Theology of Paul
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Paul gives two different accounts of the source of his theology. In
Gal. 1:11-12 he insists that he did not receive it from men but
"through a revelation of Jesus Christ," referring to his experience on
the Damascus Road. But in I Cor. 15:3-8 he pictures himself as simply
passing on the tradition he had received about Christ's atoning death,
burial, and resurrection. Some scholars (e.g., Drane) maintain that two
different Pauls are speaking in these passages: the former an
enthusiastic individualist, whose theology was based on the immediate
inspiration of the Holy Spirit; the latter an older, more sober Paul,
whose individualism has been curbed by the experience of conflict and
the need to come to terms with the other apolstles' understanding of
the faith. Others (e.g., Bruce) argue that Paul's acceptance of the
radically new tradition about Jesus, in opposition to "the traditions
of my fathers" (Gal. 1:14), was a direct result of the Damascus Road
revelation, so that the one complements the other.
Either way, it is a problem to know why Paul presents the gospel in
terms so different from those which Jesus himself used. For instance,
why is "justification by faith", scarcely present in Jesus' teaching,
so prominent in Paul's, and why does Paul virtually ignore Jesus' great
theme of the kingdom of God? Plainly Paul felt himself empowered, as an
apostle of Christ, to speak in his name (II Cor. 13:3) under the
inspiration of the Holy Spirit (I Cor. 2:12-13, 16) in ways in which
the earthly Christ had never spoken. IN fact, his thought is
fantastically creative combination of elements drawn together, under
the orchestration of the Spirit, from many different sources: from
Jesus' earthly teaching (e.g., I Cor. 7:10-11; 9:14), from his own
background in Pharisaism (e.g., Rom. 10:6-9; Gal. 4:22-26), from
earlier Christian traditions (e.g., I Cor. 15:3-7; Rom. 3:24-25; Phil.
2:6-11), from secular Greek thought (e.g., Rom. 2:15; Col. 3:18-4:1),
from his own insight (Eph. 3:4), and above all from the OT (Rom. 15:4;
II Tim. 3:15-16). Opinions are of course divided as to whether Paul
thus distorted the message of Jesus or not.
(Elwell Evangelical Dictionary)
The individual articles presented here were generally first published
in the early 1980s. This subject presentation was first placed
on the Internet in December 1997.
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