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The Gospel Solution by Tom Weaver with John Souter: Bremerton, Washington: True Light Press, 1999
The advertisement for this book says. "If
you believe in Lordship Salvation, you'll hate this book.... If
you believe that salvation is by grace alone, you'll love this
book." Jesus demanded perfection, made forgiving others
mandatory to be forgiven, requires us to love our neighbors as
ourselves, keep the commandments, etc. These things have to be
done in order to be accepted by Him. In summary the writer says
"Jesus confuses me". This is called "The Gospel
Dilemma."
The result is "The Gospel Solution."
The need is to develop an approach to help understand the
difficult teachings of Jesus in Matthew, Mark and Luke. The
writer makes an astonishing admission in Chapter l saying: "The
words of the Lord in Matthew, Mark and Luke actually offended my
theology." The dilemma... If he changed his theology
based on the first three gospels, he would be at odds with the
teachings of the Apostle Paul and the Gospel of John. (p.12)
How does the writer solve this problem? He
discovered the ministry of Jesus is set in a transition period
between the Old and the New Covenants. The key is to understand
this as a transitional period into which the Lord's earthly
ministry falls. The writer calls this approach transitionalism.
(p.24)
The first covenant was in force until it was replaced by the second covenant. This did not happen at the birth of Jesus. As a result the writer develops Principle # 1 which states:
Three more principles are given. These address
the purpose in the teaching of Jesus was bring his people to a
conviction of sin (Princile #2). His intention
was to evoke or provoke a response (Prinicple #3)
and the need to view any single passage in the synoptic Gospels
in the overall context of this transition period (Principle
#4).
The writer makes a distinction between the
teaching ministry of Jesus and what happened at the cross. The
cross is the primary reason Jesus came…but the primary
purpose of the Lord's teaching ministry was to radically
establish man's shortfall from God's holy standard. When a modern-day
believer struggles with the Lord's teaching ministry, it is often
because he does not understand the Lord was speaking in this
transitional way to prepare the Jews for the future preaching of
the cross. (p.39).
Beginning with chapter 3, the four principles
are applied to various places in the gospels.
The goal of the book is not to change the
reader's theology, but rather to help the reader harmonize their
theology with the teachings of Jesus. (p. 283)
The question has to be asked? Is there any
merit to the thesis of this book? You bet there is.The
church needs a better understanding of how they view the
development of the entire Bible. If this is not done soon, they
may just lose the current cultural battle. The church has, and
continues to bring a lot of irrelevent ideals into the pews. They
have not understood the overall unfolding of salvation history.
The key word today is context.
Know the context they say. However, the real truth is, most
saying that have no concept of what they are saying. The better
use of context would to explain the time period involved. Is the
teaching part of the old or new covenent? How do we understand
the difficult sayings of Jesus? Is their merit in the concept of
transitionalem.
I would highly recommend this book to one and
all. Something has to be done to answer the legalism, Pharaseeism
and performance oriented teachings creeping into the church. Much
of these legalistic, performance related concepts, that some have
made part of the salvation-sanctification experience, need to be
evaluated. This book clears up a lot of misunderstandings
concerning discourses of our Lord.
The book can de ordered on the Internet at www.gospelsolution.com. ......... Order it today.
