God, time, and eternity

1978 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 497-503 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Lane Craig
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Linear Time ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Classic Work ◽  
The Future ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
In The Beginning ◽  
Qualitative Distinction

God is the ‘high and lofty One who inhabits eternity’, declared the prophet Isaiah, but exactly how we are to understand the notion of eternity is not clear. Traditionally, the Christian church has taken it to mean ‘timeless’. But in his classic work on this subject, Oscar Cullmann has contended that the New Testament ‘does not make a philosophical, qualitative distinction between time and eternity. It knows linear time only…’ He maintains, ‘Primitive Christianity knows nothing of a timeless God. The “eternal” God is he who was in the beginning, is now, and will be in all the future, “who is, who was, and who will be” (Rev. 1:4).’ As a result, God's eternity, says Cullmann, must be expressed in terms of endless time.

Pauline Letters

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Magnus Zetterholm
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
First Century ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Religious Movement ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Jesus Movement ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Local Problems ◽  
Modern Turkey ◽  
In The Beginning

Thirteen letters in the New Testament bear the name of Paul, a Jewish follower of Jesus of Nazareth, who probably was born in Tarsus (in modern Turkey) in the beginning of the first century ce and who was, according to tradition, executed in Rome in the mid-60s. The letters were composed at various locations in Asia Minor and Europe and typically deal with local problems in the communities. In several cases they are direct responses to questions posed by those communities. However, the majority of New Testament scholars generally agree that Paul is not the author of all letters that bear his name. The Pauline corpus can thus be divided into two groups: (1) letters almost certainly written by Paul (authentic), (2) letters concerning which discussion is ongoing regarding authorship (disputed). Within this latter group, some letters are more disputed than others. In addition to the letters included in the New Testament, a number of noncanonical letters are also associated with Paul (e.g., the Epistle to the Laodiceans, 3 Corinthians), which clearly date from a later period. Among the authentic letters of Paul we find the earliest writings in the New Testament, and accordingly, the earliest witnesses to the Jesus movement. As such, they are of immense value for historical research on the emergence and development of the religious movement that would eventually be known as the Christian church.

In the Beginning was the Word

2019 ◽  
pp. 101-148
Author(s):  
George Pattison
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
New Testament ◽  
German Idealism ◽  
Rudolf Bultmann ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Michel Henry ◽  
John's Gospel ◽  
In The Beginning ◽  
Original Interpretation

Turning to the New Testament, the chapter examines the prologue to St John’s Gospel as an exemplary commentary on Christian vocation. However, this requires rejecting interpretations that have seen John’s logos in terms of Platonic ideas or ‘ratio’, as in much ancient and medieval commentary (Eckhart’s commentary is used for illustration). German Idealism (Fichte) refigures ratio in terms of will, and in the twentieth century, Michel Henry foregrounds ‘life’. A rediscovery of the word element is found in Ferdinand Ebner and Rudolf Bultmann. Their insights are used to develop an original interpretation of the Gospel, contrasting John’s existential focus on calling and the name with Platonizing interpretations.

In the Beginning Was the Image

2020 ◽  
pp. xxii-16
Author(s):  
David H. Price
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Medieval Theology ◽  
Renaissance Humanism ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Northern Renaissance ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
History Of ◽  
Classical Culture ◽  
In The Beginning

Renaissance artists represented the Bible as the preeminent monument of classical culture well before humanist scholars began their revolutionary efforts to recover the ancient forms of biblical texts. Once Renaissance humanism and the Reformation turned decisively to biblical philology (and began overturning the authority of the Vulgate Bible and medieval theology), artists supported their creation of innovative conceptualizations of the Bible. Remarkably, the three most influential artists of the Northern Renaissance—Albrecht Dürer, Lucas Cranach the Elder, and Hans Holbein the Younger—made profound contributions to all the major Renaissance and Reformation Bibles in Germany and Switzerland and to the biblical humanist movement generally. The chapter concludes with an introduction to the history of biblical humanism, including the emergence of new authoritative Bibles beginning with Erasmus’s first edition of the New Testament in the original Greek.

