Lecture #6: Paul (Part 2)

COURSE: New Testament

Lecture #6: Paul (Part 2)

Effects of Salvation event

Reconciliation–Read 2 Cor 5:18-20; Rom 5:10-11. Return of humans to God's favor after a period of estrangement and rebellion in God's initiative.

Expiation-only once (Rom 3:25) not Paul's term idea from Hellenism, to pacify an angry deity.

Paul didn't see God as angry but rather the idea of the Mercy seat which was just above the Ark of the covenant. The cross is the new mercy seat with the blood of Jesus

• Paul deemphasis the notion of paying a debt.
• Redemption–is Paul's view. Idea of God paying slave owner money so slaves would belong to the god.
• In O. T. idea of go'el redeemer, was kinsman who had duty of buying back freedom of a slave.
• YHWH is the Go'el in 2nd Isiah and Psalms has to do with his freeing Israel from Egypt and Babylon.
• Metaphor is deliverance of liberation; YHWH is considered as the coming redeemer in Isiah and the Qumran literature.
• YHWH liberates from sheol, sin and uncleanness. idea of acquisition by YHWH of people through the covenant.
• For Paul Jesus is the Redemption-- the act of liberation--not the Redeemer--there is complete freedom from the law.
  
  
• Justification Read-Rom 4:25, 5:18; 2 Cor 319, Gal 2:21
• Major one of his notions. idea from the judicial system. God acquits people (righteousness means the same thing).
• Paul says justification exists now through faith in the Christ event. Thru Christ sinful human beings are upright before God.

Faith

• Is the appropriation of Act in Christ.
• Speaks of faith in terms of its object-mainly divine grace or God's act in Christ Jesus. (Rom 5:1-2)
• Acceptance in obedient trust and trustful obedience of God's saving act proclaimed in the kerygma
• More than just intellectual ascent.
• Faith is a condition for salvation but not achievement on part of human beings.

Rom 12:3 - Rom 5:1- God already has acted 5:5, H.S. gives Faith

• Faith makes Abraham father of Jews and gentiles. Only new thing for Paul is that it is faith in the event of Christ Jesus. (Read Rom 4:13-18)
• Effect of Jesus was a world wide event and on the whole cosmos – future effect. (Read Rom 8 19-22) emphasizes events' effect on the whole cosmos.
• Faith life of peace w/ God, death to sin and freedom from the law and from death (Gal 2:15-16)
• Faith works thru love faith is determinative of a person's whole existence.
  
  
• Time of Faith there is a hope of righteousness rather than having it right now
• tension between something already occurring and what will happen in the future.
• Because of the event in Christ Jesus the Christian community awaits salvation
  
  
• Christ is the first fruits I Cor 15:20
• Paul has used the apocalyptic tradition to interpret the significance of Jesus the insight for Paul is that the passion and the resurrection are the turning point of the ages
• God has given liberation and redemption in time does not just belong to eternity our participation is only thru faith and is not complete till the end time, so this is his answer to the enthusiasts of Corinth we still need ethics

• Life Based on Grace

• Grace is whole event of salvation – God's favor and kindness to his people event an–i.e. Jesus Rom 3:24; 4:16
• Paul's starting point for his ethics is the gospel. What God has done in Jesus. Christian life is a response to that.
• Christian life is not a supplementary thing to faith but a mode of existence, a total response to God for what he has done in Jesus - II Cor 12:9; Galatians as a whole – grace vs law
• Faith frees the Christian to be independent of the world but also to stand up to its testing – gives freedom from the world

I Cor 7: event of Jesus and the Parousia shape Paul's ethics.

• Be subject to the powers that be

• Rom 13 Paul says to obey earthly authorities for all authority is from God this is from Hellenistic doctrine not meant to be a general doctrine

• Look at context

• Rom 12 says don't be conformed to this world and Rom 13 exhorts Christians to recognize the time and hour of the last day

Christian’s duty is not to lag behind but must be free to love

I cor 6:1-11 - Christians taking each other to court-Paul says no.

