Pauline christology an exegetical-theological study pdf

ISBN alk. Epistles of Paul—Theology. Paul, the Apostle, Saint. Jesus Christ—History of doctrines. F35 What begins as a typical prayer and thanksgiving report soon evolves into a chronological narrative about Paul's relationship with the Thessalonians. He begins with a reminder about the Thessalonians' actual conversion under the apostles' ministry , a conversion that became so well known that it preceded Paul as he moved from Macedonia down the Achaian Peninsula to Corinth For his own reasons, he next reminds them of the nature of his own ministry among them ; and after returning momentarily to the thanksgiving , he then resumes the narrative, taking up in turn 1 what had happened to them in the meantime , 2 his own thwarted attempts to return , 3 the sending of Timothy instead , and finally 4 his great relief to receive basically good news about them from Timothy The present text occurs at the end of his report about the notoriety of the Thessalonians' conversion, which with obvious deliberation he also uses to score some important theological points.

What has been noised abroad, 27 2f, For the full argumentation for this perspective, see ch. Scholarship in the latter half of the preceding century saw a flurry of activity devoted to finding pre-Pauline creedal moments in his letters, of which this passage is usually brought forward as the first. Whether this passage is pre-Pauline is moot. The present interest is not in pre-Pauline Christology but in Paul's. And here, as in 27 Christology in the Thessalonian Correspondence 39 and reported to Paul, is "how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath.

Both epithets, "the living God" and "the true God," reflect the language of such monotheism in Israel's long struggle against idolatry. Whatever else is true of the God of the Jews, he is "the living God," over against the lifeless idols of the pagan world; and precisely because he alone is the living God, he is therefore "the true God" over against the false gods of idolatry. Moreover, the living and true God is further identified, here for the first time in the corpus, as the God "who raised [his Son] from the dead.

It should also be noted that some see this passage as the primary Christology of 1 Thessalonians. See the discussion in Collins, "Early Christology," But Collins, in keeping with a long tradition, does not pursue the possible messianism of the title "his Son. B u t see also Jos. F o r "the living God," see, e.

Hos cited by Paul in Rom In the NT, see esp. Acts , where the wording of conversion is just as it appears here; cf. For "the true God," see Wis ; Josephus, Ant A considerable literature has suggested that the "background" to this usage is Daniel's "son of man" Dan A n d since it is easy for Christians who read their Bibles canonically to hear the title "Son of God" in Johannine terms, we note here that this is its first actual occurrence in the NT. Although Paul is quite prepared to use "Son" for the risen Christ, as he will again in 1 Cor , it occurs most often in Paul's letters with reference to the Son's "giving his life" for us 2 Cor ; Gal ; ; Rom , 32; Col He also designates Christ as "Son" when he thinks of salvation as effecting the new creation, in which we are being transformed back into the divine image that is found perfectly in God's Son Rom For now, one needs to note that Paul's reference here to the Son as in heaven with the Father most likely presuppositionally carries the double sense of the Son's now reigning as the Jewish Messiah, who, through his resurrection and exaltation, has come to be understood as the eternal Son, who had been sent from the Father to redeem.

But would this double sense have been available to the Thessalonians? Most likely so. Both the internal evidence of the rest of these letters Paul's 32 33 34 35 language "await. What can be demonstrated see ch. See p. One of the disappointing features of M. Hengel's otherwise especially useful study of this title The Son of God: The Origin of Christology and the History of JewishHellenistic Religion [Philadelphia: Fortress, ] is his rather complete disregard of the use of this title for the Davidic king of Israel, which all the NT evidence together points to as the basic source of early Christian understanding.

See esp. See also D. One may therefore also assume that they themselves had already been instructed in the now double sense of Jesus as the Son of God.

The significance of this is that in the latter passage Paul shifts in v. This combination indicates that the two most significant messianic "titles," Lord and Son, which occur together a little later in 1 Cor , were already in place when Paul wrote this letter. Jesus as the Kvpioq of Septuagint Yahweh Texts 38 39 The second messianic title, Jesus as the icupioc, of Ps , plays by far the most important christological role in 1 Thessalonians, so much so that the rest of this discussion is given to an analysis of this usage.

