God's wonderful announcement

What is God's wonderful announcement—the Gospel (Gk. euaggelion)—that the New Testament conveys?

A relatively clear summary is given by Jesus Christ himself.* At the end of the New Testament, Christ announces a number of repetitive, mutually clarifying promises. One may well consider that the purpose of the repetitiveness is to clear away any ambiguity surrounding earlier descriptions of the Gospel in the New Testament—ambiguity warned about, in the strongest terms, explicitly in 2 Peter 3 and 1 John 3.

(1) "To the one overcoming, I will give to him to eat from the tree of life that is in the paradise of God" (Rev. 2:7**)

(2) "The one overcoming shall not be injured by the second death." (Rev. 2:11)

(3) "To the one overcoming, I will give to him of the hidden manna, and I will give to him a white stone, and on the stone a new name written that no one knows except the one who receives." (Rev. 2:17)

(4) "The one both overcoming and keeping my works until the end, I will give to him authority over the nations, and he will shepherd them by a rod of iron, as ceramic vessels are shattered, as also I have gotten from My Father, and I will give to him the morning star." (Rev. 2:26-28)

(5) "The one overcoming, thus will he be clothed—in white garments. And I shall not erase his name from the book of life, and I will confess his name before My Father, and before His angels." (Rev. 3:5)

(6) "The one overcoming—I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God, and he shall go out no more. And I will write on him the name of My God, and the name of the city of My God, the new Jerusalem, the one descending out of heaven from My God, and My new name." (Rev. 3:12)

(7) "The one overcoming—I will give to him to sit with me by My throne, as also I conquered and sat with My Father by His throne." (Rev. 3:21)

(8) "It is become. I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. I myself will give to the thirsting one out of the fountain of the water of life, freely. Him overcoming will inherit all things, and I will be God to him, and he will be son to Me." (Rev. 21:6-7)

(9) "And, look! I come suddenly! Blessed is the one keeping the words of the prophecy of this book." (Rev. 22:7)

(10) "Look! I coming suddenly, and My reward is with Me to render to each as is his work." (Rev. 22:12)

(11) "Blessed are the ones washing their robes, so that the authority will be theirs to the tree of life and they may enter by the gates into the city. Outside are the dogs and the phármakoi*** and the fornicators and the murderers and the idolaters and everyone loving and making falsehood." (Rev. 22:14-15)

Naturally, a reader of these promises would want to understand what Jesus means by to overcome (Gk. nikaō). Here, too, clarity is provided, by the contexts of the promises (especially Rev. 2-3, 21-22), where the components of overcoming, and the opposite of overcoming, are repeatedly described with similar, overlapping terms. A summary of these could be: a Christian is required to be overcoming the power of sin and walking in obedience to Christ.

Finally, the question of how a person comes to be overcoming. This appears to be described well in NT texts like John 8:31-51, Romans 6:1—8:17, and Hebrews 10:1—13:21. Something like a seven-part process of sanctification is described: Christ-believers are given teaching, ransomed, baptized in water, baptized in the Holy Spirit, tested, chastized, and glorified. Even this can be summarized, with caution, as obeying Jesus—keeping Jesus's  commandments and other words (prophecies, teachings).

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* Two points ought to be noted. (1) This presentation is consistent with the Gospel presentation of the NT texts collected in "Ten Testimonies to the good news from God". (2) This counts Rev. 22:14 as speech directly by Jesus and therefore as a continuation of Jesus's speech in the previous verse (v.13). This view is not, today, a consensus position among published translations of Revelation, but it has good grounds, nonetheless: above all, that if one does count 22:13-15 as speech by Christ, it clearly has the identical form of the speech at Rev. 21:6-8 that is already, by consensus, considered to belong to Jesus.

** These translations are new and based on Nestle-Aland's 28th edition of the New Testament in Ancient Greek, available here. One way to check these translations is to consult a cross-referenced Greek-English interlinear text (e.g. here), and a dictionary such as Liddell Scott Jones, available here.

*** In Rev. 22:15, the Greek word phármakoi has a set of meanings that all could be applicable to this context, such as poisoners, magicians, sorcerers. (LSJ, s.v.)

