the connectedness of God and His working in Christ, and at
the same time to expose examples of the disjuncture of
such in popular evangelical teaching, resulting in deistic
detachment and Trinitarian deficiency.
"Gospel"
Zane Hodges refers to "the gospel under siege" 5 and
John MacArthur decries the "erosion of the gospel," 6 but in
their antagonism they both conceive of the gospel as a
corpus of doctrinal truths. Joining the fray, Darrell Bock
asserts that the "gospel is a precious truth" 7 which must be
"handled properly." 8 Dave Hunt concludes that "the
gospel...has three basic elements: (1) Who Christ is. (2)
Who we are. (3) What Christ's death accomplished." 9 This
three-point information-package is then said to "save those
who believe it. Nothing else will save." 10 He goes on to
speak disparagingly of those who merely "receive Jesus." 11
From his rationalistic perch, John W. Robbins explains that
"the gospel is a creed. If we do not believe the creed, we do
not believe Christ." 12 Robbins continues by saying, "Christ
identified Himself with His words. The words and the
Word are identical." 13 If Jesus' words, His teaching, His
propositional and sentential instruction, are the formulation