Paul a Pomerville

Recovering Jesus' Gospel of the Kingdom in American Culture Paul a Pomerville

As an American reader of the New Testament, you are faced with a "culture double whammy." First, the gospel story is nearly two millennia old and its characters are embedded in a culture very different from American culture. Second, the gospel story is set in a culture controversy involving the excessive influence of first century Judaism and Jewish culture on the gospel. There is a cultural dimension that must be understood. The "Judaism-gospel conflict" in the early church is the story of the early Jewish church in a cultural transition from a provincial sect of Judaism to an international Christian church. Their struggle is not a side issue in the New Testament, it is the central theme of Luke's Acts. The resolution of that cultural struggle with the gospel brought them to the true meaning of the gospel of the kingdom; it does the same for us today. The gospel does not drop directly into our hearts from heaven; it comes to us filtered by both the culture of the gospel writer and the culture of the reader. God reveals himself through human cultures; the biblical model showing this is Jesus the Son of God coming into the world as a first century Jew in Palestine under the law and Jewish culture. We cannot avoid the "culture factor" in approaching the Bible in America today. My hope is that this in-depth study of the "cultural factor" in Luke's Gospel-Acts of the Apostles will help you deal with the "culture double whammy" that tends to hide the pristine gospel from Americans. An awareness of the impact of American culture on the gospel will enable you to recover the pristine gospel of the kingdom.