Paul's own letters, including this one, are full verification that these earliest converts are well acquainted with the arguments that the crucified and risen Jesus is indeed the promised Jewish Messiah, God's exalted Son. Cerfaux, " 'Kyrios' dans les citations pauliniennes de l'Ancien Testament," ETL 20 : ; and more recently the published dissertation by D. For the evidence of this assertion, see the discussion in 1 Cor , where this psalm is first cited by Paul, in a clearly messianic context.

Steely; Nashville: Abingdon, ] and thus totally apart from any OT usage. See further the critique in Hengel, Son of God, n. Strategically situated astraddle the Egnatian Way and with a deep-sea port, the city was of special interest to the empire. The significance of this emerges in Luke's abbreviated report in Acts , where the explicit charge brought against Paul was maiestas high treason —that he was promoting "another king than Caesar. We begin by noting that the title 6 Kvtpioc, is the special province of Christ in 1 Thessalonians as throughout the corpus ; it is never attributed to the Father, who is always referred to either as Qeoq God or 6 Tratfjp the Father.

This usage in 1 Thessalonians can be conveniently packaged under two headings: 1 the intertextual use of the Septuagint's ie6pi. The christological import of this sentence lies with the fact that the Ktipvoq of the Septuagint is "Yahweh my God," who will himself come to the Mount of Olives and carry out his eschatological victory over the nations.

In Paul's theology, the future coming of the Lord is always seen as the return of the present reigning Lord, Jesus Christ.

What Paul has 43 T h e meaning of ndvitov xcov ayiwv ainou is debated in the literature as to whether it means "angels" as it surely does in Zechariah; so Best, ; Marshall, ; Wanamaker, ; Richard, ; Malherbe, ; Green, , "his saints" as it usually does for Paul; so Ellicott, 47; Findlay, 77 , or both Milligan, 46; Rigaux, ; Bruce, 74; Morris, ; Holmes, The intertextuality of this sentence seems to make it tilt decisively in favor of "angels," especially since the usage of oi ayiot to refer to "God's people" does not occur in 1 Thessalonians at all and in 2 Thessalonians only in T h e primary differences are the case and word order of "all" and "the holy ones.

The adaptation includes the article with Kupio-u, in this case caused by his addition of the possessive pronoun "our. So much is this so that in 2 Thess , the coming Lord Jesus Christ has altogether assumed the role of judging God's enemies as well see PP. But "ascent" is one thing; the present Pauline text has to do with Christ's final "descent. But in contrast to the primary usage in the prophets, where it points to future judgment.

Paul's interest in this "day" is primarily as God's eschatological conclusion to the salvation that has been effected through Christ. Indeed, the whole argument of 1 Thess is to reassure the Thessalonian believers that the Day of the Lord is not to be thought of as a threat for them.

As before, the christological significance of this phrase lies with the fact that this use of "the Name" is an appropriation to Christ of what belonged exclusively to Yahweh in the Hebrew Bible. That is, Paul may be reflecting this passage, but the language is now his own.

The Day of the Lord 2 Thess pio K u p i o u fip. But the burden of proof rests with him, since Paul explicitly identifies Christ as Kijpioi; and nowhere uses this title unambiguously to refer to God. It is Yahweh's "glory" that Moses desired to see Exod , and that then filled the tabernacle Exod and the temple 1 Kgs But precisely because the divine Son already shares that glory, Paul can easily speak in such terms. But even so, this attribution to Christ of language usually reserved for God is a remarkable way of speaking of the final goal of the Thessalonians' redemption.

Perhaps even more striking is the language of the thanksgiving in 2 Thess , with its strong affirmation of God's justice noted above pp. In that case, through his intertextual use of Isa , Paul has straight across attributed God's unshared glory—"the glory of his might"— to the Lord Jesus. And because he is so—always—God's people can count on him and trust him at all times and in all circumstances.

