help

The thesis sentence and bibliography are due this week (3). The initial thesis should be one sentence and serve as a “mini-outline” of the paper giving the reader clear direction as to what the paper will cover (if listing items/phrases, keep these items grammatically parallel).

For the bibliography, include 10-12 scholarly sources that relate directly to the passage. Two of these need to be exegetical commentaries focused on interpreting the selected Pauline letter, and three of these sources need to be from scholarly peer-reviewed journal articles. Use proper Turabian format.

READINGS:

1. Bible: Galatians 2. DPL: “Canon” (87-90) 3. DPL: “Galatians” (344-345) 4. DPL: “Gospel” (380-391) 5. PTC: “Paul’s Gospel of the Incarnation (Ch 4.)

DPL: “Canon” 87-90 CANON OF PAUL’S LETTERS By the end of the fourth century (AD 397), the *church recognized a list of fourteen letters of Paul, the traditional thirteen plus Hebrews. Evidence for a collection (canon) can be discussed under three categories: early lists, evidence from early writers (quotations and allusions indicating the writer was aware of multiple letters of Paul), and manuscript evidence (demonstrations of collected letters). Each type of evidence has strengths and weaknesses; nonetheless, the evidence makes a compelling case for a collection at least by the third century. Scholars are left to conjecture the process between Paul dispatching his letters and those collections. 1. Early Lists 2. Evidence from Early Writers 3. The Manuscript Evidence 4. Theories About Collecting the Letters 1. Early Lists. From the second Christian century, there are one—possibly two—sources providing lists of Paul’s letters. First, Marcion (writing ca. 130–140) is said by his opponents to hold to a Pauline canon of ten letters: Galatians, 1–2 Corinthians, Romans, 1–2 Thessalonians, Laodiceans (seemingly Ephesians), Colossians, Philippians, and Philemon. U. Schmid argues Marcion inherited a ten-letter collection, but E. Scherbenske counters that Marcion instead “corrected” the texts to fit his hermeneutic (94-112). Given Marcion’s demonstrated willingness to edit Scripture, one cannot be confident what his list means. Are these all the letters he knew or only

those he approved? The second document, the Muratorian Fragment, is a canon list, possibly from the second century. This list of twenty-two NT books in a Latin manuscript from the seventh century is thought to be a translation from a Greek original. The value of the list depends on when the (hypothetical) Greek exemplar was composed. Traditionally, scholars dated the composition circa 170, because, among other reasons, it seems to refer to Pius I (140–155) as “recent,” thus suggesting a collection of Paul’s letters in Rome by the mid-second century, listing the thirteen Pauline letters but not Hebrews. A. C. Sundberg Jr. argued for a fourth-century composition in the eastern empire. B. Metzger says Ferguson “sufficiently refuted (not to say demolished)” Sundberg’s arguments (193). G. Hahneman considered Metzger’s rebuttal to be “brief and dismissive” (3), arguing, for example, that the Fragment contains a Latinized form of a nickname for the Montanists (211-12), a point Ferguson (1993) vigorously disputes (see Hill). More recently, C. Rothschild suggests the Fragment is a fourth- or even ninth-century Roman fake, but C. Guignard aggressively disagrees. 2. Evidence from Early Writers. The author of 2 Peter refers to “all letters” of Paul (2 Pet 3:16). This passage is largely dismissed as second-century pseudepigrapha. The main reason often seems to be that since there could not have been a collection of Paul’s letters in Rome in the early 60s, then this letter must be from the second century, when such collections did exist. On the other hand, if the letter is Petrine, then it becomes the earliest known reference to some collection of Paul’s letters (Richards 1998, 160-62). “All letters” does not speak to the size or contents of the collection. Clement, an early bishop of Rome (ca. 96), is the only other first-century witness to Paul’s letters. R. P. Martin thinks that Clement “at best knows only four Pauline letters” (2:277). R. M. Grant sees in Clement references to Romans, 1 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, and Philippians (81-83), and D. Hagner (135) sees most of Paul’s letters. Absence of evidence, though, is not evidence of absence. Clement may well have known more letters than he referenced. One is left with Clement’s suggestion of the existence of a collection, but not a suggestion as to its contents. Other witnesses to a collection before circa 200 include Ignatius, who refers or alludes to all but 2 Thessalonians, 1–2 Timothy, Titus, and

Philemon, while Polycarp alludes to all but Colossians, 1 Thessalonians, Titus, and Philemon. Tatian accepts Titus but rejects 1–2 Timothy (so Jerome, PL 26.556). Neither Irenaeus nor Clement of Alexandria mention Philemon, but it is not clear whether they rejected it. Tertullian and Origen, both in North Africa, seem to agree with subsequent church fathers on a collection with thirteen letters and Hebrews. Origen is perhaps more noteworthy since “Origen’s typical practice is to acknowledge doubts regarding authorship where they are present” (Thomas, 603). Thus, even though Papias, Barnabas, and Justin show no evidence of familiarity with Paul’s writings (Grant, 62-107), it is still possible to maintain that the second century demonstrates a more dispersed familiarity with Paul’s letters. In summary, early references show awareness of multiple letters but cannot speak to the size of the Pauline canon. 3. The Manuscript Evidence. Aside from the five small fragments of P30 (recently dated 175–225), the earliest extant copy of any of Paul’s letters is the papyrus codex P46, often dated about 200. Although damaged, the codex has (in sequence) Romans, Hebrews, 1–2 Corinthians, Ephesians, Galatians, Colossians, and 1 Thessalonians (through 1 Thess 5:28). The unusual location of Hebrews and the reversal of Ephesians and Galatians can be seen clearly. F. Kenyon, the original examiner of the manuscript, estimated there was sufficient space for only 2 Thessalonians and 1 Timothy, leaving Kenyon (vii) to assert P46 did not originally contain the Pastorals but rather left the final four leaves blank. Kenyon’s conclusions are often cited; for example, Marshall merely comments, “As is well-known, P46 lacks the *Pastoral Epistles” (10). Kenyon’s conclusions have since been challenged. Ancient scribes typically calculated the lines (stichometry) needed for a book and then the required number of pages. If the scribe had not planned to include the Pastorals, then from his stichometry, he was able to calculate that he had plenty of blank pages. Yet, about midway the scribe of P46 began increasingly to compress his writing. There is debate over how much the scribe was compressing and whether it would have been sufficient for the Pastorals. D. Wallace, executive director of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts, has argued in blogs and seminars that the compression suggests the scribe realized partway that there would not be

room for the pastorals, but E. Ebojo counters the compression does not necessarily imply that the scribe was trying to include the Pastorals (204-35). At the least, it seems unwise to cite P46 as evidence of a Pauline collection without the Pastorals. As to the other letters, D. Trobisch makes a compelling argument that P46 arranged the “letters of Paul” strictly by length and so explains the placement of Hebrews after Romans and the inversion of Galatians and Ephesians (16-17). The five major uncial manuscripts present a consistent sequence of Paul’s letters (with two minor variations). Codex Sinaiticus ( 01 א , fourth century), Codex Alexandrinus (A 02, fifth century), and Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus (C 04, fifth century) are all thought to be independent of one another; yet all present the same sequencing: Romans, 1–2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1–2 Thessalonians, Hebrews, 1–2 Timothy, Titus, and Philemon. Codex Claromontanus (Dp 06, sixth century) nearly follows the traditional sequence of Pauline letters, with Hebrews at the end of the Corpus Paulinum, but Colossians and Philippians are reversed in sequence, perhaps influenced by the Latin tradition, which is not as consistent in the placement of Colossians. Trobisch suggests Hebrews was added “later” (13), but this is too much conjecture (Richards 2021). Last, in Codex Vaticanus (B 03, fourth century), Hebrews follows 2 Thessalonians (as in the other manuscripts of the fourth and fifth centuries), but the original manuscript breaks off at Hebrews 9:14. The remaining text is a minuscule, from when the original codex was repaired in the fifteenth century. Vaticanus shows at least two peculiarities. First, when repaired, the Pastorals and Philemon were not included. Omitting the Pastorals is, in the minds of many Vaticanus scholars (e.g., Grenz), accidental and not indicative of the fourth-century text. Second, the fourth-century section numbers in Vaticanus imply Hebrews was placed between Galatians and Ephesians in an earlier exemplar. Two conclusions seem justified from the manuscript evidence. First, all nonfragmentary manuscripts of Paul’s letters show a complete collection (thirteen letters) at least as early as the mid-300s. Second, the sequence of the thirteen letters is nearly fixed even in our earliest manuscripts, with only two variations: Ephesians-Galatians in P46 and Colossians-Philippians in Claromontanus (Trobisch, 22). The other evidence provides first- and

second-century knowledge of multiple letters of Paul, and thus a potential collection, but does not indicate the size of the canon. Marcion appears to not have known (or to have excluded) the Pastorals. The impact of the Muratorian Fragment depends entirely on the dating. If the earlier date is accurate, then it provides evidence of a thirteen-letter collection at least in Rome before the end of the second century. The question becomes, When and how did letters dispatched to at least nine locations come to be a collection? 4. Theories About Collecting the Letters. Paul encourages the church in Colossae (Col 4:16) to acquire a copy of his letter to Laodicea. Polycarp had copies of Ignatius’s letters and sent copies to Philippi (Pol. Phil. 13.2). P. N. Harrison suggested that when a church treasured its own letter(s) of Paul, it began to collect copies of other letters (Harrison, 236), and so regional collections of Paul’s letters arose, perhaps in the late first or early second century, leading to fuller collections (P46?) and eventually to the complete collections represented in the majuscules of the fourth and fifth century. S. E. Porter labels this the “gradual collection or Zahn-Harnack theory” (99-103). Despite the attractive logic, manuscripts provide no evidence for partial collections. This approach fell out of vogue, and scholars began to build on an older theory by Goodspeed, who suggested that after the publication of Acts, someone decided to collect from the various churches copies of the dispatched letters of Paul (1927). E. J. Goodspeed then suggested this disciple wrote Ephesians as the preface to the collected letters (1933). J. Knox, a student of Goodspeed, identified the disciple as Onesimus. The Goodspeed-Knox theory, also called the “lapsed interest theory,” has not prevailed, although the underlying approach remained attractive. As H. Y. Gamble notes, subsequent theories retained the idea of “an occasion, an agent and a motive” (39). C. F. D. Moule and others have suggested clever theories that all share that an individual (or an individual school) took the initiative to collect the dispatched letters of Paul (see Porter, 99-103). Since 1991, Richards noted collection often suggests an active process, that someone collected the letters. Such a view is often built on two presuppositions. First, it assumes the published set arose from making copies of the dispatched letters. Second, it assumes no collection existed

until someone desired to publish the letters. As a corollary, Paul’s letters would need to be esteemed (by someone) before a collection could exist. Richards distinguishes collection from publication, suggesting the original collection was Paul’s personal set. Ancient letter writers commonly retained copies of their *letters. Gamble notes, “In antiquity, collected editions of letters were nearly always produced by their author or at their author’s behest, often from copies belonging to the author” (101; see also Tyrrell and Purser, 59). Suetonius knew three sets of Caesar’s letters, and the Epistulae ad senatum seem to have been published by Caesar himself: “Some letters of his to the senate are also preserved, and he seems to have been the first to reduce such documents to pages and the form of a note-book” (Suetonius, Jul. 56.6 LCL). There is evidence of letter writers retaining personal copies among the Roman aristocratic elite. Cicero mentions dashing off a letter but keeping a copy in his notebook (Fam. 9.26.1). A letter he had sent to Caesar had become so wet as to be unreadable, so he sent another copy (Quint. fratr. 2.12.4). The practice has earlier roots. According to Plutarch, Alexander the Great in a fit of rage burned his secretary’s tent. He regretted losing the documents and required his officials to send back copies to replace the lost ones (Plutarch, Eumenes 2.2-3). The uncovered archive of Petaus (ca. AD 185), a village scribe in Greco-Roman Egypt, had sixty-four copies and drafts of letters he had dispatched; see other examples of making (P.Mich. 855), retaining (Tab. Vindol. 2.299), sending (P.Zen. 43), or using a copy (P.Tebt. 32) of a letter. Across the empire, those who troubled to write significant letters retained their own copies. Likely Paul followed custom and retained copies. Sometimes, ancients mentioned copies of letters were made into membranae (Latin), that is, parchment notebooks. Imprisoned in Rome, Paul requests (2 Tim 4:13) his books and membranas (Greek), using what appears to be a Hellenized form of the Latin (see Roberts and Skeat, 30). Perhaps the first collection of Paul’s letters was his personal set in Rome, suggesting why the earliest references are from Rome (Richards 1998). Whether as early as the first century or later in the second, the evidence suggests Paul’s letters from the onset were distributed as a collection of thirteen letters.