• Notion of love Whole law is summed up in "love your neighbor" (Rom 13:8-9)

the moral law of the decologue (10 comm) is still in force but is expressed in love

• Agape God's covenant love of people in LXX – the basis is God's love was first what he has done in Jesus (Rom 5:5)

love is the highest gift (I Cor 13) a divine power

"love is the presence of eternity in time"

Hope

• There can be hope because of the firm foundation of God''s antecedent act in Christ for believers and the world (Rom 8:24-25)
• He uses imagery from Jewish and other apocalyptic to show that faith is in what God has done and will do in Jesus (Rom 8:19-23, Rom 9-11)

Wisdom

• Paul's detractors in Corinth were threatening to distort the gospel by a triumphalism that implied an inner group had the knowledge to overcome the unseen spiritual beings and were thus better than the average christian.
• These people apparently claimed that the secret knowledge it possessed provided the sole means of man's salvation and that Paul's message lacked the requisite knowledge. thus Paul, after denouncing the cult of personality that divided the church there, begins an argument calculated to interest the greeks (Read: I Cor 1:22)
• He shows that God chose to reveal the truth thru a message that is devoid of wisdom as measured by human standards (I Cor 1:26)
• Unlike a philosophers persuasive rational arguments, Paul's message centers on the symbol of human weakness: the Cross
• The fact that Jesus had died suspended to a wooden cross "hanged on a tree" (Gal 3:13) placed him under a curse according to Jewish law (Deut 21:23)
• for Jews, then, the notion of a crucified Messiah was a stumbling block (I Cor 1:23) to their acceptance.
• Paul insists that God uses the message of the Cross for man's redemption because of its stress on weakness.
  
  
• He chose one who was obedient unto death (Phil 2:8) allowed him to be executed as a criminal (Gal 3:13) and chose Paul, a weak person, to be the chief messenger to the gentiles.
• WHY? not because God had no other means, but because he did not want the redemption of man to rest in any way on human strengths or virtues.
• only this way would arrogant humans be brought to acknowledge their dependence on God.

Wisdom for the Mature

• Paul asserts that there is for Christians a hidden wisdom, but it is not available either for outsiders or for the immature among those within the community. God.
• It is accessible to man only as a gift of the Spirit of God
  
  
• The natural mind (psychikos) or the flesh (sarkikos) cannot come to this knowledge except by the Spirit of God.
• Paul did not share the gnostic view that the material world was inherently evil, but instead believed that when man was redeemed the whole creation would be redeemed as well (Rom 8:19-23)
  
  
• the wisdom which Paul imparts, or which he believes God imparts thru His Spirit is not merely concerned with the It has, rather, direct bearing on such otherworldly. practical affairs of this world as personal morality, marriage, legal disputes, earning a living, eating dinner with unconverted friends, complaining about one's lot, getting drunk at community gatherings.
• It is on these specific matters that Paul utters the wisdom granted him for the benefit of the churches under his charge.

Vision of God

• The initial vision of God thru which Paul received knowledge of the gospel was in the revelation of the risen Christ (Gal 1:12, 16)
• But the mystical vision of God is continued, Paul asserts (Read II Cor 3:4-18) through the work of the Spirit.
• he uses Moses veiling his face, not to hide the glory of God but because he was embarrassed that it was fading.
• This is what has happened to the old covenant, says Paul. but, the new covenant, the glory increases and the faces of those transformed by that glory are not veiled.
• The divine radiance is now to be seen in the change that is taking place in the faithful as they take on more and more of the divine likeness in which they were created.
• This is not an everlasting process: its goal is "becoming like him" in his death and resurrection (Phil 3:10) an objective which will only be fully achieved at the end of the age.
• This transforming knowledge that Paul is striving for is not knowing about Jesus, but knowing him (Phil 3:8) which for Paul has surpassing worth. What he seeks is direct mystical experience, not merely intellectual information about Jesus, and through him of God.
  
