The Cradle, the Cross, and the Crown (204 page)

Paul only began his writing career about 15 years after his conversion when he was at least 40 years of age, whereby very little information is available regarding the long span of intervening years. By the time Paul composed his first extant letter, he was therefore by no means a novice; his thoughts are characterized by considerable theological maturity. From his first missionary journey onward, the apostle's ministry again spanned only about 15 years, which sets further boundaries for developmental hypotheses.
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Moreover, the content of Paul's Letters depended to a significant extent on his specific missionary circumstances. For these reasons it is imperative to exercise great caution when comparing the 13 letters Paul wrote with one another, and care must be taken not to read too much into the silences in these letters, as if silence necessarily indicates the nonexistence of a given Pauline category such as justification by faith.

Despite the influential essays by C. H. Dodd on change and development in Paul over half a century ago
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and similar treatments since, the substantiation of the thesis of a development in Paul's thinking is therefore fraught with considerable difficulty
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It is clear that a paradigm shift occurred in Paul's thinking right at the beginning of his career at the time of his conversion;
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but if some development of thought occurred in the apostle's thought, it probably took place
before
Paul's Letters were written rather than during the comparatively short period during which Paul wrote them.
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For reasons such as these, E. Lohse has recently argued decisively against the notion of changes of thought in Pauline theology. While allowing that Paul may have varied “his way of speaking to the various churches,” Lohse contended that “he did not change
his fundamental theological thought.”
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Investigating three major areas in which some claim that Paul experienced a change of thought, Lohse failed to find evidence for such in each instance: Paul's eschatology did not change materially between the writing of 1 Thessalonians and Romans;
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in his interpretation of the law, “Paul did not change his thinking from one stage of his missionary work to the other…[but] was, on the contrary, an outstanding theologian arguing from a clear theoretical perspective”;
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and Paul's “understanding of the gospel and his doctrine of justification are identical” from Galatians through Romans.
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This is not to deny that in the course of Paul's ministry certain issues moved to the forefront that the apostle considered of great importance. One thinks of the conscious formulation of a theology of the church (1 Corinthians; Ephesians; Colossians) and instructions regarding its organization (Pastorals) in some of Paul's letters penned during the middle and later years of his career. At the same time, other questions retreated into the background, such as the Pauline version of a law-free gospel in controversy with his Jewish-Christian opponents (Galatians; Romans). While the exact contours of the gospel are still hotly debated in Galatians, for example, the apostle can in the Pastorals assume the existence of a firmly delineated core of faith.
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Therefore, Paul's writings must be judged to exhibit a considerable degree of theological coherence and unity in the midst of a certain extent of terminological diversity and thoughtful contextualization.
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This is evident perhaps most clearly in the centrality of the gospel in Paul's writings.
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A further example is the conviction that Jesus is the Messiah and the exalted Lord; the term
Christos
alone occurs in Paul's Letters and sermons almost 400 times (see Acts 17:2-3; 1 Cor 15:20-28; Phil 2:9-11). P. Achtemeier considered Paul's conviction that God raised Jesus from the dead to be the “generative center” of the apostle's
theology.
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In his focus on the gospel and his conviction that Jesus is the Christ and the exalted Lord, Paul was not alone. The entire NT is pervaded by these major motifs.
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We therefore conclude with Dunn,

[A]llowing for diversity of circumstance and variety of expression, there does seem to be a remarkable continuity and homogeneity bonding all Paul's letters into a coherent whole.
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There are different emphases, certainly, but whether we should speak of significant development is doubtful. There is clarification of earlier insights, an unfolding of fuller meaning and implication; but “evolution” would be a less appropriate term. At most we can probably envisage a number of events and experiences which changed the emphases and prompted the elaborations, but did not alter the main elements or overall character of his theology in a significant way.
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Diversity of Expression in Paul and Peter, Paul and James, and Other New Testament Voices

Space does not permit to comment here in detail on other aspects of the diversity of expression in the NT.
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Interesting comparisons would involve those between Paul's and Peter's theology (e.g., their ecclesiology); between Paul and James (especially with regard to their teaching on the relationship between faith and works); between Paul and Hebrews (assuming non-Pauline authorship of Hebrews); or between John's Gospel and Hebrews (e.g., cf. John 1:1-3 and Heb 1:1-3).

