[Please note that I’m including my scriptural references in the links, and that they also link to articles with extended exegesis that I couldn’t fit into this post, so please be sure to click all the supporting links in order to get the full picture, as well as all the Scripture references. Please also keep in mind, however, that I don’t necessarily agree with everything that all of the writers of the articles I link to believe and/or teach (aside from the ones I myself wrote, of course). Some of them just happen to have some good supporting material on the specific point I’m making in this article.]
While those of us in the body of Christ discover pretty quickly that there are at least two Gospels taught in Scripture, the vast majority of the members of the Christian religion have somehow missed this fact, and many are extremely insistent that there’s only one Gospel taught in the Bible. In fact, even after one shows them just how clear it is that there is more than one Gospel, many of them still feel like they aren’t allowed to accept the possibility that this could be true.
Now, there are a number of reasons they feel they have to deny the existence of two Gospels in Scripture, but one of the major reasons is due a misunderstanding of the warning Paul gave in his epistle to the Galatians about preaching any other Gospel to the body of Christ than the one they’d already received. Unfortunately, most Christians read more into this passage than it’s actually saying, leading them to believe a whole doctrine that wasn’t what Paul was getting at there at all.
You see, Paul wasn’t saying there is only one true Gospel there, or that nobody could ever preach a Gospel to someone other than the one he taught the body of Christ. Most people who base their assumption on this passage don’t realize what Paul meant when he wrote “another gospel which is not another” in the verses before his warning. Unfortunately, the people who use this argument not only read more into this passage than it’s actually saying, they also don’t pay close attention to the specific wording of the passage either, leading them to believe a whole doctrine that wasn’t what Paul was getting at there at all. You see, Paul wasn’t saying there is only one true Gospel there, or that nobody could ever preach a Gospel to someone other than the one he taught the body of Christ (if that were the case, nobody could ever share good news of any sort with anyone if it wasn’t about Christ’s death for our sins, His burial, and His resurrection, including good news/gospels/glad tidings about births or job promotions or any other sort of positive information). Most people who base their assumptions about there being only one Gospel on this passage have likely only read translations of Scripture which render verses 6 and 7 in the way the KJV does when it says “another gospel: which is not another” in the verses before his warning. The problem is, if one doesn’t understand that this is a very poetic sort of translation, they can easily end up very confused. Is it another Gospel or is it not another Gospel? It can’t literally be both another Gospel and not another Gospel at the same time, which tells us that this particular translation isn’t meant to be read literally.
What most people aren’t aware of is that Paul actually used two distinct Greek words rather than one in the original text (and that Paul literally just meant: “a different gospel which is not another”) in order to differentiate between any legitimate Gospels that weren’t his but were still perfectly okay to be taught to certain people to follow for salvation (as long as it wasn’t members of the body of Christ being taught that) and any illegitimate “gospels” that shouldn’t be taught by anyone at all, speaking of both a different (ἕτερος/“het’-er-os”) so-called “gospel” which isn’t actually a real Gospel at all, and another(ἄλλος/“al’-los”) actual Gospel. The word ἕτερος basically means “other of a differing sort,” while ἄλλος means “other of the same sort,” so the wording of this passage allows for the existence of another/ἄλλος true Gospel (or even true Gospels, plural) in addition to Paul’s Gospel. For those who haven’t figured it out yet, this is one of the many examples of the translators of the KJV translating two different words (which meant something quite different from one another in their original language) using the same English word in the KJV, and if one isn’t being careful in their Bible study, they can end up completely misinterpreting the passage as saying the exact opposite of what it actually means because they aren’t aware of this fact.
Simply put, Paul wasn’t saying that people who taught there are other Gospels are under a curse, since he did so himself in the very next chapter of this epistle. All he was telling his readers is that anyone who tried to get those in the body of Christ to follow the requirements of any Gospels for their salvation other than the one they had already received from him would be accursed. But Peter and the rest of the circumcision believers could preach the requirements of their particular Gospel as something to be followed to anyone that they wanted to without fear, as long as it wasn’t to existing members of the body of Christ, based on the words “unto you” in verses 8 and 9, since Paul was writing to those who had already believed his Gospel (meaning those who had already become members of the body of Christ), not to those who hadn’t. In fact, the different/ἕτερος “gospel” that Paul was warning about there was actually an adulterated mix of both Gospels, which means it was an attempt to blend the two Gospels into one (those whom Paul was condemning were trying to mix the law elements associated with the Gospel that Peter preached in with the pure grace of Paul’s Gospel, resulting in a bastardized false “gospel” that can’t help anyone). Unfortunately, this means that the evangelists and teachers of the Christian religion today who are also trying to force the contents of each of these two actual Gospels into one (by insisting that there is only one Gospel) are guilty of preaching that very same different/ἕτερος “gospel” that isn’t even another/ἄλλος (completely legitimate) Gospel at all like the Gospel that Peter preached was, bringing the curse that Paul warned about upon themselves.
