Chapter Eight
1. The most common title
assigned to Jesus in the Pauline writings is ‘Lord’, occurring well over two
hundred times. Although the Greek kyrios
could amount to no more than a courtesy in common conversation, much like the English
use of ‘sir’, its presence in such theological contexts as Paul’s letters
surely carries with it an inescapable reference to the Jewish custom of saying
‘Lord’ in place of the unutterable name of God. It is, therefore, highly
significant that the earliest distinctively Christian confession appears to
have been ‘Jesus is Lord.’ Despite his being a monotheistic Jew, Paul is
bracketing together God and Jesus in an extraordinary way.
- What levels of
acceptance and resistance might Paul have encountered in his public
announcement, “Jesus is Lord?”
2. In the New Testament,
the problem of how to understand the relationship between the Lordship of Jesus
and the Lordship of the one true God of Israel (Deuteronomy 6.4) remains
unresolved. The issue is simply present, arising as a fact of experience,
encouraged not only by belief in the Resurrection but also by the new life that
the first believers found had been given to them in Christ. Paul can only
describe the latter as being ‘a new creation, everything old has passed away;
see everything has become new.’
- How do you
experience the Lordship of Jesus and of God?
- How does this
Lordship offer a “new creation” in you?
3. The
Pauline witness is absolutely clear, both about the presence of human and divine
attributes in Jesus and about the reconciliation (atonement) he has effected
between a righteous God and sinful humanity; but in neither case are we given,
in Paul or elsewhere in the New Testament, a detailed theological theory of how
these things can be. Experience was everything; theorizing could wait.
-
Such “experience” must be understood “theologically.” How do the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds assist
us with this task?
4. Another
remarkable attribute of Christ that is emphasized by Paul is that, though of
course the Christian community knew Jesus was a human individual, it had
nevertheless experienced a corporate element in its relationship with Christ.
Paul tells the Corinthians that they ‘are the body of Christ and individually
members of it.’ He is not using ‘body’ simply as a simile, but for him it is a
spiritual reality. Without denying the humanity of Jesus, this participatory
language points to a reality in him that exceeds the simply human.
-
How does this “corporate” nature of Christian faith differ from today’s
cultural appeal of “individual spirituality?”
5. It
is instructive to see how Paul uses the Hebrew Bible as his scriptural
resource. The most systematic of the Pauline letters is Romans, and this
provides a good focus for such a study. These examples, which have parallels elsewhere in the New Testament, show that
the early Church, while respectful of Scripture and wishing to make clear its
belief that Jesus fulfilled the expectations and hopes of Hebrew prophecy, felt
able to use that Scripture in a manner that was free from a slavish dependence
on original use and meaning. It allowed itself to manipulate what had been
written in order to conform what was being said to what it had learned by its
actual experience of the new life that had been given to it in Christ.
-
Is the Church still free today to interpret the Scriptures in light of what we
are learning by our experiences of new life in Christ?
6. I have referred to ‘the Pauline
writings’ because it is not certain that everything to which Paul’s name has
been attached was actually written by him. Remember that in the ancient world
there was not the modern concept of authorial integrity, so that it was not
considered fraudulent to present writing arising in a tradition that stemmed
from an original author as if it had actually been written by that author
himself.
-
Given this explanation, how do we benefit from both Paul and the broader Pauline
tradition that supports his extended ministry?
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