What happened? How did we develop a salvation culture out of a gospel culture? How did "evangelicals" become "soterians"? Or, when did the "gospel" become the Plan of Salvation? It began in many ways with Augustine, but its more focused beginning was in the Reformation, though it did not happen during the Reformation. We can pinpoint the documents themselves that both provide evidence for the shift that was underway and that also provide the foundation for creating a salvation culture. Those two documents, one from the Lutheran wing and one from the Calvinist/Reformed wing, are the Augsburg Confession and the Genevan Confession.
But before we get there, my own confession. Cutting out the inevitable nonsense that accompanies everything humans do, including Calvin's wretched decisions that led to the burning of Servetus, Luther's wretched beliefs about Jews and his wretched decisions about the Anabaptists, and wretched tendencies of the Anabaptist sectarian to think of themselves as the only people of God, I believe the Reformation was a profound work of God that both enlivened the church and altered Western European history for the better. the singular contribution of the Reformation, in all three directions -- Lutheran, Reformed, and Anabaptist -- was that the gravity of the gospel was shifted toward human response and personal responsibility and the development of the gospel as speaking into the responsibility.
This is not to deny the important and real differences between these three movements, but it is to say that the one things that emerged in each was a heavy sense of the need for personal salvation. I do not mean that such was not found in Roman Catholicism; rather, the Reformation said, in effect, that the "gospel" must lead to personal salvation- and the rest is history.
But with that emphasis, regardless of how important is was and remains, came a price. The gospel culture began to shift to a salvation culture. Our contemporary equation of the word gospel with the Plan of Salvation came about because of developments from and after the Reformation.
"When I read todays thin and superficial reductions of the gospel to simple points, I know that that could never have happened apart from the Reformation. I also know that it didn't happen during the Reformation itself but as a result of the Reformation's reframing of the apostolic gospel-become-creed."-Scot McKnight
Now, briefly, the two documents mentioned above. I begin with the Augsburg Confession. The Reformation statements focused on the elements of the Christian faith that led to their differences with the Catholic Church, but in so doing the Reformation churches did not deny the Nicene Creed. Instead, they reframed the faith in ways that provided a lens through which they now saw the creed itself.
In 1530, Philip Melanchthon presented to Charles V at the Diet of Augsburg a confession built of conclusions that were forming among the Lutheran Protestants. I draw attention here to the order and substance of this confession, which need to be seen over and against the classical order and substance of the Nicene Creed. Nicea framed things through God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, and the God the Son articles were derived from 1 Corinthians 15. The Augsburg Confession converted the order of the "articles" into sections on salvation and justification by faith. It is precisely here that a "gospel culture" was reshaped into a "salvation culture" or, better yet, "justification culture." Here are the central categories of the Lutheran Confession:
God as Triune [as at Nicea]
Original Sin [major reshaping idea]
The Son of God [as with Nicea and Chalcedon [propitiation of God's wrath]
Justification by Faith
Then the Augsburg Confession covers the office of ministry, the new obedience, the church, baptism, the Holy Supper, confession, repentance, sacraments, order in the church, church usage, civil cause of sin, and a lengthy discussion of faith and good works, and it concludes with the cult of the saints before it discusses matters about which the Reformers were in serious dispute. I wish to make only one point: the Lutheran Confession framed the gospel in terms of salvation. It would not be inaccurate to say that the gospel "story became soteriology," or the story of Israel/Bible/Jesus became the System of Salvation.
The Reformation did not deny the gospel story and it did not deny the creeds. Instead, it put everything into a new order and into a new place. Time and developments have somehow eroded the much more balanced combination of gospel culture and salvation culture in the Reformation to where today a salvation culture has eclipsed the gospel culture. What is important is that the genius of the Reformation's focusing of the gospel on salvation by faith alone comes to the fore also in the Genevan Confession. Like the Augsburg Confession, the Genevan Confession is framed even more by a salvation culture.
-Scot McKnight "The King Jesus Gospel" pg 70-72
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