Wednesday, March 21, 2007

outreach...

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dcjf9wz3_8dbrp64

schloship deadline 28th march!

posted by stanley2 @ 5:51 AM   5 comments

5 Comments:

At 9:02 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Posted on 2007-03-27 10:03:34
Subject 你個人對「行律法」的意思，以及保羅和第二聖殿時期猶太教的稱義觀點，有什麼樣的結論？

時間從3/27~4/2 0:00:00

 
At 2:26 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

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Paul and His Letters
©2004 Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, South Hamilton, Massachusetts
Lecture Outline 1: Introduction and the Pre-Christian Paul
Beginning of Lecture 1a.
I. Why Study Paul?
A. Next to Jesus, Paul is probably the most influential person in Christian history
B. Missionary to the Gentiles
C. Centrality of Pauline theology in the theology of later Christian thinkers (e.g.,
Augustine, Luther, Calvin, John Wesley)
D. Evangelicals often tend to understand their faith in Pauline categories.
E. Paul addresses issues of immense practical importance for daily Christian living (e.g.,
immorality, false teaching in the church, divisiveness, legalism).
F. Paul is a model of pastoral theology.
G. Paul models how to proclaim the Christian message within its Old Testament and
Jewish backgrounds in a way that speaks to the needs, problems, and aspirations of
non-Christian society.
II. The Pre-Reformation Paul
A. Before the Reformation, Paul was understood as a Christian who converted from
Judaism as a result of God’s revelation and who could be understood in the light of
Greek philosophy and Roman rhetoric.
B. From about the end of the second century onwards, the New Testament tended to
be read in light of early Christian theology and its cultural context within the Greco-
Roman world rather than in the context of its Old Testament foundations.
III. The Reformation Paul
A. Paul became understood as a Christian who rejected Jewish approaches to earning
one’s salvation by doing a sufficient number of good works.
1. Luther and other reformers often read the problems addressed in Paul’s letters in
the light of medieval Catholicism.
2. Early Judaism thus became understood as a religion of trying to gain merit before
God.
IV. The Modern Paul of F. C. Bauer
A. In the early nineteenth century F. C. Bauer established what is now called the
Tübingen school at the University of Tübingen in Germany.
B. Bauer understood Paul in the light of Hegel’s dialectic, in which all of history is seen
to evolve through the cyclical pattern of thesis-antithesis-synthesis.
1. In this scheme, Jewish Christianity (as represented by Peter) was the “thesis” to
which Paul’s Gentile Christianity was the antithesis; early catholic Christianity
represented their synthesis.
2. Bauer’s proposal has had a tremendous influence on such issues as the dating of
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Paul’s letters; any that lack a conflict between Jewish and Gentile forms of
Christianity, for example, are held to be necessarily late since they would be held
to reflect a later period when the synthesis had been reached.
V. The Paul of the “History of Religions” School
A. Developed in the early twentieth century, this view holds that Paul is to be
understood in the light of Greco-Roman backgrounds, especially Gnosticism and
mystery religions.
B. The assumption of this view is that Paul is more of a Hellenist than a Jew, and this
approach tended to give an unbalanced perspective of Paul by ignoring the Jewish and
biblical backgrounds.
VI. The Jewish versus the Hellenistic Paul
A. There is an ongoing argument regarding whether Paul is primarily a Jewish or a
Hellenistic thinker; in reality this may be a false dichotomy since Paul lives in both
worlds, confronting a Hellenistic and Roman world with a Jewish message.
B. What does it mean to understand Paul as a Jew?
1. Until recently, his Jewish background was understood primarily in the light of
rabbinic sources, which tend to come from a later period and therefore must be
used with care. The Mishnah, for example, was compiled around A. D. 200,
although many of its sources go back to the New Testament period.
2. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls renewed interest in pre-rabbinic, Second
Temple Judaism.
a. Second Temple Judaism refers to Judaism from the time of Alexander the
Great (d. 323 B. C.) to the fall of Jerusalem in A. D. 70.
b. Key sources for understanding Second Temple Judaism
1) Dead Sea Scrolls
2) Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (mostly apocalyptic and wisdom literature)
3) Old Testament Apocrypha (can be found in Catholic Bibles)
