Everlasting King, Your will for our salvation is full of power.
Your right arm controls the whole course of human life.
We give You thanks for all Your mercies, seen and unseen:
For eternal life, for the heavenly joys of the Kingdom which is to be.
Grant mercy to us who sing Your praises, both now and in the time to
come.
Glory to You, O God, from age to age.


I was born a weak, defenseless child, but Your angel spread his wings
over my cradle to defend me. From birth until now, Your love has
illumined my path, and has wondrously guided me towards the light of
eternity. From birth until now the generous gifts of Your Providence
have been marvelously showered upon me. I give You thanks, with all
who have come to know You, who call upon Your Name:
Glory to You for calling me into being.
Glory to You, showing me the beauty of the universe.
Glory to You, spreading out before me heaven and earth,
like the pages in a book of eternal wisdom.
Glory to You for Your eternity in this fleeting world.
Glory to You for Your mercies, seen and unseen.
Glory to You, through every sigh of my sorrow.
Glory to You for every step of my life's journey,
for every moment of glory.
Glory to You, O God, from age to age.

Amen

 From an Akathist by Metropolitan Tryphon c. 1934

Not including blog posts, I've typed out over 30,000 words of thesis, essays and notes in the last three weeks and despite a break from the PC this weekend I've got incredibly sharp shooting pains in both my wrists, forearms and fingers as a result of typing so much.

It's proving to be somewhat of a hindrance and causing me a great deal of discomfort and lost sleep, so I'd be grateful if you could uphold me in your prayers over the next few days. Thanks.

This post is part four in a series of eight posts that look at the history of the Christian doctrine of atonement as outlined in Gustaf Aulen's classic work Christus Victor. Part One looked at the 'classic' view of the atonement which dominated the church for the first 1000 years of its history. Part Two looked at the doctrine of the atonement according to Irenaeus, and Part Three examined the doctrine of atonement in the Eastern and Western Church Fathers.

I'll be honest I say that I think this part, which looks at the doctrine of atonement in the New Testament, is the weakest part of the whole book. This is partly because you simply cannot examine the entire NT teaching on the atonement in one chapter and also because Aulen relies on scholarship that is now very dated (the book was originally published in 1931 remember). However I think at times he is simply too keen to reject the Western model of atonement just for the sake of it and that he also misunderstands the notion of sacrifice. Nevertheless, I'll outline and comment on the chapter because for all its shortcomings it still contains great theological wisdom.

I've decided to embark upon a new blogging mini-project (I'm anticipating about 5-6 posts) that will look (however briefly) at the last 100 years or so of Pauline scholarship and especially the 'new perspective.' I've several reasons for doing this: firstly, I just find Paul really interesting to study anyway, and the developments in Paul over the last 30 years or so are particular fascinating. Secondly, I get really tired of coming across blogs that rant at length about the evils of the  'new perspective' when it is quite apparent that the blogger in question is unaware that there is no coherent consensus as to what the 'new perspective' is, and that scholars aren't trying to form one. A quick read through James Dunn will show that he is very different in his thought to Ed Sanders, who in turn is very different to Heikki Raisanen and N T Wright, and so on. I also get a little peeved at blogs who assume that What St. Paul Really Said is a conspiracy designed to undermine the 'old perspective' on Paul, which itself was not a unified and coherent theological position. Anyway, these posts aren't intended to form a polemic, but to be informative. Here's part one:

20th Century Pauline Studies Before Sanders 

Long before Sanders published Paul and Palestinian Judaism in 1977 or N T Wright wrote What St. Paul Really Said twenty years later, many Pauline scholars had begun to question the 'Lutheran hermeneutic' through which Paul had traditionally been interpreted. Stated simply, this assumed that Luther approached the Pauline texts asking the question "Am I to earn my salvation by performing good works as per my late medieval catholicism, or is it a gracious gift to me received by faith in Christ?" The answer to Luther back then, and to anyone else now, is a resounding 'by grace alone and faith alone,' and certainly not by meritorious works.

The ongoing debate over Paul is not asking this question however. This does not mean that Luther and the Reformers were wrong - they weren't - but as new information about 1st century Judaism has come to light, it has become more clear that Paul's Jewish contemporaries were not forerunners of Pelagius, or teaching some other kind of earn-your-way-into-heaven scheme of merit, and that they thought rather differently about matters raised in the Pauline epistles then many generations of Christians have subsequently. What follows now is a brief survey of scholars who began to question the 'Lutheran hermeneutic' earlier in the twentieth century.

C. G. Montefiore

The Genesis of the Religion of St. Paul (London: Max Goschen, 1914) 

 Montefiore argued that Paul's pre-Christian religion was very different to the Rabbinic Judaism of AD 300-500 that is found in the Talmud, which Montefiore saw as "rich, warm, joyous, and optimistic," and so Judaism in AD50 was not as hard or strict as perhaps Paul makes it out to have been, or at least as Paul's interpreters have made it out to have been.