For more discussion of the Gospel according to the entire New Testament (rather than a pared down and false gospel), see 
"The New Covenant through Christ Jesus is not unconditional", "The working system of God's salvation", "God's very best possible, wonderful announcement", "Is there any idea more destructive than a "Law-Gospel" division?", "Christian questions", "The tragic misreading of Paul (when he argues against Israelite works for Christians)", "What happens when theologians convince people that God doesn't judge sin?".

Just by belief or by faithfulness?

From the brief study, "Three Biblical keywords: What do language sciences clarify?"

... Here we examine facts of Ancient Greek (AG) relevant not only to several foundational hypotheses of Dixon’s “basic linguistic theory”—universal word classes, universal clause structure, universal transitivity typology, etc.—but also to the comprehension and translation of central parts of humanity’s most widely read text, the Christian Bible (recorded firstly in AG manuscripts). Central to the Christian Bible are ideas expressed with a set of related words—pistos, pistis, pisteuō—translated most often into modern English with “faithful”, “faith”, “to believe”, respectively, yet revealed in dictionary entries to be far more difficult to understand, at least for lexicographers (LSJ, s.v.; BDAG, s.v.). For example, pisteuō is understood to have the senses of “to comply” (LSJ, s.v. 2) and “to entrust” (LSJ, s.v. II; BDAG, s.v. 2) in some ancient texts. (Continued....)

Sanctification methods, the Competitive Principle, etc.

Update: I now question the legitimacy of church hierarchies, given that in Christ's words we have a commandment to practise equality (Matthew 23) and only the elevation of 12 apostles who would in future be the judges of the 12 tribes of Israel. 

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According to two Pauline letters (1 Tim 3:2, 10; Tit 1:6, 7), all leaders of churches (prebyteroi, episkopoi, diakonoi) must be “blameless” (anegkletoi). Is this really possible, and if so, how? Answers are given by at least three New Testament texts (John 8:31-51; Rom 6:1—8:17; Heb 10:1—13:21) that describe the mechanism of how a Christ-believer is set free from sin slavery. Precisely according to the Exodus anti-type, Christ-believers are given teaching, commandments and leaders, ransomed, baptized, tested, and chastized—a seven-part sanctification process.
      Specifically how Christ-ministers are made fit for service is described in a fourth text (2 Cor 3:1—4:6). Here, in broad accord with the Creation anti-type, Christ-converts are formed in the divine image, the primary agent is God’s Spirit, and God’s enemy is the agent for deception and blinding. Because real Christ-ministers have ministries only to the extent that they are Christ-converts, they also have experienced the sanctification process that liberates from sin slavery and “have renounced the hidden things of shame, neither walking in craftiness nor deceitfully using the word of God” (4:2). So they are able to conduct themselves blamelessly, able to manifest “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (4:6), and therefore able to administer the process whereby Christ-believers are made into a “letter from Christ” written by the Holy Spirit (3:3).
      The NT’s descriptions of sanctification are usually overlooked, but this fourth text is ignored to an unusual extent. Why might that be? At least several possible factors can be considered: (a) The loss of sanctification traditions over the centuries, so that sanctification-oriented Bible interpretation (like Chrysostom’s, for example) is exceedingly rare; (b) The complexity of the 2 Corinthians text, so that its full coherence requires much effort to find; (c) The keystone that holds 3:1—4:6 together, making it a single, coherent sub-argument of the letter, is hidden by polysemy, a noted problem especially for Pauline texts (cf. 2 Pet 3:14-18); (d) The text is an example of the genre of competitive communication (pace, inter alia, Huang, Levinson, Grice[1]) that allows only some to understand it correctly (cf. Matt 13:10-15; Mark 4:10-12; Luke 8:10; John 6:22-68)....  (continued...)

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[1] Pragmatics, at least its Anglo-American tradition, is dominated by the hypothesis that all human communication is founded on what H.P. Grice first called the Cooperative Principle, which has been reformulated by Neogriceans, prominently Levinson and Huang. Cf. Yan Huang, Pragmatics, 2nd edn, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Ten testimonies to the good news from God

Here are ten testimonies recorded in the New Testament that describe the rescue action by God Almighty.

Matthew 25:31-40
John 8:31-32, 34-36
Romans 6:17-18
Colossians 1:3-29
Hebrews 5:8-9
James 1:12-27
1 Peter 1:3-21
1 John 3:1-12
Revelation 3:8, 10-13
Revelation 22:12-17

Three theological goals

Are these three goals within reach for Christians today?