See also LETTERS, LETTER FORMS; TEXTUAL CRITICISM. BIBLIOGRAPHY. E. Ebojo, “A Scribe and His Manuscript: An Investigation into the Scribal Habits of Papyrus 46” (unpublished thesis, University of Birmingham, 2014); E. Ferguson, “Canon Muratori: Date and Provenance,” StPatr 17, no. 2 (1982): 677-83; idem, “Review of Hahneman, Geoffrey Mark, The Muratorian Fragment and the Development of the Canon,” JTS 44 (1993): 691-97; H. Gamble, The New Testament Canon: Its Making and Meaning (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986); E. Goodspeed, New Solutions to New Testament Problems (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1927); idem, The Story of the New Testament (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1933); R. M. Grant, Heresy and Criticism: The Search for Authenticity in Early Christian Literature (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993); idem, The Formation of the New Testament (New York: Harper & Row, 1965); J. Grenz, “The Scribes and Correctors of Codex Vaticanus,” PhD diss., University of Cambridge, 2020; C. Guignard, “The Muratorian Fragment as a Late Antique Fake? An Answer to C. K. Rothschild,” Théologie et souffrance 93 (2019): 73-90; D. A. Hagner, The Use of the Old and New Testaments in Clement of Rome, SNTSMS 34 (Leiden: Brill, 1973); G. M. Hahneman, The Muratorian Fragment and the Development of the Canon (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992); P. Harrison, Polycarp’s Two Epistles to the Philippians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1936); C. E. Hill, “The Debate over the Muratorian Fragment and the Development of the Canon,” WTJ 57 (1995): 437-52; F. G. Kenyon, The Chester Beatty Biblical Papyri Descriptions and Texts of the Twelve Manuscripts on Papyrus of the Greek Bible: Fasciculus III; Pauline Epistles and Revelation (London: Emery Walker, 1934); I. H. Marshall, The Pastoral Epistles, ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2004); R. P. Martin, New Testament Foundations, rev. ed., 2 vols. (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2000); L. M. McDonald, The Biblical Canon: Its Origin, Transmission, and Authority (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2007); B. M. Metzger, Canon of the New Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987); C. Moule, The Birth of the New Testament, 3rd ed. (London: A&C Black, 1962); A. G. Patzia, The Making of the New Testament: Origin, Collection, Text and Canon, 2nd ed. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2011); S. E. Porter, “When and How Was the Pauline Canon Compiled? An Assessment of Theories,” in

The Pauline Canon, ed. S. E. Porter (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 95-127; E. R. Richards, “The Codex and the Early Collection of Paul’s Letters,” BBR 8 (1998): 151-66; idem, “The Pauline Canon,” in Canon Formation: Tracing the Role of Sub-collections in the Biblical Canon, ed. W. E. Glenny and D. R. Lockett (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2021); C. H. Roberts and T. C. Skeat, The Birth of the Codex (London: Oxford University Press, 1983); C. K. Rothschild, “The Muratorian Fragment as Roman Fake,” NovT 60 (2018): 55-82; E. Scherbenske, Canonizing Paul: Ancient Editorial Practice and the Corpus Paulinum(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); U. Schmid, Marcion und sein Apostolos: Rekonstruktion und historische Einordnung der marcionitischen Paulusbriefausgabe, ANTF 25 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1995); A. C. Sundberg Jr., “Canon Muratori: A Fourth Century List,” HTR 66 (1973): 1-41; M. J. Thomas, “Origen on Paul’s Authorship of Hebrews,” NTS 65 (2019): 598-609; D. Trobisch, Paul’s Letter Collection: Tracing the Origins (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994); R. Tyrrell and L. Purser, The Correspondence of M. Tullius Cicero, 7 vols. (London: Longmans, Green, 1901–1933). E. R. Richards DPL: “Galatians” (344-345) GALATIANS, LETTER TO THE Galatians was written to a *church in the midst of controversy. At some point after Paul evangelized and departed from the churches in Galatia, a group of outsiders claiming official status as representatives of the church in *Jerusalem arrived. They claimed, it seems, that Paul had not properly catechized the Galatian church on what was required of followers of the Messiah Jesus and members of the church of *God. In their view, to be full members of the church and heirs of the promises made to *Abraham, the *Gentile men in the church needed to be circumcised and keep the law like Abraham (Gal 5:2; Gen 17:10). This teaching seems to have been sufficiently compelling to draw significant support, and as a result members of the congregation reported these developments to Paul (Gal 1:6-9). Paul

wrote Galatians to remind them of the *gospel he preached and to keep them from adopting the views of his *opponents. Paul’s gospel includes that trust in the crucified (and risen) Messiah Jesus is sufficient to justify believing Jews and Gentiles and make them co-heirs to the inheritance that belongs to the promised heir of Abraham, Jesus the Messiah (Gal 3:16, 19). Galatians, then, is a letter that functions to unite men and women across *ethnicity and class under the banner of the king who died to reconcile them to God and each other. Paul believes that something essential to the gospel itself is lost if those who believe are not justified on the same basis, namely, *faith. Galatians is more than a defense of a doctrine of *justification, though *righteousness/justification language does figure prominently in the letter. In the course of making his argument, Paul examines the nature of God’s promises to Abraham, the role of the *law in God’s purposes (Gal 3:19-22), the meaning of Christ’s *death (Gal 1:4; 3:13-14; 4:4-7), and the ethical norms for Christians who live by the Spirit in community (Gal 5:22-25; 6:1-5). In short, Galatians is, in the heat of controversy, an articulation of a vision for Christian faith and practice that remains relevant today. 1. Authorship and Audience 2. Dating Galatians 3. Paul, His Opponents, and the Use of Scripture 4. Galatians, Rhetoric, and Structure 5. Galatians in Outline 6. The Argument of Galatians 1. Authorship and Audience. Few things are less contested in Pauline scholarship than Paul’s authorship of Galatians. Matters are not so simple when it comes to discerning who the Galatians were. Exploring this topic requires a brief journey through a history of the settlement of the Roman province of Galatia. The province took its name from the Celts of central Europe, who were called “Gauls” or “Galatians” in Latin and Greek sources. In the middle of the third century BC, these Gauls migrated from central Europe to attack and eventually colonize the north-central portion of Asia Minor in what is now modern Turkey. By 232 BC the boundaries had become fixed, with the major cities being overseen by the three major Gaul tribes: Pessinus

(Tolistobogii), Ancyra (Tectosages), and Tavium (Trocmi). In the Roman sources, these ethnic Gauls have a reputation of being ignorant and uncivilized. This ethnic bias should probably be viewed as propaganda justifying Roman conquest of the area. North-central Asia Minor remained under the oversight of tribal councils and later three tribal kings until 42 BC, when Deiotarus murdered the other two kings and took power for himself. This area now known as Galatia became a client kingdom some twenty years before Deiotarus’s rule due to Galatia’s support of Pompey in a war against Mithridates V. In 25 BC Galatia became a province of the Roman *Empire. In Paul’s day the province of Galatia extended beyond the originally ethnically Galatian area in the north-central Asia Minor. (This included the area around the three cities Pessinus to the west, Ancyra to the north, and Tavium on the east.) Galatia grew to include parts of Pisidia, Lyconia, Paphlagonia, Pontus, and Phrygia. Its northern border stretched to the Black Sea and its southern border the Mediterranean. To the east it extended until one arrived at Cappadocia and on the west until one reached Asia and Bithynia. As it relates to Paul’s letter, Galatia could refer to any portion of this expansive province. The first of two major options is the ethnically Galatian area to the north, around the three major cities mentioned above. The second option is the southern part of the province, with its mixed population of Jews and Gentiles. If there were churches in the north, then Acts 16:6; 18:23 probably records their founding. However, if Galatia refers to the area in the south, Acts 13–14 describes Paul’s missionary work in that region. The major difference between the two options is that in the south it is possible that the congregation consisted of Jewish and Gentile believers, while in the north the congregation would have most likely been completely Gentile (and ethnically Galatian). Historically, northern Galatia was viewed as the location of the recipients of Paul’s letter because by the middle of the first century, according to Acts 13–14, the southern portions of the area that Paul visited had been detached from the province. For most ancient commentators, then, Galatia referred to the ethnically Galatian area to the north. Today the arguments in favor of the north are: (1) Paul would not refer to an ethnically diverse

group of people, especially the Phrygians or the Lycaonians living in the south, as Galatians (Gal 3:1); (2) Paul writes as if there were no Jews in the congregation, which would fit a northern location; (3) when Luke refers to Galatia he has in mind the north (Acts 16:6; 18:23). The arguments for a southern location are several: (1) Acts 16:6 does not depict Paul’s evangelizing in the north, only Paul’s travels in the region. Luke usually describes Paul’s church-planting efforts when Paul evangelizes an area (Acts 13–14; 16); (2) there is explicit mention of churches being formed in the south (Acts 13–14); (3) based on the *travel plans depicted in Acts 16, Paul would have to had travel around 125 miles out of the way to reach the populated northern cities; (4) Paul in his *letters usually refers to locales by their Roman provincial designations (1 Cor 16:19; 2 Cor 8:1; 1 Thess 2:14). This means that he could refer to the southern portions of the province as “Galatia” even if Luke did not; (5) only the elites in the north would have spoken Greek, making Paul’s evangelism difficult; (6) it seems more likely that an ethnically mixed congregation that knew of Judaism would find the arguments of Paul’s opponents compelling, and the southern location assumes just such a congregation. On balance the best argument for the northern hypothesis is that Paul would not refer to an ethnically mixed group as Galatians, but it is difficult to think of a better collective for the people in those churches than “Galatians.” Furthermore, there simply is better evidence, if Acts can be trusted, that Paul evangelized the south, and the cultural milieu (local knowledge of Judaism) makes it more likely that the problems the Galatians faced would arise there. 2. Dating Galatians. The questions of when Paul wrote his letter to Galatians and the relationship between the events recounted in Galatians and the book of Acts must be handled together. In Galatians 1:11–2:14, Paul recounts the events from the time of his *conversion to his confrontation with *Peter in Antioch. He does this to prove, over against his detractors, that his gospel originates with God and does not rely on human approval. In the course of making his case, Paul acknowledges that when the *leadership in Jerusalem heard about his message, they gave him the right hand of *fellowship and approved of his *mission to the Gentiles (Gal 2:9).

During his rehearsing of events, Paul mentions two visits to Jerusalem. One occurred three years after his conversion (Gal 1:18). He then mentions a second visit fourteen years later. This could be fourteen years after his conversion or fourteen years after the first visit (Gal 2:1). This article will assume (1) that Jesus’ death, *resurrection, and *ascension occurred between AD 29 and 30, and (2) that Paul was converted between AD 31 and 32. Therefore, the first Jerusalem visit occurred between AD 34 and 35. The second visit occurred between AD 44 and 49. There are two reasons for this range. First, it is unknown whether Paul counts entire years or portions of a year in his reckoning. Second, as noted above, it is unclear whether the fourteen years refers to the time since his conversion or since his first visit. It is known that Paul wrote his letter after these two visits. Thus, the earliest date for Galatians could be shortly after the second visit using the earliest date, namely, sometime around AD 46. (That time could be moved earlier by those who date Jesus’ death and Paul’s conversion at a different time from the assumptions outlined above.) The later date of composition could be any time after AD 49. Dating Galatians is complicated by the fact that there is a second set of data—Luke’s depictions of Paul’s travels in the book of Acts. Acts records three visits that are relevant to the discussion here: (1) a visit following his conversion in Acts 9:26-29; (2) a visit for famine relief in Acts 11:27-30; 12:25; and (3) the *Jerusalem council in Acts 15. A northern location for Galatians means that the letter had to be written after the events of Acts 15, because Paul evangelizes northern Galatia after those events. Luke records this in Acts 16:6. The Jerusalem council occurred around AD 48–49. In a northern account, one needs to allow time for a number of events to occur. Paul first evangelized the region. Following this evangelization, he departed, and his opponents arrived and preached their gospel. The news of trouble spread to Paul, and he composed the letter. AD 50–51 seems like a reasonable period of time. If one assumes that Galatians 4:13 refers to two trips to Galatia, then the letter would have been written after the second visit, during Paul’s second missionary journey recounted in Acts 18:23. That pushes the date to sometime around AD 53–55.

This article takes the position that a southern destination for the letter is more likely, so that will be the focus here. Most agree that Acts 9:26-29 refers to the first visit to Jerusalem mentioned by Paul. The question is whether the second visit to Jerusalem that Paul recounts in Galatians 2:1-10 refers to the visit in Acts 15:1-29 or the famine visit in Acts 11:27-30. The strongest arguments for equating the visit that Paul recounts in Galatians 2:1-10 with Acts 15:1-29 are that (1) both record Paul and Barnabas going up from Antioch to Jerusalem, (2) both deal with the issue of *circumcision and Gentile inclusion, (3) both state that there is an agreement that Gentiles need not be circumcised, (4) both record *James and Peter’s consent, and (5) both recount the blessing of Paul’s *ministry. The problems most often raised when equating Galatians 2:1-10 with Acts 15:1-29 are that (1) Paul presents this as a private meeting between himself, Barnabas, Titus, and the pillars, while Acts 15:1-29 depicts a gathered church; (2) in Galatians, the central issue is Paul’s apostolic *calling, while in Acts 15:1-29 the issue is Gentile inclusion; (3) Paul does not mention the decree of Acts 15, which would have been very useful in Galatia; and (4) one has to assume that Paul omits the visit of Acts 11:27-30; 12:25 even though he seems to be giving a very careful account of his activities. There is strong evidence for both options. The differences in public versus a private meeting could be a matter of perspective. The same could be said about Paul’s emphasis on the approval of his ministry in Galatians versus Luke’s more detached depiction in Acts. Craig Keener notes that there are other places in Paul’s letters where the decree in Acts would be useful. The Acts decree about sexual morality and *food sacrificed to idols, for example, would have been very useful in *Corinth. Nonetheless, the differences between the accounts do matter. In addition, one can be relatively confident that Paul would not omit a visit to Jerusalem when making the case about his independence from Jerusalem. Therefore, on balance the evidence favors Galatians 2:1-10 referring to the famine visit in Acts 11:27-30. In this reconstruction, Paul met with the pillars privately, received the right hand of fellowship, and withstood pressure from the more conservative wing of the Jewish Christian movement. Paul then returned to Antioch with

the positive news and interpreted this as a sign of unhindered Jewish and Gentile Christian fellowship. Peter visited and initially shared a meal with the mixed community of Jewish and Christian believers in Antioch. This visit unraveled under pressure from Jewish Christian conservatives who thought that Peter’s actions would hinder the mission to the Jewish people. Paul and Peter’s confrontation in Antioch was one more step along the way to finding a solution to the question of Gentile inclusion. Given the choice to favor the southern destination for the letter, and matching Galatians 2:1-10 with the famine visit in Acts 11:27-30, one can date Galatians shortly before the apostolic council in AD 48–49. DPL: “Gospel” (380-391) GOSPEL The gospel is of utmost importance in the NT and Paul’s letters. But it has often not received the scholarly attention it deserves. For the past five hundred years Protestant-Catholic polemics concerning how to systematize justification by faith have dominated to such a degree that “gospel” (euangelion) has not always been scrutinized within first-century categories. The Protestant-Catholic systematic debate has made analysis of “gospel” challenging. On the one hand, many Protestants assert that personal justification by *faith alone is the gospel or its center. When popularized in this way, the gospel is primarily about how sinful humans can obtain heaven by trusting in Jesus’ accomplished work on the *cross. On the other hand, justification by faith alone is denied by Catholicism. The official Catholic position, articulated at the Council of Trent, is that justification is imparted/infused as a seed of righteousness at baptism by the Holy Spirit, but subsequently one must maintain and grow one’s own justification through good deeds (with God’s assistance) to receive the final crown of justification at life’s end. Recent scholarship has made strides by analyzing “gospel” within a first-century framework—along with related terms. For Paul, it is certainly true that a person can be justified by faith. But that does not mean that an

