The Good Life & Christ: A Theological Reframing of the Gospel

Course Description

In what does “the good life” consist? This question was posed most famously by Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics, yet all of us face this inescapable question, cobbling together some kind of answer even as we respond to the concrete exigencies, problems, and opportunities of our day-to-day lives and contexts. Indeed, the philosopher-theologian Dallas Willard contended that the Scriptures were written to address this very question, guiding human beings into the good life that God intended in creating each person.

So, what is “the good life” according to biblical teaching? It wouldn’t be surprising if many church- and Bible-study-attending Christians found themselves hard-pressed to answer this question. Willard himself named and critiqued three main “gospels” of “salvation” held by contemporary North American Protestants. On what Williard called the “theological right,” salvation is presented as essentially a matter of receiving forgiveness for sin-debts and “heaven-when-you die.” For those on the “theological left,” salvation is mostly about the social gospel[HG1] . A third model aims to “disciple converts into church membership,” promising that “if you take care of your church, your church will take care of you.” (Additional versions of “the gospel”—religious and secular—doubtlessly come to mind.)

But all of these summaries of Jesus’s own message of “good news” about “salvation” are at best incomplete. They operate with a theologically myopic view of the Person of the Son and with a truncated grasp of his teaching about his ministry and the ultimate aim of his creative and redemptive intentions on behalf of each person.

In this course, we will critically examine received understandings of crucial and interrelated theological terms such as “the gospel,” and the nature of “salvation,” “eternal life,” “the kingdom of God,” and “the good,” and reconfigure them into a more adequate reflection of biblical teaching about “the good life ‘before God’ (coram Deo).” As we will see, the living Lord Jesus Christ stands at its centre.

More specifically, we will consider what is it about “the good life” that can allows Jesus to call the “un-bless-ables” in our world—the have-nots, the disfavored, those who are despised and shunned, those whose lives appear wrecked and beyond repair—truly “blessed” or well-off (Matt 5:1-12). We’ll also ask what it is about “the good life” that can break through the delusions held by the apparently well-off, haughty, self-sufficient Laodicean believers whom Jesus calls “wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked” (Rev 3:14-22), enabling them to become genuinely “good” persons in his sight. Is experiencing this “good life” here and now really possible, without exception, for all who turn to God in repentance and trust? Is this a promise we can confidently attest to on God’s behalf? As we explore these questions, we’ll be guided by a model of the human person that is rooted in the consistent biblical testimony about “the good life” and “the good person” who is pleasing in God’s sight.