1. How often Christians are enjoined to forgive, or to bear with one another, or to practice gentleness or patience.
2. How incredibly subtle Acts is as a narrative.
3. How much the issue of the inclusion of the Gentiles drives everything from mission to ecclesiology to ethics - and how reflection on this issue drives us back to theology and soteriology and even to creation. Wow.
4. How much and how often Paul has to defend his legitimacy as an apostle.
5. How personal and particular the documents are - they abound with the names of real people about whom we know so tantalizingly little (See Romans 16).
6. How huge the scope is - given that the church was small, scattered, persecuted and divided, how incredible that the NT writers are able to make cosmological statements about their gospel. (see Col 1:15ff for example).
7. What a majestic piece of writing Ephesians is. After reading the Corinthian correspondence, you could be forgiven for despairing somewhat.
8. How complicated the issue of the ongoing relevance of the law for the Christian life is.
9. How rich the NT is when you add to the Pauline vocabulary and outlook the Johannine, Petrine and Jamesian takes.
10. How sublime and yet how pastoral Hebrews is, charting a narrow course between a supremely grounded confidence in the sacrificial blood of Christ and the severe warnings against apostacy.
9 comments:
Re "How much the issue of the inclusion of the Gentiles drives everything": This has been impressing itself on me in recent years, both through (occasional) reading-through of whole books, and through week-in-week-out lectionary readings at church. So that gels with your as-a-whole experience: one might be able to miss it up close, but on the large scale it's very striking.
It particularly jumped out when looking at the visit of the Magi, for a sermon back in Jan ...
Like!
Interested to hear some more on 'inclusion of the Gentiles drives everything.' Great list. Thanks
'Jamesian' - not Jacobite?
@Mikey - even my pretiousness has its limits :-)
I guess I shouldn't say 'the inclusion of the Gentiles drives everything'. What I mean is that the discovery/revelation of the universality of the mission of God is the dynamic force that seems to impell the NT - and how to reconcile this with the election of Israel.
Ok I get it. THanks.
What's the one for Michael? Michelene?
Thanks,
1, 6 and 10 particularly resonated.
I meant: pretentiousness. It is a good word to know not how to spell.
I hope you don't mind, but I've stolen your idea here.
BTW, #3 is one that keeps hitting me in the NT as well.
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