1. Theology that overcomes major schisms, so that the world may believe. (Cp. John 17:21)
2. Theology that effectively shepherds Christians to overcome and to enter eternal life. To reveal the Bible’s clear system of sanctification and overcoming (Rev. 2-3) that leads to salvation.
3. Theology that is as robust as any other science. To establish methods that produce knowledge that is as reliable as the other sciences’. The Bible is, after all, the basis of science (historically, and by supplying key presuppositions about the reliability of evidence and logic) and makes continual appeal to evidence and logic in the manner of the best sciences.

Reflexion indicates that these goals are inter-related, even so much so that achieving any one of them (perhaps) achieves the other two.

A collection of the Lord's Commandments

How important is it to keep the Lord Jesus's commandments? The New Testament gives a pretty clear answer:

Yet why do you call me, “Lord!”, “Lord!”, and do not do what I say? (Luke 6:46)

If you love me, you will keep my commandments. (John 14:15)

If you remain in my word, truly are you my disciples. And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. (John 8:31-32)

My own experience is that Jesus is telling the truth: when I began keeping the Lord's word, I did begin the journey out of "Pharaoh's Egypt" (i.e. sin slavery) and into God's amazing and wonderful freedom. But how can a person learn Jesus's commandments? One way, presumably, is to read the whole New Testament and color-highlight the texts where the Lord Jesus gives commandments. I tried that, and I am not sure how pedagogically effective it was for me or my daughter! So how about making collections of the Lord's commandments?

Several weeks ago I began to do that, and because of copyright restrictions by English versions (like KJV, NKJV), I made new translations. Via this link you can see twelve texts with the Lord Jesus's commandments. A brief example is given here:

Everyone coming to me, hearing my words, and doing them - I will show you whom that one is like. He is like a person house-building a house, who dug and made deep and placed a foundation on the rock. And a flood having come, the river beat against that house, and had not power to shake it, for it was founded on the rock. But the one having heard and not doing, is like a person house-building a house on the earth, without a foundation, against which the river beat, and immediately it collapsed, and the ruin of that house became great. (Luke 6:47-49)

Are Bible translations hiding the real Golden Rule?

From the brief study (link):

Many Bible translations and commentaries propose that the Golden Rule for human conduct is to treat others as one wishes to be treated. Certainly, this is a hugely important rule, and it is given by the Lord (Matt. 7:12; Luke 6:31). It must be kept. But... why does the Lord say “therefore” (oun, in the Greek original), when He introduces the rule...? It seems possible that the Lord means that because God is ready to answer prayer, we must treat others well, because if we don’t, our prayers may not be answered. Indeed, this is how one of the earliest and most respected commentators of the Bible, Chrysostom, understood it...:

After this, to indicate that we ought neither to feel confidence in prayer, while neglecting our own doings; nor, when taking pains, trust only to our own endeavors; but both to seek after the help from above, and contribute withal our own part; He sets forth the one in connection with the other. For so after much exhortation, He taught also how to pray, and when He had taught how to pray, He proceeded again to His exhortation concerning what we are to do; then from that again to the necessity of praying continually, saying, “Ask,” and “seek,” and “knock.” And thence again, to the necessity of being also diligent ourselves.

To end 1000 years of church schisms

From the brief study,  "To end a thousand years of church schisms"....

....Now, why could these translation problems, if corrected, end a thousand years of church schisms (or even all church schisms)? Two reasons are easily identifiable: (1) If God’s Word actually tells us that the Good News is that Christ leads Christians to righteousness (and eternal life), then Christians must follow Christ by obeying Christ and His commandments rather than relying on juridical justification. .... 

The second reason is that, according to the Scriptures, keeping and doing the commandments of God are a first, even necessary step, to understanding the Scriptures: therefore, it is possible that so long as Christians have not been keeping and doing God’s commandments, they have not been understanding the Scriptures.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom:

a good understanding have all they that do his commandments…. (Psalm 111:10)

15 If ye love me, keep my commandments. 16 And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; 17 even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. (John 14:15-17)

A third reason is that Protestant translations and interpretations of the Bible have stood as important points of disagreement (alongside other points) with the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches. The outlook for unity among churches is much better if what the Bible teaches about “justification by faith” can be understood more agreeably to all people calling themselves Christians. ...

