The Gospel: “Fog” and “Cloudy”

Greg Gilbert says the there is a “fog” in our understanding of the gospel; Darrell Bock says our understanding of the gospel is “cloudy.” We’re talking here about the core of cores, the heart of hearts, the center of all centers; we’re talking here about the gospel of all things. And both of these writers, in two books I’ve recently read, think we’re confused.

I agree.

What’s odd, though, is that it’s like I just read two completely different books and both think they are making the gospel itself clear. One of them, Gilbert’s, is written for ordinary folks, while Bock’s book is a little more advanced, though anyone serious about “gospel” can easily read Bock’s book.

Before I get to the two books, a question or two or more: Where is the best place to begin in the Bible to understand the gospel? Can we somehow get from “kingdom” in Jesus to “salvation” in Paul? Does the Holy Spirit figure in the gospel? Where?

Greg Gilbert, at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in DC, in his new book (What Is the Gospel? ) argues with admirable clarity and focused attention on four essential points to the gospel, and he sees the best place to begin in Romans 1–4. So, his gospel is Romans-shaped and it is about personal salvation.

God. Man. Christ. Response.

God in Gilbert’s book is the Creator and God is righteous; Gilbert opines over the modern assumption of the doting Father-God and his complaining of this leads him to avoid even sketching the grace and love and mercy of God in the act of working on our behalf in the gospel. I will give him the benefit of the doubt here, but alongside his observation of the presumption of moderns to see God in almost Mr Rogers-like fashion there needed to be a sketch of the absolute greatness of God’s utter goodness. Then Gilbert moves to humans as sinners and he sketches the importance of seeing ourselves as more than just those who sin but those who are corrupted and rebellious.

Then he sketches Christ, and he is the Savior: God-Man, an emphasis on his suffering death, and here he is emphatic on the centrality of penal substitution — which he calls the heart of the gospel. The response is faith and repentance (and I don’t know why folks don’t see more baptism, which the NT does see, but that’s another discussion). Part of faith, and perhaps the focus of faith is on our unrighteousness and Christ’s righteousness — and he’s strong on double imputation. After he’s done, Gilbert redoes it all through the lens of kingdom and then focuses on the centrality of the cross. There are three substitute gospels: Jesus is Lord, Creation-Fall-Redemption-Consummation gospel, and the cultural transformation gospel.

What Gilbert misses Darrell Bock, well-known professor at Dallas Theological Seminary, seems to find in his new book: Recovering the Real Lost Gospel: Reclaiming the Gospel as Good News. I’m not really convinced Gilbert needs the Old Testament for his gospel to make sense; it’s mostly about God’s holiness and righteousness and the need for a penal substitution in Christ; there’s not enough emphasis on the Plan of God in the Story of Israel coming to fulfillment for how I understand gospel, but that is precisely what Bock does on nearly every page of his book. His book is a robust sketch of the Scripture Story and it’s consummation in Christ.

In fact, Bock begins with the Promise of the Holy Spirit (and I can’t recall that Gilbert gives space to Holy Spirit in his gospel). As I read Bock, I wondered at times if he was responding to Gilbert because he fills in so many gaps. He begins with the gospel being more than dying for sin; he the moves to the gospel as the promise to have a relationship with the Holy Spirit, and Darrell’s sketch here is simply exceptional.

Then he moves to the gospel as a meal and a washing (Lord’s Supper, Baptism); he examines the cross from a variety of angles in a most helpful way; the gospel is is inaugurated as a gift of God’s grace, another most needed them in any gospel discussion; the gospel is affirmed in divine action — and Scripture; and then he moves to the response in repentance and faith. Finally he focuses on a different kind of power through a way of life pleasing to God in reconciliation, peace, and the power of God unto salvation.

Here’s the oddity of reading these books back to back: both think we are in a cloudy fog, and both propose substantively different ways of describing the gospel. While Bock thinks Romans is one of the most significant descriptions of gospel, he doesn’t sketch the gospel through the lens of Romans. Gilbert’s approach is to let the four points he finds in Romans 1–4 shape the whole of the NT gospel.

I would ask this question: Why in the world did the first Christians call the first four books of the NT “The Gospel”?