While certain periods of church history have seen certain portions of the NT and biblical canon being awarded a privileged position (such as Paul, and here especially Romans and Galatians, in the Reformation and ever since), it is important to appreciate all the voices finding expression in the NT, major (the Gospels, Paul) as well as minor (Peter, James, Jude). As seen further below, for example, Caird envisioned the NT writers participating in a roundtable discussion. While no analogy is perfect, this model well illustrates the nature of NT theology.

POINTS OF INTEGRATION IN NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY

G. Maier has rightly noted that the unity of the NT is not dependent on identifying one, and only one, center of NT theology.
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Even if it were impossible to pinpoint such a solitary center, this would not mean that the NT's unity would therefore be jettisoned. In other words, there may not be one center of NT theology, but there clearly is an underlying unity to the NT. For this reason it may be preferable to speak of several points of integration that provide coherence and unity to the NT message.

In 1936 C. H. Dodd called on his scholarly colleagues to counteract disintegrative tendencies in NT theology and to accentuate the commonalities of diverse NT perspectives.
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In the remainder of this chapter, we propose three major points of integration that provide cohesion to NT theology: (1) the one God of Israel as he is revealed in the Hebrew Scriptures; (2) Jesus the Christ, the exalted Lord; and (3) the gospel of forgiveness and salvation in Jesus Christ. This is not to say that these are the only integrative motifs found in the NT; far from it. Our treatment of these three major NT themes is simply designed to demonstrate the substantial theological unity underlying the diversity of expression in the NT and, in fact, in all of Scripture.

The One God

Like Judaism, Christianity came to be known for its monotheism.
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The various NT writers all speak of the same, one God, the God of Israel (Matt 15:31; Luke 1:68) and Abraham (Matt 22:32; Acts 3:13; 7:32), who revealed himself through the OT and who sent Jesus (John 3:16). The more than 1,300 NT references to God
(theos)
provide a telling testimony to the central significance of this God. Thus Jesus, according to the Synoptic Gospels, speaks about the
kingdom
of God;
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Paul chooses the
righteousness
of God as a central motif;
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several NT authors refer to the
glory
of God;
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and numerous voices even call the Christian
gospel “
the gospel of God.”
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Beyond this one reads about the
will
of God, the
knowledge
of God,
the power
of God,
the peace
of God, the
church
of God, the
work
of God, God the
Father
, God the
Redeemer
, the
word of
God,
the judgment of
God, the
Spirit
of God, the
grace
of God, and so on. The entire NT is pervaded by the belief in God, his character, and his salvific work in Christ. God is therefore the foundation, not
only of the NT, but of the entire Bible, and in the NT also of the further unifying themes that are discussed below: Jesus the Messiah and the exalted Lord, and the gospel.

