Some common sayings among many believers are:
“There's only one gospel throughout all the Bible, and so everyone is saved in the exact same way.”
“Jesus, along with His 12 apostles, and along with Paul, all preached the same gospel message.”
“All that happened was Paul came along later and continued Peter's ministry gospel and ministry, but to the Gentiles.”
Those claims sound very biblical to many, but are the assumptions behind these claims correct?
1. To whom did Jesus and His 12 disciples preach?
2. What was their gospel message?
3. Paul was the apostle to....whom?
4. What was Paul's gospel that he preached?
Please share your thoughts on these questions.
MM
I appreciate the invitation to openness. The 790,000 odd words, in english, that is the bible, should be seen as a library. In that library are many categories of literature common to any library. There is poetry, supernatural heros, villians, history, wisdom literature, state and national legal dictates, epic human adventures, theological treatises, other world imaginings, wars, international conflicts and a compelling description of how humans can access the divine.
However, there no one idea of what should be in the library. The number of books varies from 66 to 81 based on ancient traditions.
I like the framing of your question. It is not necessarily probing at what many believers believe, as if in any group of 10 few would answer the same way. The frame of your question is about what believers say they believe in. This is very comfortable ground. We already we can say we believe things that we do not fully understand and have no intention of making relevant in our lives. That does not mean we don't say them.
When asking questions about our assumptions, you are poking a stick at the soft underbelly of many Christians. In reality, Christianity is something given to us by friends or families. it assumes their theological framework used to value one idea over another or to restrict thought about both the ramifications and alternate perspectives results in the only obvious truth.
In my opinion the first question is impossible to answer without qualifications. Is there "one gospel" throughout the bible? If there is, I have no idea of what it would be. If we start with the story of Adam and Eve, was their gospel message, "don't believe evil reptiles." Or perhaps being naked makes God aware you are sinful." Or "If God talks to you face to face, do whatever He says." What was the gospel as it applied to the oversexed anatomically male angels who came (flew?) to earth to breed with irresistible human women and in so doing so angered God that He decided to kill every living on earth. Is their gospel message, check the heritage of your potential husband? Is the gospel message of Samson don't let anybody cut your hair? Is the gospel of the Hebrew people that no matter how hard you try, you will never be able to please God? Of that God will crush and punish His chosen people for a 1,000 years before giving them hope but only if they stop doing what He demanded they do for a 1,000 years?
“Jesus, along with His 12 apostles, and along with Paul, all preached the same gospel message.”
Good question. Up until Jesus resurrection, the 13 had no clear understanding of anything called a gospel. They had not yet even figured out who Jesus was...."some say Elijah.... We have the sermon preached 50 days after Jesus resurrection. Repent and be baptised to be saved, but today a huge portion of Christianity rejects this "gospel" so perhaps Paul has a "gospel" all Christians can agree on. Paul's gospel was at odds with the gospel of the head of the church in Jerusalem, James and of course Peter. In Paul's gospel no gentile needed to become a Jew or practice Jewish law to be saved. So, they got their heads together and came up with a more commonly acceptable gospel as it related to Jews, which were the vast majority of early Christians. Their agreed upon gospel included the requirement for Jews converting to Christianity to abstain from 4 things. No eating animals sacrificed to idols, No eating of blood or things strangled and no sexual immorality. For a while that was part of the agreed upon gospel message, but then Paul decided that his gospel would be different. What you ate means nothing, but sexual immorality is still wrong. Over time Paul's gospel won out and Paul even convinced Peter, after a difficult face to face confrontation, to harmonize with Paul's view on Jewish converts as well as gentile converts. We don't know who Matthew, Mark or Luke were and the details of their gospels differ in only a few details. The Gospel of John was supposed to be written by a Aramaic speaking poor uneducated fisherman, who came to write beautiful, powerful and a deeply Greek theological gospel focused on the Greek concept of "logos." I believe the composite gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John deliver a clear and mostly harmonious story of the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.
Strangely enough, many think of the Apostle Paul as a missionary to the gentiles. However, his normal method was to start his missionary work first in the Jewish Synagogues in the cities he visited. The Jews first, then the gentiles. Paul's gospel was complex. It highly leveraged Hebrew scriptures. In his biggest work, his letter to the Romans, Paul quotes the Hebrew Bible at least 80 times and alludes to other Hebrew scriptures as well. Thus, while the house churches in and around Rome were largely Gentiles, they had a Jewish orientation. Judaism had spread around the world of the Mediterranean and had been accepted by hellenistic Romans. As Roman education taught Greek literature and culture.
Judaism became a highly respected theology because it was the only religion of its time with a strong moral center where ethical behavior and living in harmony with 1 God was a big step up from the worship of idols who only took and provide uncertain benefit. Thus, Paul's heavily leaning on the Hebrew Bible reassured Roman fans of Judaism who were attracted to Christianity that it extended even further a moral and ethical connection to the 1 God of the universe through faith in God's son and obedience to God's will. They were familiar with sacrifices and the idea that the 1 God would, in love, sacrifice His only Son was a powerful message in Rome and around the Roman empire. Paul in Romans 5-8 provides a masterclass in salvation. We are relieved of the power of sin in faith and he power of death by experiencing water baptism where we repeat Christs death burial and resurrection.