Rabbinic Jews delighted in the God-given law and saw its commands not as a burden, but as a joy to perform. They believed they would inherit the world to come, but that this would be done not by their own merits but by the grace of God. Rabbinic Jews were aware of their sinfulness and thus placed great emphasis on the annual Day of Atonement and on personal repentance. This led Montefiore to conclude that Paul's form of Judaism was very different to Palestinian Judaism, because his soteriology places so little emphasis on repentance (contrary to other Rabbis) and understands the law very differently. Montefiore thus concluded that the Judaism against which Paul argued was a form of Hellenistic diaspora Judaism. This idea is no longer widely accepted, but Montefiore showed the importance of considering the first-century setting of Judaism when interpreting Paul.
 

George Foot Moore

Christian Writers on Judaism HTR 1921, 197-254

 Moore astutely noted that from Justin Martyr and Tertullian onwards, Christian writing against Jews has all too often attacked straw men, but in the Middle Ages Christians began to encounter learned and established Jews who could defend Judaism a little more robustly. Christian polemic then became (for a time at least) less anti-semitic. By the time of the Reformation, writers were no longer defending the doctrines of the Church from Jewish attack, but rather they sought to build on Jewish scriptures to strenghten the Protestant position over against Roman Catholicism.

Moore concluded his work by arguing against 19th and early 20th century scholars who had begun to criticise Judaism as legalistic, which suprisingly very few people had asserted until this time. He claimed that they were now examining Judaism to find evidence that it was directly antithetical to the teachings of Jesus and Paul, rather than trying to understand Judaism on its own terms.

Albert Schweitzer

The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle (London: A&C Black, 1931) 

A very, very important book. Schweitzer saw that Paul's teachings were not - as was commonly supposed at the time - rooted in Hellenistic modes of thought, but that they were thoroughly Jewish and reflected first century eschatological hope and expectation. Put simply, Paul believed that the Law was only binding until the Messianic age arrived, and that now it had arrived it would be those 'in Christ' who shared in the world to come, not those who kept the Law. Schweitzer then saw many of Paul's problems following from his belief that Gentiles did not need to adopt the Law once they were in Christ, but that Jews who were in Christ should do, and so he argues that ultimately justification is by faith, and not by obersving the law.

However, justification by faith was not understood by Schweitzer to be at the centre of Paul's teaching, he instead saw the doctrine of 'mystical redemption' (in other words, being 'in Christ') as the centre of Paul's understanding of salvation.

When the sun is setting, when quietness falls, like the peace of eternal sleep,

And the silence of the spent day reigns,

Then in the splendour of its declining rays, filtering through the clouds,

I see your dwelling-place.

Firey and purple, gold and blue, they speak prophet-like of the ineffable beauty of your presence, and call to us in their majesty.

We turn to the Father:

Glory to You at the hushed hour of nightfall.

Glory to You, covering the earth with peace.

Glory to You for the last ray of the sun as it sets.

Glory to You for the sleep's repose that restores us.

Glory to You for Your goodness, even in time of darkness, when all the world is hidden from our eyes.

Glory to You for the prayers offered by a trembling soul.

Glory to You for the pladge of our reawakening on the glorious last day, that day which has no evening.

Glory to You, O God, from age to age.

The dark storm clouds of life bring no terror to those in whose hearts

Your fire is burning brightly. Outside is the darkness of the whirlwind, the terror and howling of the storm,

But in the heart, in the presence of Christ, there is light and peace, silence. 

The heart sings: Alleluia!

Amen.

From an Akathist by Metropolitan Tryphon c. 1934.

A few bloggers have come across my doodle of N T Wright I did a few months ago when he was guest lecturing at my college on the topic of 'Life After Life After Death'. The lectures are being published by Paternoster next year but if you can't wait that long I blogged my way through the first three of the four lectures and you can read up them here, here, and here. (I lost my notes for the fourth lecture, so you'll just have to buy the book, but in all fairness, you should anyway.)

Anyway, here are a few more doodles from the lectures that I've dug out of my file for your perusal and enjoyment.

But I am very busy and won't manage to blog or respond to comments for another 24 hours or so but I've nearly finished writing the latest part in my series on Christus Victor and also the second part of my two 'pennorth on the charismatic and cessationist debate. The first part argued that signs and wonders are an essential part of the church's eschatological proclamation and expectation but this second part will argue that there is still revelatory and authoritative prophecy today, and that prophecy has not been replaced by the canon of scripture but that the two stand alongside each other.

In the meantime it's worth checking out the latest Biblical Studies Carnival and also a blog that's new to me called Pantodapos (Hat-tip: Michael Bird).