New Testament Theology

By Leon Morris

This work is not a history of New Testament times, nor an account of New Testament religion. Nor does it proceed from a view that the New Testament was written as theology. We must bear in mind that the writers of the New Testament books were not writing set theological pieces. They were concerned with the needs of the churches for which they wrote. Those churches already had the Old Testament, but these new writings became in time the most significant part of the Scriptures of the believing community. As such, they should be studied in their own right, and these questions should be asked: What do these writings mean? What is the theology they express or imply? What is of permanent validity in them? We read these writings across a barrier of many centuries and from a standpoint of a very different culture. We make every effort to allow for this, but we never succeed perfectly. In this book I am trying hard to find out what the New Testament authors meant, and this not as an academic exercise, but as the necessary prelude to our understanding of what their writings mean for us today. -- From the Introduction

• Language: English
• Publisher: Zondervan
• Release date: Mar 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9780310873426

Leon Morris

Leon Morris (Ph.D. University of Cambridge) now in his retirement, was formerly Principal of Ridley College, Melbourne, and has served as Visiting Professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.

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New Testament Theology

Leon Morris

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Table of Contents

Title Page

Abbreviations

Preface

Introduction

Part one The Pauline Writings

1 God at the center

2 Jesus Christ our Lord

3 God’s Saving Work in Christ

4 Life in the spirit

Part two The synoptic gospels and Acts

5 The gospel of Mark

6 The gospel of Matthew

7 The gospel of Luke and Acts: the doctrine of God

8 The gospel of Luke and Acts: the doctrine of Christ

9 The gospel of Luke and Acts: the salvation of our God

10 The gospel of Luke and Acts: the Holy Spirit

11 The gospel of Luke and Acts: discipleship

Part three The Johannine Writings

12 The gospel of John: the doctrine of Christ

13 The gospel of John: God the Father

14 The gospel of John: God the Holy Spirit

15 The gospel of John: the Christian Life

16 The epistles of John

17 The revelation of John

Part four The general epistles

18 The epistle to the Hebrews

19 The epistle of James

20 The past epistle of Peter

21 The second epistle of Peter

22 The epistle of Jude

Conclusion

Copyright

About the Publisher

Share Your Thoughts

Abbreviations

Preface

The aim of this book is to provide a compact introduction to the theology of the New Testament. The subject is a big one, as the existence of several massive volumes testify, but I have not sought to add yet another large work. Rather I have tried to steer a middle course between being unhelpfully brief and being too long and technical for the student or the interested layman. If such readers are stimulated to tackle the larger works, I will be well rewarded. In pursuing my aim I have not gone deeply into the controversies that interest the scholarly world, though I hope I have written with reasonable awareness of what scholars are saying. I have simply tried to set out the principal theological teachings of the books of the canonical New Testament as I see them, without trying to interact with scholarly theories. I would prefer to have provided more adequate documentation, but that too would have lengthened the book unduly.

Unless otherwise noted, I have used the New International Version for quotations from the Old Testament. I have made my own translation for quotations from the New Testament; this gives the reader the advantage of seeing what I understand the meaning of the Greek to be and, of course, the disadvantage of the limitations of a personal translation. I encourage the reader to check my readings against the standard translations.

I express my gratitude to ANZEA, the publishers of the forthcoming Festschrift for D. Broughton Knox, for permission to use my contribution to that work, The Apostle Paul and His God.

Leon Morris

Introduction

Although New Testament Theology is the title of a large number of books, its precise meaning is far from obvious. Part of the problem stems from different ways of using the word theology. Thus Rudolf Bultmann has a notable two-volume work entitled Theology of the New Testament in which he discusses a good deal of the New Testament. Two of his major sections are entitled The Theology of Paul and The Theology of the Gospel of John and the Johannine Epistles, but his other major divisions are Presuppositions and Motifs of New Testament Theology (in which he includes the chapters The Message of Jesus, The Kerygma of the Earliest Church, and The Kerygma of the Hellenistic Church Aside From Paul) and The Development Toward the Ancient Church. This appears to mean that, although his book title refers to theology of the New Testament, he finds theology in only two places, the Pauline and the Johannine writings. He expressly differentiates the teaching of Jesus from theology, for his opening sentence reads, "The message of Jesus is a presupposition for the theology of the New Testament rather than a part of that theology itself."¹ It would seem from this classification that most of the New Testament is not theology, and in any case it seems that there are two theologies, and not one.

W. G. Kümmel, by contrast, has a book whose full title is The Theology of the New Testament According to Its Major Witnesses: Jesus—Paul—John. This appears to mean that there is such a thing as the the theology of the New Testament, though a doubt remains because, while there is a chapter called The Theology of Paul, the other chapter headings lack this key word (The Proclamation of Jesus According to the First Three Gospels, The Faith of the Primitive Community, etc.). In any case he disenfranchises most of the writers. It cannot be said that Kümmel deals with the theology of the New Testament.

A similar comment can be made about Hans Conzelmann’s Outline of the Theology of the New Testament. The table of contents indicates that the treatment is in five parts: The Kerygma of the Primitive Community and the Hellenistic Community, The Synoptic Kerygma, The Theology of Paul, The Development After Paul, and John. If we take this outline seriously, only one part deals specifically with theology.