  
• In offering wisdom to the mature, Paul is himself on the way to maturity for as he says he has not yet attained his full potential.

The Eschaton

• For Paul wisdom is not so much a matter of information as of mystical insight and illumination, there is nevertheless, certain important items available only to people of faith.
• Significant among these is the disclosure of the details of the circumstances that will lead to the consummation of God's purpose at the end of the age.
• The basis for Paul's eschatological experience is that shared with others, ie, Jesus' appearance raised from the dead by God.
• So fundamental was this belief in the Resurrection that Paul could not stand by quietly and allow its validity to be questioned at Corinth (see 15:)
• He argues that as a Pharisee, he already believed in the resurrection of the dead before becoming a Christian and that the Corinthian peoples' experience was valid of the saving grace of God. But then he says, to his own direct experience, he knows God raised Jesus because he saw him.
• Because of this great event he knows that all will be resurrected as Christ was the guarantee.
• Hellenistic Christianity would have a hard time accepting a resurrection since the Greeks believed only the soul survived death, thus the difficulty in dealing with the concept of bodily resurrection.
• At most, the soul would transmigrate from one body to the next in reincarnation (plato) but the body per se did not matter.
• Paul does not mean the body will be identical with the one a person has when he dies, but it will be a tangible, physical substance, and identifiable as a personal self which can be distinguished from others.
• The body is exchanged (I Cor 15:35-39) and bodies differ not merely in a general way, but in glory, as exemplified by the way that the glory of the sun differs from the moon or stars. (15:41)
• In I Thess 4, Paul speaks of the dead in Christ being raised to meet the Lord in the air along with those still alive. This, of course, is what is referred to as the rapture.
  
  
• The meeting in the air is probably an allusion to the figure in Dan 7, where "one like the Son of Man" appears on the clouds of heaven on his way to earth to receive authority over God's kingdom.
• The saints of I Thess 4 are therefore the hosts who accompany the eschatological King to earth to receive the kingdom.
• The resurrection hope thus served both as a reminder of the shortcomings that Paul could observe in his own present way of life and as a future goal of what he might yet become.
• with this prospect before him, he was striving for ever increasing maturity in the faith.
  
  
• Before continuing, I want to point out that in antiquity pseudonyms. authorship was a widely accepted literary convention
• Therefore, the use of an apostle's name in reasserting his teaching (or what was believed to be his teaching,) was not regarded as dishonest but merely a way of reminding the church of what it had received from God through that apostle.
• Also – the authority of the N. T. books are not dependent on their human authorship but what the church deemed as the authentic voice of apostolic teaching.

Pauline letters

• As has already been pointed out, only 7 of the 14 letters attributed to Paul are from his hand for sure. Thus the Pauline letters consist of the pastorals (I II Tim and Titus), II Thess, Epesians, and perhaps Colosians.

Ephesians

• The style is post Pauline and the wording has very different shades of meaning. For example the "holy apostles' ' (3:5) is a phrase inconceivable to Paul.
• More important, the conflict with Judaism lies in the past while for Paul it was still a burning issue.
• Most scholars agree that Ephesians was written in Ephesus as a covering letter when Paul' letters were collected and published.
• it was meant to be a general introduction to Paul's theology
• It shows clearly a literary dependence on Colossians and it has been suggested that the author was very familiar with it and used it as his model.
  
  
• IF time tell @ Onesimus -

• Two themes dominate the thought of Ephesians:

• the unity of all things in Christ and
• the Church as the symbol and agent of that unity.
  
  

• There is minimal apocalyptic drama in Ephesians.

for this author the cosmic victory has been won

the fullness of time has been reached and the unity of all things under Christ's dominion is a fact.

• The difference with Colossians is in the role assigned to the church.
• The church plays a much bigger role for the author of Ephesians, showing a more established worship and organization.
• For the author of Ephesians, the church is the visible symbol of the cosmic unity which God has brought about through Jesus Christ.