4) Philo (Hellenistic Jew of the early first century)
5) Josephus (Jewish historian of later first century)
6) New Testament (most, if not all, of its writers were Jews)
7) Rabbinic materials still important, especially those that reflect conditions
of the Second Temple period
VII. The “New Perspective” Paul
A. In 1977, E. P. Sanders published Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of
Religion, creating a revolution in the study of Paul.
1. The revolution resulted from a re-evaluation of soteriology (the theology of
salvation) in Second Temple and early rabbinic Judaism.
2. Sanders argued that Second Temple Judaism was not a religion of legalistic worksLO-
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righteousness but was rather a religion of grace, in which Jews observed the law
of Moses not to earn their salvation but in response to the gracious election of
God who had chosen and redeemed them for himself.
a. The proposal of Sanders makes sense in the light of the Old Testament, where
the giving of the law comes after God’s deliverance of his people at the
Exodus.
b. In this context, the law was not given as a tool for earning salvation but as a
way for God’s people to express their loyalty to the God who redeemed them.
c. Sanders would argue that this is the way the law was viewed in the Second
Temple period.
3. One of the results of the work of Sanders has been to replace one monolithic view
of Second Temple Judaism with another.
a. Before Sanders, nearly all Christian theologians described the Jews of the
Second Temple period as people trying to earn their salvation through works.
b. Sanders suggests that all Jews were keeping the law as a gladsome response to
the God who had redeemed them, not as a way of gaining salvation.
B. In this “post-Sanders” period, scholars continue to weigh the merits of both the
Reformation view of Paul and the New Perspective.
1. The New Perspective on Paul is the result of the new perspective on Judaism
outlined above.
a. If Jews were not trying to earn their salvation through works, this can’t be
what Paul is arguing against.
b. This would call for a reconsideration of who or what Paul is fighting against in
his letters.
1) Sanders claimed Paul simply misunderstood Judaism and was fighting
against something that didn’t exist.
2) Others have suggested that Paul was contending against nationalistic Jews
who were not open to the inclusion of Gentiles.
2. Since Sanders’s 1977 book, extensive study of the sources for Second Temple
Judaism has revealed a diverse reality. Judaism of the period was not a monolithic
entity but was comprised of many different groups with varying theologies.
3. One of the purposes of this course is to work through these issues and to try to
assess the validity of both Sanders and the traditional Reformation view of Paul.
VIII. Sources and Methods
A. Disputed versus non-disputed letters
1. Even critical scholars generally accept Paul’s authorship of Romans, 1 and 2
Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon.
2. However, many scholars doubt that Paul wrote the rest of the Pauline epistles,
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assigning them instead to his later disciples.
a. The influence of the Tübingen school is partly responsible; for example, there
is little fighting between the Judaizers and Paul’s “law-free gospel” in the
pastoral epistles, Ephesians, Colossians, and 2 Thessalonians. Bauer would
claim that Ephesians, Colossians, and the Pastoral Eistles are representative of
early Catholicism, or the period after a synthesis had been reached between
Jewish and Gentile Christianity.
b. The disputed letters also have somewhat different styles compared with Paul’s
other letters. The Pastoral Epistles, for example, contain vocabulary not used
elsewhere by Paul, and Ephesians is written in a more ornate style than Paul’s
other letters.
1) However, several of Paul’s letters indicate that Paul used an amanuensis,
a scribe who would write a letter dictated by another, sometimes with
greater freedom to lend his or her own style to the letter.
2) Moreover, it is possible that Paul’s style developed or changed over time,
and Ephesians and Colossians are considered to be among his last letters.
3) Style tends to differ according to occasion and purpose. We might expect
Paul to use a different style in the Pastoral Epistles, addressed to one of his
lieutenants overseeing a church Paul established, than in a letter addressed
to a church as a whole. Ephesians may differ because Paul has intentionally
adopted a style of worship and praise.