Donald Guthrie approaches the subject thematically. He takes the great subjects dealt with in the New Testament and surveys the contributions made by all the writers to each of his themes.² We could continue this survey indefinitely. It seems that almost every New Testament theologian sees his task differently from the way it appears to other practitioners of the art. Gerhard Hasel points out that of the eleven who produced New Testament theologies between 1967 and 1976 no two agree on the nature, function, method, and scope of NT theology.³

It is clear that theology may be understood in more ways than one. Geoffrey W. Bromiley defines it briefly in this way: Strictly, theology is that which is thought and said concerning God.⁴ The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary sees it as The study or science which treats of God, His nature and attributes, and His relations with man and the universe. Clearly it refers to disciplined thinking about God, and we might understand it in this sense: A coherent system of ideas that interpret in logical fashion matters relating to God. Perhaps it would be better to say, …that in principle is capable of interpreting…, for our theologies are not always as coherent and effective as we would wish. But they do represent our attempt at setting out in orderly fashion our understanding of God and his revelation in Christ, and of what all this means for his worshipers. New Testament theology will then be that understanding of matters relating to God that is expressed by, or underlies, or may be deduced from, the New Testament. It will not necessarily always be expressed in set terms by the New Testament writers, but it will be implied in what they have said, for what they say always has as its basis their understanding of the ways of God. It we take the term New Testament seriously, we will resist the temptation to discard passages or books that we see as of inferior importance or even unauthentic. Everything in the New Testament is part of the thinking of the early church, whether it goes back to Jesus himself or to one of his followers.

The question inevitably arises concerning how far we are to repeat what the New Testament writers have said and how far we are to interpret it. Is our primary concern with what they meant or with what they mean? There is no substitute for pursuing the former question. We must make a sincere attempt to find the meaning the authors conveyed when they wrote their books in their own historical situations. But, of course, as we do so some element of interpretation is inevitable. We read these writings across a barrier of many centuries and from a standpoint of a very different culture. We make every effort to allow for this, but we never succeed perfectly. In this book I am striving hard to find out what the New Testament authors meant, and this not as an academic exercise, but as the necessary prelude to our understanding of what their writings mean for us today.

We must bear in mind that the writers of the New Testament books were not writing set theological pieces. They were concerned with the needs of the churches for which they wrote. Those churches already had the Old Testament, but these new writings became in time the most significant part of the Scriptures of the believing community. As such, they should be studied in their own right, and these questions should be asked: What do these writings mean? What is the theology they express or imply? What is of permanent validity in them?⁵

It is with questions like these that this book is concerned. This work is not a history of New Testament times, nor an account of New Testament religion. Nor does it proceed from a view that the New Testament was written as theology. As I have just said, the New Testament writers wrote to meet the needs of the churches of their day as they saw them. But what they wrote should not be understood as a series of random reflections. Behind all these books is the deep conviction, the deep theological conviction, that God has acted in Christ. In other words, there is theology behind all the New Testament writings. We cannot write a theology of Peter or James or even of Paul, for in no case do we have sufficient material, or even an indication that the writer is giving us what he sees as most important for Christian theology. They are all occasional writings. But these writings are theologically informed, and we do well to take seriously the ideas expressed or implied in them.

Another problem arises from the very nature of the project. William Wrede long ago maintained that the name New Testament theology is wrong in both its terms,⁶ and many scholars since his time would agree. Wrede argues that we should take into consideration the whole of early Christian literature, not simply the books in the canon, and further that the New Testament is concerned with religion rather than with theology. Indeed, he thinks that the subject would be better called early Christian history of religion or the history of early Christian religion and theology.⁷

But is the tide really wrong in either aspect? It is, of course, possible to write a theology of the early church, taking into consideration all the early literature available. But the church has always given the canonical writings a special place,⁸ and there seems no real reason why these writings should not be studied together,⁹ with no more than passing references to other early literature. The church has always regarded the canonical books as inspired (however the term has been understood). It is to these books and no others that Christians refer when they wish to establish authentic Christian teaching.¹⁰ Wrede puts little difference between the canonical writings and other early Christian literature: No New Testament writing was born with the predicate ‘canonical’ attached. The statement that a writing is canonical signifies in the first place only that it was pronounced canonical afterwards by the authorities of the second- to fourth-century church, in some cases only after all kinds of hesitation and disagreement… Anyone who accepts without question the idea of the canon places himself under the authority of the bishops and theologians of those centuries.¹¹ But this is too simple. Specifically it overlooks the fact that no bishop and no theologian (or even council) seems ever to have assumed the right to make any book canonical or, for that matter, uncanonical.

What seems to have happened was something like this: Some of the faithful are perplexed. They are finding that in some churches books like 2 and 3 John are not read as sacred Scripture, whereas in others they are. Some are reading books like 1 Clement. What is the right course? What should they do? The question is referred to an authority, a bishop or a theologian or a council. When the decision is given, it is in some such statement as this: These are the books that have been recognized in the church. For example, when Athanasius gave his well-known list of the books of the New Testament (the first official list that has our twenty-seven books, no more and no fewer), he referred to the authentic books as those delivered to the fathers, and he went on to list them as those handed down, and accredited as Divine.¹² He did not decree that henceforth they were to be canonical; he said that they had been received as such, and the formula was always something like that. No Christian or group of Christians seems ever to have taken upon himself or itself the authority to add any book to the accepted list or to delete any book from it.¹³ If we take seriously the idea that God guides his church, we must see in this an indication that these are the books that he means his people to have. It is a striking fact that, at a time when there was no machinery for imposing a decision on the world-wide church, exactly the same twenty-seven books were practically universally accepted.¹⁴ We should not see the canon as an arbitrary arrangement brought about by some bishops and theologians. It holds a special place in the Christian scheme of things,¹⁵ and there is not the slightest reason why it should not be studied by itself for that reason.

