How would you describe the proclamation of the gospel in the New Testament? Would you come up with one definition and try to find the closest use of that definition among all the New Testament authors? Or would you let each author speak for himself?
C. H. Dodd was tasked with explaining the gospel in the New Testament for Sunday School teachers, and he took a middle road. Originally written around 1920, Fontes Press has released a newly edited, formatted, and typeset paperback and kindle edition that keeps alive this concise yet insightful survey of the New Testament.
The book divides into three parts, which demonstrates his method. He starts with Jesus and his proclamation of the kingdom of God. His position of “realized eschatology” holds that the kingdom is here and now, and he claimed that “the predominant and essential meaning of His ‘good news’ had nothing to do with the future” (p. 41). That is not to say that nothing will happen in the future, but that the kingdom is present fully in Jesus’ ministry. For Dodd, “The Kingdom of God means God reigning, reigning in the hearts of men, and reigning in the whole sphere of their outward life as well, individual and corporate” (p. 27).
Part 2 explores the early church’s proclamation of the gospel. He surveys the teaching of Acts, Revelation, 1 Peter, and the Evangelists. He separates the Evangelists from Jesus’s proclamation because Jesus’s teaching is decades earlier than the “publication” of the Gospels. This earliest preaching emphasized repentance toward Christ and life in this new community of Jesus-followers (p. 64-65).
Part 3 looks at those authors of the New Testament who seem to be much deeper thinkers and theologians, namely, Paul, Hebrews, and John. In considering these three, Dodd hammers out their essential positions on the gospel and its implications. In some areas, Dodd gives his distinctive views that he later became well-known for, such as his view of atonement as being more about reconciliation through forgiveness than about appeasing an angry deity. This book will also be of interest, then, to New Testament scholars who have heard so much about Dodd’s influential theories, but want to trace it to its earliest origins (this is one of his earliest books).
There are some aspects of the book that one might found out of date, such as his evolutionary view of religion and his following of Wellhausen’s view of OT morality coming to its zenith in the prophets (see p. 91 and xvi, respectively). But on the whole, Dodd is an astute scholar of the ancient world in which the New Testament was birthed. He is familiar with the Greeks, the Roman Empire, and Judaism, and he is also a careful reader of the New Testament (even if that does not mean he is always right in his interpretations).
His view of the kingdom is a bit anemic, in that he views it essentially as God reigning in man’s heart. However, he does believe the kingdom manifests itself outwardly through a changed life, and in that way the kingdom is not purely spiritual, but also physical. There is a real transformation of the person, especially in their ethics.
Dodd also makes some insightful connections, as when he notes that John speaks little of the kingdom, but rather speaks of “eternal life” as a near equivalent (see p. 112). And then he makes such memorable and purpit-worthy explanations, for example,
When [John] says “eternal life” he is not thinking of life beyond the grave; he is thinking first of life of a certain kind and quality which a man may live here and now—of such a kind and quality that it is worthy to endure forever (p. 112).
How many of us need to be reminded that “eternal life” is not desirable because it is unending, but because it is a “certain kind and quality…of such a kind and quality that is worthy to endure forever.”
This little book is a useful survey of the New Testament from a scholar who dominated British scholarship in the twentieth century. You likely won’t agree with everything he has to say, but you’ll certainly find his method of considering the entirety of the New Testament helpful as you think about how you would pull together all the New Testament’s strands yourself. You will also find the seed of many New Testament debates between Dodd and other scholars such as Morris and Ladd.
If you buy it, make sure to buy the Fontes Classics edition with the cover that appears in the banner at the top of this post. Other versions are poorly reproduced images of the original book pages.
