Making Sense of the New Testament (Three Crucial Questions)

L. Blomberg Craig

Description

The New Testament is the foundation of the Christian church, but some question its historical accuracy. Others have claimed that Paul's teaching differs from that of the Gospels. How can we reconcile the seemingly different messages of Jesus and Paul? What is the relevance of the New Testament in our world today, in cultures far removed by time and space from the first-century Mediterranean world? What principles can we use to make appropriate applications? In Making Sense of the New Testament, Craig Blomberg offers a reasonable, well-informed response to these crucial questions encountered by Bible readers. Grounded in sound scholarship but written in an accessible style, this book offers reliable guidance to pastors, students, and anyone interested in a better understanding of the New Testament.

Informations

• Publié par: Baker Publishing Group
• Date de parution: 01 mars 2004
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781441206787
• Langue: English

Extrait

Making Sense of the New Testament
Making Sense of the New Testament
THREE CRUCIAL QUESTIONS

C RAIG L . B LOMBERG
2004 by Craig L. Blomberg
Published by Baker Academic a division of Baker Book House Company P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287 www.bakeracademic.com
Printed in the United States of America
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means-for example, electronic, photocopy, recording-without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Blomberg, Craig Making sense of the New Testament / Craig L. Blomberg. p. cm. - (Three crucial questions) Includes bibliographical references (p. ). ISBN 0-8010-2747-0 (paper) 1. Bible N.T.-Evidences, authority, etc. I. Title. II. 3 crucial questions. BS2332.B49 2004 225.1-dc22 2003065338
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, Today s New International Version . Copyright 2001 by International Bible Society. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION . NIV . Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.
for George Kalemkarian with profound gratitude for a friendship that has surpassed three decades
Contents

List of Abbreviations
Preface
Introduction
1. Is the New Testament Historically Reliable?
2. Was Paul the True Founder of Christianity?
3. How Is the Christian to Apply the New Testament to Life?
Summary
Notes
Abbreviations
AJT Asia Journal of Theology BBR Bulletin for Biblical Research Bib Biblica BSac Bibliotheca Sacra BTB Biblical Theology Bulletin EvQ Evangelical Quarterly ExpT Expository Times HBT Horizons in Biblical Theology JBL Journal of Biblical Literature JR Journal of Religion JSNT Journal for the Study of the New Testament JTS Journal of Theological Studies NovT Novum Testamentum NTS New Testament Studies PEQ Palestine Exploration Quarterly SJT Scottish Journal of Theology TrinJ Trinity Journal TynB Tyndale Bulletin VC Vigilae Christianae WTJ Westminster Theological Journal
Preface

Many people deserve my thanks for enabling this project to come to completion. Jim Weaver, the former academic books editor for Baker, first approached me about getting involved and was willing to issue me a contract with a due date years into the future, due to my many other commitments. Jim Kinney, the current academic editor, was gracious enough to continue to encourage me to pursue the project, even while he was lining me up to do additional writing further down the road. Michelle Stinson and Jeremiah Harrelson, both recent graduates of Denver Seminary s Masters of Arts in Biblical Studies program, devoted numerous hours of research assistance during the 2001-2 and 2002-3 school years, respectively. Jeanette Freitag, as an assistant to our faculty, helped with the final stages of editing. I am also grateful to the administration and trustees of Denver Seminary for appointing me to a position in the spring of 2002 that has provided a little extra time and significant extra resources to enable me to complete this project, while maintaining a normal teaching load, during the past two academic years.
Many Christian books aim to address a broad cross section of the reading public by presenting their discussions at a level readily understandable by college-educated adults, while recognizing that Christian college and seminary students as well as church leaders and pastors may form their primary readership. Footnotes or endnotes then guide interested readers, and particularly scholars, to more detailed studies. This book aims to do all these things as well. Such works also often refer to the well-read or interested layperson as a kind of golden mean of individuals addressed. At the same time, patterns of reading among the American public sometimes make writers wonder just how many laypersons still fit that description!
One individual who clearly does fit the description is George Kalemkarian. As a young, single man, George devoted many hours a week over several years as a volunteer staff person for a Campus Crusade for Christ chapter at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois. My greatest Christian nurture during my college years, from 1973-77, came through that chapter. George not only provided loving leadership and consistent, biblical instruction; he also devoured theological literature and was regularly able to point us to key evangelical Christian scholarship to answer our hard questions. And all this took place, not because he had attended a Christian college or seminary, but because he had studied on his own, in addition to holding down a full-time secular job. George subsequently married a young woman he first met through Crusade, June Stunkel, and they have raised two wonderful daughters in Moline, Illinois, where they remain active in the First United Presbyterian Church. We continue to keep in touch, and George remains one of my staunchest supporters and best friends. It is to him that I therefore dedicate this book, with profound gratitude for three decades of friendship and influence.
Introduction