Wrede’s second point is that theology is the wrong word; he insists strongly on a historical approach (cf. Morgan’s reference to the theological method of interpreting the tradition by historical methods).¹⁶ It is, of course, possible to study the New Testament in this way, but I cannot agree that it is the only way. I simply do not know enough about the history of the early church to attempt it,¹⁷ and I marvel at the confidence with which some approach the task. The historical approach is a very uncertain approach, because our knowledge of the history of the early church (as opposed to our conjectures and deductions) is so meager. The Gospels are not concerned to give us a history of the life and times of Jesus of Nazareth. They tell us what is important for our salvation, and the history is more or less incidental.¹⁸ With the information at present at our disposal it is simply not possible to give anything like an accurate historical account of the life of Jesus of Nazareth and of the first days of the church that resulted from his life and death and resurrection. Scholars dispute about how much of the Gospels goes back to Jesus; there are endless discussions about the authenticity of this or that saying and about that or this incident. If we are to insist on accurate history before we can speak of theology, we are in a sad case indeed.¹⁹

We see Wrede’s concern for history in his contention that "in the last resort, we at least want to know what was believed, thought, taught, hoped, required and striven for in the earliest period of Christianity; not what certain writings say about faith, doctrine, hope, etc."²⁰ I share Wrede’s desire for information about what was believed and thought and so on (though I do not see how that desire is to be gratified without some startling new source of information), but I strongly dissent when he declines to take an interest in what the New Testament says about faith and doctrine and hope. I do very much want to know what it says about such things. Those whose area of expertise is history are certainly free to pursue history. But theology is a distinct discipline, and it may be pursued even when we are not certain of the historical details surrounding the documents in which it is enshrined.²¹ To go into the precise times at which given doctrines emerged and the exact early Christians who first enunciated them would be interesting, but it is not what I see as biblical theology. As Bernard Weiss put it long ago, Biblical theology cannot concern itself with the critical and specialized investigations regarding the origin of NT writings, because it is only a historical-descriptive science and not a historical-critical one.²² Theology is concerned rather with faith and hope and love, with sin and salvation, with life here and now, with our hopes for the hereafter, and above all with God and with what God has done in Christ.²³ The approach that insists on a close historical study of the way the New Testament writings reached their present form is inadequate.

This is not to deny that there is development of thought in the New Testament. There is certainly development, even if we are not in a position to trace that development with any exactness. But in any case the task of theology is descriptive, rather than historical. It is concerned to say what the theological teachings of the various writings are, not to explain when and how their various authors got them. Christians are concerned primarily with a group of books in their canonical form, rather than with how they got into that form.²⁴ The theologian, of course, must have some concern for history. The New Testament documents emerged at a given time and in a given culture, neither of which is ours. We must go back to that time and ask our questions in the light of that given culture if we are to make sense of the documents. What I am eschewing is the attempt to trace in detail the sequence of events in the early church and the way the documents came to be in their present form as the necessary prelude to theology.

Because New Testament theology is basically occupied with the final product, not with working out the steps along the way, it seeks out what is distinctive of the early Christians over against what Judaism or Hellenism or first-century society in general believed. It is reasonable to expect that the Christian community had some things in common with each of these others and some things peculiar to itself. Individual Christians surely had their own personal emphases (just as they do today). It is important to see what is distinctive of Christians, both as a group and as individuals. In this study I will attempt something of an overview of the thought of each—that is, of Christians as a whole and as individuals—and attempt to discover both what is distinctive and what is common to all. The great Christian affirmations should emerge.

I am more respectful of Wrede’s insistence on the concern of the New Testament writers for religion. But as I see it, religion and theology go together, or should do so. Each is impoverished without the other. A purely pragmatic religion, with no considered theology behind it, is unsatisfying. At the same time a theology that does not issue in right religious practices is not worth much. Theology, as the New Testament writers see it, necessarily issues in right attitudes and right practices, and that toward both God and other people. But where the theology and the religion with which it is so closely bound up can be distinguished, this book is concerned with the former.

The Christian theologian, accordingly, becomes involved in his subject. Morgan points out that "a theologian does not have the same freedom as a historian. He cannot say that this was how the tradition understood Christianity, but that it is not a live option for him. If he is to remain a Christian theologian, he must be able to claim continuity with the tradition, and that means weaving the pattern of his own position with threads received from the past."²⁵ In some measure all Christians are involved in this task of identifying the threads in the New Testament and weaving them into a pattern. It may be that none of us will be completely successful; we are not big enough and our grasp is not comprehensive enough to accomplish the task. It may even be that some will see the task as an effort to reconcile the irreconcilable.²⁶ But at least what we are trying to do in a study like this is to come to grips with the teaching of the whole New Testament. We are trying to be, not Paulinists or followers of John or of the Synoptic theologians, but theologians of the New Testament.

This leads to a further problem confronting anyone who would write a theology of the New Testament these days—namely, a widespread recognition that there are considerable differences among the writers of the various New Testament books. Some argue that there can be no such thing as a theology of the New Testament; they prefer to think of a number of theologies.²⁷ They see the differences among the writers as so considerable that they can talk only of contradictions, and, of course, if there are contradictions, it is useless to seek a common theology.