Yahweh is so revealed in Deut "the faithful [x61;] God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him" , whose faithfulness means he can do no wrong Deut And it is Yahweh's faithfulness to which psalmists Ps and prophets Isa appeal. And so, too, does Paul. Although not frequent thereafter, this expression does occur 3 times in his correspondence with less than faithful Corinth: 1 Cor ; ; 2 Cor In each case, as in the OT, it is God Qeoq who is faithful.

Verse 5a very likely expresses the view of those with weak consciences. In the present argument ch. And as has been recently pointed out Thiselton, ; Garland, , the "reality" of idolatry was everywhere in ancient Corinth.

He has kept the "one" intact, but he has divided the Shema into two parts, with Geoq God now referring to the Father, and Kitpioc; Lord referring to Jesus Christ the S o n.

Because Paul's interests here are pastoral, he identifies the "one Lord" as none other than the historical "Jesus Christ," the one who died for all, especially those with a weak conscience v. The Shema also asserts, typical of Paul's Jewish monotheism, that the one God stands over against all pagan deities at two crucial, interrelated points: as Creator of all that is and concomitantly as the one Ruler of all that is created.

Nothing—absolutely nothing—lies outside the realm of the one Creator-Ruler G o d. Over against the "lords many" of paganism, there is only one Lord, Jesus Christ, whose relation to creation is that of effective agent.

Collins, ; M. Hengel, The Son of God, For a strong critique of Bousset's Kyrios Christos and others up through W. For a helpful overview of this crucial point, that this combination of God as Creator and Ruler of the universe is the absolutely unique feature of Jewish belief, see R.

Kuschel Born before All Time? The Dispute over Christs Origin [trans. But that is to misread the passage in context; the analogy for Pauline usage here is Rom , not 2 Cor , as argued by Kuschel. The whole passage therefore, typically for Paul, encloses the work of the Son within that of the Father; that is, the two 5id phrases regarding the one Lord's role as agent of creation and redemption are logically framed by the E K and eic, phrases regarding the Father as the ultimate source and goal or purpose of all things—both creation and redemption.

It need hardly be pointed out—but it will be because of what is said in the literature—that this second line is a plain, undeniable expression of Paul's presuppositional conviction about Christ's preexistence as the Son of God: preexistence, because of the assertion that "through him are xd rcdvxa [all things]," with creation in view; Son of God, because of Paul's identity of the "one God" as "the Father" see the discussion on 1 Thess in ch. All of this seems deliberate on Paul's part.

That is, he is reasserting for the Corinthians that their theology has it right: there is indeed only one God, over against all other "gods many and lords many. That the idols are not "gods" is a given; what the Corinthians have failed to reckon with is that the idols are in fact the habitation of demons see, e. And Paul's final point in this argument is that because there is only one Lord, and because the idols are the habitation of demons, they may not under any circumstances sit at both tables.

For that is in fact a denial of the one Lord First, although the conceptual frame for this construction eic-Sid-eicJ can be found elsewhere in the N T , ' ' there is nothing quite like this use of prepositional phrases apart from Paul himself. It is of significant theological interest to note here that in the Romans doxology God QEOC, is the one "through whom" are all things, while in Col the Son is the one "for whom" are all things. As Bauckham has recently argued in a slightly different way, this interchange of prepositions in itself indicates full identity of Christ with G o d.

That is, Paul is not here trying to demonstrate Christ's creative agency; he simply assumes it by assertion. Nonetheless, at a deeper level this is precisely the assertion that will make both the theological and ethical dimensions of the argument work. There is nothing like this to be found in Paul's Jewish heritage as such.

That is, he has no prior frame of reference into which this modification of the Shema can be fitted. As is pointed out on 1 Cor below pp. Dunn has further suggested that one of the texts Philo, Cher. This is true, but Philo's concerns and language differ from Paul's. LCL, vol.

Thus, although there are conceptual similarities, in fact the combination of prepositions found here and Rom ; Col is apparently unique to Paul in antiquity.

