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Student ID: 10014453 Page 1 of 13
‘The church stems from the evangel, not the evangel from the church.’
1
These words of Robinson take us to the centre of the relationship between the gospel and the Church.This essay will argue that the gospel creates the Church, but the Church does not createthe gospel. The ontological implications for this asymmetrical relationship will beexplored. These include fellowship with God and one another, the importance of thegather to understanding the Church and that it exists as an end in itself, not simply ameans to an end. The priority of the gospel over the Church also has implications forthe existence of the Church. It is an eschatological reality that is made manifest onearth as Christians gather as well as in heaven as they are now gathered in Christ
The relationship between the gospel and the Church
 The gospel is God’s self-revelation through the redemptive work of his Son Jesus. AsCalvin writes this ‘is the true knowledge of Christ, if we receive him as he is offered by the Father: namely clothed with his gospel.’
2
As the gospel’s relationship to the Churchis considered, it is imperative to understand that the gospel is fundamentally Trinitarian. Torrance notes,In the Gospel God has revealed himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but insuch a way that we know that he is in himself what he is toward us in his savingacts in history, eternally Father, Son and Holy Spirit in his one divine being,and that what he is eternally in himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, he is inhis activity toward us through the Son and in the Spirit.
3
 
1
D. W. B. Robinson,
Selected Works
(ed. Peter G. Bolt and Mark D. Thompson; 3 vols; CamperdownN.S.W.: Australian Church Record, 2008), 2:109.
2
J. Calvin,
Institutes of the Christian Religion
(ed. John T. McNeill; trans.
 
Ford Lewis Battles;
 
2
 
 vols.;
 
LCC20–21;
 
Philadelphia:
 
Westminster, 1960 [1559]), III.ii.6.
3
T. F. Torrance,
The Trinitarian Faith: The Evangelical Theology of the Ancient Church ( 
Edinburgh: T &T Clark, 1993), 5.
 
Student ID: 10014453 Page 2 of 13
It is essential to see the relationship between the gospel and the Church asasymmetrical.
4
The self-revelation of the Triune God, through the Son in the Spirit, iswhat gathers the elect to God and to each other in the fellowship of believers.
5
It is thisgathering through the gospel that forms the Church. This achieves God’s redemptivegoal for humanity.This can be seen in the prologue to John’s Gospel (1:1-18) where he presents a précisof God’s salvation history.
6
The eternal Word takes on human frailty and flesh so thatHe might gather to the Father those who are His, so that they might become childrenof God.
7
The eternal Word precedes the act of gathering. As the gospel is proclaimedby Jesus and the apostolic witnesses the Holy Spirit creates the Church (1 Thess 1:5-6,2:13; 1 Pet 1:12). This testimony is handed on through Holy Scripture and as it isproclaimed and applied by the Holy Spirit to the hearts of men and women itcontinues Christ’s work of gathering the elect people of God, forming the Church.‘Christ, when he illumines us into faith by the power of his Spirit, at the same time soengrafts us into his body that we become partakers of every good.’
8
Simply, the gospelprecedes the Church.The gospel’s asymmetrical relationship with the Church reveals three key elements of the Church’s being. Firstly, it is through the gospel that the Church is created to be in
4
John Webster, ‘The Church and the Perfection of God’, in
The Community of the Word: Toward and Evangelical Ecclesiology
(ed. Mark Husbands and Daniel J. Treier; Leicester: Apollos, 2005), 77.
5
Calvin,
Inst.
IV.i.2.
6
Robert Doyle, ‘The Evangelical Doctrine of the Church’, Anglican Church League address delivered atSt. Paul’s Cambridge Park in Sydney on Monday 16th June 1997. Cited 20 March 2009. Online:http://acl.asn.au/old/rcd_doctr_church.html.
7
At this point I would like to affirm that doctrine of Penal Substitutionary Atonement, Jesus death as asubstitute for sinners, is essential to this gospel that gathers the Church.
8
Calvin,
Inst 
. III.i.35.
 
Student ID: 10014453 Page 3 of 13
 fellowship
with the divine Trinity and with one another. Secondly, it is by the gospelthat the Church is the
 gathered 
people of God. Finally because the gospel creates theChurch, the Church is not an end in itself.
Clearing the ontological air
It is important to recognise that the discussion of the
being 
of the Church is adiscussion of the ontology of the Church. Until recently discussions about theontology of the Church have been dominated by two rival ontologies that have lead toan understanding of the Church as a ‘graded hierarchy’ or a ‘political empire’.
9
 According to Gunton, an ontology that is informed by ‘the being of God, who is whathe is as the communion of the Father, Son and Spirit’ will give the ‘proper ontologicalbasis for the Church’.
10
Webster concludes that the ontology of the Church must beginwith the doctrine of God, but is firmer in asserting that the relationship between theChurch and God ‘is most properly conceived as a relation-in-distinction, the
communion
between the church and its Lord is best articulated as
 fellowship
rather than
 participation
.’
11
Webster frames his discussion of ontology in this way because heobserves that ‘communion ecclesiology is heavily invested in a theology of theontological union between Christ and the body of the church,’ and ‘it ischaracteristically insecure (even casual) about identifying Christological boundaries’.This makes it impossible ‘to determine the point at which Jesus stops and the churchbegins’.
12
 
9
Colin E. Gunton, ‘The Church on Earth: The Roots of Community’, in
On Being the Church: Essays onthe Christian Community
(ed. Colin E. Gunton and Daniel W. Hardy; Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1989), 53;Robert Doyle, ‘The Church of the Holy Trinity’,
The
 
Briefing 
, 121 (1993): 2; Gunton, ‘The Church onEarth’, 51-53.
10
Gunton, ‘The Church on Earth’, 66.
11
Webster, ‘The Church and the Perfection of God’, 92.
12
Webster, ‘The Church and the Perfection of God’, 85.
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