But I make known to you, brethren, that the Gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through the revelation of Jesus Christ. -- Galatians 1.11-12
Once in a while, it helps to say what Christianity is not instead of what it is. There is a lot of opinion nowadays about what the Christian faith has in common with other faiths, religions or philosophies. That may be true. But it is truer that Christianity is one and only, high and above the rest. And for this reason, St. Paul lists, in Galatians 1.11-19, what the Gospel is not:
The Gospel doesn’t come from the Jews …
(i.e., “The Gospel did not evolve from heredity or environment”)
Some say that Paul was a hyper-religious, mal-adjusted youth who grew up to be a fundamentalist Jew. But Paul was “advanced in Judaism beyond his contemporaries” (Galatians 1.14) not because he couldn’t make friends or because he was strange, but simply because he was “zealous for the traditions of his fathers.”
But the traditions of his fathers did not produce the Gospel in Paul. Instead, Paul took his Jewish upbringing and used it destructively against the new Christian Church. St. John Chrysostom calls attention to Paul’s words in Galatians describing his enmity against Christianity:
Observe how he does not shrink from aggravating each point: not saying simply that he has ‘persecuted’ but ‘beyond measure’ and made havoc of it,’ which signifies an attempt to extinguish, to pull down, to destroy, to annihilate the Church. (Commentary on Galatians)
Paul’s “background” – whether by how he was raised, or what he was born with – did not at all make him Christian. The Gospel came to Paul despite his upbringing, not because of it.
Nor from the Greeks ...
(i.e., “The Gospel was not produced by wish-fulfillment”)
Others suggest that Paul manufactured the Gospel, his own form of Christianity, out of his own desperate wish that it might be true. Of course, God has put religion in the heart of man, as an indelible part of his nature, even in its corrupted form. People will be religious, and they will even tend toward monotheistic religion.
Monotheism (i.e., the belief in one god), even to the point where one can guess at a good and everlasting solitary God from the evidence of creation and human nature, can be said to be produced by wish-fulfillment. And it is a very good wish at that. Such a wish is a revolutionary improvement on atheism or agnosticism – both of which are lower on the scale of intellect than even paganism or pantheism.
But as good as monotheism is, it is nothing compared to the infinite superiority and beauty of the Gospel. All philosophy is wish fulfillment, and so is religion by and large. Some of these wishes speak to the divine image and latent nobility of man: others (like the more wretched historicist varieties – think of Hitler and Ivan here) speak to the darker, sin-ravaged and corrupt black holes of unnatural humanity.
But the fullness of the Gospel in Orthodoxy is beyond all human anticipation or comprehension. Paul was neither wishing for the Gospel, nor was he looking for or desiring anything like it. When the Lord appeared to him on the Damascus Road (in Acts 9), Paul asked Him “Who are You, Lord?” The answer came as a blinding shock: “I am Jesus, Whom you are persecuting …” (Acts 9.5).
Paul resisted Christianity at first (as many of us have or still do). Certainly, no one can reasonably say that the Apostolic Gospel came about because Paul (and Peter and John and all the others) wished that it were so. Paul didn’t want to believe that Jesus Christ was risen from the dead. But there it was – the Resurrection and the solid glory of the Gospel, despite what Paul wished for in his philosophy, not because of it.
Nor from the Church itself
(i.e., “The Gospel does not arise from a human institution or movement”)
Paul’s conversion to the Way of Christianity happened in the year 33. In the year 57, while spending time in the city of Ephesus, he described his experience to the community of Christians in Corinth:
I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago … such a one was caught up to the third heaven. And I know such a man … how he was caught up into Paradise and heard inexpressible words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter. Of such a one I will boast … (2 Corinthians 12.2-5)
Paul experienced the beatific vision, the mystical ecstasy of the apostolic theoria. He experienced the direct apprehension of the Risen Lord, the Uncreated Light of the Trinity on Mt. Tabor, and the complete, whole summation of the Holy Tradition. He saw what was seen by all the seers and prophets. He experienced the same physical fellowship of Christ shared by all the apostles.
This was the deposit given to Paul directly by Christ, in that third Paradise, and for the following three years in the Arabian desert (the seminary triennium of the Apostolate):
But when it pleased God, Who separated me from my mother’s womb and called me through His grace, to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately confer with flesh and blood, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me; but I went to Arabia .. then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter … (Galatians 1.15-18).
Paul did not receive the Gospel from Peter or from any other Apostle. All the Apostles are Announcers of a New Thing to the human race, they all stand on the Rock and hold the Keys. The Gospel is not invented by the Church – it is announced by the Church to the world. Jesus Christ reveals the Gospel directly to the Apostles: they in turn announce the Gospel, through the Bishops and the Church, to the likes of you and me.
In each Apostolic ministry, the Gospel is new, but it is the same. Only prophets and apostles can say what Paul said: “God separated me from my mother’s womb and called me through His grace,” just as Jeremiah said these words centuries before (Jeremiah 1.5). God calls only to the apostleship: He does not “call” to worldly careers. One can be a doctor, a farmer, a teacher or even a lawyer according to one’s own decision-making and planning: but the Orthodox Apostleship is a matter of Divine Economy, and the Sovereign ordering of salvation history.
God called Peter and Andrew, James and John, from the fishing nets to the fishing of men. God called Paul from wreaking destruction on the Church to bringing the Church to wholeness and peace. He calls you and me to theosis and communion: and that is His will for us, pure and simple. It does no good to ask whether He wants you to be an analyst or actuary, to live in Pittsburgh or in the Mojave. What God wants is clear as spring water, and needs no augury (or haruspication): what He wants, what He wills, is Christlikeness in the Here and Now, nothing less, nothing easier, nowhere else, no one else.
The Gospel is not a get-rich-scheme or a program for self-esteem. Such a concern is the stuff of any institution or movement, revolution or liberation that has crossed the field of human history. It is old stuff and always follows the same script. At best, men like Abraham Lincoln call us to pay heed to our “better angels.” At worse (and more often), men like Che Guevara release the demons of massacre and revenge. Best and worst, this is all a human movement can manage: it is the full extent of what the society of men and women can produce.
But the Gospel brings men and women into contact not with dreams or scripts, but with Divinity. God is in His House, and meets us in Communion in His Church. “Who has believed our report?” “It is marvelous to our eyes!” “Heaven and earth are full of Thy glory.” The Gospel is beyond our imagination, and it has dwelt amongst us, full of grace and truth.
The Gospel is a thing unlooked for and radically unexpected. It could never have sprung from golden tablets, for it is too wild of a thing, and too revolutionary. It could never have been eked from nirvana or a koan, no-thing or sheer ecstasy or a vision of sublime totality. It outstrips every utopia and overflows every category, every ideal ... it is above all names.
The Gospel truly is good news, and blessed are the feet of those who bring it. We have no doubt that the Gospel is good, but we often forget that it is news. Now. And always.
The Gospel is not what it is not, because of what it is.
The Lutheran theology which I have learned makes very strong distinctions between Gospel and Law, with warnings not to confuse or mix the two. Law defining the sin and condemning the sinner, Gospel as source of all faith (as in Rom. 10:17.) Law being common to all mankind, Gospel found only through Christ and his teachings.
How widespread was this teaching before the Reformation? How does Orthodoxy address it, or how closely does Orthodoxy align it's beliefs with the Roman Council of Trent, which seems to refute Luther's belief?
DB
Posted by: Doug | October 14, 2007 at 07:11 AM