On the attempt by some to find the background in Greco-Roman Hellenistic religion s. The problem with this view, of course, is that the Pauline texts themselves do not support it. See the excursus, pp. F o r the full data and discussion, see appendix A , pp. T h a t is, moral or sinful behavior Rom ; : the greatness of God, who alone has wisdom Rom ; the folly of trying to match wits with God 1 Cor As the story of Christ that Paul rehearses in Phil makes plain, Paul came to recognize very early on that "the foolishness of God" is wiser than our merely human wisdom.

Thus, even though no christological point is made of it here, the "humiliation" of the divinely given Messiah, who came from heaven to earth "in the form of a slave," is Paul's thoroughgoing perspective see also 2 Cor ; cf.

As he indicates here in v. That leads then to the clinching moment. Returning to the language of Deuteronomy once more, Paul concludes the argument with a pair of rhetorical questions. As always, Paul distinguishes between Qeoc, and Kijpioi;. Nonetheless, they also have shared identity, so that the "Lord" whom Israel was provoking to jealousy is, in the Corinthians' case, to be understood as the risen Lord, Jesus Christ. Freedom to indulge also means freedom not to indulge.

To support his assertion v. On the one hand, since the present argument concludes v. This happens in a variety of ways. We take them up in their order of appearance in 1 Corinthians except for two items in ch. Here I simply note how "grace" plays out in the rest of this letter.

First, in the letter body "grace" is expressed only in terms of God the Father. Thus in ; ; , 57, "grace" is either "of God" or is "given by God. See n. Capes Old Testament Yahweh Texts. Kvpwc yivaoKei fidrawi. He then offers that what more likely lies behind the metaphor is Jesus as the second Adam, who "was rich" in a way far beyond the first Adam but became "poor" in his suffering and death.

And he is the same author of the later Phil , which tells this same story but with more detail. Nevertheless, the plain sense of the metaphor in this case carries all the freight in a presuppositional way of the normal sense of the language and theology of Phil But he does so, typically, by putting it into the context of the larger work of reconciliation that Christ has effected for the sake of the world.

Verse 21 serves as the wrap-up to this part of the long digression. What is striking is how apparently unrelated to the preceding sentences it seems to be. That is, Paul's concern from v. The basic historical presupposition that should prevail in such moments is that what Paul wrote even though by dictation , Paul himself believed and made his own; and therefore these sentences are as Pauline as anything else one finds in his letters. Christ's death and resurrection have radicalized everything, so that viewing Paul's weaknesses from the "old age" point of view misses the point of everything that Christ has done for us and the world.

The old has gone; the new has come v. The point is that Paul could easily have moved on to what he says in and no one would have missed a thing in the argument itself. But he is never quite able to do things that way.

What is crucial for him in this appeal is that the Corinthians recognize the enormity of the work of Christ that effected our reconciliation. Thus, with a typical, very tight two-liner, with its very sharp contrasts much like above , he sets forth the work of Christ in terms of the great exchange: the "sinless one" becomes "sin" for us so that we the sinful ones might in him the sinless One become the righteousness of God. The one not knowing for us that we might become auapxiav a u a p x i a v E7toir c;ev, S i K a i o a w n Geoi sin sin [God] made, the righteousness of God in him.

The very tightness of this kind of contrast has Paul saying things in a way that has led others to spill a great deal of ink over this passage, to give it a precision that removes some of our discomfort with what is said. Our present concern is simply to note that the sinlessness of Christ in his incar17 15 Or, in Barrett's words, "Paul has not yet explained to his own satisfaction how Christ crucified constitutes a message of reconciliation" O n this, see Barnett n.

But the next passage does in fact seem also to point in this direction. This is one of the issues that gives clear continuity between the two canonical letters to Corinth, as is made plain by Paul's strong defense in 20 18 S o most commentators.

Thus it is unlikely that the similar phrase in Rom and has the same meaning as here pace Bultmann, ; Furnish, In the two Romans passages, the law has caused people to become conscious of their sin as sin; here Paul is dealing with a different kind of "knowing" that comes by experience. T h i s reality was anticipated regarding the Suffering Servant in Isa "though he had done no lawless deed [dvouia], nor was any deceit in his mouth" ; according to Pss.