But, while we recognize the differences, we must also recognize that there is a unity. If there had not been some kind of unity, the various books would not all have been accepted into the one canon. For all their differences the writers of the New Testament books were all recognized as Christians, as were the many other believers who did not write books. There was something that marked Christians off from other people, and that something was recognized by both the Christians themselves and the outsiders who viewed them. There was a recognition among the Christians that God had acted in Jesus of Nazareth, especially in his death and resurrection. There was a recognition that what God had done demanded from them an attitude of trust (their word was faith) and a resulting life of service—service to their God and and service to other people.

A good deal depends on what we are looking for. In bringing out his thought of unity in the diversity of the New Testament, A. M. Hunter draws attention to the use of a variety of phrases: in the Synoptic Gospels, the kingdom of God; in Paul, being in Christ; and in John, the Logos becoming incarnate. He proceeds, "Now isolate each of these phrases, and observe what is likely to happen. Your study of the Kingdom of God may take you back through Judaism to the Old Testament and perhaps even (as it did Otto) to primitive Aryan religion. Your study of the Pauline formula ‘in Christ’ may take you back to Hellenistic mysticism (as it did Deissmann). Your study of the Logos may take you back through Philo to Plato and the Stoics."²⁸ There is no real connection between primitive Aryan religion, Hellenistic mysticism, and Philo, Plato, and the Stoics. It would be easy to conclude that the three expressions quoted have nothing to do with each other. But that would be too hasty a conclusion. As Hunter goes on, "When Jesus said, ‘The Kingdom of God has come upon you’ (Luke x.9) and Paul ‘If any man is in Christ, there is a new creation’ (2 Cor. v. 17) and John ‘The Logos became flesh and dwelt among us’ (John i. 14), they were not making utterly different and unrelated announcements; on the contrary, they were using different idioms, different categories of thought, to express their common conviction that the living God had spoken and acted through his Messiah for the salvation of his people."²⁹

This means that we should not hastily assume that different forms of expression necessarily point to irreconcilable contradictions. There is such a thing as unity in diversity, and where it exists we should seek it out. I do not mean, of course, that Hunter’s example proves that all the diversities in the New Testament will, on examination, resolve themselves into a satisfying unity. We are at the beginning of the enterprise. We do not know where it will lead. All I am saying is that what Hunter has done shows plainly that there can be a basic unity when some of the New Testament writers are using their natural thought forms to express ideas that on the surface are not closely related. We must not pass over the diversities, but it is important also that we do not neglect the unity.

We could perhaps draw an illustration from our own experience. In a congregation of like-minded Christian people we commonly find differences. Some members are better informed and are more profound thinkers than others. Some of the others may express themselves in ways that the former would not choose, ways that are open to legitimate objection. But are they necessarily saying things that are incompatible with the way the better informed would express them? There may be a deep and moving unity in a congregation, no matter what the forms of expression of individual members are. There may also, of course, be perversity of spirit and the holding of opinions that the congregation at large would not accept. We must look at the New Testament and see what the teaching of the various writers means and whether or not the differences point to irreconcilable contradictions.

At this point I am saying no more than that in modern congregations we sometimes find widely differing forms of expression used by people whose basic beliefs are much the same and that in the same way there may be a New Testament equivalent. There are outstanding thinkers and writers in the New Testament, but, however great their differences, we must be clear that they were members of the same community of faith; they did not emerge from some wilderness, barren of religious convictions. They were all shaped by their contact with Christ, but also to some extent by the community to which they belonged. What they wrote is Christian teaching, however individual their expression. And they all wrote under the tutelage of the same Holy Spirit.

This does not mean that all ways of expressing the Christian position are acceptable. Paul complained of another gospel—that is not another (Gal. 1:6—7), and through all the centuries the church has known of people who claimed to be Christians but who were so far from the distinctive Christian faith that they were labeled heretics. We must look at the differences in the New Testament as well as the unity to see whether we are confronted with incompatible opinions or not. One big difference is that the preaching of Jesus, with its emphasis on the kingdom of God, is some distance removed from the preaching of the early church with its emphasis on the death and resurrection of Jesus. Nothing in the Epistles leads us to think that the first Christians made any attempt simply to pass on what Jesus had said. They did, of course, remember it and they passed it on as its preservation in the Gospels shows.

But for the early Christians there was no going back on the cross and the resurrection. These events constituted the central part of God’s great saving acts, and in one way or another the New Testament writers all express it. Paul could speak of a new creation (2 Cor. 5:17), which Acts shows plainly had happened in Paul’s own case (Acts containing three accounts of his conversion). There is an emphasis on life in Acts, John, and Paul, and with that goes a stress on the importance of believing and living in newness of life. And throughout the New Testament there is a strong emphasis on the Cross and the Resurrection; the Gospels lead up to it as their climax, and the other books look back to it as their basis. In other words Christianity points us to a great act of God that centers on the Cross (this is crucial in the literal sense of that word) and challenges us to embrace salvation, which means abandoning an old way of life and proceeding in a new one. The New Testament writers do not all express this in the same way, nor do they all emphasize identical aspects. It was the case from the first, as it has been the case through the centuries, that one aspect of the faith is more congenial to one Christian, another to another. But these writers are all writing about authentic Christian experience and specifically about what God has done for our salvation. It will be our task to look for the theological truth behind the various ways of expressing it.