individual’s justification by faith is part of the gospel. Paul’s own description of the gospel has a considerably different shape and emphasis. 1. Definition and Related Words 2. Scholarly Context for Recent Developments 3. Recent Scholarship 4. Content or Event? 5. Gospel Content 6. Gospel as Event 7. The False Gospel in Galatians 8. The Purpose of the Gospel 1. Definition and Related Words. For Paul, the gospel (euangelion) is the announcement that Jesus the Son was sent by *God (the Father) to become the victorious king. When the king was enthroned, the Spirit was sent to bring benefits and to facilitate the gospel’s primary purpose: allegiant obedience to Jesus as the *Christ among all the nations. Greater clarity about the gospel and salvation can be achieved by distinguishing between the gospel proper and its purposes and benefits. The euangel- word group appears 44 times in the LXX and 119 times in the NT, with 62 occurrences in the seven undisputed Pauline letters and 15 in the disputed. In the LXX, the highest density appears in 2 Samuel and Isaiah 40–66. Throughout the disputed and undisputed letters, occurrences are distributed in a fairly uniform fashion (only Titus is not represented). Closely related terms include kerygma (“proclamation”) and logos (“word, message”). Despite the frequency of occurrences, there are only a handful of passages in the Pauline corpus that explicitly give an expanded description of the gospel or its purposes—Romans 1:1-5; 15:15-21; 16:24-26; 1 Corinthians 15:3-5; Galatians 3:8; 2 Timothy 2:8. These passages can be supplemented by other, briefer indications. 2. Scholarly Context for Recent Developments. Leading Pauline scholars from the previous generation expressed reticence concerning a Hebraic or Jewish background to euangelion. It was a Christian novum. To illustrate this tendency to downplay the Hebraic background in favor of Christian newness, consider Rudolf Bultmann’s analysis.

On the surface the Jewish background for “gospel” appears to have been important to Paul. But Bultmann was not convinced. Isaiah uses gospel language that Paul cites in a modified form: “like the feet of one bringing glad tidings [euangelizomenou] of a report of *peace, like one bringing glad tidings of good things [euangelizomenos agatha], because I will make your salvation [tēn sōtērian sou] heard, saying to Sion, ‘Your God shall reign [basileusei sou ho theos]’” (Is 52:7 NETS; cf. Rom 10:15). Even though Paul cites this text, Bultmann underplays the importance of this gospel language in the Hebrew Bible/OT and the Greek OT manuscript traditions for Paul’s theology. For Bultmann, the Hebraic background did not significantly affect Paul or other early Christian understandings of gospel. What is vital is how the early church developed the gospel over time to fit its emerging needs. Bultmann claimed that the original “germ-cell” gospel proclamation (kērygma) merely included the *death and *resurrection of Jesus. But then, to meet their practical needs, early Christians began to build on this original death-and-resurrection gospel. First, the earliest Jewish Christians needed to show how the passion and resurrection fit into salvation history and *prophecy, so they added interpretative elements to the kērygma. Second, the *church had to account for the cultic *worship of Jesus, so miracles and teachings were appended. Next, the church needed Jesus’ teachings, so moral elements were added to the gospel. Yet even still gospel was not yet used in the absolute sense of “the gospel” (full stop) in which one finds it in Paul’s letters (Bultmann 1:86). Bultmann rejected not only a Hebraic background for Paul’s gospel but also a Greek context: “This usage of Paul, which in his footsteps became widely current, has no analogy either in the Old Testament and Judaism or in Gentile Hellenism, and the widespread view that ‘evangel’ is a sacral term of the emperor-cult cannot be maintained” (Bultmann 1:87). Bultmann’s emphasis on the gospel as a Christian novum was echoed by the leading scholars who followed him. For example, Ernst Käsemann approvingly cites Bultmann and then reiterates his sentiments, saying, “The antithesis between the worship of Christ and emperor worship does not play in the primitive Church the role presupposed for such a derivation” (Käsemann, 7). Moreover, Käsemann agrees with Bultmann that objections

to deriving Paul’s understanding of euangelion from Deutero-Isaiah “have not been fully met” (7). In arriving at this conclusion, Käsemann, citing Peter Stuhlmacher, finds the absence of the use of “the gospel” in an absolute sense outside early Christianity to be decisive. This is significant because Stuhlmacher’s influential studies of the gospel (1968) were more optimistic regarding a Hebraic background and continuity between the Jerusalem-based church and Paul’s letters. In short, leading Pauline scholars of a previous generation were convinced that “the gospel” as an unqualified term could not go back to the earliest Jerusalem-based church. Rather, Jesus’ death and resurrection were originally gospel (good news), but it was only as the Hellenistic church added diverse elements that such ideas became fixed as the gospel. Therefore, Paul’s use of the gospel reflects all of these developments (Bultmann, 1:87-88; on past scholarship, see Twelftree, 5-9). 3. Recent Scholarship. The theory of a pre-Pauline development from an early Palestinian (Jewish) to early Hellenistic (Greek) church is now widely rejected. Accordingly, scholarly understandings of the gospel have shifted. In terms of origin, Paul himself claims to have received the gospel directly from the Lord Jesus himself when the once-dead-but-now-living king was revealed to him (Gal 1:12). This, however, does not suggest that Paul’s gospel had no pre-Pauline currency among followers of Jesus the Messiah. There is every reason to believe that Paul’s gospel predates Paul’s letters, reaching back to the earliest distinctively Christian experiences of the Jerusalem-based church. Although they date after Paul’s letters, the Gospels strongly indicate that the gospel was central to the historical Jesus’ own message (e.g., Mk 1:14-15; Lk 4:16-21; 4:43). Jesus proclaimed that he was in the process of bringing about God’s kingdom through his own emerging kingship. Moreover, Paul acknowledges that Peter was entrusted with the gospel before he was (Gal 2:7) and speaks of it as a *tradition that he himself received from others (1 Cor 15:3). Paul’s gospel did not fully originate with Paul. Nor was the euangel- word group devoid of meaning in the broader Greco-Roman world. Scholars today are more prepared to see the HB/OT, Second Temple Judaism, and the Greco-Roman world not as preparation for the Christian

gospel as a novum but as the sociohistorical matrix that informed its novel content holistically. As N. T. Wright puts it: “In Paul’s Jewish world the word [gospel] looked back to Isa 40:9 and 52:7, where a messenger was to bring to Jerusalem the good news of Babylon’s defeat, the end of Israel’s exile, and the personal return of YHWH to Zion. In the pagan world Paul addressed, the same Greek word referred to the birthday of a ruler or emperor” (Wright 2013, 415). That is, within Paul’s world euangelion connected both to the OT promises of YHWH’s return to Zion and also to announcements pertaining to the emperor and his benefactions. The imperial context is apparent in the famous Priene Calendar inscription, in which Caesar Augustus is referred to as “savior” (sōtēr) and “god” (theos), and the day of his birth is called “the gospel [euangelion] for the world.” An imperial framework is also in place for Josephus, when he describes the “good news” that Vespasian has become the new emperor: “And quicker than thought rumour spread the news of the new emperor in the east. Every city kept festival for the good news [euangelia] and offered sacrifices on his [Vespasian’s] behalf” (J.W. 4.618 [LCL]; cf. J.W. 4.656). N. T. Wright is not alone in advancing a royal gospel informed by the HB/OT, Second Temple Judaism, and the Greco-Roman context. Matthew Novenson has shown that Christ had not devolved into a mere name but retained royal implications as an honorific for Paul. A royal gospel is inescapable in Paul’s letters because the phrases Jesus Christ and Christ Jesus ubiquitously assert that Jesus presently holds the messianic office. For scholars today, Paul’s gospel might be more than a royal proclamation that God’s HB/OT promises have been fulfilled—with implications for the wider Greco-Roman world—but it cannot be less. Michael Gorman (2004, 98-114) captures the way in which Paul’s gospel is holistically informed by its Jewish and Greco-Roman contexts. Paul’s gospel is theopolitical: “It announces an event that has to do with God’s intervention in history, something that must be both a ‘theological’ and a ‘political’ event” (108). Meanwhile Gorman shows that key terms such as euangelion (“good news”), kyrios (“*lord”), sōtēr/sōtēria (“*savior”/“salvation”), basileia (“kingdom”), eirēnē (“peace”), pistis (“faith”), eleutheria (“*freedom”), dikaios/dikaiosynē (“just”/ “*righteousness”), ekklēsia (“church”), and parousia (“coming”) are all double-voiced. Each

draws from and resonates within its Jewish and Greco-Roman context but takes on additional meanings when used by the emerging church to speak of the paradoxes surrounding a crucified, risen king. Paul was well aware of the irony of a crucified Messiah, seeing the message of the cross as folly to the perishing world but nevertheless God’s transformative power (1 Cor 1:18). Those working within an apocalyptic framework also emphasize a royal gospel, although generally the theme is more muted. For example, J. L. Martyn speaks of a royal gospel (127-28) but focuses more on its eruptive, disruptive quality as a revelatory occurrence: “In a word, the gospel happened to Paul when God stepped on the scene, invading his life in Christ” (Martyn, 144; cf. 147-51). Beverly Gaventa strikes similar chords. Meanwhile, Douglas Campbell believes that neither justification by faith nor a salvation-historical approach can ultimately do justice to Paul’s euangelion (Campbell 2005; 2009). Campbell advances an apocalyptic model for Paul’s gospel that focuses on Spirit-led participation in Christ’s death and resurrection. He calls it “pneumatologically participatory martyrological eschatology,” or PPME. Additionally, Michael Bird (2014), Scot McKnight (2011; 2019), and Joshua Jipp (2015) have furthered the emphasis on the gospel as a royal proclamation for Paul. M. W. Bates (2017; 2019), whose results regarding Paul’s gospel are consolidated in the following subsections, has sought to integrate a royal gospel with other key categories such as grace, faith, and works. The most recent full-length monograph, Graham Twelftree’s The Gospel According to Paul, continues these trends, while adding that the miraculous deeds of the Spirit should be regarded as gospel too. In short, there is now heightened awareness that Paul’s gospel (euangelion) was associated with Roman emperors—their patronage, benefactions, and governance. Paul’s gospel is that something new has happened in world and cosmic history. God’s king is now ruling: the Christ is Jesus. Although humans did not deserve the grace of the Christ-events that together constitute the gospel, nevertheless the benefits of ultimate salvation are available to all who accept this gift by giving loyalty to the king. 4. Content or Event?

Recent scholarship raises an important basic question: For Paul, does euangelion characteristically intend a message with a specific content, or is it rather an activity or event? Some words, such as *hope, contain a verbal idea even when used as a noun. If one has placed hope in a retirement account, for example, hope is a noun. But since it can be a verb in other contexts, it has an implied action and an object. Similarly, although euangelion (“good news,” “glad tidings”) is a noun, it has a verbal counterpart, euangelizomai (“to herald good news”). Much of the debate in contemporary Pauline scholarship about the gospel concerns how to correlate salvation-historical content, such as promise and *covenant, with cosmic and apocalyptic events, such as deliverance and new *creation (for discussion, see Gaventa). Consider the English word proclamation as a relevant word capable of denoting content or activity. When a governor issues a proclamation pertaining to a new regulation, one might focus on the content proclaimed (the message), the activity (the event of the speech-act), or the purposes or results. It is the same for Paul and euangelion. Careful inspection of Paul’s usage makes it clear that euangelion is a proclamation, so it can intend both content and event. Douglas Moo calls this the static and active sense of euangelion (43). The gospel also has distinct purposes. In dividing this article’s treatment into content, event, and purpose, the intention is not to suggest a tidy, nonoverlapping division in Paul’s usage along these lines but to discern and discuss the weight of emphasis in the most important gospel passages. 5. Gospel Content. 5.1. Incarnation and Enthronement—Romans 1:1-4. That the gospel is central to Paul’s letters and theology is apparent from the opening verse of the Pauline corpus: “Paul, *slave of the Messiah, Jesus. A called *apostle, having been set apart for the gospel of God” (Rom 1:1). Paul uses the phrase “gospel of God” (euangelion Theou), suggesting that God (the Father) is the gospel’s author and source. Since Paul wants to stress the gospel’s universal significance here, he avoids “my gospel” (Rom 2:16; 16:25; cf. 2 Tim 2:8). Since this is the gospel of the one true God, its purview is boundless.