At least this seems to be the most natural reading of the text so Windisch, ; Barrett, ; Barnett, ; Lambrecht, ; Matera, cf. In this second letter it is picked up regularly— beginning with and then again in and —and serves as the main piece of the argument against his opponents in chs.

Paul has been accused of being "weak" when present with them but "forceful" in his letters v. Although some e. The net result is that the word "glory," which has carried the narrative from v.

Thus for the believer, the glory that is ours is the direct result of being brought face-to-face with "the glory of Christ" himself by means of the Spirit. The first significant christological point in v. Paul thus continues to keep alive the contrast with Moses. All of this assumes a remarkably high Christology, where the Son of God is both the true expression of God the Father's glory and the true bearer of the divine image.

And it is precisely at such points that Pauline Christology and soteriology merge, since with Christ as the Father's glory and image, through his death and resurrection and by the gift of his Spirit, the ultimate goal of redemption is finally actualized—which is not simply dealing with our sins and thus fitting us for heaven but actually re-creating us back into 61 So also Barrett, This is one of the more difficult phrases in the argument.

The basic options are three: 1 ever-increasing glory; 2 from the glory of the old to that of the new; 3 from the glory that is Christ's to the glory that is ours. In God's Empowering Presence I opted for the second, on the basis of v.

Although the third is attractive. Paul in other places uses E K. And this is the point that Paul makes next in the present narrative. The two sentences vv. First the texts: 6 6edq xov cdcovoq xorjxou exvj A, oaev xd v o f p a x a xcov diuaxcov eiq xd uf a d y d o a i xov »xio-p. Here the "fear of the Lord" does not mean to be fearful of him but, in light of his being the final judge, to live with proper reverence and awe in his presence.

But the obedience called for in this passage is the ultimate kind of obedience due God alone. What Paul is taking on here are the mis81 78 C f. T h a t is, this is a familiar idiom in the OT.

Isa ; ; Ezek ; Hos Given both the immediate context v. Bultmann [], "the K-upioc;, of course, is Christ" , one meets with surprise that Furnish , emphatically applies "the fear of the Lord" to God. Those who are carrying on this "warfare" against Paul are seen by him to be setting themselves "up against the knowledge of God.

That obedience in this case is expressed as "obedience to Christ. This is the kind of language that in the biblical revelation is basically reserved for God; indeed, in Isa God explicitly says that "all who invoke a blessing in the land will do so by the God of truth; those who take an oath in the land will swear by the God of truth. Whereas his opponents have disdained his weaknesses, Paul boasts in them as reflecting the Christ whose gospel he proclaims.

When he goes on to the criterion of "revelations," he obviously intends the 85 8 1 For direct obedience to God, see, e. Whether Paul intends this as an actual oath most think so is not especially crucial because, as Thrall notes, what Paul says here functions like one in any case. M o s t see it as a subjective genitive of "source" or "origins" , but that seems to make "truth" more objective than this oath would seem to warrant; in any case.

Paul is appealing not to some objective truth but to the fact that what he is about to say is absolutely trustworthy. At one point in h u m a n history, when God's set time had arrived, the messianic Son of God entered human history yevopevov [born] from a woman within the context of God's own people yevouevov [born] under the law so as to free people from the slave tutor—Torah observance—by giving them "adoption as 'sons.

Paul's concern lies precisely in the next two items of his sentence "born under the law, in order to redeem those under the law". His first mentioning Christ as yevouevov EK yuvcaKoc, born of a woman seems understandable only if one recognizes the presuppositional nature of Christ's preexistence that is the predicate of the whole sentence.

Or to put it another way, the fact that both yevouevoc, phrases emphasize the Son's human condition seems to suggest that the sending word presupposes a prior existence that was not h u m a n.

While it is true that yivouca can mean "born," and for the purposes of making sense in English almost 27 2 4 So also Burton, ; cf. It is of some interest that Dunn's analysis of this verb is strictly limited to v. Betz, ; Longenecker, This, of course, can be neither proved nor disproved; but when it is further suggested that one can find the Pauline "additions" to the prior formula, which only exists by excising parts of Paul's sentence!