This subject could be approached in any one of a number of ways. We could begin with the Gospels, proceed to Acts, and take the Epistles in chronological order. Or we could tackle everything in chronological order—at least this could be done if the chronological order were known. There are other possibilities, as the variety of New Testament theologies amply attests. In the lack of any generally accepted procedure, we will start with the Pauline writings, for there can be little doubt that these are the oldest part of the New Testament. After that, dates are hazardous, but we will proceed to Jesus as he is depicted by Mark, Matthew, the Lucan writings, and John—in that order. This does not mean that the teaching of Jesus is either uncertain or unattainable. On the contrary, the Gospels give us reliable accounts of Jesus, and his words and deeds are of fundamental importance. But there is no denying that the accounts are later than the writings of Paul and they thus may well be looked at after we have studied Paul. Hebrews will follow, and after that the remaining writings. If the reader protests that there are objections to this order, I quite agree. But then there are objections to any order. And in any case here, as some wit once remarked about systematic theology, it does not matter much where you start, you must go through it all before you come out. With this stimulating thought before us, let us proceed to look at the New Testament books.

Part one

The Pauline Writings

Paul was a very gified man, and his wide and effective ministry¹ was helped by the fact that he was equally at home in two worlds, the world of Judaism and the world of Hellenism (perhaps we should add a third—the world of Rome). He was an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin (Rom. 11:1; cf. 2 Cor. 11:22), a fact in which he clearly gloried. Of fleshly descent and achievement he could write, If any other man has confidence in the flesh, I have more; circumcised the eighth day, of the nation Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews; with regard to the law, a Pharisee, with regard to zeal, persecuting the church, with regard to righteousness in the law, blameless (Phil. 3:4-6). His manner of life accorded with his deep conviction that the way to God was not that of obedience to the law, yet on occasion his practice could be Judaic; for example, Luke tells us that at Cenchrea he had his hair cut off because of a vow (Acts 18:18), evidently a Nazirite vow.² Although he became a fervent believer in Christ and, indeed, gave his entire life over to living for Christ and preaching Christ, he did not go back on his Judaism. He could ask, What, then, is the advantage of the Jew? or what is the profit of circumcision? and though the logic of his argument leads us to expect the answer Nothing, his answer is Much in every way… (Rom. 3:1-2). Throughout his writings he makes constant appeal to the Jewish Scriptures, and it is clear that to the end of his days it mattered to him that God had given such a treasure to his nation.

There is a marked difference in the way he handled Greek writings. It is clear from Paul’s grasp of the Greek language that all the treasures of Greek literature were open to him, but in all his writings he quotes from a Greek author only twice (1 Cor. 15:33; Titus 1:12; Luke tells of another quotation, this one in a sermon, Acts 17:28). Paul’s interest was in the Old Testament; he quotes from it constantly, and, interestingly, he quotes mostly from the Sepruagint (Greek) rather than from the Hebrew.

Paul identified with Israel. Even in writing to Gentiles he calls Abraham our forefather and Isaac our father (Rom. 4:1; 9:10), and he refers to all our fathers (1 Cor. 10:1). He looks for peace on the Israel of God (Gal. 6:16).³ Perhaps this identification is nowhere as poignant as in his emotional treatment of the problem of Israel’s rejection of the Messiah. Christ meant everything to him (Phil. 3:8), but he could wish himself accursed from Christ if only that would avail for his fellow Israelites (Rom. 9:3). It is plain from all he wrote that Paul valued his Jewish heritage highly. Even though it could not compare with the Christian way (2 Cor. 3:11), he still saw it as having glory (Rom. 9:4; 2 Cor. 3:7). He was unlike many converts to a new religion who become very bitter against the faith they have forsaken. Paul was a Christian through and through, but he was also an Israelite through and through, and we will not make sense of his writings unless we bear this mind.⁴

But, although he was so thoroughly Jewish and apparently at first thought his ministry would be among Jews (Acts 22:17—20), his work turned out to be largely among Gentiles. He was equipped for this in that he was a citizen of Tarsus, where he had had a good education and became thoroughly familiar with the way of life in the world of Hellenistic culture. He was a Roman citizen (Acts 16:37; 22:25-28), in which capacity he made his well-known appeal to Caesar (Acts 25:11). It accords with this citizenship that he urges the Romans to be subject to the governing authorities (Rom. 13:1—7) and says that prayer should be made for kings and all in authority (1 Tim. 2:1-3). Clearly he valued his heritage, both Greek and Roman.

Jew though he was, Paul made it clear that the work to which he was called was largely to be done among the other nations of the world. He was the apostle to the Gentiles (Rom. 11:13), a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles (Rom. 15:16); his call was to preach Christ among the Gentiles (Gal. 1:16; Eph. 3:8). He spoke of an agreement with the Jerusalem apostles whereby he and Barnabas were to go to the Gentiles, while James, Peter, and John went to Jews (Gal. 2:9). He called himself the prisoner of Christ Jesus on behalf of…the Gentiles (Eph. 3:1), and a teacher of Gentiles (1 Tim. 2:7; also, in some MSS, 2 Tim. 1:11).

This complex background complicates our study of Paul’s writings. So does the apostle’s literary style. He rushes on, often leaving out words he expected his readers to supply (and which they hope they are supplying correctly!). He is an original thinker, sometimes struggling with language to say things that no one had said before. This increases our difficulty and at the same time makes our quest the more rewarding.⁵

There is, of course, considerable dispute about which writings are Paul’s. These days many scholars hold that the Pastoral Epistles do not come from this great apostle (though he may have written some fragments that are embedded in these letters). Not a few have their doubts about Ephesians and/or Colossians, while 2 Thessalonians is also rejected by some. To go into discussions about the authenticity of all these writings would involve a major digression from my main theological purpose. So let me simply say that I propose to include them all as belonging within the scope of this study. Good reasons have been urged for accepting all of them as Pauline,⁶ and, while many remain unconvinced, at least there is something about them all that in the judgment of the church led them to be accepted as products of Paul. In the broad sense of the term they are Pauline;⁷ they stand apart from writings like those of John or the Synoptics. We may well consider them together.