While it would be wrong to exclude activity entirely, contextually the content is foregrounded in this passage as Paul continues to present the gospel (so also Moo). [the gospel] that he promised in advance through his holy prophets concerning his Son, (X) who came into being [tou genomenou] (a) by means of the seed of David [ek spermatos Dauid] (b) as it pertains to the *flesh [kata sarka] (Y) who was appointed Son-of-God-in-Power [tou horisthentos huiou Theou en dynamei] (b) as it pertains to the Spirit of *Holiness [kata pneuma hagiōsynēs] (a) by means of the resurrection from among the dead ones [ex anastaseōs nekrōn] Jesus the Christ our Lord [Iēsou Christou tou kyriou hēmōn]. (Rom 1:2-4) 5.1.1. Promised in Advance. Paul stresses that the gospel was “promised [by God] in advance [proepēngeilato] through his prophets in the holy Scriptures” (Rom 1:2). This clause presses uncomfortably against the tendency within earlier scholarship to angle toward the Christian gospel as a novum over against its Hebrew Bible/OT background. Three points should be made: (1) Paul’s gospel presupposes God’s orchestration of a divine economy, a providential arrangement of world affairs and their outworking; (2) God did not merely announce the gospel in advance but committed himself via promises, such as those made to *Abraham and David (e.g., Gen 12:3; 2 Sam 7:12-16); (3) the gospel is not an entirely unanticipated rupture within human history, since God promised it beforehand in Scripture. The gospel is not identical to the OT story but is the fulfillment of patterns and promises made within that story. This hints at an implication that Paul will tease out subsequently: the gospel vindicates God, proving that he has acted powerfully and justly within history. Paul is probably using preexisting material in Romans 1:3-4, much as he does in 1 Corinthians 15:3-5. That is, the early church prior to Paul may have used this gospel content as part of a proto-creed or *hymn. If so, Paul may have modified its wording to adjust portions of its theology, or for irenic purposes, or both (see Jewett). But it is unlikely that Paul would have idiosyncratically redacted gospel material here. It is more probable that he

presented the gospel that he and the Romans held in common, especially since he had never personally visited the churches at Rome and he is requesting their assistance in his efforts to preach the gospel in Spain (Bates 2015). For Paul in Romans 1:2-4, the gospel pertains to God’s Son. Yet what one learns about the Son is presented in a tightly structured X-a-b-Y-b-a pattern in the Greek text. The X and Y are participial phrases. The a-b-b-a pattern is carried out by the prepositions ek-kata-kata-ek. This structure in Greek shows that two events are primary, for the rest of the information describes and qualifies these two events. The two events are coming into being and being appointed Son-of-God-in-Power. 5.1.2. Coming into Being. In detailing the gospel, Paul stresses that the Son came into being. The ordinary word for human reproduction, gennaō, is eschewed in favor of ginomai (“to be, to become”), much as in Galatians 4:4; Philippians 2:7. But Paul qualifies the way in which the Son came into being in two ways. First he says this was ek spermatos Dauid (“by/from the seed of David”). This could merely be a statement of Davidic origin (i.e., “from the line of David”). But earliest reception history and parallelism with Romans 1:4 points at a more plausible solution—that Paul is describing the means by which this “coming into being” of the Son transpired. It was by means of the seed of David. That is, by means of Mary, who is called “the seed of David” in several second-century sources (Ign. Eph. 18.2), including Irenaeus, in what is the earliest explicit interpretation of this verse (Haer. 3.16.3; cf. Irenaeus, Epid. 36; see Jipp 2009). Second, Paul further qualifies “came into being” by saying that this was not a coming-into-being in every way but only with regard to the flesh (kata sarka), since he was already the Son (Rom 1:1). The key gospel event highlighted in Romans 1:3 is what subsequently would come to be termed the incarnation. 5.1.3. Appointed Son-of-God-in-Power. After speaking of the Son’s enfleshment, Paul describes his appointment to a new station. Prior to the gospel the Son preexisted alongside the Father. But the gospel is about his installation as Son-of-God-in-Power. There is a progression from Son to enthroned Son. This interpretation takes the prepositional phrase en dynamei as modifying “*Son of God” rather than the participle horisthentos (“who was appointed”). It is not that the Son was appointed with power to

be Son of God, but rather that the Son was appointed Son-of-God-in-Power. This is the most likely interpretation because (1) Jesus is already described as the Son in Romans 1:1, so it would be odd for him to be described subsequently in Romans 1:4 as being appointed with power to be Son of God in conjunction with the resurrection—but the strangeness dissipates if the Son is being appointed to a new office, Son-of-God-in-Power; (2) it preserves the a-b-b-a structure; (3) it best explains the word order within the clause; (4) it is contextually reinforced by the royal emphasis throughout Romans 1:1-5; and (5) there is a movement from the Son’s preexistence with God to his role as glorified ruler in similar texts in Paul’s letters, such as Philippians 2:6-11 and Romans 8 (Rom 8:3 together with Rom 8:34; cf. 2 Cor 8:9). The content of the gospel in Romans 1:3-4 pertains to the preexistent Son of God coming into fleshly existence and to his appointment to a new office after his resurrection, Son-of-God-in-Power. Perhaps what is most surprising about the gospel in Romans 1:1-4 is what is missing. There is no mention of the cross, faith, *forgiveness of *sins, or salvation. Even if the previous generation of scholarship is the standard, Paul’s emphases are surprising inasmuch as it is not a Christian novum but draws on HB/OT and Hellenistic royal motifs. In Romans 1:2-4 the gospel pertains to God’s advance promises about his Son: that he would take on human flesh by means of a seed of David and that he would be enthroned in a position of power after his resurrection from the dead. In Romans 1:1-4, the gospel is about God’s promise of the Son’s incarnation and enthronement. 5.2. The Raised King—2 Timothy 2:8. Second Timothy 2:8 is among the few passages that spell out the content of the gospel explicitly. But due to its brevity and disputes over its authorship, it is woefully neglected. “Remember Jesus the Christ, raised from among the dead ones, of the seed of David, according to my gospel” (2 Tim 2:8). In contradistinction to the “gospel of God” in Romans 1:1, with his “my gospel,” Paul makes his personal stake in the gospel clear. Yet, as in Romans, one is immediately reminded that above all the gospel is about the Christ, the Messiah, the Jewish but nevertheless universal king. The gospel is not just about Jesus; it is about Jesus in his kingly capacity.

The resurrection of Jesus the king is fronted: “raised from among the dead ones” (2 Tim 2:8; cf. Rom 1:4). The point is not that Jesus as a singular individual happened to die and be raised up—a neat one-of-a-kind miracle. Rather, Paul emphasizes that the Messiah was in a condition of death among others who were dead too (the word dead is plural in the Greek) and that God raised the king up. It suggests that the king upon his death was with others who were dead until he was raised on the third day. It also hints that the resurrection of the king has implications for all his subjects. The Messiah is the firstfruits of resurrection life, but there will be a full harvest for all the king’s people (1 Cor 15:35-58). As in Romans 1:3, Paul describes the Messiah as “from/by the seed of David,” implying God’s faithfulness to his covenant promises to David. 5.3. The Crucified-Risen King—1 Corinthians 15:3-5. Although Paul is capable of summarizing the gospel without mentioning the cross at all, in 1 Corinthians 15:3-5 Paul locates the king’s death for humanity’s sins alongside other key events. Paul begins by reminding the Corinthians that “the gospel that he proclaimed” (to euangelion ho euēngelisamēn—“the gospel that he gospeled”) to them was part of an intentional process for reliably transmitting tradition. Hence they “received” it. 5.3.1. An Idiosyncratic Gospel? Was Paul’s gospel unique or weird in comparison with other early Christian articulations of the gospel? The gospel one finds in Paul’s letters is not Paul’s alone, but rather part of the common property of the church. Consider five reasons: (1) Paul states that he himself received the gospel and passed it to the Corinthians (1 Cor 15:3). So it did not originate with Paul—even if he personally received core elements of the gospel when Jesus the Messiah revealed himself in his resurrected state to Paul (Gal 1:11-12; cf. Acts 9:3-9; 22:6-11; 26:12-18). (2) Paul asserts that this same gospel was proclaimed by the other apostles: “Whether then it was I or they, thus we preach and thus you believed” (1 Cor 15:11). (3) Other apostles, including Peter, had almost certainly visited *Corinth (1 Cor 1:12; 3:22), so if Paul was dissimulating in asserting a common gospel, the Corinthians would have known better—so there is every reason to believe Paul. (4) No portion of the content of Paul’s actual gospel as one can reconstruct it here or elsewhere was a matter of dispute among those elsewhere called apostles in the NT. (5) Paul’s gospel

is in harmony with the presentation of the gospel found in the four canonical Gospels and in the remainder of the NT. For example, there is no genuine discrepancy between the gospel in Paul’s letters and the gospel presented as Paul’s in Acts. Acts faithfully summarizes Paul’s gospel, “The Christ is Jesus” (Acts 18:5; cf. 9:22; 17:2-3). In short, there is no evidence that any portion of the content of Paul’s gospel was disputed by any apostle or apostolic *witness. Paul’s gospel was not idiosyncratic but a participation in the common, united apostolic testimony. 5.3.2. The Saving Gospel. Paul’s gospel, properly weighed, is not a procedure for how to get saved. But it certainly is a saving message. Paul affirms that it is by this gospel that the Corinthians are “being saved”—that is, if they continue to cling to it (1 Cor 15:3). What is the content of this saving gospel? “That the Christ died in behalf of our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he has been raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve” (1 Cor 15:3-5). In presenting the gospel here, Jesus’ royal office is fronted to such a degree that Jesus’ name is not even mentioned, merely his honorific title, the Christ. The gospel is a royal proclamation. Paul mentions four distinct events that constitute the good news about this king: death, burial, resurrection, and appearances. Two of the events, death for sins and resurrection on the third day, are given primacy inasmuch as they are said to be “according to the Scriptures.” What seems to be in view with the “according to the Scriptures” is not one or two specific texts from the OT but numerous passages involving a righteous sufferer who is subsequently vindicated by God. Meanwhile the other two events, burial and appearance to others, serve a secondary role. They confirm the truthfulness of the primary events. Burial certifies the reality of the king’s death for sins. Appearances to numerous witnesses certify the truthfulness of the resurrection on the third day. A brief word about the two primary events is in order. 5.3.3. The King Died for Our Sins According to the Scriptures. The cross is theologically central to the gospel, even if it is not the gospel’s definitive theological center. The death of the king is described as “for our sins,” or even better, “in behalf of our sins” (hyper tōn hamartiōn). The king stands in humanity’s place as a substitute (see Rom 8:3; 2 Cor 5:21). Elsewhere

Paul elaborates on this substitution, saying that the king redeemed humanity from the curses associated with the old covenant when he “became a *curse for us” as he hung on the cross (Gal 3:13). 5.3.4. The King Was Raised on the Third Day According to the Scriptures. The resurrection is as vital as the cross to the saving message of the gospel. “Jesus our Lord,” as Paul puts it elsewhere, “was delivered up on account of our trespasses,” but that alone did not result in full vindication for humanity (Rom 4:25). He was also “raised on account of our justification” (Rom 4:25). Human justification depends not just on Jesus’ death but also on his resurrection. If believers live, it is only because he was raised to everlasting life. 5.4. The Gospel of Blessing to All Nations—Galatians 3:8. Paul gives the content of the gospel in another passage—Galatians 3:8. It is quite different, and hence it is neglected as a gospel-defining passage. Paul is explaining to the Galatians that they received the Spirit not by performing *works of the *law but rather by pistis (“faith,” “faithfulness,” or “allegiance”)—and that the same is true for Abraham. “The Scripture foresaw that that God would justify the *Gentiles by allegiance [ek pisteōs] and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham, ‘All nations will be blessed through you’” (Gal 3:8, see Gen 12:3; 18:18; 22:18). Paul makes several intriguing claims about the gospel in Galatians 3:8. Paul personifies the Scripture here, giving it independent speaking agency as a character in the divine drama. The text of Genesis is made by Paul to herald the good news to Abraham even though historically the book of Genesis did not yet exist so as to speak to Abraham. Paul is not making a historical blunder but unveiling his high view of God’s providence. Not only does God orchestrate a vast divine economy, arranging correspondences between past, present, and future historical events, but God also controls Scripture formation as part of that process—to such a degree that the text of Genesis can be ushered on stage as an advance witness to the good news about Jesus the king (cf. Rom 10:6-8, in which “the righteousness by faith” and other characters speak). Scripture announces the gospel in advance to Abraham. What Paul identifies as the content of the gospel spoken to Abraham via the text of Genesis is arresting. It is not “justification by faith,” as if Abraham

learns the good news that trust alone is efficacious for obtaining a right standing in God’s presence. Abraham does trust and is reckoned as righteous. But this is not what Paul identifies as the gospel. Rather, the gospel Abraham hears is “All nations will be blessed through you” (Gal 3:8). When one teases out Paul’s argument in Galatians further, one discovers that Abraham’s seed, the Messiah, is in view as the vehicle of that blessing and that “the righteous will live by pistis” (Gal 3:11, citing Hab 2:4; cf. Rom 1:17). This pertains especially to the king’s loyalty in redeeming his people (Gal 3:13). This redemption is purposed toward the loyalty of the nations to Jesus the king, as the Gentiles receive the *Holy Spirit and are integrated into the worldwide family that God is creating (Gal 3:14). Paul’s description of the gospel’s content, “All nations will be blessed in you” (Gal 3:8), is a reminder that the gospel pertains to Jesus the king’s rule over the nations as facilitated by the Holy Spirit. Similar motifs arise in the passage discussed next, Romans 1:16-17, Paul’s most famous statement about the gospel. 5.5. Summarizing the Content. In sum, what is the content of Paul’s gospel? It is the common apostolic gospel. According to Paul’s own witness, the following elements are prominent: The gospel is that Jesus the king 1. preexisted as God the Son, 2. was sent by the Father, 3. took on human flesh in fulfillment of God’s promises to David, 4. died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 5. was buried, 6. was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, 7. appeared to many witnesses, 8. is enthroned at the right hand of God as the ruling Christ, 9. has sent the Holy Spirit to his people to effect his rule, and 10. will come again as final judge to rule. (Bates 2019, 86-87) Jesus’ present rule as the Christ is italicized because it best summarizes the gospel’s content for Paul. Since these ten events are derived from passages in which Paul explicitly gives the gospel’s content, other texts that fit this pattern but are not called “gospel” by Paul can be identified as expressing important aspects of it