The Pastorals

• I and II Timothy and Titus have been called pastorals because they contain much material related to the pastoral oversight of the churches.
• They are closely similar to each other in content, diction, and theology.
• They lack the typical theological motifs of Paul such as justification by faith, redemption through the death of Christ on the cross, and use of other terms in ways foreign to paul.
• Faith, as in James, does not define a relationship to Christ but signifies a body of doctrine which must be kept free of perversion
• the main argument for a late first or early 2nd century writing of these is:

• the Episcopes or Bishop is now the church leader and there is a regularly paid local minister (I tim 5:17) which was not true under Paul
• women were no longer allowed the freedom they had under the earlier church, but were commanded to be submissive, as they would be "saved by childbearing" (I Tim 2:15)

• This was not Paul's view, who believed women and men could equally be called on by the spirit to speak, prophecy, etc. (see I Cor 11)
• As a matter of fact, the passage in I Cor 14:33b-36 is believed by scholars to be an interpolation from this period into the genuine Pauline letter to give Paul authority to women being silenced.
  
  
• Thus, the movement toward hierarchy, the opposition to Gnosticism (which I will discuss later) that was far more developed in this period, and the change in the attitude towards women all point to a late writing of these three letters.

II Thessalonians

• There is not much question about whether Paul wrote I Thess, but his authorship of II Thess has been disputed on several grounds.
• First, in I Thess Paul, while emphasizing that the Parousia (see I thess 2:19) will come unexpectedly, speaks as if it were near
• II Thess on the other hand, indicates that there will be considerable delay between his letter and the Parousia, and he gives detailed signs which must occur first.
• Second, the strongest argument for inauthenticity is that this letter speaks against the teaching that "the day of the Lord is already here" (2:2).
• It is difficult to suppose that this latter view, which treats the Parousia as a present spiritual experience, would flourish in Thessalonica at the same time as the opposite, the fervent expectation of the Lord's coming as a future event, found in I Thess.
• Nevertheless, it is possible that Paul responded to a new problem which arose after the writing of the earlier letter.

Colossians

• I want to point out why it is not believed to be Paul by some scholars
• Colossians, however could be Paul written between 56 and 58 most likely if it is and the differences between it and his other writings could be accounted for by the gnostic threat. some of the arguments against Col being Paul are:

First, Paul is not interested in the unity of substance.

Ephesians has this idea, which it gets from Col.

• In Christ there a mystical union (1:24) which is not Paul's earlier idea,

earlier he speaks of union with Christ thru faith.

• Col. speaks of already being raised with Christ (2:12) while Paul in Romans 6:5 he says 'we are not yet raised"
• Col 2:19 speaks of a physical union with Christ which is not a Pauline idea.
• in Gal 2:19-21 there is union with Christ thru faith, no ontological union with God or Christ.

• for Paul one shares in the new life thru baptism but not in God.

Colossians

• There were several of the later epistles dealing with Gnosticism, but they were all much later and were dealing with Gnosticism from the viewpoint of the institutional church of the late first and early 2nd centuries.
• The only one that might have been Paul was Col, and it was much earlier, whether Paul or not, than any of the others.
  
  
• the Christians of Colossae in Asia minor were already showing Gnostic tendencies, a proto-Gnosticism, if you will.
• They believed that these elemental spirits all contained part of the Pleroma or fullness of the Godhead and that they were the Cause of creation and shared control of the earth and human destiny.
• Thus, one had to find out who controlled him and how to conform to them to fulfill one's destiny.
• Paul tries to counter these tendencies by saying Christ, not these elemental spirits, contains all the fullness of God and that Christ by his death had won a victory over these forces
• Paul never denies their existence, as most people did, but is convinced that God is fully in control through Christ.
• He appeals to the wisdom literature, proverbs 8, only he says Christ was the firstborn of all creation, thus equating wisdom with Christ.