Becoming the Gospel by Gorman Michael J

Author:Gorman, Michael J.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Published: 2015-03-16T15:19:12+00:00

Conclusion

In a book not primarily on Paul but one that is deeply sympathetic with the direction of this chapter, Ross Hastings suggests that the mission of the church as participation in the life and mission of God is essentially twofold: discovering shalom and disseminating shalom.95 This is what we have referred to in this chapter as peace being both a divine gift, or grace, and an ecclesial task, or practice.

The apostle Paul, not least in Romans — but not only in Romans — reminds his audiences, both ancient and contemporary, that in the gifts of Christ and the Spirit God has inaugurated the prophetically promised age of shalom. The church has the privilege and the mission of participating in that age of peace — which is also, as we will see in chapter seven, the age of justice. Those in Christ, empowered by the Spirit, become the gospel they believe; they embody the peace of God within the community, with outsiders, and wherever they are in the world. They become agents of reconciliation. They become, that is, the gospel of peace.

Lest those concerned that too much Christian attention to peacemaking might have a negative effect on what is traditionally called evangelism, I conclude with the following perspective from a Christian pacifist and an atheist.

Theologian Stanley Hauerwas has written a brilliant book titled War and the American Difference: Theological Reflections on Violence and National Identity.96 In response to a critical review of that book, self-­confessed atheist Noah Berlatsky lauds the intellectual and theological perceptiveness of Hauerwas, concluding his main remarks as follows:

Hauerwas is definitively, defiantly Christian. His message, therefore, is specifically to Christians. It is Christians, first, he believes, who must determine not to kill each other. It is Christians, first, who must reject the morality of war for the morality of the Cross. On the one hand, this is something of a relief for atheists like myself. Since I’m not a believer, I can cheerfully keep paying taxes for cluster bombs and hating my neighbor just as I’ve always done. Still, there is a bit of discomfort there too. If, after all, Christians were actually to take up Hauerwas’ challenge, if they were actually to bear witness to nonviolence and transform the world — well, I’d hate to say it, obviously, but it would be hard to escape the suspicion that that might actually be the work of God.97

Perhaps the world might actually sit up and take notice of the Christian faith if Christians really did embody the gospel of peace. For that reason, we will briefly consider a few contemporary practices of missional peace at the end of the next chapter, which will focus on peace in the letter to the Ephesians — another letter about “the gospel of peace” (Eph. 6:15).

1. Billy Graham, Peace with God: The Secret of Happiness (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1953). I do not mean to impugn either the book or the author, only to suggest that the title is an inadequate summary of the meaning of peace in the Christian gospel.

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