In recent years, Baker Books has published numerous volumes presenting three crucial questions about a particularly controversial biblical or theological topic. Helpful studies have canvassed key issues with respect to the Holy Spirit and charismatic gifts, spiritual warfare, the last days or end-times, women in ministry, and so on. One volume that departs from the format of focusing on a narrowly defined theme is Tremper Longman s Making Sense of the Old Testament: Three Crucial Questions. 1 In it, Longman tackles three very broad questions-the keys to understanding the Old Testament, comparing the God of the Old Testament with the God of the New Testament, and guidance for Christians as to how to apply the Old Testament today.
Because of the popularity of Longman s work, Baker Books approached me about composing a companion volume on the New Testament. But what would be our three questions? Certainly the two largest portions of the New Testament deal with the life of Jesus (the four Gospels) and the ministry of Paul (much of Acts and all of his letters). The first two questions should probably surround the work of these two men. And while the New Testament is not as difficult to apply as the Old Testament, issues of application certainly remain crucial. It was decided, then, to formulate three questions about Jesus, Paul, and application. Now we needed to decide on the specific questions.
Arguably the most controversial aspect of the life of Christ during the past two hundred years, since the rise of modern biblical scholarship, is whether or not the New Testament s portraits of Jesus of Nazareth can be trusted. There are opaque portions of the Gospels, to be sure, but any reasonably literate person with a good translation of the Bible can quickly recognize that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all believed Jesus to be much more than a great teacher, a Jewish rabbi, and a controversial first-century prophet. They believed he was also Israel s long-awaited Messiah or liberator, a divinely sent messenger, even God incarnate. From these convictions came a crucial corollary-all humanity would one day be judged based on their response to this Jesus. His followers could look forward to a new age, inaugurated already in his lifetime but consummated only when he would return from heaven to reign on earth. Christians, as those followers later came to be called, would then experience an eternity of unending happiness in the company of God and each other, while those who rejected Jesus and the New Testament s message about him would spend an eternity separated from God and all things good.
One s assessment of the New Testament s claims about Jesus, from this perspective, is thus the most important issue a person can ever face in this life, despite our world s cultures that would replace it with dozens of other allegedly more pressing concerns. But this line of reasoning presupposes that at least the basic contours of the Bible s portrait of Christ are trustworthy. If Jesus did not make the kinds of claims for himself that the New Testament presents, then we may relegate him to a lesser role in the history of humanity and get on with facing more urgent, current events. One of the three crucial questions for this book to address, therefore, must involve the historical reliability of the New Testament. Or, to phrase the question more precisely, do the apparently historical portions of the New Testament in fact communicate trustworthy history? This means that we must particularly scrutinize the Gospels and Acts, which purportedly provide biographies of Jesus and a history of the first generation of Christianity, respectively. But there are autobiographical reflections in Paul s letters that will have to be considered as well, along with more indirect evidence bearing on questions of history in all the New Testament letters and even in the Book of Revelation.
A closely related crucial question redirects our primary attention from Jesus to Paul. Even if the basic picture of Jesus that the New Testament paints proves trustworthy, his message often sounds quite different from that of the first century s greatest missionary preacher, the apostle Paul. Churches in many times and places throughout Christian history have devoted far more attention to Paul than to Jesus as they have tried to encapsulate the gospel message. Can we reconcile the teaching of these two formative figures? Or did Paul so distort Jesus message that we must choose one over the other? Was Paul, in fact, the second founder, or perhaps even the true founder of Christianity as it