Thus, church schisms, differences of views that have gone unresolved by reference to the Scriptures, may be based on insufficient understanding of the Scriptures, due to insufficient obedience to the Scriptures, possibly in the form of a spiral of first one, then the other. For a description of a spiral between disobedience and incomprehension, one can turn to Romans 1:

18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; 19 because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them….  28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; 29 being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, 30 backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, 31 without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful…. (Romans 1:18-19, 28-31)

A very brief critique of the dominant hypothesis of Pragmatics

A brief critique of Grice, “Logic and conversation” (1975)

There is a problem with Grice’s theory of a “cooperative principle”, possibly like the problem with general theories of syntax. The problem may be that conversations (like syntax) are not so uniform as to be describable with one particular theory. The possibilities for conversations may be innumerable. The principles of conversations may be as numerous as conversations themselves. Divergent goals, divergent styles, expression of personality, and poetics, are among the possible reasons.

       The same problem would hold for Grice’s maxims (under four categories: Quantity, Quality, Relation, Manner.) Is, in fact, Grice describing the ideal conversation of university professors (Quality, for example, demands truth and evidence)? Grice finally clarifies that he assumes that the purpose of a conversation (or, “talk exchange”) is the “maximally effective exchange of information”. He also recognizes that this is not generally true of all conversations, which may have other purposes, e.g. “influencing or directing the actions of others” (47).

       What is the empirical evidence for the cooperative principle being followed generally at all (outside of e.g. Oxford University conversations experienced personally by Grice)? Noteworthy forms of dodging an empirical requirement are displayed (pp. 48-9):

(a) asserting that it is already proven: “it is just a well recognized empirical fact that people DO behave in these ways”.

(b) asserting that it is universally rational: “it is much easier… to tell the truth than to invent lies.” (Really?)

(c) demonstrating in part that the cooperative principle is rational (here assuming that all or most people are rational. (Then could this be a theory of heavenly conversations?)).

       The leap to conversational implicature is no less risky. This is indicated by Grice's faulty analysis (p. 43) of the imaginary conversation between A and B about C: a unique implication of C’s potential dishonesty is not certain; instead, the implication could be

1. banking is tempting for all people;
2. that bank’s personnel are wicked (and would try to frame or entrap C in a crime);
3. that bank is wicked (ditto);
4. all banks are wicked (ditto).

The example of A and B planning travel is similarly analyzed faultily: there are many other possible implicatures. The potentiality of many implicatures from one utterance also opens for the possibility that the speaker intends several or all of them. Indeed, so thought Tolkein (a contemporary Oxford professor, whose work also concerned languages).
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Tolkien’s meditation on implicature:

"Good morning!" said Bilbo, and he meant it. The sun was shining, and the grass was very green. But Gandalf looked at him from under long bushy eyebrows that stuck out farther than the brim of his shady hat.

"What do you mean?" he said. "Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?"

"All of them at once," said Bilbo.
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Conversation among people may be far more complex, humane, open, than Grice theorized. (Elite English conversation may be highly limited, seeking primarily (a) preservation of social status, (b) exhibition of awareness of elaborate and elite social rules, e.g. culturally specific conversational principles. If the elite masqueraded as the ideal, that could have misled Grice into thinking it was a universal ideal and the perfection of rationality.) 
      This seems to be anticipated and described in the “post-Gricean” emphasis on context (cf. Katarzyna Jaszczolt, 2007, “On being post-Gricean”, in: R. A. Nilsen, N. A. A. Amfo and K. Borthen (eds). Interpreting Utterances: Pragmatics and Its Interfaces. Oslo: Novus. 21-38. Link to webpage where Jaszczolt’s articles are available to read).

A Christian reflexion on Pragmatics

From the brief study, "A Christian reflexion on Pragmatics"... where we introduce the hypothesis that competitive communication must be considered on a par with cooperative communication (pace Grice, Levinson, Huang, etc.):


...how often is conversation actually (and even rationally) competitive rather than cooperative? And how dire are the consequences if one party communicates cooperatively in such a situation? The example of courtrooms as a non-cooperative situation, often cited in the literature, is surely inexhaustive. If in fact much language use is actually (even rationally) competitive, what are the consequences for the speaker or hearer who naively follows the Gricean cooperative programme? Quite certainly she will be duped and abused and soon adopt another programme, likely with other divisions and rules of inference. Now where is this actual (and likely rational) language use described? Is it a corollary of cooperative use? Grice’s programme runs the risk of leading people to believe falsely that cooperation is normal (by dint largely of assertion, as we will show), rendering them servile, vulnerable, even morally inert or worse (if they are led to cooperate with a morally repugnant agent).