(e.g., Rom 8:3; Gal 1:3-5; 4:4-5; 2 Cor 8:9; Phil 2:6-11). Moreover, in pondering these ten events, one should not fail to observe the gospel’s trinitarian shape: the Son is sent by the Father, so they can send the Spirit. The gospel reveals the Trinity. 6. Gospel as Event. Since Romans 1:16-17 is widely recognized as Paul’s thesis statement in Romans, what Paul says in it has decisively influenced theological reconstructions of the gospel’s content and center of gravity. For Protestants the influence of this passage is even more pronounced, for it was Martin Luther’s meditations on Romans 1:16-17 that, by his own later reports, led to his breakthrough tower experience. On the basis of the close identification between the gospel and justification by faith in this passage, Luther considered the latter the doctrine by which the church stands or falls. Paul, however, does not say that he is giving the gospel’s content in Romans 1:16-17. Paul has already done that in Romans 1:2-4. Paul’s reference to the gospel in Romans 1:16-17 is designed to bring readers back to his previous description in Romans 1:2-4. Now he needs to explain how the gospel’s content—God’s promises about the Son’s enfleshment and enthronement—is able to save. Paul’s focus in Romans 1:16-17 is not on the gospel’s content but on the gospel as activity or event—what sort of power and effects the royal good news of the Son’s incarnation and enthronement have thrust into the world. “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation for everyone who performs the pistis action, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed by pistis, for pistis, as it is written, ‘But the righteous [one] by pistis will live’” (Rom 1:16-17, citing Hab 2:4). 6.1. The Revelation of God’s Righteousness. Paul asserts that the gospel is able to effect salvation for Jew and Greek alike—for everyone who performs the pistis action. Paul does not equate the gospel and “justification by faith.” Rather, he says something slightly different: the righteousness of God is revealed in or through the events that together constitute the gospel. It would be going too far afield to enter here into a scholarly discussion of the righteousness of God (for its history, see McGrath; for a recent

exegetical attempt, see Irons). But on the level of a biblical theology, it can be summarized this way: “The righteousness of God is God’s resurrection-effecting verdict that Jesus the wrath-bearing, sin-atoning, allegiant king is alone righteous—a verdict that all who are united to Jesus the representative king share” (Bates 2017, 181). So ultimately, when one is in the Messiah, “the righteousness of God” is a standing or benefit that one can enjoy (2 Cor 5:21). The righteousness of God is unveiled in the gospel because, although it was previously attested in Scripture, it is not attainable by works of the law, but only by the pistis of the Messiah and by those who perform the pistis action in relationship to him (Rom 3:21-22; Gal 3:21-23). 6.2. Paul’s Citation of Habakkuk 2:4. In Romans 1:17, Paul cites Habakkuk 2:4: “The righteous [one] by pistis will live.” In the OT, the Hebrew word pistis translates ʾĕmûnâ. ʾĔmûnâ is best glossed “steadfastness,” “trustworthiness,” “faithfulness,” “honesty” (HALOT 1:62). A covenantal framework helps make sense of the meaning. Habakkuk is querying God’s justice in using Babylon as his instrument for judging his people. God replies that the righteous man will live by staying faithful or loyal to God and God’s covenant during this difficult season. Paul’s use of the OT is made complex by the textual witness. One can summarize it as follows: The righteous man will live by his [own] fidelity (MT) The righteous [one] will live by my [God’s] pistis (LXX) The righteous [one] will live by pistis (Paul’s quotation of the OT) In the MT, the righteous man will live because of his own fidelity. In considering how the LXX and Paul’s citation differ from the MT, there are two things to observe. First, the LXX uses my instead of his: “But the righteous one will live by my pistis.” The translator understood the faithfulness to belong to God rather than to the righteous man. The translator believed it was God’s own fidelity that would uphold the righteous man throughout this time of *judgment. Second, in citing Habakkuk 2:4, Paul follows neither the MT nor the LXX precisely. Unlike the MT, Paul does not say “his pistis” (the righteous man’s fidelity). And unlike the LXX, Paul does not say “my pistis” (God’s own fidelity). Paul has no pronouns at all,

just a solitary pistis. This makes it uncertain whether Paul intends to speak of divine or human pistis. 6.3. By the King’s Loyalty, for the People’s Loyalty. Paul’s omission of pronouns before pistis in the Habakkuk citation in Romans 1:17 appears to be calculated. Christopher Stanley has convincingly demonstrated that Paul’s modifications to his OT citations are often theologically motivated. Omission of the pronouns allows Paul to include both divine and human pistis. God shows himself to be faithful to his promises through the king’s faithfulness, but this is purposed toward stimulating human allegiance to the king in response. 6.3.1. Faith’s Agency and Direction. Paul prefaces the citation with an opaque expression: “in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed by fidelity for fidelity [ek pisteōs eis pistin]” (Rom 1:17). Paul is using compressed language to express dual agency and the bidirectional movement of faith (pistis): “in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed by [the Messiah’s] fidelity, for [our human] fidelity.” That is, two agents are in view: (1) the king and (2) the people loyal to the king. Twin agency is probable here for pistis—the king’s first, and then other humans’ second—because the same twin agency can be found in closely related passages such as Romans 3:22; Galatians 2:16; and Galatians 3:22. Moreover, the bidirectional movement of pistis—from the king toward God and from the people toward the king—is also probable on the basis of these passages. 6.3.2. Instrumental Means and Purpose. The translation “by loyalty, for loyalty” in Romans 1:17 is reinforced by contextual clues that suggest instrumental means and purpose. Since in Habakkuk 2:4, ek pisteōs expresses the instrumental means by which life is achieved, “by loyalty” or “by allegiance,” this is also likely for Paul in Romans 1:17—especially given the royal framework for the gospel for Paul. Meanwhile, the “for [eis] the obedience of pistis” in Romans 1:5 suggests that purpose is in view for eis pistin in Romans 1:17. Confirming evidence can be found in Romans 3:22, where Paul circles back to expand on themes he introduced in Romans 1:17. Paul indicates the righteousness of God has been revealed “through [dia] the pistis of Jesus the Christ for [eis] all who perform the pistis activity” (Rom 3:22). In Romans 3:22 instrumental means, purpose, and twin

agents—the Christ and other humans—are in view for the pistis word family, just as has been proposed for ek pisteōs eis pistin in Romans 1:17. In sum, although alternatives are possible (Longenecker 2016, 178-80, has a helpful discussion), ek pisteōs eis pistin most likely intends instrumental means (ek pisteōs) and purpose (eis pistin). 6.3.3. “The righteous by allegiance will live.” For Paul, Habakkuk makes a prophetic declaration, “The righteous [one] by allegiance will live” (Rom 1:17; cf. Gal 3:11), which finds its answer in the Messiah’s allegiance to God (the royal Father) in his obedient life and climactic death (see Rom 5:17-21). In view of the Messiah’s allegiance, God justified Jesus as the righteous one. God’s justifying verdict with respect to Jesus the Messiah was confirmed by his resurrection. As Son-of-God-in-Power, the raised king now lives forever, having defeated death once for all. When Paul refers to “the righteous [one],” he first has the Messiah in view (see Acts 3:14; 7:52; 22:14; Rom 5:17-19), but secondarily all who imitate his pattern. The same by-pistis-the-righteous-will-live pattern is found in Paul’s prosopological exegesis of Psalm 116:1 in 2 Corinthians 4:13 (see Bates 2012, 304-25; 2019, 79-82; Downs and Lappenga, 75-80, 110-13). Paul finds the Messiah saying to the Father, “I performed the pistis action, therefore I spoke.” This speech was a plea to God for rescue (Ps 116:4) that culminated in deliverance to the land of the living (Ps 116:9). In sum, Paul’s expression “The righteous [one] by allegiance will live” (Rom 1:17) refers to Jesus the king’s allegiance and resurrection life first. But secondarily the Christ’s fidelity in his death, ongoing mediation at the right hand of God (Rom 8:34), and Spirit-sending enables allegiance and resurrection life among his followers. As for the king, so also for the king’s people: trusting loyalty results in vindication unto life in the presence of God: “the righteous by allegiance will live.” The purpose of the king’s allegiance was for believers’ allegiance, that humanity might enter into his allegiant pattern. The aim of Jesus’ allegiance was so that people might declare allegiance to him as king, so they can share in the saving benefits that belong to the king’s people (e.g., *adoption, justification, and life). 6.4. Justification, Allegiance, and Life. In Romans 1:17 Paul refers to the gospel as a royal proclamation, but the focus is on the new saving power released into the world in these events. In the events of the

gospel—including the king’s incarnation, death for sins, resurrection, enthronement, and Spirit-sending—the righteousness of God is revealed ek pisteōs eis pistin (“by loyalty for loyalty”). For the king first and secondarily his people, the verdict of righteousness is attained by trusting allegiance and results in resurrection life. For Paul, the gospel has a specific content that demands a response—Jesus has now become the Christ. It is also an event. Furthermore, because it unleashes transformative power, the gospel has fixed results and aims. Paul’s language in Galatians shows that the gospel demands a unique response and generates specific communal benefits that cannot be compromised. 7. The False Gospel in Galatians. Paul never says that his gospel is personal “justification by faith.” Nor does he ever include it as a component of the gospel. The same can be said for the rest of the NT. The closest one gets is Paul’s presentation of the gospel in his speech in Pisidian Antioch (Acts 13:13-41), where he is described as mentioning justification by faith (Acts 13:39). But even there Paul is not portrayed as straightforwardly indicating that the principle is part of the gospel. But given Paul’s ardent and urgent warnings about a “different gospel” (a nongospel) that is threatening the churches of Galatia (Gal 1:6), is one not compelled to equate the gospel with justification by faith? After all, when Paul details the problematic teachings in Galatia that are causing consternation, he has in view certain works-of-the-law activities that compromise the unique role of pistis in justification (e.g., Gal 2:11-21; 3:10-14; 5:1-6). The equation is tempting. A better solution is that justification is a benefit or result of the gospel that has been objectively won by the king for his people. But the personal receipt of the benefit of justification is not part of the gospel. When the gospel of Jesus’ saving kingship is proclaimed (that is, the ten events or a likeminded summary), personal receipt of justification is conditioned on whether that individual has declared loyalty (by pistis) to the king. 7.1. Peter Violated the Gospel’s Results. When Paul first broaches the topic of justification by pistis in Galatians, he does not say that Peter denied the gospel’s content. Rather, Peter was not walking straight with regard to “the

*truth of the gospel” in his actions (Gal 2:14; cf. Gal 2:5). Peter’s actions had compromised the truth of the gospel by violating not its raw content but the truth that the gospel results in one and only one justified family—and that this family is defined by pistis (both by the king’s pistis and by those who yield pistis to the king)—not by works of the law. Peter’s action had created a false division and tiers within that one justified family. Paul knew these divisions and tiers were false because pistis uniquely avails with God (Gal 5:6). 7.2. Communal Justification First. God’s justification of Jesus is part of the gospel, since Jesus’ resurrection and enthronement give evidence that God has judged and vindicated him. Moreover, the King poured out his Spirit on Pentecost, justifying his followers. It is part of the gospel that the king “died for our sins” and then sent the Spirit to his people. The establishment of a forgiven or justified community—the church—on the basis of the king’s work is gospel. But an individual’s justification by faith is not part of the gospel. Rather, an individual’s justification is a benefit of the gospel, conditioned on an allegiant response. The benefit of justification is only realized when a person performs the pistis action (e.g., Rom 3:22; Gal 2:16). It is the pistis response to the gospel that moves a person into the justified community. When an individual by faith declares allegiance to King Jesus, the community benefit of justification is actualized for that individual. 7.3. Not Content but Response and Benefits. In the warnings against turning to a different gospel in Galatians 1:6-9, Paul is using metonymy (see Bates 2019, 107-8). The content of Paul’s gospel is the proclamation that Jesus is the Christ-King (variously summarized; see section 5.5 above). But Paul uses metonymy to refer to other close associations. Within metonymy, via contextual implicature, a reference to a thing (e.g., “the gospel”) can intend a reference to responses, effects, or other close associations (e.g., faith and justification). For example, Paul uses metonymy in Galatians 2:7, where he speaks of “the gospel of the foreskin” and “the gospel of *circumcision.” This is metonymy because Paul intends not the content of the gospel but its effect or result for the noncircumcised and circumcised. In Galatians 2:7 Paul uses the phrase “the gospel” but intends its results.

Metonymy also makes the best sense of Paul’s warnings about the gospel in Galatians 1:6-9. The content of Paul’s gospel was not being violated in Galatia, but rather works of the law compromised the uniqueness of pistis (“trusting loyalty”) as the only effective response to the royal gospel. Works of the law also compromised the gospel benefit of justification, because they threatened to divide the one people of the king. The true gospel can result in one and only one justified family. In sum, that an individual can be justified by faith is vitally important to Paul. But it is not the gospel. The content of Paul’s gospel pertains to Christ-events, not personal justification by faith. For the individual, faith (trusting allegiance) is the only saving response to the gospel, and justification (right-standing with God) is one of its key benefits. Paul speaks in strong terms in Galatians about compromises to the gospel using metonymy because the exclusive means (trusting allegiance) to one of the gospel’s most important benefits (justification) was under threat. This takes seriously Paul’s own explicit royal descriptions of the gospel while also making sense of Paul’s language in Galatians. The cogency of this solution is sharpened when one considers Paul’s statements about the purpose of the gospel. 8. The Purpose of the Gospel. The required response to the gospel and its results align with the gospel’s purposes. In short, the gospel is purposed toward stimulating loyal obedience to the king in order to restore glory. Through allegiance, the benefits of Jesus’ kingship are delivered to humans and creation, all of which redounds to God’s ultimate honor. Allegiance to the king brings restoration. 8.1. Loyal Obedience to the King. The most overt statement of the purpose of the gospel is found near the end of Romans. Although the authenticity of this portion of the letter has been questioned, Pauline authorship has been capably defended (see Hurtado). The whole of Romans 16:25-26 is a description of the gospel, while the final line is a purpose statement about the gospel. . . . my gospel and the preaching about Jesus the Messiah which has been made manifest

according to the revelation of *mystery kept silent for eternal ages but which now has been made known through the prophetic writings according to the command of the eternal God for the obedience of pistis for all the nations. (Rom 16:25-26) The content of Paul’s gospel is given in summary form as “the preaching of Jesus the Messiah” (to kērygma Iēsou Christou), best understood as an objective genitive (“preaching about Jesus the Messiah”). It is further described as a long-concealed mystery that has suddenly been unveiled. Yet it was not without witness in the prophetic writings of the OT. Now that the gospel has been revealed, it can be shown to have been made known in advance through the prophetic writings (see Rom 1:2). The matching bookend to Romans 16:26 can be found in Romans 1:5. Immediately after Paul gives the content of the gospel in Romans 1:2-4, he speaks of its purpose: “[the gospel about the Son,] Jesus the Christ our Lord, through whom we received *grace and apostleship for the obedience of pistis in all the nations in behalf of his *name” (Rom 1:4-5). The “in behalf of his name” refers back to Jesus, who is called Lord, Christ, and Son-of-God-in-Power in the immediate context. His royal titles are ubiquitous. What is the purpose of the gospel? It is the “obedience of pistis in all the nations” unto King Jesus. Given Paul’s stress on Jesus’ sovereignty, “the obedience of pistis” (Rom 1:5; 16:26) is best translated as a descriptive genitive—“the obedience characterized by loyalty” or “allegiant obedience.” Put more simply in contemporary English language idiom: the purpose of the gospel is to cultivate allegiance to King Jesus in every nation. 8.2. Obeying the Gospel. Allegiant obedience to the king is why elsewhere Paul speaks of not just belief or trust but obedience as a necessary response to the gospel. Paul, with reference to Jesus’ lordship, can grieve, “not all have obeyed the gospel” (Rom 10:16) and can express confidence that all who fail to “obey the gospel” will experience wrath when the Lord Jesus is fully revealed in his coming (2 Thess 1:8). Elsewhere Paul summarizes the purpose of the gospel, saying that he has “fulfilled the

