Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 170:679 (Jul 2013)
Article: Book Reviews
Author: Matthew S. DeMoss

BSac 170:679 (July-September 2013) p. 366

Book Reviews

By The Faculty of Dallas Theological Seminary

Matthew S. DeMoss

Editor

The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited. By Scot McKnight. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 2011. 184 pp. $19.99.

Scot McKnight, respected biblical theologian and professor of religious studies at North Park University (Chicago), seeks to reorient understanding of the “gospel.” He is urged on by two major evangelical thinkers. In the first foreword, N. T. Wright opines that the evangelical understanding of the gospel “has shrunk down to a statement about Jesus’ death and its meaning, and a prayer with which people accept it” (p. 13). Dallas Willard in a second foreword expresses similar concern that popular conceptions of the gospel produce “massive nominal, non-disciple ‘Christianity’ ” (p. 15). With these openers, McKnight then argues that the gospel is the full-orbed story of the triune God restoring humanity into the image of God.

McKnight clearly affirms that a person must be born again to be reconciled to God. This, he insists, is a given (p. 28). But if believers are to be called “evangelicals” (from εὔανγελιον), then they must present the entire gospel of the Scriptures rather than merely the plan of personal salvation. By emphasizing only conversion, many evangelicals, he suggests, might better be termed soterians (“the saved ones”).

The author targets the doctrine of “Pastor Eric,” who insists that “the gospel is not a call to imitate Jesus,” “not a public announcement that Jesus is Lord and King,” “not an invitation into the church,” and “does not involve a promise of the second coming” (p. 33). All this, according to Pastor Eric, is important theology but the gospel itself is the good news that Jesus died and rose again to save people from sin (pp. 32-33). While desiring to see a robust faith that leads to discipleship, Pastor Eric worries that “if he presses discipleship too hard, salvation by grace and by faith alone will be compromised.” “His gospel is a ‘salvation culture’ gospel instead of a ‘gospel culture’ gospel” (p. 33).

Attempting to correct this perspective, McKnight declares, “In this book we want to show that the gospel of Jesus and that of the apostles, both of which created a [holistic] gospel culture and not simply a [decision-oriented] salvation culture, was a gospel that carried with it the power, the capacity, and the requirement to summon people who wanted to be . . . the Discipled” (p. 33). Thus the true “good news,” the author affirms, must be understood within the greater story o...