Jesus the Messiah and the Exalted Lord

The connection between the one God and Jesus the Messiah and exalted Lord is nowhere clearer than in the remarkable early confession cited by Paul in 1 Cor 8:6: “Yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through Him.”
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In light of this close connection between the one God and the Lord Jesus Christ drawn by the early church, Bultmann's famous exclusion of the historical Jesus from NT theology is too radical.
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Jesus' messianic consciousness and the fact that the Easter event could not by itself produce messianic faith underscore the close connection between the so-called historical Jesus and the faith of the first Christians.
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In fact, the conviction that Jesus is the Messiah foretold in the OT and the exalted Lord represents an important integrative center of NT theology
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This conviction unites both the OT with the NT, and the four Gospels with the gospel of the first Christians, including Paul.
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Paul's conversion at his encounter with the resurrected Christ was brought about by the realization that the same Jesus whom Paul deemed cursed by the law was in fact the God-sent redeemer (Gal 3:13-14). With this starting point, Paul began to read the OT in light of this revolutionary hermeneutical axiom, which led not merely to important Christological interpretations of the OT but also put into perspective the role of the law in the life of the believer (see Rom 10:4).
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Fulfilling the law was now replaced by a new “law,” that of life in the Spirit of Christ (Rom 8:2; Gal 5:16,18; see 6:2), and this law was—in contrast to the law in the OT—not merely external to the believer; but through his Spirit, God wrote it directly into a person's heart (see Jer 31:33—34). In this Paul and
John agreed (Rom 8:9; Gal 2:20; John 14:16-17; 1 John 2:20,27). This does not mean that there is no more need for further written instructions or commands, as if possession of the Spirit entirely obviated the need for such. To the contrary, the NT is replete with just such hortatory material.

The Gospel

The gospel of Jesus Christ is one of the major integrative glues of Scripture and particularly of the NT.
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According to Lohse, it is the task of “NT theology to demonstrate how the early Christians proclaimed the gospel, and to show in detail how this
kerygma
was interpreted in the theology of the apostle Paul, the Synoptics, and in the Johannine writings.”
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The term “good news” is already found in the OT (e.g., Isa 40:9; 52:7). Jesus started out his ministry calling people to repentance and faith in the “good news” (Mark 1:15 and parallels). Paul discovered in the gospel the power for salvation of all who accept it by faith, Jews as well as Greeks.
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Moreover, the gospel did not merely indicate for the first Christians that the historical Jesus was to be identified with the resurrected, exalted Lord and the Messiah who had been predicted in the OT. It was a message of forgiveness of sins on account of the substitutionary work of Christ at the cross.
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As Paul and his apostolic colleagues read the OT in the light of the Christ's first coming (see Acts 17:2—3; Rom 1:2,17; 1 Cor 15:3—5), they realized that the Messiah is cast already there as a
suffering
Messiah, whose plight was in the place of others and was followed by his resurrection (e.g., Isaiah 53). This conviction surfaces repeatedly in the teachings of Jesus in all four Gospels (e.g., Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:33-34,45), in Paul (e.g., Rom 3:25; 2 Cor 5:21), in Peter (1 Pet 1:2,10-12,18-20), in Hebrews (Heb 1:3; etc.), and further NT writings (e.g., 1 John 2:2; Rev 5:5—6). Therefore, the gospel of the first Christians (which in turn was rooted in Jesus' messianic consciousness) has as its content the crucified and risen Messiah and Lord—in conscious application of OT passages to the person and work of Jesus. Finally, in the book of Acts, God's Word is frequently invested with personal traits so that it is not Paul and the first Christians who pursue their mission but the gospel itself marches irresistibly and victoriously to the ends of the earth (see Acts 6:7; 12:24; 19:20). Recent research views the gospel as a central motif especially in the programmatic letter to the Romans.
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Beyond this, the expression “gospel” (or equivalent expressions such as
“message” or “the faith”) is found frequently in the NT, even though the precise contours of the Christian message depend on the respective circumstances of proclamation.
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Not only did Paul insist on a unified gospel, he also viewed it as safeguarding the unity of the Christian movement (see Gal 1:6—9).
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The gospel established common ground between the diverse elements within the church, Jews and Gentiles, slave and free, male and female (Gal 3:28; see 1 Cor 12:13; Col 3:11). Thus while Paul acknowledged the diversity of local congregations and the distinctive roles and spiritual gifts of individual church members, he saw this diversity within the larger framework of the one church as the one body of Christ (1 Cor 12:12; Eph
4:4;
5:30) as well as of the one God, Lord, and Spirit who works in and through the church individually and corporately (1 Cor 12:4—11; Eph 4:3-6).