Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from May, 2013

Why Foreign Missions? 20b. The Gospel According to Paul in the Corinthian Correspondence, Gordon Fee

Why Foreign Missions?  20b. The Gospel According to Paul in the Corinthian Correspondence, Gordon Fee The previous study offered two ways to explore the content of the Gospel in the early Church: by examining confessional formulae and the speeches of Acts.  In this study, a third approach to identifying the Gospel will be presented through an essay by +Gordon D. Fee. [1]   His method is to examine Paul’s correspondence with the Corinthian church.  While his method again demonstrates that the Gospel is focussed on Jesus, it identifies several dimensions to the Gospel that expand points noted in the previous study. The Gospel has Content First, Fee points out that the Gospel has a content (pp. 112f).  Existentialist eisegesis of the 20 th century attempted to argue that, originally, the Church spoke of the act of believing rather than what was to be believed.  While such a distinction is surely ludicrous in its own right, one might, nevertheless, point out that Paul does indee

Why Foreign Missions? 20a1. The Gospel According to Paul: Sermons and Confessions

Why Foreign Missions?  20a1. The Gospel According to Paul: Sermons and Confessions What Gospel did the early Church take to the Jews and Gentiles of the Roman world outside Israel?  This study, focussed mostly on Paul, begins a section that seeks to identify the content of the early Church’s ‘Gospel.’  Here, I will present how several scholars, such as C. H. Dodd and James D. G. Dunn, have approached and answered the question, ‘What is the Gospel According to Paul?’ by exploring sermons and confessional formulae in Acts and Paul. [1]   The next studies will expand this discussion. Challenges in the Twentieth Century The twentieth century saw several challenges to coming up with a content to the Gospel.  Michael Green discussed these in Evangelism in the Early Church . [2]   First, there is the question of whether different scholars can arrive at the same results when reviewing the evidence from the New Testament.  Is there a unity to the content of the Gospel?  Second, ex

Why Foreign Missions? 19. The Pauline Missions According to Acts

Luke presents the mission of the Church beyond Israel largely through journeys of Paul and his companions. Acts anticipates the Gentile mission from the beginning and stemming from Jesus’ teaching that his disciples will be witnesses from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria to the ends of the earth (Acts 1.8; thus fulfilling Is. 59.6). This concurs with Jesus’ instructions at the end of Matthew (28.18-20) and Luke (24.46-49). This Gentile mission starts with the diaspora Jews visiting on Pentecost, who take the Gospel back to their home regions (Acts 2.5-11).  John hints at the same development, when Gentiles seek Jesus just before His passion and Jesus says that He will draw all people to Himself when He is ‘lifted up’ (meaning both crucified and glorified) from the earth (12.20-36; reflecting Isaiah 52.10, 13).  In Acts, the mission continues as the Gospel is taken to Samaritans (Acts 8.5, 25), to an Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8.27ff), and to a Roman Centurion's family (Acts 10.1ff).  This

Engaging the Bible in Mission Theology: Scholarship, David Bosch (2)

Engaging the Bible in Mission Theology Scholarship: Scholarship, David Bosch (2) David Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1991). These are short notes on the mission paradigms that Bosch identifies in Church history, without comment. Bosch argues that identifying 'paradigms' is a helpful way to understand the history of theology and mission. In this, he is developing the notion of paradigm shifts in theology as argued by Hans Küng (" Was meint Paradigmenwachsel ?" in Küng and David Tracy (eds.), Paradigm changes in Theology (NY: Crossrod, 1984, 1989 ET).  Bosch finds six paradigm shifts in 2,000 years of Christian history.  He does not believe that one gives way to another so much as one is added to existing paradigms.  I will simply present his analysis briefly, noting that this remains one of the major studies in recent times of mission theology and history (even though I have my doubts about the use

Engaging the Bible in Mission Theology: Scholarship, David Bosch (1)

Engaging the Bible in Mission Theology Scholarship: Scholarship, David Bosch (1) David Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1991). After initial chapters on the mission theology of certain New Testament authors, Bosch surveys the history of missions.  He structures his historical survey by identifying six paradigms for mission in Church history.  He attempts to associate key Biblical texts with each of the paradigms for mission.  Bosch’s views on which Scriptures go with which paradigms of mission form the focus of the following study, with a very brief caution and comment of my own at the end.  In the next study, a deeper look at Bosch's paradigms for mission will be presented.  An outline format should help readers scan this study quickly. 1.       Apocalyptic Paradigm of primitive Christianity a.        This is the period during which the New Testament documents were being written and when the New Testament cano