What goes after the “is” in “The Gospel is . . .”?

John Meier’s imaginative scenario with which he introduces his Marginal Jew project is something analogous to the experience four of us are having in Cambridge this week. We have been locked (not really locked) into the “hex” (not the bowels) of the Tyndale House Library (not the Harvard Library) in order to come to an agreement on the question of the Gospel, is it Cross or Kingdom (not a lest-common-denominator Jesus), being fed only bread and water until we finish our given task (totally not true – we’ve eaten lots of English pub food!). Ok, so the analogy doesn’t work at all! It seemed like a good way to begin at first. Oh and we don’t have a Jew and an agnostic either, but we do have a Southern Baptist.

One question we asked in the early part of the week was what is the Gospel? How would we define it? In other words, what goes after the “is”? Is the predicate nominative (to use grammatical speak) “atonement”? Is it “story of Israel”? Is it kingship? The challenge of a predicate statement is its grammatical simplicity.

Here’s my working draft of a  “Gospel is . . .” sentence:

The Gospel is the resolution of Israel’s story, whose plot centers on the vindication of God’s creational kingship on earth secured by the Messiah’s cross-death resulting in both forgiveness of sins for humanity and victory over all realms but primarily over the heavenly arenas, and whose consequences are universal encompassing all of the created order.

What do you think?