January 2018 - godblog

Bultmann and Barth: Not your Sunday school Christianity

The standard Christian view of sin and salvation is not a pretty one. Salvation is being saved from the righteous judgment of God. Salvation doesn’t mean being saved from yourself or the devil. Salvation is being saved from God’s wrath, which condemns to hell all who have broken his law.

All of us have sinned against God and deserve judgment. But Jesus never sinned. He lived the Law of God perfectly. Jesus is perfectly righteous. “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” (2 Corinthians 5:21) Through his crucifixion, Jesus bore our sins in His body and suffered in our place.

Escaping the judgment of God means having faith in Jesus Christ. It has nothing to do with doing good works. “Through grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.” (Ephesians 2:8) You are saved by grace through faith.

When you have faith in Christ, then Christ’s righteousness is given to you, and you give your sins to Jesus. “It’s like a trade. He gets your sin. You get His righteousness.” (https://carm.org/what-is-salvation) It sounds more like blackmail to me. Be righteous because God will send you to hell forever if you aren’t.

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Gospel of John: Christ’s return is now

This post covers a number of different aspects of John’s gospel. I especially like what is called John’s realized eschatology, his theory of the end time. We should not and need not wait for Advent. It appeared when Christ appeared. If we have faith in Christ and follow his commandments then we have already been saved. I’ll cover some other topics as well

Almost everyone agrees that John is unique among the gospels. While the other three gospels indirectly refer to each other or a common source, often using almost identical language, John doesn’t. For this reason, the gospels are often divided into the three synoptic gospels (Mark, Matthew, Luke), and John. The opening of John’s gospel resembles none of the other gospels. Nor does John’s Jesus speak in parables. There are other differences.

John’s gospel was written no later than 90 AD, and possibly a decade or two before. It is sometimes argued that the apostle John was the author, but while this is possible (Christ was crucified around 30 AD), the main argument against it is that there is an intellectual complexity to John that seems unlikely in a fisherman with no formal education, even if he had learned to read and write Greek. John’s Greek is simple, but his story is not.

It is also argued that the Gospel was written in layers, often called form criticism. It’s probably true, but I’m not going to go into that.

God’s relationship with Jesus

God is identical with Jesus, but Jesus stands in a relationship to God. In which case they can’t be identical. I think this summarizes chapter 1, verses 1-14 pretty well. And it’s confusing.

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