The Return of the One God

Return of the One God
Simply Good News
Why the Gospel Is News and What Makes It Good

I have pointed out that in Paul’s Roman world the word gospel was regularly used to speak about the royal announcement that was made when an emperor came to the throne, or perhaps on his birthday. That was the meaning everybody knew. Since Paul used words like Lord and phrases like Son of God to talk about Jesus – words and phrases that everybody knew belonged to the Roman emperors, not least because they were on coins and inscriptions – it would be easy to imagine that Paul spoke like that simply to indicate that Jesus was like Caesar only more so. But there is something deeper, older, and richer going on here…