Wayne E. Ward

Theological Issues Raised in First Corinthians

Paul was undoubtedly the most influential Christian theologian who has ever lived. Yet he was not primarily concerned with setting forth a systematic statement of Christian doctrine. During his early years in rabbinic training under Gamaliel, he had been required to formulate and defend one of the most rigorous theological systems ever developed.1 When he met Christ, Paul’s entire system of thought was re-oriented. Christ became the center of his life, his thought, his very existence; his doctrine of redemption shifted radically from a legalistic program of works issuing in self-righteousness to an utter dependence upon the righteousness of God revealed in the atoning death and resurrection of Christ. However, those who disparage the theological orientation of Paul’s writings ignore a very significant fact: Paul was a thoroughly trained Jewish rabbi who was transformed by his encounter with the risen Christ. Every utterance of Paul was conditioned by the presuppositions of this general theological position, as that theology had been fulfilled, transformed, or re-oriented in Christ. The interpreter who ignores or fails to emphasize this obvious fact concerning Pauline thought will find his argument confusing or mystifying and may come to some rather weird conclusions concerning the theology of the great apostle.2 Just as Jewish rabbinism provides a background against which Paul’s writings must be under~tood,~ so the entire

Towards a Biblical Theology

In spite of dire predictions of its early demise, biblical theology is alive and productive in this latter half of the decade of the seventies. To be sure, it is not riding the wave of popularity which it enjoyed in the years immediately following World War II. During the late forties and early fifties, it dominated the fields of theology and biblical studies in both Europe and America in a way which was detrimental to the proper concerns of systematic theology, on the one hand, and to basic research in biblical languages and history, on the other. The popular appeal of biblical theology as the discipline which brings together all of the results of tedious work in textual studies, in archaeological excavations, and in Hebrew and Greek exegesis of the biblical texts themselves, sometimes drew attention away from these basic disciplines, without which serious study of the scriptures cannot proceed. On the side of dogmatics, the substitution of biblical theology for the more comprehensive discipline of systematic theology obscured the urgent task of relating Christian theology to the philosophical cross-currents of the contemporary world. A shallow biblicism often resulted. It neither grasped the real message of the Bible in its historical setting nor understood the dynamics of contemporary life to which that message should be addressed. Biblical theology certainly has a distinctive contribution to make in both biblical and theological studies, but it is fortunate that this is now being seen in a more clearly defined and limited way.

Baptism in Theological Perspective

The crucial issue in all of the current debate about baptism is the theological meaning of baptism. Ultimately, all practice and administration of a religious rite must be determined by its theology or it will cease to have significant meaning for the religious community. One of the tragedies of the present situation is that most Christian theologians lind themselves trying to justify a baptismal practice which has developed pragmatically across many centuries and has been shaped by the historical circumstances of the religious institution.

Book Review: III. Theological and Historical Studies: The Doctrine of the Holy SpiritThe Doctrine of the Holy Spirit, by BerkhofHendrikus. Richmond: John Knox Press, 1964. 128 pp.

for the Daniel 12:2,3, passage, have not been convinced that these passages teach “resurrection of the body.” For example, the great H. H. R.owley feels that the Daniel passage is the only clear Old Testament passage teaching “resurrection of the body.” Professor Schep does not hesitate to pronounce that the Old Testament teaches the resurrection of a body of flesh. Chapter 111: “Flesh and Body in the New Testament” pursues the theme through non-Pauline and Pauline materials, finding the teaching in harmony with but more clearly detailed than in the Old Testament. Chapter IV: “The ResurrectionBody of Jesus Christ” is one of the stronger sections of the book. The author is, of course, on grounds much more easily demonstrated. Chapter V: “The Body of Our Exalted Lord, The Life-giving Spirit” demonstrates that the Lord’s appearances through the “40 days” and his “ascencion” body are one and the same: i.e., he had no “interim” body from resurrection to ascension and “exalted” body after the ascension. Chapter VI: “The Nature of the Believer’s Resurrection-Body” presents the view that this follows naturally and necessarily upon the fact of the resurrection of Jesus. He insists upon the resurrection of “this body of flesh” yet in his discussion he leaves the impression that he means not literal “flesh” but a glorified corporeality. This chapter closes with an appendix on the Greek concept of the immortality of the soul and one on the Christian concept of the resurrection of the body. Ray Summers