3. Note that although Hebrews originally was associated with the Pauline epistles,
virtually no scholar today thinks Hebrews was written by Paul, and so it will not
be used as a source for understanding Paul.
B. The Acts of the Apostles
1. An accurate but incomplete account of Paul’s activities
2. Although often used for the background it supplies for Paul’s letters, it was
written with its own theological intentions. It remains valuable for structuring
Paul’s ministry, and it provides insights into Paul’s thought, but it obviously
doesn’t tell us everything about his travels and his ministry.
C. Historical-grammatical analysis (the primary method used in this course)
1. The traditional and still-foundational approach
2. Each letter is set within its historical context, and careful grammatical and
linguistic analysis is used to understand what Paul’s words mean and what he is
saying in his context.
D. The historical-critical method
1. The historical-critical method subjects Paul’s letters and other biblical writings
to careful critical analysis in which all causes are assumed to be natural causes and
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therefore miracles and prophecy are ruled out.
2. The historical-critical method is useful for pursuing questions of genre and form,
and is useful for asking a variety of different questions besides the historical and
grammatical, but this approach will be employed in this class within the
framework of belief in a God who can and does act in this world.
E. Rhetorical analysis
1. There has been a recent focus on the Greco-Roman handbooks that were used in
Paul’s time to understand how Paul uses rhetoric.
2. It is important to pay attention to how Paul uses\d rhetoric, although his letters
should not be forced artificially into preconceived rhetorical categories since Paul
could argue effectively without necessarily consciously relying on some handbook
or presumed set of categories.
F. Sociological analysis:
1. Two approaches
a. The classical approach is to focus on social history (e.g., how did social norms
regarding marriage and divorce influence New Testament authors?).
b. Recently the trend has been to adopt sociological models to explain such
things as self-identity (e.g., honor-shame dynamics; how did the early church
establish its identity in relation to the wider Greco-Roman world?).
2. Many insights are possible through such approaches as long as one avoids using
sociological analysis in a reductionistic way, and we should recognize that often we
simply do not know enough about the social dynamics operative in any given case.
G. Theological and intertextual analysis
1. The need to understand Paul as a biblical theologian
2. See Acts 17:11: Paul’s teaching had to be in accord with the Old Testament.
3. Inspiration could operate through Paul’s normal thought processes as God
prepared him to write both through his learning of Scripture and the revelation of
Christ.
4. Scripture is one of Paul’s primary sources (cf. 2 Tim. 3:16).
IX. The Pre-Christian Paul and Old Testament Backgrounds
A. Paul came from a multi-cultural world.
1. Paul was raised in Tarsus, a free Roman city near the coast in south-central Turkey,
which was strongly influenced by Stoic philosophy.
2. Paul was a Roman citizen.
3. Paul is commonly known by his Greco-Roman cognomen, Paulus, but we know
from the book of Acts that he also had a Jewish name, Saul.
4. Paul was not only a Jew, but a Pharisee (Acts 23:6, 26:5; Phil 3:5)
a. Shammaite? N. T. Wright argues Paul’s zeal would place him in this category.
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b. Hillelite? Paul claims to have been taught by Gamaliel (Acts 22:3), a grandson
of Hillel.
B. The (C)-S-E-R structure: (Covenant)-Sin-Exile-Restoration
1. Deuteronomy follows the pattern of an ancient international covenant or treaty,
with stipulations (laws), blessings, and curses.
a. Deut 28:1-14: blessings to God’s people if they keep the covenant
1) 28:1: “If you fully obey the Lord your God and carefully follow all his
commands I give you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all
the nations on the earth.”
2) 28:7: “The Lord will grant that the enemies who rise up against you will
be defeated before you.”
3) 28:13: “The Lord will make you the head, not the tail.”
b. Deut 28:15-68: curses if God’s people do not keep the covenant
1) 28:15: “However, if you do not obey the Lord your God and do not
carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all
these curses will come upon you and overtake you.”
2) 28:25: “The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies.”
3) 28:64: “Then the Lord will scatter you among all nations, from one end of