Burton: "Both [b] clauses are evidently added to indicate the humiliation. Indeed, it is of some interest that this is the first meaning offered in BDAG "to come into being through process of birth" ; but in this case, putting this meaning first stands over against Danker's ordinary way of handling such verbs, where the first meaning usually given is the one from which all others evolve.

In this case, that comes second, "to come into existence. The point to be made is that its use here is demanded neither by context nor meaning. In fact, later in the chapter, when referring to the birth of Ishmael and Isaac, by implication , Paul uses the ordinary verb for "to be born" yevvdco [, 24, 29]. Otherwise, the participles would need to be expressed as antecedent to the main verb: having been born of a woman and under the law, the Son was sent by God to redeem those under the law.

Thus, "birth" from Mary in this case is expressed in terms of Christ's "coming into earthly existence" through a human mother. And this leads to our third christological observation. Paul's emphasis with this phrase "born of a woman" , in passing though it seems to be, is on the incarnation of Christ, who thereby stands in stark contrast to the ahistorical, atemporal axoixzia TOVJ KOOUOVJ elemental spiritual forces of the world [v. That is, if this clause makes certain that the main clause, "God sent his Son at the right time in history," implies his preexistence, then in its own way it puts special emphasis on his genuine humanity: "the Son of God" was no docetic Christ but shared fully in our humanity, preexistent Son of God though he was.

In becoming God's children through Christ and the Spirit, they are thereby also Abraham's children and thus heirs to the promise that God made with Abraham. And here is the reason for emphasis on the incarnation. It was precisely because Christ himself entered history 28 29 first heading, two have to do with plant life Matt 1 Cor , while the other three, including this one John ; Rom , focus not on birth as such but on Abraham's or Christ's appearing in the world.

S o most interpreters; cf. Betz: "This anthropological definition [born of a woman, born under the law] is given a christological purpose, indicating that Christ's appearance was that of a human being in the full sense of the term" ; cf.

Longenecker: "As a qualitative expression 'born of a woman' speaks of Jesus' true humanity and representative quality, i. Thus the twofold focus of the two "was born" clauses: God's Son was both truly human and born within the context of Israel.

In this same vein, one should note further the significance of the Abba-cry with regard to Christ's humanity. And since by Paul's own testimony he spent a fortnight with Peter and James in Jerusalem, it is myopic skepticism of the highest order to suggest that Paul knew next to nothing of the historical Jesus.

If what he knows comes to him from others, it is nonetheless that knowledge of the historical Jesus that he demonstrates. After all, it is not Christ who is K a r a a d p K d in that passage: rather, it is Paul's way of viewing the world. Hence the T N I V rightly has it. This is skepticism born out of another time when it was popular to believe that Paul is a kind of second creator of Christianity and therefore that he cared almost nothing for, and was unacquainted with, the historical Jesus.

Such skepticism was fostered in the generation before mine by Bultmann's famous assertion "I do indeed think we can now know almost nothing concerning the life and personality of Jesus, since the early Christian sources show no interest in either" Jesus and the Word [trans. Smith and E. If Paul's emphases lie elsewhere on the saving event , his passion for its ethical demands, in which he insists that he is following Christ 1 Cor , should have caused some degree of caution among those who were so ready to read Paul myopically.

For the emerging new view, see Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God; cf. Perhaps the best analogy in the Pauline corpus is found in the confession " esus is Lord" in 1 Cor , which no one can make except by the Spirit.

In both cases, it is not ecstasy that is in view but the presence of the Spirit, to whom such basic prayer and confession are ultimately attributable, as certain evidence that one is truly Christ's.

Indeed, it is this usage by Paul, as much as anything, that tends to verify the basic soundness of Jeremias's conclusions. Oesterreicher, " 'Abba, Father! Petuchowski and M. Brocke; New York: Seabury, , ; G. Hurtado, "God," DJG To deny the origin of such usage to Jesus himself, and through him to the early church, is to push historical skepticism to its outer limits.