*ministry of the gospel of the Christ” by bringing “the nations to obedience” (Rom 15:18-19). God’s final judgment, exercised through his king, is also said to be part of the gospel (Rom 2:16). This judgment for eternal life or condemnation will be according to deeds (Rom 2:6-8; cf. Rom 14:10; 1 Cor 3:12-15; 2 Cor 5:10; Eph 6:8; 1 Tim 5:24; 2 Tim 4:14; Mt 16:27; Jn 5:28-29). Thus, the gospel requires bodily obedience. One can best make sense of this by seeing salvation as solely by pistis (faith; loyalty) to King Jesus. Pistis unites one to the king and his benefits. But it is not merely mental. Pistis is externalized, relational, and embodied, so that with the Holy Spirit’s assistance saving deeds are within allegiance’s purview, allowing a person to meet the law’s righteous requirements (Rom 2:27-29; 8:4, 12-14). Similarly the necessity of obedience to the gospel is implied in passages that concern sovereignty and citizenship. Paul does not say the purpose of the king’s death and resurrection is to achieve forgiveness for humans regardless of their bodily activities, but on the contrary so that the Christ “might reign as Lord over the dead and the living” (Rom 14:9; cf. Acts 10:42; 1 Pet 4:5). The need for obedience is also why Paul calls the Philippians to “live as citizens” in a manner worthy of “the gospel of the Christ” (Phil 1:27). The purpose of the gospel is allegiant obedience to the king. 8.3. The Restorative Gospel. Paul speaks of the gospel as saving. The gospel is the power of God for salvation (Rom 1:16). Likewise, Ephesians speaks of “the gospel of your salvation,” and the gospel is also called the “message of truth” (Eph 1:13). Death is defeated, and life and immortality are brought to light through the gospel (2 Tim 1:10). The larger aim is a process of rescue. The gospel is one’s salvation if one holds fast to it (1 Cor 15:2). Paul’s focus is on the collective rescue of the community that continually confesses “Jesus is Lord,” for that confession is indicative of the true work of the indwelling Holy Spirit (see 1 Cor 12:3). The gospel is connected to heavenly hope and future glory (e.g., Col 1:5; 2 Thess 2:14). Salvation through the gospel is not just rescue from a plight but is for the purpose of glory’s restoration. Although made in God’s image, humanity exchanged God’s glory for nonglorious idols (Rom 1:23). The result for

humanity is not merely a sin problem but also a lack of glory (Rom 3:23). Creation has been dishonored (Rom 8:21). God’s glory—his reputation—has been smeared too (Rom 1:21; 2:23-24). Paul is not speaking trivially when he calls the good news “the gospel of the glory of the Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Cor 4:4). Through viewing the pristine image of God—Jesus the Christ—right now humanity is in the process of glory restoration (2 Cor 3:18). Creation will be reinvigorated as humans recover and fully distribute God’s glory to it afresh (2 Cor 8:21). As humans are transformed into the image of the king, they become fit to reign gloriously over the restored creation alongside the king of kings (2 Tim 2:12). As humanity and creation recover glory, then the God revealed by the gospel—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—receives the maximum glory too. The purpose of the gospel is allegiant obedience to Jesus the Christ in every nation. Conformity to the king’s pattern of life, death on the cross, resurrection, and enthronement is how glory is being restored for humans, creation, and ultimately God. Jesus is the victorious king. He has conquered sin, evil cosmic powers, and death. As the Christ, Jesus gives his resurrection life and other saving benefits to all those who respond to his kingship with trusting allegiance. See also CHRIST, MESSIAH; FAITH; GOD; HOLY SPIRIT; JUSTIFICATION; KINGDOM OF GOD/CHRIST; OLD TESTAMENT IN PAUL; RESURRECTION; RIGHTEOUSNESS; SALVATION; SIN, GUILT. BIBLIOGRAPHY. M. W. Bates, The Hermeneutics of the Apostolic Proclamation: The Center of Paul’s Method of Scriptural Interpretation (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2012); idem, “A Christology of Incarnation and Enthronement: Romans 1:3-4 as Unified, Non-adoptionist, and Non-conciliatory,” CBQ 77 (2015): 107-27; idem, Salvation by Allegiance Alone: Rethinking Faith, Works, and the Gospel of Jesus the King (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2017); idem, Gospel Allegiance: What Faith in Jesus Misses for Salvation in Christ (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2019); M. F. Bird, Introducing Paul: The Man, His Mission, and His Message (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2014); idem, An Anomalous Jew: Paul Among Jews, Greeks, and Romans (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2016); R. Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, trans. Kendrick Grobel, 2 vols. (New York: Scribners, 1951–1955); D. A.

Campbell, The Quest for Paul’s Gospel: A Suggested Strategy (London: T&T Clark, 2005); idem, The Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009); D. J. Downs and B. J. Lappenga, The Faithfulness of the Risen Christ: Pistis and the Exalted Lord in the Pauline Letters (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2019); D. B. Garlington, “The Obedience of Faith”: A Pauline Phrase in Historical Context, WUNT 38 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1991); B. Gaventa, When in Romans: An Invitation to Linger with the Gospel According to Paul (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2016); M. J. Gorman, The Apostle of the Crucified Lord: A Theological Introduction to Paul and His Letters (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004); idem, Inhabiting the Cruciform God: Kenosis, Justification, and Theosis in Paul’s Narrative Soteriology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009); idem, Becoming the Gospel: Paul, Participation, and Mission (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2015); L. W. Hurtado, “The Doxology at the End of Romans,” in New Testament Textual Criticism: Its Significance for Exegesis; Essays in Honour of Bruce M. Metzger, ed. E. J. Epp and G. D. Fee (Oxford: Clarendon, 1981), 185-99; C. L. Irons, The Righteousness of God: A Lexical Examination of the Covenant-Faithfulness Interpretation, WUNT 386 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015); R. Jewett, “The Redaction and Use of an Early Christian Confession in Romans 1:3-4,” in The Living Text: Essays in Honor of Ernest W. Saunders, ed. D. E. Groh and R. Jewett (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1985), 99-122; J. W. Jipp, “Ancient, Modern, and Future Interpretations of Romans 1:3-4: Reception History and Biblical Interpretation,” JTI (2009): 241-59; idem, Christ Is King: Paul’s Royal Ideology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015); E. Käsemann, Commentary on Romans, trans. G. W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1980); L. E. Keck, “Romans 15:4: An Interpolation?,” in Faith and History: Essays in Honor of Paul W. Meyer, ed. J. T. Carroll, C. H. Cosgrove, and E. E. Johnson (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990), 125-36; R. N. Longenecker, Introducing Romans: Critical Issues in Paul’s Most Famous Letter (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011); idem, The Epistle to the Romans: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2016); M. Luther, Preface to the Latin Writings, in Martin Luther: Selections from His Writings, ed. J. Dillenberger (Garden City, NY: Anchor,

1961), 19-34; J. L. Martyn, Galatians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 33A (New York: Doubleday, 1997); A. E. McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification, 3rd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); S. McKnight, The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011); idem, Reading Romans Backwards: A Gospel of Peace in the Midst of Empire (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2019); D. J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans, NICNT (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996); M. V. Novenson, Christ Among the Messiahs: Christ Language in Paul and Messiah Language in Ancient Judaism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); S. E. Porter and H. T. Ong, eds., Is the Gospel Good News? (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2019); C. D. Stanley, Paul and the Language of Scripture: Citation Technique in the Pauline Epistles and Contemporary Literature, SNTSMS 69 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); G. Stanton, “Paul’s Gospel,” in The Cambridge Companion to St Paul, ed. J. D. G. Dunn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 173-84; P. Stuhlmacher, Das paulinische Evangelium 1: Vorgeschichte, FRLANT 95 (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1968); idem, “The Pauline Gospel,” in The Gospel and the Gospels, ed. P. Stuhlmacher (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991), 149-72; G. Twelftree, The Gospel According to Paul (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2019); N. T. Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said: Was Paul of Tarsus the Real Founder of Christianity? (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997); idem, Paul and the Faithfulness of God, 2 vols. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2013); idem, The Paul Debate: Critical Questions for Understanding the Apostle (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2015). M. W. Bates PTC: “Paul’s Gospel of the Incarnation (Ch 4.) Paul’s Gospel of the Incarnation Through a fresh examination of Paul’s letters within the context of Israel’s Scriptures, the previous chapter sought to bring new depth and clarity to the study of Pauline Christology. In so doing, we discovered the crucial place of the incarnation in Paul’s thought. In this chapter, we will deepen our understanding. We will discover how Paul’s good news of the

incarnation would have impacted its first hearers in the gentile world into which it came. We will explore the relation between Paul’s doctrines of creation and incarnation. And this chapter will offer solutions to difficulties and problems that have been raised regarding this teaching of the apostle, including common arguments of that minority of Pauline scholars who reject the presence of a “divine” or “incarnational” Christology in Paul. The coming chapters of this book will explore the myriad ways in which the incarnation is at the center of Paul’s thought. Since it is the center, it is worth our while to examine this teaching of the apostle more fully, including these challenges and objections that have been raised. When we do so, we will better understand Paul’s divine Christology, and the place of the incarnation in his thought. The Incarnation in Its Ancient Pagan Context Paul’s gospel proclaimed that the human being Jesus of Nazareth is the one Lord through whom and for whom all things were created (1 Cor 8:6; Col 1:16–17), God over all (Rom 9:5). This was a startling claim without equivalent or parallel in the ancient pagan world into which Paul’s gospel came. Paul’s gospel claimed for Jesus what no one had claimed for Buddha, Socrates, Plato, or the other great teachers and sages of antiquity. Even the titles of such modern books as Karl Jaspers’s Socrates, Buddha, Confucius, Jesus and Thich Nhat Hanh’s Living Buddha, Living Christ reflect a deep historical mistake, for neither Socrates, Buddha, nor any of the other ancient sages claimed divinity, nor did their disciples claim it about them. Moreover, when Paul brought the good news of the incarnation, the entrance of the creator into his creation, he proclaimed a conception that would have previously never entered the minds or hearts of his hearers. To be sure, various aspects of ancient religious thought are occasionally suggested as equivalents or parallels to the Christian doctrine of the incarnation. The ancient myths of the Greco-Roman world described manifestations or visitations of the gods among human beings in various forms (Homer, Odyssey 17.485–87; Plato, Republic 2, 381d; Ovid, Metamorphoses 8.618–728). Moreover, these myths are filled with demigods such as Asclepius, Hercules, and Achilles, who were heroes half-divine and half-human, the offspring of sexual intercourse between the

gods (conceived as physical and bodily beings) and mortal men and women (Hesiod, Theogony 940–55; Ps.-Homer, Hymn to Asclepius 1–4; Ovid, Metamorphoses 9–11). And the ancient Hindu sages had the concept of the avatar, the temporary manifestation of a deity in animal or human form, the most notable example being the revelation of the god Vishnu in human guise as Krishna (Bhagavad Gita 9–11). However, none of this comes close to the early Christian claim of the incarnation. Among many points of contrast, five are especially crucial. First, as we saw in chapter 1, the pagan world had no notion of one transcendent creator, distinct from the cosmos, who had brought the universe into being. The many gods of the Greek and Roman pantheons, even the high gods Jupiter and Zeus, were not considered to be outside nature and the cosmos, but products of it (Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.1–261; Hesiod, Theogony 1–962). The gods portrayed in the ancient myths as interacting within the human realm were thus regarded as powerful but finite aspects of the cosmic whole. The Stoics and Hindu sages envisioned (alongside many lesser deities) a highest divinity. However, within these pantheistic systems this divinity did not transcend nature and the universe, but was identified with them (Rigveda 10.90; Bhagavad Gita 9; Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 8.54). In Platonic dualism, the material realm had eternally existed independently from the highest divinity, and human beings in their bodily form were the work of lesser gods (Plato, Timaeus 27c–69a). The pagan world addressed by Paul’s gospel thus could have no prior notion of incarnation (the creator entering his creation), for it had no conception of a transcendent creator. Paul’s gospel, by contrast, made the astounding claim that the one transcendent creator God, the maker of heaven and earth, had entered the creation he had made in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Second, in those systems of belief that came closest to the conception of a transcendent creator, this highest deity was considered incapable of manifestation on the human plane. Plato’s highest divinity could have no interaction with the realm of material reality and human embodiment, the flawed work of inferior beings (Plato, Timaeus 29–30; 42). The Hindu sages conceived of the god Vishnu as manifesting himself through Krishna, but the unknowable highest reality Brahman, identified with the cosmic All,