the earth to the other.”
4) 28:68: “Then the Lord will send you back in ships to Egypt on a journey I
said you should never make again. There you will offer yourselves for sale
to your enemies as male and female slaves, but no one will buy you.”
c. In many ways, the land served as a kind of thermometer for the relationship
between God and his people: when the relationship was good and healthy, they
were secure and experiencing blessings in the land; when the relationship was
strained or broken, the blessings of the land, or even the land itself, were lost.
2. Deuteronomy 30: hope for the future even after exile
a. 30:1-3: “When all these blessings and curses I have set before you come upon
you and you take them to heart wherever the Lord your God disperses you
among the nations, and when you and your children return to the Lord your
God and obey him with all you heart and with all your soul according to
everything I command you today, then the Lord your God will restore your
fortunes and have compassion on you and gather you again from all the nations
where he scattered you.”
b. 30:6: “The Lord your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your
descendants, so that you may love him with all your heart and with all your
soul, and live.”
3. Jeremiah 31: hope for restoration after exile
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a. 31:31: “‘The time is coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when I will make a new
covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.’”
b. 31:33-34: “‘This is the new covenant I will make with the house of Israel after
that time,’ declares the Lord. ‘I will put my law in their minds and write it on
their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will a
man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, “Know the Lord,” because
they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,’ declares the
Lord. ‘For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no
more.’”
4. Ezekiel and other writers in the Old Testament and later Judaism picked up on
these themes.
End of Lecture 1a.
Beginning of Lecture 1b
X. Old Testament Themes
A. Deuteronomy 28: Covenant blessings and curses
1. Disobedience or sin within the covenant context would result in curse.
2. As the disobedience continued, the climax of the curses would be exile from the
land.
B. Deuteronomy 30: Hope for restoration
1. When the people turned back to the Lord, he would restore them.
2. God would also circumcise the hearts of the people so that they would love him.
C. Jeremiah 31:31-34: Restoration
1. God promises a new covenant.
2. God will write the law onto the hearts of the people.
D. Ezekiel 36:16-30
1. This passage contains the themes of covenant, sin, exile, and restoration.
2. The restoration of Israel also has implications for the rest of the nations.
a. The nations will come to know that God is Lord.
b. God will vindicate himself in the eyes of all the nations at the time of the
restoration of his people.
3. The restoration will bring about transformation of the people.
a. God will give the people new hearts and he will put his Spirit within them.
b. This passage is the basis for the New Testament association of the Spirit, the
heart, and the transformed life.
E. Ezekiel 37
1. This chapter describes Israel in its exile as dry bones in a valley.
2. These bones are resurrected from the dead. This refers to God’s promise of
restoration in the post-exilic period.
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©2004 Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, South Hamilton, Massachusetts
3. God promises that when he restores Israel, he will put his Spirit within them, and
they will live. He will also return them to their land.
XI. Penitential Prayers
A. The Jews prayed to the Lord, confessing the sins of their nation and asking God to
restore Israel from their exile.
B. Examples of penitential prayers in biblical literature
1. Daniel 9
a. Daniel’s prayer shows an understanding of the cycle of sin, exile, and
restoration within the context of the covenant.
b. Daniel prayed that the sins of Israel would be forgiven and that restoration
would begin.
c. Dan 9:13: Turning from sin is a prerequisite for restoration.
2. Ezra 9
a. This prayer was prayed in Jerusalem after the return from exile and in
response to the condition of the city.
b. The people of Israel still feel that they are in some sort of exile even though
they have returned to Jerusalem.
3. Nehemiah 9
• The people have returned to Jerusalem, but they are still experiencing the
curses of the covenant because of their sins.