Most likely, the word was in fact an expression of intimacy, used by children first as infants and later as adults, reflecting what is true in many such cultures where the terms of endearment for one's parents are used lifelong, which is generally not true in English-speaking homes. Thus, if "Daddy" is not a very good equivalent—and it almost certainly is not—the basic thrust of the term and 39 the significance oi Jesus' use oi it in addressing God still carry considerable christological as well as theological weight.

Here is the ultimate evidence that we are God's own children: we address God with the same term of intimate relationship that Jesus himself used. We are not slaves but children. The Spirit has taken us far beyond mere conformity to religious obligations. God himself, in the person of the Spirit— of both the Father and the Son—has come to indwell his people; and he has 40 41 59 Barr " 'Abba' Lsn't 'Daddy'" seems to miss the point here. Although he surely is correct that it did not originate with the babbling of children after all, why these sounds and not others?

They do so because these are the first words that children are "taught," as it were as in, "Say abba". Thus "origins" as such are irrelevant, but not so with usage and significance.

On the other hand, "intimate" does not equal "individualistic. No wonder Paul had such antipathy for Torah observance, because it invariably breaks this relationship of child to parent in favor of one that can only be expressed in terms of slavery—performance on the basis of duty and obligation, in which one "slaves" for God rather than being re-created in God's own likeness cf.

Christ the Son has effected such a relationship; the Spirit of the Son makes it work. The assumed Christology in these affirmations is thus thoroughgoing. Paul's further elaboration in v. It is one of the most certain instances in Paul's writings of shared identity between the Father and the Son. Finally, we should note the final prepositional phrase in the passage, "through God," which brings the whole passage full circle to its theocentric starting point. As significant as Paul's statements about Christ and the Spirit are for our Christology and pneumatology, Paul will frequently bring us back to his basic monotheistic roots: all of this, the work of the Son and the Spirit that effects and makes effective our salvation, is ultimately attributed to God the Father.

In this case, therefore, the whole passage is enclosed by the phrases "God sent forth" and "through God. Christology in Galatians 45 brought to faith. Although such a reminder actually begins the letter, the narrative itself is picked up at , where he asserts again the divine origin of his gospel. After placing his story in the context of his former animosity toward Christ and his church v. Both of these realities need brief discussion.

Despite the way a large number of scholars have read this sentence, one must take seriously that Paul's ev carries its ordinary locative force of "in. This is the point made earlier, in v. He could have repeated that clearly and easily enough ; rather, Paul's point has ultimately to do with his apostleship and the true source of his gospel. But what they see as a liability he will capitalize on. The difference between him and the agitators is that they do come from Jerusalem, as it were, and in this argument that means that they have merely human authority.

Paul distances himself from Jerusalem as a coup: his apostleship obviously cannot come Si' dv9p bjtou; in fact, it comes directly from Christ and the Father. This, of course, is what Paul intends, even though it is highly unlikely that the 6 Qeoq in v. So also the dissenting voice of Metzger and Wikgren in B. When he speaks of the revelation as coming to someone, he uses the dative 1 Cor ; ; Eph ; Phil ; when he indicates the locus of the revelation, he uses e v Rom and here ; the usage in 1 Cor is probably a dative of means.

The greater problem with the prevailing view is that there is no known instance where Paul uses ev to indicate the recipient of something. That the implacable enemy is now a promoter of what he once sought to destroy is for Paul supreme evidence of "the grace of God. The Jewish Messiah, Paul counters, has been revealed in me; how that revelation has taken place emerges in the next occurrence of Son of God language. Galatians In a passage that is thoroughgoing in its "Christ devotion," Paul begins by arguing that the alternatives "by faith in Christ Jesus" and "by works of law" are mutually exclusive v.

After the proper renunciation of such an absurdity, Paul goes on to appeal to the fact that he has already died with respect to the law and thus he is living totally for God. And with that, Christ enters the story again, this time as the means of Paul's dying and coming to life.