And on the off chance that anyone ever tries to claim that “different” and “another” (or ἕτερος and ἄλλος) literally mean the same thing, here are some sentences to consider: 1) “the word ‘different’ is different from the word ‘another,’” 2) “the word ‘another’ is another from the word ‘different,’” 3) “the word ‘another’ is different from the word ‘another,’” 4) “the word ‘different’ is another from the word ‘different,’” 5) “the word ‘another’ is another from the word ‘another,’” and 6) “the word ‘different’ is different from the word ‘different.’” Read those, then ask yourself if those sentences all mean the same thing, or if the last five even make any sense at all. And to really drive the point home, if the two words truly did mean the same thing, the verse could also be translated as “a different Gospel which is not different,” similar to sentence number 6 above, but that would be an extremely nonsensical translation. And if the words “different” and “another” don’t mean the same thing, as those examples I just gave prove, there’s literally no way to interpret the passage as meaning Paul is saying there’s only one legitimate Gospel, because he’s clearly allowing for at least three separate messages called gospels in this passage, 1) his own Gospel, 2) another Gospel, and 3) a different “gospel,” which means the only way he could have been talking about only two messages called gospels — 1) his own Gospel, and 2) a different “gospel” — with only one being legitimate, is if “another” and “different” actually did mean the same thing. (This isn’t to say that ἕτερος and ἄλλος can’t ever be used as synonyms of one another in a more figurative manner in other places, since we already know that the same word can be used in different ways in different passages, but it should be clear by this point that Paul wasn’t using ἕτερος as another word with literally the same meaning as ἄλλος in this passage — since then he’d have been contradicting himself by saying it both was and wasn’t another Gospel at the same time — but that he was instead using the two words with different definitions intended, contrasting them with one another, in this case; and yes, I used the words “different” and “another” repeatedly in this sentence on purpose, to really drive my point home.) And even if we only look at the way the KJV renders the verse, ignoring the original Greek words, that translation is obviously still saying the same thing, just very poetically (since a literal interpretation on its own would be contradictory, as I just mentioned), so it has to be interpreted as meaning: “another” [so-called] gospel which is not [actually] another [legitimate Gospel] (with the first “another” there being in quotation marks in order to demonstrate that it still just means “different” [from any actual Gospels], when it comes to this particular translation).
Besides, anyone who has studied the Bible already believes that there were other glad tidings (again, meaning Gospels) preached in Scripture, such as the angel Gabriel’s proclamation of glad tidings regarding the impending birth of John the Baptist to Zacharias, with “glad tidings” being translated from a verb form of the same Greek word εὐαγγέλιον/“yoo-ang-ghel’-ee-on” that “Gospel” is translated from in the KJV (and that the English word “evangelism” is transliterated from), literally meaning to “preach this good news” in that passage. This means that there’s no way Paul could have been saying there’s only one message allowed to be labelled as words of good news/a Gospel/glad tidings/εὐαγγέλιον in existence or else we’d have to remove those verses discussing the other “glad tidings” from the Bible altogether, and Gabriel would have been accursed for telling Zacharias about his wife’s pregnancy, unless those various other words of good news/glad tidings are all a part of a larger, all-encompassing, progressively-revealed “Gospel” we have to believe in so we can be saved. But then John the Baptist’s birth would also have to be a part of what the body of Christ has to have faith in for their salvation (and someone who hadn’t heard of John the Baptist yet couldn’t get saved until they do if this were the case), so this obviously makes no sense, especially in light of what Paul said the Gospel he preached actually was, which means that right off the bat we already have multiple proclamations of good news/Gospels/glad tidings/εὐαγγέλιον in the Bible even before we get to any of the Gospels that one can believe when they get saved. All that being said, even if somebody somehow still hasn’t recognized that there’s more than one Gospel in the Bible after everything I’ve already covered, they should at least now recognize that the passage in Galatians we just looked at about a different gospel which is not another can’t be used to refute the idea, since its wording does at least allow for another/ἄλλος legitimate Gospel to exist, even if they somehow still don’t believe there definitely is another.
A misunderstanding of this warning isn’t the only reason that most Christians assume there’s only one Gospel taught in Scripture, however. There are a number of other passages they also misinterpret, one of the most important ones being the statement about there how there is “neither Jew nor Gentile,” and if this is something that also has caused you to assume there can only be one Gospel, I urge you to read my next article now, where I explain why that statement doesn’t mean what most Christians assume it does any more than what Paul wrote about the different ”gospel” he condemned does.