C. In “Second Temple” Judaism many Jews felt that, although many Israelites had
returned to the promised land, they were still living under some sort of exilic status.
1. God had promised that there would be a time of restoration, of tremendous
blessing, after the time of judgment and exile.
2. Since the Jews were not experiencing what God had promised, they were stil
waiting and praying that God would bring about the full restoration.
D. Examples of penitential prayers in extra-biblical literature
1. 2 Maccabees 1:27-29
a. 2 Maccabees was most likely written during the first century B.C.
b. This prayer is a plea for restoration.
c. The prayer reflects the idea that at the time of the restoration God will
vindicate his name: “Let the Gentiles know that you are our God.”
d. The prayer also echoes the promise of restoration found in Deuteronomy 30
(“just as Moses said”).
2. Baruch 3:6-8
• Centuries after the return to Jerusalem, the Jews were still praying for
restoration.
3. Tobit 14:4-7
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a. Tobit was written between 225 and 175 B. C.
b. Again we can see the themes of sin, exile, and hope for restoration.
c. There is also a vision of the Gentiles turning to the Lord and giving up their
idolatry.
4. 4QMMT
a. This document, found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, mentions that some of the
blessings and the curses mentioned in Deuteronomy 30 have come.
b. The document claims that the time has come when the Israelites will return to
to the law, a time spoken of by Moses in Deuteronomy 30.
5. The Damascus Document
a. This document suggests that Israel was in exile, not for 70 years, but for 390
years.
b. The document mentions an additional 20 years in which the people were
groping for the path. This brings the total years in exile to 410 years.
c. This document was written near the time period of the New Testament.
d. The document also mentions that the people can have hope that the
restoration will occur soon, because God has given them a “teacher of
righteousness” as a sign.
e. Restoration was expected, because the people “sought him [God] with a pure
heart.”
6. 4Q Messianic Apocalypse
• This document describes what the people were hoping for in a time of
messianic restoration.
E. These prayers focus on the hope that Israel will turn with all of its heart to the Lord
so that it might finally enter into the time of restoration (cf. 1 Sam 7:3; Jer 24:7;
Joel 2:12-14).
XII. Zeal for the Lord and for the Law
A. Numbers 25
1. This passage describes a situation where Israel is committing apostasy and is
experiencing terrible judgment from God because of it.
2. Israel is saved through the act of Phineas, whose zeal leads him to take violent
action against an unfaithful Israelite. Through Phineas’s act of zeal, God puts an
end to the plague of judgment and establishes a covenant of peace with him.
3. This is perhaps a different kind of zeal than what we normally think of.
Someone who had zeal for the law was someone who was ready to take violent
action against those who were disobedient to the Lord.
4. The zealous person was led to this act of violence by a desire to stop the curse and
to stop the disobedience.
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5. Someone needed to make an example of the unfaithful Israelites in order to keep
the rest of the nation from falling into idolatry.
6. The theme of the zeal of Phineas is also mentioned later in Scripture.
a. Ps 106:28-33: “They [the Israelites] yoked themselves to the Baal of Peor and
ate sacrifices offered to lifeless gods; they provoked the Lord to anger by their
wicked deeds, and a plague broke out among them. But Phineas stood up and
intervened, and the plague was checked. This was credited to him as righteousness
for endless generations to come.”
b. The phrase “credited to him as righteousness” recalls Gen 15:6, which says,
“Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”
c. 2 Maccabees 2
1) This text describes the zeal of Judas Maccabeus on behalf of Judaism and
how, because of his zeal, the Lord showed great kindness and grace.
2) Mattathias, the leader of the Maccabean family, burned with zeal when he
saw a Jew about to offer a pagan sacrifice.
(a) He killed the unfaithful Jew and the king’s officer who was forcing
that Jew to sacrifice, and he tore down the pagan altar.
(b) “He burned with zeal for the law, as Phineas did against Zimri the son
of Salu.”
3) In this community, Phineas is still remembered for his zeal for the law and
willingness to take violent action in defense of it. Because of his zeal he
“received the covenant of an everlasting priesthood.”