could itself have no avatar or manifestation (Bhagavad Gita 12.1). In marked contrast, Paul’s gospel proclaimed a transcendent creator, who was infinitely higher than the quasi-transcendent highest divinity of Platonic and Hindu thought, but who had stooped infinitely lower—not only to be born as a little child (Rom 1:3; Gal 4:4) but also to undergo suffering, crucifixion, and death (Rom 8:3; Phil 2:6–8). Third, the earthly manifestations of these divine and semidivine beings, whether Zeus, Athena, Asclepius, or Krishna, took place in the distant world of myth. They belonged to archaic ages and mythic kingdoms, not to the real world of the Roman Empire into which Paul’s gospel came. Very differently, Paul proclaimed that the maker of all had come in the person of Jesus, a real human being, born from the lineage of David (Rom 1:3), crucified under Pontius Pilate (1 Tim 6:13), and risen from the dead according to the testimony of living eyewitnesses (1 Cor 15:1–11). Fourth, the divine manifestations of the Greek and Roman myths, and the avatars of the Hindu sages, were temporary affairs, not solitary and unique but multiple and repeated. Apollo was believed to have had many manifestations (Ps.-Homer, Hymn to Pythian Apollo 179–546; Euripides, Alcestis 1–9), and Vishnu was thought to have had many avatars, both animal and human (Bhagavad Gita 4.7–8). Paul’s gospel, by contrast, proclaimed the unique and unrepeatable embodiment of the eternal Son of God in human flesh (Rom 1:3–4; 8:3–4; 1 Tim 3:16). The incarnation was not a temporary manifestation, but permanent and everlasting. The eternal Son had become fully human, without ceasing to be the Son of God. The term for this in Christian theology is the “hypostatic union”: Jesus is the Son of God, one person with two natures, God and man, never to be divided. And this brings us to the fifth and final difference. The stories of divine avatars and manifestations in the world into which Paul’s gospel came did not claim to announce a new event in history that had transformed the world, but to disclose in varied ways the inner truth of the world as it was, is, and always will be. They did not change the human condition nor join divinity to humanity. In an important sense, these recurring manifestations only highlighted the unbridgeable distance between humanity and divinity. In striking contrast, Paul’s gospel brought the good news that the creator had come, in the mystery of the incarnation, to renew fallen humanity with

his own presence, glory, and life (2 Cor 8:9; Col 1:19–20; 1 Tim 1:15; Titus 2:11–14). The creator had united himself with humanity, in order that (as we will explore more fully in chapter 5) humanity might be restored to union with God. He had come to renew all things (2 Cor 5:17; 2 Tim 1:9–10). And therefore in Paul’s gospel the incarnation is the incomparable and unique event at the center of the cosmos and of history: “When the time was fulfilled, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman” (Gal 4:4; cf. Rom 16:25–27; 1 Cor 2:6–9; Col 1:25–27). Paul’s first hearers, then, had no prior notion of the incarnation proclaimed in Paul’s gospel. And yet the gentile world’s varied visions of divine manifestations, of demigods and avatars, did express a yearning—a yearning for divinity drawn near. Paul’s good news of the incarnation matched this deep longing of his first hearers, but in a way beyond their wildest dreams. For we know, as a matter of history, that the story Paul brought to them was not one they had previously imagined. The incarnation, it seems, was beyond imagining. Incarnation and Creation We saw in chapter 1 how Paul brought to his ancient hearers the good news of the God-given and good creation. The fact that it was the direct creation out of nothing by a holy creator God endowed the world and physical existence with an essential goodness and sacredness. Paul’s good news of the incarnation provided the most startling exclamation point to his doctrine of creation. Many of the ancient philosophers and sages believed the material cosmos and physical existence were illusory and evil, something to be escaped. But according to Paul’s gospel, the creator himself has assumed a human body. The transcendent Lord of all has entered into physical and material existence. If Paul’s doctrine of creation reveals that the body and physical existence are good, the incarnation reveals that they are good beyond the power of words or human imagination to describe. The incarnation of the creator reveals the boundless goodness of his creation. And through the incarnation, the creator has sanctified the whole physical and tangible creation in a new and ultimate way. “In the Incarnation creation is fulfilled by God’s including himself in it” (Kierkegaard).1 The One Lord of the Old Testament in Paul’s Gospel

The previous chapter touched upon many of the varied evidences that compel the great majority of Pauline scholars today to affirm a divine Christology within Paul’s letters. As we saw, Paul attributes to Jesus the worship that in Paul’s Jewish context is due God alone.2 Paul ascribes eternal existence and the creation of all things to the Son, attributes which in Paul’s biblical context are markers, unshared with any creature, of the God of Israel’s unique identity.3 Moreover, just as within the Old Testament YHWH is the center of Israel’s faith, life, and hope, so in Paul’s epistles Jesus is the center of his people’s faith, life, and hope (we will see much more evidence of this in the ensuing chapters).4 But perhaps the most striking evidence we have thus far considered is the numerous passages in Paul’s letters that refer to Jesus as “Lord” (Greek: kyrios) in quotations and echoes of Old Testament texts in which “Lord” (kyrios) translates the divine name YHWH. These passages in Paul’s letters are sometimes called “christological YHWH texts.” The majority of Pauline scholars today would agree that these texts, as I argued in the previous chapter, are conclusive evidence of a divine Christology identifying Jesus with the God of Israel.5 However, a small but influential minority of scholars have sought to refute the case from the christological YHWH texts for a divine Christology in Paul. According to these scholars, in Paul’s quotations and echoes of these Old Testament passages a semantic transfer takes place, in which “the Lord” no longer denotes the divine name but is a title marking out Jesus as the highest of God’s creatures and the chief agent of God. Moreover, they argue that the depiction of Jesus within these passages as sharing in divine attributes and prerogatives does not identify him as YHWH, but involves a merely functional participation in God’s majesty and power. For these scholars, it is crucial that in these passages Paul draws upon Old Testament texts that employ the divine name “the Lord” (kyrios) rather than the divine title “God” (theos), for if it were the latter, they admit that such an intertextual association would unambiguously identify Jesus with God. They argue that Paul’s use of passages employing the divine name involves a shift of reference from the divine Lord (in the Old Testament passages) to the messianic but merely human Lord Jesus (in the Pauline passages).6 A very long book could show how this approach fails as an adequate exegesis of any of the christological YHWH texts. But in this little chapter,

we will take as a test case just one such text, 2 Thessalonians 1:6–10. In this passage, Paul seeks to encourage the Thessalonians, who are enduring suffering and persecution for the faith, by vividly describing their salvation, and the righteous judgment of the wicked, that will come about at the advent of the Lord: 6Since indeed it is righteous in the sight of God to repay with affliction those who afflict you, 7and to repay you who suffer affliction with release from suffering, together with us, at the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with the angels of his power, 8in fire of flame bringing just retribution upon those who do not know God and who do not obey the good news of our Lord Jesus. 9Those who are such will undergo the just judgment of everlasting destruction, separated from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power, 10when he comes to be glorified in his saints, and revealed as wondrous in all who believe (because our testimony to you was believed) in that day. This passage brims with multiple allusions to the Old Testament. Two of these are taken from the prophet Isaiah. In the translation below, the portions echoed in 2 Thessalonians 1 are in italics: 10And now enter into the rocks and hide yourselves in the earth from the presence of the terror of the Lord and from the glory of his power, when he arises to shatter the earth. . . . 17And every human being will be abased, and the pride of human beings will fall, and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day. 18And all the idols they will hide away, 19bringing them into the caves and into the crevices of the rocks and into the caverns of the earth from the presence of the terror of the Lord and from the glory of his power, when he arises to shatter the earth. 20In that day each person will cast his abominations of silver and gold, which they made to worship, to their useless things and to the bats, 21to enter into the caverns of the strong rock and into the crevices of the rocks, from the presence of the terror of the Lord and from the glory of his power, when he arises to shatter the earth. (LXX Isa. 2:10, 17–21) For behold, the Lord will come as fire, and his chariots as a storm, in his wrath to bring just retribution and condemnation in a flame of fire. (LXX Isa 66:15)

Paul’s use of these passages from Isaiah in 2 Thessalonians 1:6–10 powerfully reveals his incarnational Christology, and the untenability of the proposal that Paul in quoting Isaiah replaces the divine Lord of these Isaian passages with a merely human Lord who shares in divine attributes. For Isaiah 2 and Isaiah 66 are central and important passages within the book of Isaiah regarding the God of Israel and his unique, unshared glory. The portion of Isaiah 2 that most emphatically expresses the unique glory that belongs to God alone is the threefold refrain in 2:10, 19, and 21 (“from the presence of the terror of the Lord and from the glory of his power”). Remarkably, it is this threefold refrain that in 2 Thessalonians 1:9 is applied to Jesus (“from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power”). In attributing to Jesus the glory given in Isaiah 2 and 66 to YHWH alone, the passage identifies Jesus with YHWH, the God of Israel. Moreover, in both Isaiah 2 and Isaiah 66, YHWH’s unique glory is revealed by his acts. It is through his unique divine power and judgment that YHWH’s sole glory is revealed. The conception of a created being who carries out these divine functions and yet is distinct from YHWH himself is in striking contradiction to the theology of the very passages of Isaiah upon which Paul reflects in 2 Thessalonians 1:6–10.7 Paul, in his use of these passages, attributes to Jesus not only the divine name kyrios, but also the judgment and power that in these Isaian passages belong to God alone. The central figure in these Isaian passages is Israel’s God, whose divine power manifests his unique glory. In identifying this figure with Jesus, Paul identifies Jesus as Israel’s God. Another aspect of these Isaian allusions in the 2 Thessalonians passage is even more crucial. We saw in the previous chapter that the central expectation of the Old Testament is the coming of YHWH in the fullness of his presence and glory. Both Isaiah 2 and Isaiah 66 are prophetic texts that envision the coming of YHWH: “Behold, the Lord will come” (66:15). These passages of Isaiah on which Paul draws are therefore not solely about divine attributes or functions. They are also about the divine presence. YHWH’s presence is not an attribute, function, or prerogative of YHWH. YHWH’s presence is YHWH himself. And in the Pauline passage, the presence of the Lord is the presence of Jesus: “the presence of the Lord and the glory of his power” (2 Thess 1:9). The reading of the christological

YHWH passages in terms of a created Lord who shares in divine functions is simply impossible in 2 Thessalonians 1:6–10, for the passages on which Paul draws concern not merely divine prerogatives or functions, but the very presence and coming of YHWH himself. In applying to Jesus these passages that describe the coming of the God of Israel, 2 Thessalonians 1:6–10 identifies Jesus as Israel’s God. Paul also alludes to two Psalms texts within the passage. In the texts given below, I have italicized the portions echoed in 2 Thessalonians 1:10: God is wondrous in his saints; the God of Israel himself will give power and strength to his people. Blessed be God. (LXX Ps 67:36 [=MT 68:36; Eng 68:35]) God is glorified in the council of saints, great and awesome above all those around him. (LXX Ps 88:8 [=MT 89:8; Eng 89:7]) These texts from the Psalms describe the glorification of God in his saints. But within 2 Thessalonians 1:10, these passages that are explicitly about God (LXX Ps 67:36, theos; LXX Ps 88:8, theos) are fulfilled in Jesus. The argument for a semantic shift, based on a claimed ambiguity of the word “Lord” (kyrios), is clearly falsified by 2 Thessalonians 1:10. For Paul here applies to Jesus not only passages containing the divine name (“the Lord”), but also passages containing the divine title (“God”). In all four of Paul’s allusions to Old Testament passages in 2 Thessalonians 1:6–10, we find a strikingly consistent and connected pattern of interpretation. Throughout the passage, in allusions to both Isaiah and the Psalms, Paul identifies Israel’s God, whether referred to as “Lord” (kyrios) or “God” (theos), with Jesus.8 Through these intertextual echoes, Paul identifies Jesus as the Lord God, the creator God of Israel. In this, as in the other “christological YHWH texts,” proposals that seek to explain (or explain away) these passages in terms of an unspoken semantic shift in the meaning of “Lord” (kyrios), and a merely creaturely and functional participation in divine agency, suffer shipwreck on the evidence of the texts themselves. These passages are one crucial way in which Paul’s letters express a divine and incarnational Christology. A Divine but Not an Incarnational Christology? Others would object to an incarnational Christology in Paul on wholly different grounds. They agree that 2 Thessalonians 1:6–10 and many other

