Gospel, A Matter Of Definition
Submitted by on January 1, 1999
Category: Religion
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Gospel, A Matter of Definition
Reasonable God-talk presupposes that we agree on the meanings of the terms we use. A foundational term for Christian theology is ‘gospel’. This term, however, has had multiple referents. This paper explores referents for ‘gospel’ and their implications.
Theological authors are often inconsistent in their definition of ‘gospel’. Donovan uses at least four different referents for this term. He most clearly defines gospel in historical terms:
The gospel is, after all, not a philosophy or a set of doctrines or laws. That is what a culture is. The gospel is essentially a history, at whose center is the God-man born in Bethlehem, risen near Golgotha.
The gospel, then, is a story of actions surrounding Yeshua Bar Yosef of Nazareth during the Second Temple Period in the Judea and the Galilee, and is thus culture-bound. Donovan has...