Some scholars trace development in Paul’s thought from the earlier to the later letters, but this is probably a vain pursuit. The letters all come from a comparatively short period of time toward the end of Paul’s life. But Paul had been a Christian and a preacher for seventeen or more years before writing the first of his extant letters. His essential position must have been established well before he wrote his letters. The differences in the letters are to be accounted for by the different circumstances of the apostle and the different situations that called them forth, rather than by some supposed development in his thinking.

We must bear in mind the fact that Paul’s writings are real letters, letters written to real people who had real problems. He never attempts to set out in order a summary of his theology. Because of the way some themes keep coming up, and because of the way Paul treats them, we can deduce that they are important. But where there was no controversy he said little, and this includes important topics like the authority of Scripture or the personality of God. All Paul’s letters are occasional writings, not chapters in a systematic theology, and we must be on our guard against thinking that we can set out in orderly fashion a summary of all the theological topics he saw as important. But all that he writes is theologically informed, and this enables us to say things with confidence. We may not be able to set forth systematically the theology of St. Paul, but we can certainly say that Paul gave expression to some important theological ideas. Whether these ideas present a complete theology or not, they make a rewarding study.

We should not overlook the fact that these writings were produced early. While there is uncertainty about some of the dating, Paul’s first extant letter must have been written within about twenty years of the Crucifixion, and the main body of his writings was completed within a very few years. Thus it did not take long for the essentials of Christian doctrine to appear in their Pauline formulation. This fact is significant especially in a day when some critics give the impression that for many years the early church was busy evolving and shaping what came to be Christian orthodoxy.

There are those who hold that Paul took over a good deal from the primitive church,⁸ but this raises the question, What primitive church? There is no reason to doubt Martin Hengel’s estimate that Paul was converted somewhere between 32 and 34.⁹ There were certainly some Christians before Paul, but not many. If anyone belonged to the early church Paul did; and when Christian tradition was established, he played a part in establishing it.¹⁰ Let me say with the utmost plainness that there is no reason at all for holding that there was significant growth in Christian theology before Paul became a Christian. His theology is very full and very profound—and very early. But Paul’s writing is solid evidence that the basic Christian position was firmly established before the middle of the first century, less than twenty years after Jesus’ death. Later writers add much, but Paul’s theology is rich and full, and its early date is significant.

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God at the center

Paul’s great interest is in God.¹ We usually take it for granted that a New Testament writer will be writing about God, and this assumption is not unjustified. But we usually do not notice the fact that Paul uses the name of God with astonishing frequency.² His usage is distinctly exceptional. He refers to God far more often than does anyone else in the New Testament. He has more than 40 percent of all the New Testament references to God (548 out of 1,314)—a very high proportion. It is really extraordinary that one writer, whose writings total about a quarter of the New Testament, should have nearly half the total number of references to God. In Romans³ he uses the word God 153 times, an average of once in every 46 words. It is not easy to use any word as often as that.⁴ Paul does not keep up this rate throughout his correspondence, but in all his letters he speaks of God often.

Paul was a God-intoxicated man, and he spoke constantly about the One who was central in his thinking.⁵ Everything he dealt with he related to God. He taught that God is sovereign over life in all of its aspects, so that there is no part of our experience of which we can say that God is irrelevant to that. Paul saw God as important everywhere in the present time and he looked forward to a time when God would be all in all (1 Cor. 15:28).

ONE GLORIOUS GOD

Like any good Jew, Paul is a strict monotheist; there is and can be only one God (Rom. 3:30; 1 Cor. 8:4, 6; Gal. 3:20; Eph. 4:6; 1 Tim. 1:17; 2:5). That one God he sees as the Father of his people (Rom. 1:7; 1 Cor. 1:3; 2 Cor. 1:2-3; Gal. 1:3-4; Eph. 4:6; 5:20; Phil. 1:2; 1 Tim. 1:2; 2 Tim. 1:2; Titus 1:4), and the Father is clearly a great God. All the depths of riches, wisdom, and knowledge are his (Rom. 11:33); Paul may sometimes prefer to link the power and the wisdom with Christ, but it is still the power and the wisdom of God (1 Cor. 1:24; cf. 2:5, 7). The power by which Christ lives is from God (2 Cor. 13:4), and the Christian’s abundant power for living comes from God (2 Cor. 4:7; 6:7; 13:4; 2 Tim. 1:8). From another point of view all power and authority in the civil state derive from God (Rom. 13:1—7). Paul is interested in different kinds of power and in the fact that in the end it is only God who gives it (whatever kind it may be).

Akin to this is Paul’s interest in glory (he uses the word 77 times, nearly 47 percent of its New Testament occurrences). Once he complains that sinners come short of God’s glory (Rom. 3:23; cf. 1:23), and he can refer to a human hope of the glory of God (Rom. 5:2). But more often he delights in God’s glory (2 Cor. 4:6, 15; Phil. 2:11) or sees it as a motive for conduct: we should, like Abraham, give glory to God (Rom. 4:20; cf. 15:7; 1 Cor. 10:31; 2 Cor. 1:20; Phil. 1:11). Frequently he speaks of glorifying God (Rom. 15:6, 9; 1 Cor. 6:20; 2 Cor. 9:13: Gal. 1:24). The God who is so central to Paul is a glorious God.