Pauline passages, through their Old Testament allusions, identify Jesus as God. But such passages, they point out, refer to the risen and exalted Christ and his coming in power and glory, not to Jesus during his ministry on earth. It is the exalted Jesus who is identified with YHWH. And therefore, the argument goes, these passages, although reflecting the belief that Jesus has been given the divine name and has been exalted to the status of God almighty, contain no hint of an incarnation. These interpreters claim that we find in Paul a high Christology, even a divine Christology, but not an incarnational Christology.9 This objection (it must be said) is founded upon a deep misunderstanding of Pauline theology. To these scholars, it apparently makes perfect sense to speak of Jesus as merely human in his birth, life, and death, but exalted to “divine status” at his resurrection and ascension. But not in Paul’s theology. The theology of Paul is Jewish and monotheistic, thoroughly imbued with the faith of Israel. As we saw in part 1, the foundation of Paul’s theology is the distinction between creator and creation. The creator God, distinct from his creation, is the fundamental conception within Paul’s thought. He is the everlasting God, without beginning and without end, the transcendent creator who brought all things into being. And therefore the identification of the risen and exalted Jesus as God necessarily reveals not only who Jesus now is, but who Jesus always was. David Yeago writes, If “there was when he was not” (Arianism) or if any moment can be identified as the beginning of his relationship with YHWH (Adoptionism), then his association with YHWH would amount to the enthronement of a “second god” alongside the Lord God of Israel. And we are forbidden to think that by the deepest logic of Israel’s faith: there is only one God, YHWH, incomparable and unique. . . . Only if the exaltation manifests a relationship intrinsic to God’s being from everlasting, does the exaltation not imply that there are now two gods, Jesus and YHWH, but rather make known that Jesus was always included in the glory of the one God, even before the foundations of the world were laid (John 17).10 The one “born of a woman” (Gal 4:4) is, together with the Father, the creator and source of all things (Col 1:16–17). He is from everlasting the “one Lord . . . through whom all things exist” (1 Cor 8:6). Within Paul’s

theology of the creator God, Paul’s identification of the risen and exalted Jesus as God presupposes the entire narrative of the incarnation. Moreover, contrary to the claims of these scholars, Paul in fact applies Old Testament YHWH passages not only to the risen and exalted Christ but also to the Son of God prior to his incarnation (1 Cor 8:6, echoing Deut 6:4), at his birth (Titus 2:11, echoing Isa 40:5), at the Last Supper (1 Cor 11:25, echoing Zech 9:11), at his crucifixion (1 Cor 2:8, echoing Ps 24:10), and at his death, burial, resurrection, and ascension (Eph 4:7–10, citing Ps 68:18). Jesus’s glorification through his resurrection and ascension was not the bestowal on Jesus of a “divine status” he did not previously have. Rather (as we saw in the previous chapter), through his saving passion, death, and resurrection, Jesus had brought the new and ultimate revelation of the divine name and glory awaited in the time of YHWH’s saving reign (Isa 45:22–3; Zech 14:9; Mal 1:11). And in bringing the promised full revelation of the divine name (something only YHWH himself could do), Jesus had revealed himself as the One who bears “the name which is above every name,” the very creator God of Israel (Rom 1:3–5; Eph 1:20–23; Phil 2:9–11).11 It is true that Paul uses Old Testament passages about the coming of YHWH extensively in connection with Jesus’s future coming in power and glory, and less extensively in regard to his first coming.12 Why is this? I propose that when he describes Jesus’s first advent, Paul prefers to make the mode of Jesus’s coming clear by using language that is specifically incarnational, focusing on the Son of God’s advent in human flesh, especially on his sharing in the human plight of abasement and suffering: From whom came the Christ in regard to his human nature, who is God over all, blessed forever. (Rom 9:5) He emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being made in human likeness. (Phil 2:7) Although he was rich, for your sake he became poor. (2 Cor 8:9) At other times, Paul chooses to describe Jesus’s fulfillment of the hope of YHWH’s advent through his first coming in language that illumines simultaneously the incarnational mode of his coming, and that coming’s revelation of the mystery of Father and Son. He does this by replacing (and

thereby enriching) the prophetic language of YHWH’s coming with the language of the Father sending the Son in human flesh: But when the time of fulfillment came, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman. (Gal 4:4) God sent his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh. (Rom 8:3) I would propose, then, that the reason Paul employs the Old Testament texts and language of YHWH’s coming less extensively for Jesus’s first advent than for his second is that, when he describes the former, Paul normally alters and enriches the Old Testament language of YHWH’s coming and presence, in order to more fully express the nature of the incarnation event. God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ Another objection to an incarnational theology in Paul is that Paul seldom directly refers to Jesus as “God.” While we have seen that Paul does apply the divine title “God” to Jesus explicitly and powerfully in Romans 9:5, in Titus 2:13, and by intertextual allusion in 2 Thessalonians 1:10, it is true that Paul refers to Jesus as God rather seldom. Yet he refers to Jesus as Lord with great frequency. And (although this is seldom pointed out) the reverse is also true: Paul refers to the Father as God with great frequency but to the Father as Lord quite seldom. Why? Here again I have a proposal. We saw above how in his reading of Deuteronomy 6:4, the core confession of Israel’s belief in “one God, one Lord,” Paul identified the “one God” with the Father and the “one Lord” with Jesus Christ (1 Cor 8:6). I would suggest that Paul’s reading of this central confession of Israel in light of the mystery of Father and Son (“one God, the Father . . . one Lord, Jesus Christ”) is the basis for his regular practice of ascribing the divine title (“God”) to the Father and the divine name (“Lord”) to the Son. This pattern is evident in the salutation with which Paul begins practically all his letters: “Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom 1:7; 1 Cor 1:3; 2 Cor 1:2; Gal 1:3; Eph 1:2; Phil 1:2; 1 Thess 1:1 [textual variant]; 2 Thess 1:2; 1 Tim 1:2; 2 Tim 1:2; Philem 3). In Paul’s salutation Jesus Christ is identified as the coordinate and equal source with the Father of that divine grace and peace that can come only from the creator, and in this way is identified together with the Father as the Lord God of Israel. But in Paul’s salutations, as in 1 Corinthians 8:6, the Father

is given the divine title (“God”) and the Son the divine name (“Lord”). This pattern is also a striking element of the confessional formulas and summaries of the faith in Paul (cf. Rom 1:3–4; 10:8–10; 1 Cor 12:3; Eph 4:4–6; Phil 2:9–11; 1 Thess 5:9–10; 1 Tim 6:13–16), and is a constant feature of his letters (e.g., Rom 5:1; 8:39; 15:6; 1 Cor 1:9; 6:11; 2 Cor 13:14 [Greek 13:13]; Eph 5:20; 6:23; Col 3:17; 1 Thess 3:11–13). In each of these texts in which Paul identifies the Father as “God” and the Son as “Lord,” the context, either explicitly or implicitly, forbids reading the “Lord” of these passages as a mere created being alongside the one God. Rather, these Pauline texts draw upon the language and thought of Deuteronomy 6:4, Israel’s core confession, to identify the “one God, one Lord” of Israel’s faith as God the Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.13 I would thus propose that Paul’s christological reading of Israel’s central affirmation of faith, the Shema, was fundamental in shaping Paul’s way of speaking about God. This, I would argue, offers the most satisfying explanation for Paul’s normal practice of ascribing the divine title (“God”) to the Father and the divine name (“Lord”) to the Son. An Anachronistic Reading of Paul? We must address one final and inevitable objection: that an incarnational reading of Paul’s Christology can only be an illegitimate projection of later dogmatic categories onto New Testament texts.14 I believe this objection fails to grasp the true relationship between Paul’s letters and the church’s historic Christology. For these later Trinitarian dogmas, as they were clarified and expressed in the great christological debates, creeds, hymns, and prayers of the ancient church, were themselves the product of exegesis of the New Testament, and above all of Paul. Historically, the theological language and categories of the church’s creeds, such as the Nicene Creed, were created to flesh out the implications of the scriptural witness, especially the letters of Paul. Nicene theology is the direct creation of Pauline incarnational theology. The Pauline letters themselves exert a powerful theological “pressure” upon both ancient and modern interpreters that compels an incarnational interpretation. This important conception of the pressure or coercion exerted by the biblical text was first suggested by Brevard Childs and has recently been powerfully developed in an important essay by C. Kavin Rowe: “The biblical text is not inert but instead exerts a

pressure (‘coercion’) upon its interpreters and asserts itself within theological reflection and discourse such that there is (or can be) a profound continuity, grounded in the subject matter itself, between the biblical text and traditional Christian exegesis and theological formulation.”15 Of course, the church’s developed theological terms and categories (e.g., incarnation, essence, person) are not present in Paul’s letters. However, they are not a false imposition on Paul’s thought, but the logical and necessary outworking of the incarnational substance of his theology. Conclusion: Paul’s Incarnational Christology When Paul brought the good news of the incarnation, he proclaimed a conception previously unknown to his ancient hearers—the entrance of the creator into the creation he had made. The creator had come in the person of Jesus Christ to renew fallen humanity and restore all creation. The incarnation affirmed (in the most startling way) the infinite goodness of the creation, and through the incarnation the creator sanctified the created order in a new way. “In the Incarnation creation is fulfilled by God’s including himself in it” (Kierkegaard). As we have seen, Paul’s Christology is divine and fully incarnational. The church’s doctrine of the incarnation is not a false imposition on Paul, but the logical outworking of his theology. In this and the previous chapter we have explored the major lines of evidence that have led the great majority of scholars today to affirm a divine Christology in Paul in continuity with the historic Christian creeds and their confession of Jesus as God incarnate. These several lines of evidence converge and, in my view, are conclusive. But (the reader may be surprised to learn) we have not yet considered the most important line of evidence. The main evidence for Paul’s incarnational Christology concerns an aspect of Paul’s teaching on which there is virtually unanimous scholarly agreement. However, its importance for Paul’s Christology has not in my view been fully explored. This will be the focus of our next chapter. This aspect of Paul’s teaching will not only confirm our results in this and the previous chapter, but will also shed a wondrous new light on the incarnation in Paul, and its place within his theology.

1. Søren Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), 2:1391. 2. On this aspect of the evidence, see further Larry Hurtado, One God, One Lord: Early Christian Devotion and Ancient Jewish Monotheism, 3rd ed. (London: T. & T. Clark, 2015). 3. This aspect of the evidence has been especially illumined by Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008). 4. Chris Tilling, Paul’s Divine Christology (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012), has shown persuasively that the “pattern of relation” between Christ and Christ followers that we find in Paul’s letters corresponds to the pattern of relation between God and Israel in the Old Testament. 5. Already decades ago Lucien Cerfaux concluded that these passages apply to Christ “the same name which belonged to God in the Old Testament.” Cerfaux’s key studies in this regard are “ ‘Kyrios’ dans les citations pauliniennes de l’Ancien Testament,” in Recueil Lucien Cerfaux (Gembloux: Duculot, 1954), 1:173–88, and Christ in the Theology of St. Paul (New York: Herder and Herder, 1959), 470–79. Later, L. Joseph Kreitzer argued that the “referential shift of ‘κύριος’ from God to Christ” in these texts betokens “a conceptual overlap between God and Christ in such a manner as to prepare the way for the later christological claims of the creeds” (Jesus and God in Paul’s Eschatology [Sheffield: JSOT, 1987], esp. 93–129). N. T. Wright, in a pair of influential essays on 1 Cor 8 and Phil 2:5–11, respectively, called further attention to the christological YHWH texts, finding in them evidence for a fully incarnational Christology in Paul: see conveniently N. T. Wright, The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), 56–98, 120–36. David B. Capes, in the fullest study of the christological YHWH passages in the Pauline letters to date, claims that Paul in his letters “deliberately and unambiguously applies to Jesus Old Testament texts that contain the divine name” in such a way that “Paul identifies Jesus with God.” See his Old Testament Yahweh Texts in Paul’s Christology, WUNT 2.47 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1992). An extremely thorough and insightful study of the relevant passages is provided by Gordon D. Fee, Pauline Christology: An Exegetical Theological Study (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2007). The most valuable treatment of all in my view is found in N. T. Wright, Paul and the

Faithfulness of God, vol. 4 of Christian Origins and the Question of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2013), 701–9. 6. The major studies that have taken this line of argument are P. M. Casey, From Jewish Prophet to Gentile God: The Origins and Development of New Testament Christology (Cambridge: James Clarke, 1991); James D. G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998); “Why ‘Incarnation’? A Review of Recent New Testament Scholarship,” in Christology, vol. 1 of The Christ and the Spirit (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 405–23; Wolfgang Schrage, Unterwegs zur Einzigkeit and Einheit Gottes: Zum “Monotheismus” des Paulus and seiner alttestamentlich-früjüdischen Tradition (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2002); Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, Becoming Human Together: The Pastoral Anthropology of St. Paul, 3rd ed. (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009), 58–69, 235–40; J. F. McGrath, The Only True God: Early Christian Monotheism in Its Jewish Context (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2009); and Paula Fredriksen, Paul: The Pagans’ Apostle (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017), 137–45. 7. On “the fundamental Jewish correlation between divine being and divine agency,” see Francis Watson, “The Triune Divine Identity: Reflections on Pauline God-Language, in Disagreement with J. D. G. Dunn,” JSNT 80 (2000): 99–124. 8. Two small but crucial details fit with and confirm this pattern of Old Testament interpretation. Through the possessive “his” in 2 Thess 1:7b, Paul describes the power of the angels, which in the Old Testament belongs to God alone, as belonging to Christ. And through the possessive “his” in the phrase “in his saints” in 1:10, the passage describes the saints, which in Jewish thought can only belong to God, as belonging to the Lord Jesus. 9. For an argument along such lines, see Bart Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee (New York: HarperOne, 2014), 247–82. According to Ehrman, in Paul’s theology Jesus “was an angel or an angel-like being, who only after his act of obedience to the point of death was made God’s equal” (266). “Jesus has been granted the status and honor and glory of the one almighty God himself. . . . But it

was not because he was God ‘by nature.’ . . . He was God because God made him so” (265). 10. David Yeago, “The New Testament and the Nicene Dogma: A Contribution to the Recovery of Theological Exegesis,” Pro Ecclesia 3 (1994): 157–58. 11. See the insightful treatment of Richard Bauckham, God Crucified: Monotheism and Christology in the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 56–61. 12. See Larry Hurtado, “YHWH’s Return to Zion: A New Catalyst for Earliest High Christology?” in God and the Faithfulness of Paul: A Critical Examination of the Pauline Theology of N. T. Wright, ed. Christoph Heilig, J. Thomas Hewitt, and Michael F. Bird (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 417–38. 13. In Deut 6, verse 4 belongs together with verse 5. The Pauline passages that draw upon the language of Deut 6:4 often reflect the theological and verbal content of the larger unit Deut 6:4–5 in striking (and christologically significant) ways. For example, in Eph 6:23 “the Lord Jesus Christ” is the source, together with “God the Father,” not only of peace but also of love and of faith, gifts that can only be given by the one God. Eph 6:23 thus reflects the vocabulary and thought of Deut 6:4: “The Lord our God is one Lord.” The very next verse bestows grace upon “all those who love our Lord Jesus Christ” (Eph 6:24), reflecting the thought of Deut 6:5: “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.” 14. For this objection, see, for example, Fredriksen, Paul, 137, 144. 15. C. Kavin Rowe, “Biblical Pressure and Trinitarian Hermeneutics,” Pro Ecclesia 11 (2002): 295–312. The quote is from 308.