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The publishing of a comprehensive work in New Testament theology is an event of major importance for the world of Christian scholarship. If it is a serious and significant exposition of the theology of the basic documents of our Christian faith, i t can only come as the culmination of long years of intensive study in the history, language, and interpretation of the whole body of biblical literature from the most ancient Hebrew writings, through the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, into the New Testament sources, and, even beyond, into the sub-apostolic literature which illuminates the New Testament context. It requires in addition, a thorough understanding of the history of Christian doctrine, especially the theological tradition in which the interpreter himself stands; because this inevitably conditions the theologian as he approaches the task of setting forth the theology of the New Testament. Such a formidable task might well cause the most ambitious biblical scholar to falter, and it is a demonstrable fact that in the long history of Christian scholarship relatively few scholars have attempted it. When a proven and competent New Testament interpreter, with a background of long years in biblical research, Greek exegesis, and classroom teaching of the entire New Testament sets his hand to this task, it is time for serious Bible students to sit up and take notice. Careful reading of such a work is certain to stimdate, challenge, and inform. This significant book in N. T. theology grew out of more than fifeen years of teaching the New Testament in New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, New Orleans, Louisiana. (Stagg has just moved this year, 1964, to a similar position in Southern Baptist Theological Seminxy, Louisville, Kentucky.) It is the first such effort by a Southern Baptist since W. T. Conner, the theological patriarch of Southwestern Seminary, published The Faith of the New Testament in 1940. An American Baptist, Ralph E. Knudsen, of Berkeley Baptist Divinity School, has just published (1964) Theology in the New Testament, A Basis for Christian Faith, which is actually a biblically oriented systematic theology. Such works have been rare among Englishspeaking theologians, but Baptists have contributed a disproportionate share.

Book Review: I. Books by the Faculty: New Testament TheologyNew Testament Theology, by StaggFrank. Nashville: Broadman Press, 1962. 361 pp.

The Dean and Professor of New Testament Literature in Berkeley Baptist Divinity school has written this volume in “a modest attempt to present a theology which will be helpful to the church in its titanic task of interpreting Christianity to this generation.” (Preface) Although the material is “New Testament-centered,” it is actually an exposition of the “basic doctrines of the church.” Written in a direct and non-technical style, with a minimum of documentation, it should appeal to the general reader. Beginning with a chapter on “Revelation and Inspiration,” Knudsen follows a rigid systematic outline of subjects: God, Jesus Christ, The Holy Spirit, The Trinity, Man, Sin, Salvation, The Church, and Eschatology. Each chapter is prefaced with a onepage outline of each doctrine, topically arranged; and a good bibliography is compiled at the end of each c h a p ter, suggesting classic works both old and new in the main line of “conservative critical” and neo-orthodox scholarship.

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In recent years a revolution has occurred in the interpretation of Ephesians. Under the influence of the extreme individualism ot the nineteenth century, interpreters such as E. Y. Mullins in 1931l were apt to see this Epistle primarily as an exposition of the believer’s experience of redemption in Jesus Christ. It was possible for Mullins to treat the entire Ephesian Epistle (and Colossians, too) without any specific reference to the doctrine of the Church. The opening verses are understood as “an answer to the inquiry of any believer whose mind seeks to grasp the meaning of the marvelous experience Christ has brought to him.”2 Even the interpretstion of T. K. Abbott in the International Crifica! Commwt i ry , 1897,a makes scant reference to the Church, the vcry subject which later commentators consider to be the central theme of the Epistle. For a reader today this is almost impossible to understand. His reading of Ephesians is conditioned by the intense debate conc;rrniag the nature of the Church which has dominated the theciqical world during the last two decades. A New Testament scholar whose active ministry spanned the entire first half of this century, William Owen Carver, came to the crowing work of his life with a study of the Ephesian Epistle, The Glory of God in the Christian Calling.4 In 1949 he declared that its “theme throughout is the glory of the Christian movement in the Christian Church viewed as the progressive life of God in Christ reconciling the world unto himself.”S Even more explicitly w2s this stated under the heading, “Subject and Emphases of Ephesians”: The Church is a major concept in the structure of the Epistle. To be sure, the term occurs in only three of the six chapters. Yet the concept is to the fore throughout, so much so that the entire contcnts may easily he logically integrated about this concept as if it were the Fubject of the whole, without doing any violence to Paul’s thought and

