit into a kingdom of God.").
3. It is cross-centered - "restored in the death of the Son of God." I think it would be better to also add the resurrection and say "restored in the death and resurrection of the Son of God." But I am glad that the death of Christ is not minimized, but is front and center.
4. It is kingdom-oriented - "re-created by the Holy Spirit into a [should we say "the"] kingdom of God."
5. It is short.
Good stuff. Gotta love those Dutch folks!
1 comment:
I've been meaning to comment on this for a while, but I've been busy and therefore behind in the blogosphere.
This is a good summation--and it is also as you said, more than one way to answer it truthfully.
I've been running across this Creation-Fall-Redemption-Restoration paradigm in a number of places. I'm not sure who to give credit for it too--it's obviously old, hence Bavinck. It works.
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