4) 2 Maccabees 2:58 also remembers Elijah, another hero of zeal.
(a) “Elijah, because of great zeal for the law, was taken up into heaven.”
(b) Elijah showed his zeal when he killed the prophets of Baal.
B. The biblical pattern of creation, sin, exile, and restoration
1. This pattern is not only found in the history of Israel but is a pattern that goes
back to the very beginning of the Bible and the story of Adam and Eve.
a. Adam and Eve were created and given a special land (paradise).
b. They were sent into exile from paradise after disobedience.
1) At the time of their exile they died spiritually, and they began the process
of dying physically.
2) Death is associated with exile from the beginning of the Bible.
2. God created humankind to have dominion over the earth (Gen 1:26, 28). But
when humans sinned, they were kicked out of that land. The plot of the rest of
the Bible centers on what God will do to restore his creation to fellowship with
him.
3. God decided that he will bring blessing to all nations through the family of one
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man, Abraham (Genesis 12).
a. Through this one man he established a people called Israel.
b. God established a king over Israel about whom he said, “He will be my son,
and I will be his father.”
c. God promised a great Davidic king who will reign over not just Israel but the
ends of the earth.
4. The pattern in Israel
a. Deuteronomy 28: As long as Israel obeyed the law the land would be like a
paradise to them.
b. If they disobeyed the law they would experience curses in the land, and if they
continued to disobey they would experience exile, which Ezekiel 37 describes
as death.
5. Both Israel and humanity are in the same situation of alienation and exile from
God.
6. The question is: when will there be restoration?
a. Israel was looking forward to a time when the exile would end and God
would restore her.
b. Israel expected the restoration to be a time when God’s people and name
would be vindicated, when blessings would be poured out on them, and when
all the nations would recognize the Lord and his Messiah.
c. Paul was in this state of expectation when he met Jesus Christ.
XIII. The Pre-Christian Paul
A. Paul was zealous.
1. Gal 1:13-14: “You have heard of my previous way of life in Judaism – how
intensely I persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it. I was advancing
in Judaism beyond many Jews of my own age and was extremely zealous for the
traditions of my fathers.”
2. Persecuting the church and zealousness for the traditions of the fathers are not
two different things.
a. Israel had to turn to the Lord with all her heart before she would begin to
experience true restoration after the exile.
1) An Israelite who wanted this to happen would desire to eliminate the
disobedience and apostasy found among the people.
2) This was the object of the Zealot movement.
(a) The Zealots were angry not with the Romans, but with unfaithful,
disobedient, and apostate Jews.
(b) The Zealots expected that God would bring justice against the Romans
once Israel returned to him.
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(c) Thus, their goal was to get the house of Israel in order so that God
would restore them, vindicate them, and deal with their enemies.
b. Paul persecuted the church, because he saw it as an apostate group that was
loose with respect to the law of Moses.
B. Paul’s Jewish credentials (Phil. 3:4-6)
1. The phrase “confidence in the flesh” refers to confidence in earthly
qualifications and especially in Paul’s Jewish identity, not to confidence that he has
been “good.”
2. Circumcised
3. Of the people of Israel, the tribe of Benjamin
4. A “Hebrew of Hebrews”; this phrase most likely means that Paul preserved not
only the religion but also the traditions and language and culture of the Hebrew
people.
5. “In regard to the law, a Pharisee”; the Pharisees were considered by most people
the strictest and most faithful of the groups.
6. “And as for zeal, persecuting the church”
a. This isn’t a confession of wrongdoing on Paul’s part.
b. From the perspective of Jewish qualifications, this is one of the things that
marked him as a great leader and a faithful Jew.
c. Paul’s zeal, like that of Phineas, led him to persecute the church.
7. “As for righteousness under the law, faultless”
a. This line has stirred up a great deal of controversy.
b. This phrase does not suggest that Paul was sinless, but that no one could
accuse him of not being part of the covenant.
c. No one could claim that Paul was a disobedient Jew.
C. Paul’s persecution of the church
1. Paul’s persecution of the church began at the stoning of Stephen (Acts 6:10-14).