Book Review: III. Theological and Historical Studies: Theology in the New TestamentTheology in the New Testament. A Basis for Christian Faith, by KnudsenRalph E., Valley Forge, Pa.: The Judson Press, 1964. 442 pp.

“By what authority doest thou these things? and who gave thee this authority to do these things?”’ (Mark 11:28 AV) . This question which the chief priests and scribes asked Jesus is still a basic question confronting the Christian world. Addressed to us as Baptists it may mean, “Why do you insist upon immersing people for baptism, when the vast majority of Christians think it is not necessary at Or, even more important, “How can you Baptists dare to teach that the individual soul is competent to deal directly with God in personal repentance and faith, when large segments of Christianity are sure that salvation can be dispensed only by the proper channels of church authority?”3 The Baptist challenge to such authority is not considered merely audacious; it is, from that viewpoint, considered to be downright heretical! The penalty for this sin is a serious one: both the heretic and his convert are in danger of eternal fire.4

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One of the most remarkable revivals in all Christian history has been in progress since World War I. It is a revival of intensive Bible study and a renaissance of thoroughgoing Biblical theology. Many theologians have ventured to identify the opening signal of this movement with the publication of Karl Barth’s Romerbrief, his commentary on Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, in 1918.1 This “bombshell”2 in the theological world was not an adequate commentary on the Roman epistle, but it recovered the meaning of “the word of God” with a depth and dimension which was desperately needed in this century of crisis. So central is his understanding of “the Word of God” in all of his theological formulation that Barthian theology is often called the “Theology of the Word of God.”3 For the subject under consideration in this article, it is even more significant that Karl Barth recovered this Pauline and New Testament understanding of the word of God under the urgent necessity of finding an authentic message to preach to his church in the Alpine village of Safenwil. He often prepared his sermon for Sunday against the background noise of the pounding guns on the French-German battlelines of World War I. How foolish and irrelevant were the words of the liberal theology in which he had been trained! In the face of human sin, hatred, and war, in the midst of a troubled and distraught people, he desperately needed a “word from the eternal.”4 Like Augustine and Luther, Barth found this “word” as he toiled with anguish of soul through Paul’s epistle to the Romans. The word of God had broken through into his heart and life; the people of Safenwil knew that something had happened to their

One Body – The Church

To the long list of works on the Fourth Gospel has been added this important book, the first English language commentary on the Greek text which has appeared since the two-volume work by Archbishop Bernard in 1928. Important research into the critical and historical problems and a rediscovery of the profound theological significance of the Gospel have made necessary such an extensive new commentary. A long introduction of 116 pages discusses the characteristics and purpose of the Gospel, its Christian and nonChristian background, its theology, its origin and authority. Barrett finds both Jewish and Hellenistic influences, but he emphasizes the Hellenistic influences more than some recent interpreters. He is sure of kinship with the Synoptic gospels and Pauline thought. As to authorship, he conjectures that John the Apostle went to Ephesus, gathered a number of disciples, and wrote apocalyptic works. Upon his death, one of his disciples collected John’s writings in the form of the Apocalypse; another disciple wrote I John, and the remaining epistles were written by yet another disciple. A more profound and original thinker produced the Gospel, with the twenty-first chapter added from left-over material at a late date. Perhaps the most important part of the commentary is the very skillful introduction which is given to each section of the Gospel, summarizing its significance, and relating to the central themes of the entire work. Immediately following the introduction, a careful, verse by verse, Greek exegesis is given of each section. This exegesis is the heart of the commentary, and is the most thorough piece of work to be found in any of the recent books on John. Because it is a scholarly work, accurate and balanced, yet readable in style, Barrett’s book is likely to become a classic commentary on this most challenging Gospel. Wayne E. Ward.