Bauder: Thinking About the Gospel

Kevin Bauder has produced two excellent posts seeking to answer the question, "What is the gospel?" Read part 1 HERE, and part 2 HERE. Here's a brief quote from part 1 to whet your appetite:

Today we are faced with a multiplicity of gospels. The message of the gospel is understood in terms of political liberation, social reconstruction, initiation into a body of secret teaching, synergistic cooperation in the work of salvation, reshaping of consciousness, divinization of the individual, liberation from the feeling of embarrassed shame that is wrongly called “guilt,” and any number of other constructs.

And here's a passage from part 2:

The explanations are the key to the gospel. Without the explanations, the gospel does not exist. The explanations give God’s perspective on the events, rendering their true meaning and making them applicable by humans. Such theologically centered explanations have a name. They are called doctrines. To say that the explanations are key to the gospel is to say that doctrine is key to the gospel.