Sometimes Paul refers to divine qualities. He sees God as living (1 Tim. 3:15; 4:10), as faithful (1 Cor. 1:9; 10:13; 2 Cor. 1:18), as living and true (1 Thess. 1:9). God cannot lie (Titus 1:2). The apostle speaks of the God of endurance and encouragement (Rom. 15:5), of the God of hope (Rom. 15:13), and of the God of all encouragement [or consolation] (2 Cor. 1:3; cf. 1:4; 7:6). God is the God of love and peace (2 Cor. 13:11), the God of peace (Rom. 15:33; cf. 1 Cor. 14:33; Phil. 4:9; 1 Thess. 5:23). Paul also assures us that the God of peace will crush Satan under [our] feet (Rom. 16:20); this statement shows God as active and gives a new dimension to our understanding of peace. Peace is certainly not a quiescent state; it is compatible with militant opposition to evil. Paul, then, can speak of God’s qualities, but it is characteristic of his writings that he more commonly refers to what God is doing than to his nature and state.

PREDESTINATION

Paul is insistent that the will of God is being done; he speaks of this repeatedly (e.g., Rom. 1:10; 12:2; 1 Cor. 1:1; 4:19; Eph. 1:1, 4-5, 11; Col. 1:1; 4:12; 1 Thess. 5:18). The central truth of Christianity is that Christ gave himself for our sins, and he did this according to the will of our God and Father (Gal. 1:4),⁶ a thought that Paul repeats in a variety of ways. Thus there is made known through the church, the manifold wisdom of God according to the eternal purpose which he worked out in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness… (Eph. 3:10-12).⁷ Paul speaks of this wisdom as hidden and that which God foreordained before the ages for our glory (1 Cor. 2:7; cf. Rom. 16:25-27). It has now been made known to the saints to whom God willed to make known what is the richness of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles (Col. 1:26-27). There is a strong argument for predestination in the opening chapter of Ephesians, where we read that believers were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world (v. 4) and were predestined for adoption through Jesus Christ (v. 5). God’s good pleasure was purposed in Christ (v. 9), and believers were predestined according to the plan of him who works all things according to the purpose of his will (v. 11).

Predestination as Paul saw it gives assurance: ‘Those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son…and those whom he predestined, these he also called, and those whom he called, these he also justified; and those whom he justified, these he also glorified (Rom. 8:29-30). Moffatt translates Romans 11:29 in this way: God never goes back upon his gifts and call." Left to ourselves, we would never be certain that we had done what was necessary for our salvation. But we are not left to ourselves: God has predestined and called his own. This is a way of saying that our entire salvation, from first to last, is of God. We have the assurance that God chose us before the foundation of the world and that he does not go back on his calling. Nothing can give us assurance like that.

We should also notice that God predestines people for ethical achievement. Paul does not see this doctrine as a magnificent incentive to laziness. Rather, we are created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we might walk in them (Eph. 2:10). Because we are God’s elect, we are to put on a heart of compassion, goodness, humility, gentleness, longsuffering (Col. 3:12). Predestination is not for privilege, but for service. It is a reminder that good works are not optional for the believer, but the very object for which we are predestined.

GOD WILL JUDGE

⁸

Now if God intends us to do good works it follows that he is not indifferent to the way we live. One day he will call on us to give account of ourselves (Rom. 3:19). Paul refers often to the fact that evil deeds register before God. For example, people who boast in the law and yet break it are not simply making themselves into hypocrites and treating the law lightly, but they are dishonoring God (Rom. 2:23); they are causing his name to be blasphemed (v. 24). When Paul quotes from Scripture to show that people are evil, the passages he cites relate this to God: no one searches for God; there is no fear of God before their eyes (Rom. 3:11, 18). Again, the trouble with the mind of the flesh is that it is hostile to God; it does not and cannot submit to God’s law; it cannot please God (Rom. 8:7-8). Therein lies the tragedy of the natural man. People may talk back to God (Rom. 9:20) and disobey him (Rom. 11:30). Even religious people, those zealous for God, may be bereft of knowledge in spiritual things; they may not perceive that saving righteousness is the righteousness of God and accordingly do what is quite wrong; they may try to establish their own righteousness (Rom. 10:3). There are those who use the Word of God for their own profit (2 Cor. 2:17) or handle it craftily (2 Cor. 4:2). Paul knows of people who are without God (Eph. 2:12) or are alienated from the life of God (Eph. 4:18)—people who do not please God (1 Thess. 2:15) or who do not know him (1 Thess. 4:5; 2 Thess. 1:8) or who despise him (1 Thess. 4:8; cf. 2 Cor. 10:5).

Paul, then, does not see evil in all its varied forms simply as so many ethical misdemeanors. He relates it all to God. It is a dishonoring of God, a failure to fear God, a hostility to God, and more. And God takes knowledge of it. People are responsible for their actions. We will be called on to give an account of ourselves, and we will be liable to punishment for those deeds in which we come short of what we should have accomplished. This has been so from the beginning, for the judgment came from one sin [or one man] issuing in condemnation (Rom. 5:16). It matters little whether we read one sin or one man, for both Adam and his sin are in mind. That sin resulted in a condemnation that affects the whole human race.

Paul sees God as active in judgment right now. For believers this is a merciful provision of God in which we are disciplined by the Lord in order that we may not be condemned with the world (1 Cor. 11:32). The sufferings we encounter are an evidence of God’s love. His discipline is to prevent us from suffering the fate of the worldly. We should bear in mind that judgment is part of the gospel (Rom. 2:16); we may not easily adjust to the thought that judgment belongs to the good news, but if we are to understand Paul’s view of judgment, we must make the attempt.