New light from science on how to translate the Bible

From the study (available here):
"The method for answering our question [about the meaning of 2 Cor. 4:1], and for testing our hypothesised answer, involves two kinds of steps. There are steps taken here that are general to scientific method, and steps that are specific to the problem of evaluating a hypothesis about what an utterance in Ancient Greek intended to communicate to sympathetic hearers. The general steps are to disclose the presuppositions, evidence, archive and logic upon which any conclusions are based, together with the investigator’s perspective (i.e. likely sources of bias), and to attempt to falsify any hypothesized answers to the research question. This is a reflexive, inductive-deductive method. One or more researchers work in a self-aware way (reflexively), to found a hypothesis on evidence (induction), then to draw out falsifiable implications of this hypothesis (deduction), which are then tested."

"There are at least two tests that a hypothesis about the intended meaning of an Ancient Greek utterance ought usually to face, although neither is decisive:

(1) Does it increase, relative to alternative hypotheses, the coherence of the text to which it belongs? Coherence of text can be defined as the extent of informational relations between the words (and for example punctuation) of the text.[1] For example, consider what informational relations, and therefore coherence, one can identify in the following texts: (a) He loves God; (b) We loves God; (c) They we he. Interesting, possibly useful descriptions of different kinds of informational relations have been developed over at least three decades by scientists working with Linguistics and Artificial Intelligence,[2] and in this essay we will especially consider two kinds: cause-effect and elaboration.

(2) Does it violate reliable real-world knowledge?

The reasons that neither is decisive are, firstly, that some texts are incoherent, and, secondly, that real-world knowledge is never perfectly reliable.[3] Nonetheless, these tests are usually inescapable, and optimal starting points for evidence gathering"

[1] This is a proposal I am making. Among related alternative proposals (cf. de Beaugrande & Dressler 1981, 48-112), its closest relative is the proposal by Wolf & Gibson 2006, 1-2.

[2] Cf. Wolf & Gibson 2006; Renkema 2009.

[3] Socrates/Plato, the apostle Paul (1 Cor 13), David Hume and Karl Popper all argued for this limitation.

Does the multiple-witness rule explain New Testament mysteries?

From the study (available here):

What the New Testament community referred to as Scripture provided laws of testimony: for example, not to give false testimony (Exod 20:16; 23:1-2; Deut 5:20), and that testimony had legal force only with multiple, confirming witnesses (Deut 19:15; 17:6; Num 35:30). Then, did these laws of testimony work as governing rules for the historians and letter authors of the NT?

If such laws were important, that would help to answer many questions that readers of the NT struggle with. Why do accounts of Jesus’s life and teachings sometimes vary? Why is Paul so quiet about Jesus’s biography? How did Jesus’s followers gather the material that became the Gospels? In fact, NT testimony rules could change how many of the most basic, vital questions about the New Testament are answered: questions of its historical authenticity, of relationships among its texts, about how people gathered and preserved what became the NT. 

Please let me encourage you to join in evaluating whether testimony rules can help to answer these and other questions – and provide new appreciations of the New Testament texts. 

The present study, "Tell John what you hear and see: a multiple witness requirement in dominical statements and the NT", takes just a couple of the needed steps. We consider evidence available from already published studies. We search for new evidence by examining two sets of records of Jesus’s words, drawn from all four Gospels. Then we try to draw conclusions based on all the evidence we have found about an NT requirement for multiple witnesses, what could be termed an NT standard of verification.   

How might you answer this question: Is Jesus the all-powerful rescuer for all people? That is, is Jesus the Messiah, God’s promised saviour for all nations?

In this study, we look at how Jesus answered that question – among friends, or with strangers, or challenged in hostile situations. It may surprise you that Jesus’s way of answering focused on the evidence, much as a good scientist of today might. As we will see, according to the New Testament Jesus appears to have been careful to observe and to explain the conditions for accurate knowledge.

One of the reasons we study Jesus’s answers is to learn more about the standard of verification that the New Testament follows. We will review a lot of evidence in the NT that an Old Testament law that required multiple, confirming witnesses for a claim to have force, also functioned as a governing rule for the NT community.