Paul's death is expressed in terms of Xptoxeb oweoxauptoum I have been crucified with Christ , a very personal way of speaking about what Christ did for believers through his crucifixion. His death meant their death, which 48 4 7 S o also Lightfoot, Dunn, M.

He also does something that makes this volume extremely helpful and user friendly, he underlines references to God the Father, bolds references to Christ and the occasional references to the Holy Spirit are put in italics. This is done in both the Greek text and his English translations to aid in following Paul's line of reasoning. Further, after each exegetical section, Fee offers appendices. In these appendices Fee puts the text both Greek and English, his own rendering and a statistical analysis of the passages that have direct relevance to Christ, with a textual apparatus discussing the combinations of names and tiles that are in that particular letter.

To be sure, it is beyond the scope of a review to provide a detailed analysis of the content of each chapter, but Fee does give a summary of the main points that he finds in the Pauline corpus. Fee does this by discussing three key Pauline texts that deal with Christology Corinthians , Colossians and Philippians For here the fundamental theological reality from Paul's Judaism, the Shema, has been divided up so as to embrace the Son along with the Father" Further, Fee understands in this text the "first passage in the corpus where Paul asserts, as something assumed between him and his reader, that Christ is both preexistent and the mediatorial agent of creation" Fee then moves to a discussion of the high points from his exegesis of Colossians This text is "the first instance where scholarship has invested enormous capital trying to demonstrate that Paul is here citing a 'hymn' that had prior existence in the church" Though Fee thinks this could be a hymn, he warns against reading too much into this.

Just because Paul might have used a hymn does not mean that Paul did not believe the content of that hymn, as some scholars argue. The last passage mentioned in his overview is Philippians Fee argues that this text teaches the fact that Christ has two natures he points out that both are on display here, with humanity taking center stage.

In other words, at the incarnation, Jesus became all that it means to be human. Though Fee does affirm the full divinity of Christ as a Pauline teaching, he does not believe that Romans or Titus support this doctrine. These two passage have been the bed rock for the doctrine of Christ's divinity for centuries since, historically, they have been understood explicitly to refer to Christ as qeo,j God.

On exegetical, grammatical and theological grounds, Fee argues that both of these passages do not call Jesus God. However, following F. Hort and O. Towner, Fee opts for the third option. He translates this passage as, "the blessed hope and appearing of our great God and Savior's glory, Jesus Christ" , emphasis original. In support of this view that Titus does not explicitly refer to Christ as God, Fee makes the following arguments. First, he argues from the structure of this text and a parallel text, Colossians and concludes that "it is only the distance from what it stands in apposition to Second, he gives a positive argument for why "Jesus Christ" should be seen in apposition to or modifying "glory.

Third, Fee argues that it seems difficult for Paul "to have created the anomaly of referring to Christ as qeo,j" Fourth, Fee argues that "since the 'grace of God' and the 'glory of God' are what are being manifested in Christ's two 'appearances,' there is every good contextual reasons to think that Paul in this passage has simply brought forward the previous reference in v.

It is important to keep in mind that both of these texts that Fee brings into question are at the heart of the biblical teaching on the deity of Christ. As stated above, Fee does not deny this teaching; he simply does not find support for it in Romans or Titus Since this doctrine is so central to our faith, a few responses are in order. First, it is true that "the glory of Jesus Christ" is a Pauline idea, but Christ as deity is just as much a Pauline idea, which Fee agrees with in numerous places.

For instance, as stated above, Fee agrees that Philippians teaches the deity of Christ. It is not a far leap from saying Jesus is in the form of God, as Philippians 2 states, to saying that Jesus is in fact God. Second, "Jesus Christ" would most naturally modify the closest word cluster, which in this case is "our great God and our Savior.

Third, and finally, the charge that Paul would not create this anomaly seems to be special pleading. After all, referring to Jesus as God would not be unique to Paul. Christ is the beginning and goal of everything for Paul, and thus is the single great reality along the way. Gordon D. What would you like to know about this product? Please enter your name, your email and your question regarding the product in the fields below, and we'll answer you in the next hours.

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