Sin reaps its own harvest, for sinners receive in themselves the fitting recompense of their going astray (Rom. 1:27). It would be easy to see this as a natural process of cause and effect, by which the inevitable consequences of sin are themselves the punishment of sin. But although Paul recognizes that there is truth in this, he insists that the hand of God is in it all. Three times he says of Gentile sinners that God gave them up to the unpleasant consequences of their sin (Rom. 1:24, 26, 28). God is never neutral; he is always opposed to evil. Paul can even say of sinners who did not receive the love of the truth so that they should be saved that God sends them strong delusion (2 Thess. 2:10-11).

In such passages it would have been easy to express the thought impersonally. But Paul is not envisaging a process in which a helpless God stands by and watches. God is an active God, a God who participates in the process,⁹ a God who has made this a moral universe so that people who reject the love of the truth end up believing a lie. That is part of his judgment. The inevitable result of rejecting God’s salvation is delusion, but again Paul does not leave this to the operation of natural causes. God is in it.¹⁰ In the same spirit he quotes from Isaiah words that speak of God’s giving sinners a spirit of stupor (Rom. 11:8). Sinners cut themselves off from real life and reduce themselves to unremitting dullness and a horrifying inability to see God’s good gifts for what they are. And the hand of God is in that too. Paul knows nothing whatever of an absentee God.

From another point of view God’s judgment is shown in the persecutions and afflictions the Thessalonian Christians endured (2 Thess. 1:5). These troubles were sent to them as God’s loving discipline, and it is because God’s hand is in such discipline, and because they are aware of it, that Christians are enabled to bear the troubles so well.

But, although present judgment is a stern reality, more significant for Paul is the future judgment, the judgment that will take place at the end of the age. God will judge men’s secrets (Rom. 2:16), he writes, and clearly this truth is basic; nothing can be hidden from God, and no one will escape scrutiny (Rom. 2:3; 14:12). Judgment will be universal, and those outside the church are specifically mentioned (1 Cor. 5:13). Not only will God judge everybody, but he will judge with perfect justice, without partiality (Rom. 2:11) and with righteous judgment (Rom. 2:5; 2 Thess. 1:5-6), with a judgment according to truth (Rom. 2:2). Those who love law are warned that hearing the law is not enough; to be just before God means obeying the law (Rom. 2:13). This seems to be a reference to Jewish discussions. Some of the rabbis thought that all that was necessary was to hear the law, and that all Israelites would be saved.¹¹ Paul insists that law must not only be heard but also obeyed if one is to be just before God. The judgment of God is a much more serious business than many of his fellow countrymen thought. They had no easy out.

Paul has an interesting argument when he speaks of an objection to his view of the salvation of sinners. Some apparently asked, If God saves sinners freely, then is he not unjust if he brings his wrath on the lost? The apostle does not rebut the objection directly, but asks a question in his turn, If that were so, how will God judge the world? (Rom. 3:5-6). That God will judge the world is so certain that it does not need to be demonstrated; it can be assumed as beyond doubt. Anything that does not square with the fact that God will judge must be unhesitatingly dismissed.

Now and then Paul speaks of people as receiving praise from God in the judgment (Rom. 2:29; 1 Cor. 4:5), but mostly he is concerned with the truth that when we think of judgment we think of those with whom God is not well pleased (1 Cor. 10:5), those who face eternal destruction (1 Cor. 3:17; 6:13). Nevertheless, however judgment is viewed, for the apostle the basic thing is that God is active in bringing it about.¹²

THE LOVE OF GOD

From all this it would be easy to deduce that Paul thinks of God as a supremely great God, One who created all tilings, is working out his purposes in creation, and is ruthless in punishing those who try to hinder that purpose. But this would be wrong. Paul’s great interest in God centers not so much in his power and his majesty and the judgment he brings to bear, as in his love and concern for his people. For his people! Interestingly Paul does not often say that God loves Christ, though this thought does occur: Christ is the beloved (Eph. 1:6). But his emphasis is on the totally unexpected thought that God, who is so good and so great, regards the human race, sinners as we all are, not simply with tolerance and magnanimity, but with love. It is significant that Paul so often calls God Father; indeed he speaks of him in this way in every one of his letters. The combination of the ideas of God’s power and his fatherhood means, as William Barclay says, that we get the full, rounded idea of God, as a God whose power is always motivated by His love, and whose love is always backed by His power.¹³

In a very important passage Paul tells us that God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Rom. 5:8). This is totally alien to human experience. We know that occasionally someone will lay down his life for someone else, but he does this incredibly noble deed for a good person or for one closely tied to him in some way, or perhaps in a good cause. People do not voluntarily die for those they do not esteem. Yet while people were still sinners and thus worthless in God’s sight, Christ died for them. This is a key thought in Paul and it underlies much of what he writes. God gives his love unstintingly; he has poured it out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit (Rom. 5:5).

And his love is all-powerful. In a magnificently rhetorical passage Paul comes to his climax with the thought that nothing in this whole earth or beyond can separate God’s people from God’s love (Rom. 8:38-39). The love of God quite naturally forms part of the benediction (2 Cor. 13:14), and Christians are God’s beloved children (Eph. 5:1). God does things for his people. We may translate Romans 8:28 as he [i.e., God] works all things together for good… or all things work together…¹⁴ But,

Reviews for New Testament Theology

[trevor_f_3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Written for Lay People. Basic, but crisp and helpful. A good clear read for anyone seeking a clearer view of the New Testament.