a. The unbelieving Jews accused Stephen in front of the Sanhedrin: “This man
never ceases to speak words against this holy place and the law. We have heard
him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and will change the
customs that Moses delivered to us.”
1) Note that this description of Jesus is similar to that of Antiochus Epiphanes
who offered a pagan sacrifice on the altar in Jerusalem and tried to
change the Jewish customs and eliminate the law of Moses.
2) Jesus and his followers were described in terms used of disobedient,
apostate Jews.
b. The Jews who heard Stephen responded by stoning him.
1) Acts 7:58: “The witnesses laid their garments at the feet of a young man
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named Saul” (Paul).
2) Acts 8:1-3
(a) “Saul approved of the execution and on that day a great persecution of
the Jerusalem church began.”
(b) “All the believers in Jerusalem except the apostles were scattered
throughout Judea and Samaria.”
(c) “Saul began going from house to house, and he dragged off men and
women and committed them to prison.”
3) Acts 9:1-2: “Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats
against the Lord’s disciples. He went to the high priest and asked him for
letters to the synagogues in Damascus so that if he found any there who
belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as
prisoners to Jerusalem.”
4) Acts 22:3-5: “I was as zealous for God as any of you are today. I persecuted
the followers of this Way to their death. . . . ”
(a) Zeal is something that one does with a dagger (N. T. Wright).
(b) Paul reports that he went to great effort to stamp out this movement
including going as far as Damascus, which was a distance north
from Judea.
(1) Damascus had a very large Jewish population that Paul would not
have wanted to be contaminated by this blasphemous, apostate
version of Judaism.
(2) Damascus was within the original territory that was considered to
be part of the land promised to Abraham. Thus, Damascus was a
part of the land that needed to be purified from spiritual
disobedience.
D. Paul’s pre-Christian thought
1. In Gal. 3:9-14, Paul quotes Deut. 27:26: “Cursed be everyone who does not abide
by all that is written in the Book of the Law and do them.”
a. It’s quite probable that this verse played an important role in Paul’s thinking
before he knew Christ.
b. Paul persecuted those whom he perceived as being disobedient to the Law.
Those who were disobedient to the law kept Israel under the curse, so they
were the focus of those who wanted restoration.
2. Gal. 3:13: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for
us. For it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.’”
a. This is a quote from Deut 21:23.
b. Being hung on a tree, according to the law, would only happen to someone
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©2004 Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, South Hamilton, Massachusetts
who was under a curse.
c. The Old Testament passage was still true, but because of the work of Christ it
now played a different role in Paul’s thinking.
d. In taking the curse on himself, Christ redeemed us from the “curse of the law.”
1) The curse of the law is what had fallen on Israel because of her
disobedience to the law.
2) Through the action of Christ, the blessings of Abraham came to the
Gentiles.
3. In Pauline and other New Testament thought, the idea is not that God sent a
generic Jesus to die for a generic humanity on the cross so that we all might be
generic Christians.
a. Gal. 4:4-5: Christ was “born under the law to redeem those under the law so
that we might receive the adoption of sonship.”
1) The “we” in that sentence is probably a reference to Jews in particular.
2) Israel needed to be redeemed so that its redemption could bring blessing
to all nations.
3) This is why redemption from the curse of the law is key.
b. Matt. 1:21: “Call his name Jesus, because he will save his people from their
sins.”
1) Most people understand “his people” to be a reference to the church, and it
is true that we are redeemed from our sins through Jesus.
2) But in the context of Matthew, “his people” actually refers to Israel.
3) The sins from which Israel needs to be redeemed are the sins that lead
them into exile.
4) In his ministry Jesus focused on the lost sheep of the house of Israel until
he gave the Great Commission.
(a) The Great Commission immediately followed after the death and
resurrection of Jesus Christ.
(b) The death and resurrection of Christ brought about the redemption of
Israel.
(c) Jesus’ death was his identification with Israel and its exile.
(d) His resurrection from the dead, understood in light of Ezekiel 37,
implied the beginning of the time of restoration.
(e) It is because he has brought about the redemption of Israel that upon
his resurrection the focus was no longer simply on restoring Israel but
on bringing the message to the nations.
5) Those who do not find the end of their exile in Christ continue on to this
day in exile.
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Paul and His Letters
©2004 Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, South Hamilton, Massachusetts
c. However, most Christians ignore the story of Israel and its promises, exile,
and death. They do not recognize God’s intention to use Israel as the key to
bring about the redemption of the rest of humanity.
1) Instead most Christians assume that God gave up on Israel and started over.
2) This is not how the New Testament authors understood it. Rather, they
understood that Jesus redeemed Israel so that the Gentiles might enter into
the promised blessings that would come about at the time of the salvation
and restoration of Israel.
d. The restoration of Israel has happened apart from a massive conversion on the
part of the Israelites.
1) God brought about the restoration of Israel through one perfectly godly,
righteous person who in his own person represented Israel.
2) This results in a radical rethinking of the place of the law for God’s
eschatological people.
(a) God didn’t bring about restoration through obedience to the law by the
people but, rather, in spite of their disobedience.
(b) He brought about restoration through Christ’s obedience.
e. Are we in the time of restoration?
1) We are still waiting for some of the blessings of the restoration such as the
resurrection and the recognition of Christ’s kingdom by all nations.
2) This is the area in which we find the tension that underlies the New
Testament, the tension between the “already” and the “not yet.”
(a) We do see many of the blessings of the restoration already.
(1) Christ is already reigning.
(2) He has already given us his Spirit.
(3) He has already created peace between those who know him and
between his people and God.
(4) People of all nations are beginning to recognize the God of Israel as
being the one true God.
(b) Yet we still wait for the fullness of this revelation of restoration.
(c) There’s a sense in which the Christian is already experiencing the
restoration of fellowship with God and salvation in Jesus Christ. Yet
there is also a sense in which we are just in the initial phase of the
restoration, and we are still waiting for its fullness.
f. There was a righteous remnant in Israel.
1) There were people who were waiting for the redemption of Israel.
2) There were also people who thought they were among the righteous ones
but who were not.
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©2004 Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, South Hamilton, Massachusetts
3) But the reality was that “while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.”
(a) Christ died for us not when we had turned back to him with all of our
hearts but while we were still sinners.
(b) God intervened in our lives with grace, love, and goodness even while
we were still in rebellion against him.
4. Gal 4:21-31: the allegory of Sarah and Hagar
a. Paul says that this passage is an allegory of two women, the slave woman and
the free woman. These two women represent two covenants.
b. One of the women is Hagar from Mount Sinai bearing children to slavery.
“Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present city of
Jerusalem for she is in slavery with her children.”
1) The theme of Jerusalem and slavery comes from the prayers found in Ezra
9 and Nehemiah 9.
(a) “We are slaves to this day.”
(b) These prayers were said from Jerusalem.
2) Paul is saying that the situation as it was in Nehemiah 9 and in Ezra 9 still
holds for all of those Jews who have not found the restoration in Jesus
Christ.
End of Lecture 1b.

 
At 2:33 AM, Blogger stanley2 said...

http://centrihall.com/hall/GCTS_PL/outline_eng/NT504_Outline_01.pdf

 
At 8:44 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

在這種定義下 教會與天國 只有一線之格











from 陳濟民 之 新約神學精要

 
At 12:18 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

為何研究保羅

繼耶穌之後
保羅應該是對基督教最有引想的人物若不是說勝傲骨司丁或說馬丁路德家耳聞或衛斯理
在耶穌時代
除了十二使徒之外
實在非保羅莫屬他佔的篇幅也不是
約翰路家或彼得與其他葛以比泥的




他談的內容也很多
基督 末世 教會

這學期從保羅的身世
行律法的定義 稱義
人 榮耀 權柄

當保羅說到沒有什麼能敵擋我們，他是反映出哪些舊約的主題？

羅 5:18 「如此說來，因一次的過犯，眾人都被定罪；照樣，因一次的義行，眾人也就被稱義得生命了。」

羅 5:19 「因一人的悖逆，眾人成為罪人；照樣，因一人的順從，眾人也成為義了。」

 

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