The New Testament in Religious Studies

1974 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 385-406 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Morgan
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Colleges Of Education ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Dialectical Theology ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
New Testament Studies ◽  
New Situation

The aim of this essay is to show the significance for a new situation of Barth's attack upon some of the historical scholarship of his day over fifty years ago. Barth was motivated by Christian theological concerns, but what he stood for has important implications for New Testament studies generally, and in particular for its purpose and place within a Religious Studies syllabus. If what is written has a mildly polemical edge this will betray the scarcely veiled theological interests which prompt the warning against New Testament studies that spurn theology and a theology that spurns the New Testament. But the argument depends upon considerations arising from the character of the New Testament material and the educational reasons for studying it outside the Christian church. Within the theological circle, liberal protestantism is at last emerging from under the cloud cast over it by the dialectical theology. The rediscovery of Schleiermacher is rightly being followed by a rediscovery of Troeltsch. But for reasons for which dialectical theology is itself partly to blame this is being accompanied in some quarters by a failure to insist upon the importance of the Bible for Christian theology. Despite all their differences, liberals and dialectical theologians agreed in defending biblically rooted theologies. Some of those engaged in revising the map of recent theological history need reminding that the emphasis upon the theological use of the New Testament which has dominated the work of Barth and Bultmann has more than a narrowly confessional interest. It is directly relevant to the recent swing towards Religious Studies in British universities and colleges of education.

Passover and Eucharist in the Fourth Gospel

1967 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 329-337
Author(s):  
J. K. Howard
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Fourth Gospel ◽  
People Of God ◽  
Dominant Position ◽  
The Past ◽  
The People ◽  
The Future ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
New Israel ◽  
Acts Of God

The events of the Exodus, in which the Passover occupied a central and dominant place, were one of the most deeply rooted of all Israel's traditions. The Passover itself lay at the very heart of the covenant concept and forms the basis of the Heilsgeschichte which records the redemptive acts of God for His people Israel. In later Judaism it became overlaid with eschatological ideas, especially those associated with a Messianic deliverance for the people of God, as God's saving act in the past became the prefigurement of an even greater saving act in the future. The Passover night was thus a night of joy for all Israel, the night on which Israel's future redemption, effected through the Messiah, would be revealed. The early Christians, however, believed that this Messianic deliverance had already appeared in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, and consequently, in Preiss' expression,‘the totality of the events of the Exodus centering on the Passover’ together with its associated ideas occupied a dominant position in Christian soteriological thought in the New Testament period, especially as Jesus Himself had instituted the eucharist in a distinctly Paschal setting. We may trace, as has been done in recent years, the idea of the Exodus complex of events running as a constant theme through the New Testament writings, and Jesus is pictured both as a second Moses leading His people forth from a bondage far greater than the slavery of a human despot, from the thraldom of sin and death, and as the Antitype of the very Passover sacrifice itself, through which the redemption of the New Israel was effected.

Dealing With Development: The Protestant Reviews of John Henry Newman’s An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, 1845–7

2004 ◽  
Vol 38 ◽  
pp. 357-364
Author(s):  
Erik Sidenvall
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Christian Doctrine ◽  
Central Topic ◽  
The Future ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Impact

The greatness of John Henry Newman’s Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine has been acknowledged many times since it was first published in 1845. Its international repute was secured by the beginning of the twentieth century; for example, the future Archbishop of Uppsala, Nathan Söderblom, writing on the modernist movement, described it and its author in 1910 as ‘the most significant theological work, written by England’s foremost theologian, and together with Leo XIII, the most important man in the Roman Catholic Church during the last century’. This estimation is confirmed by the impact Newman’s book has had on twentieth-century theology. One recent observer has judged that it is ‘significant, less for its positive arguments … [than] for its method of approach to the whole problem of Christian doctrine in its relation to the New Testament’. In other words, Newman’s book touches on a central topic of modern theology.

scholarly journals En la plenitud del tiempo: Reconociendo Daniel 9:24-27 en el Nuevo Testamento

2021 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-79
Author(s):  
David Tasker
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The People ◽  
The New Testament

This article explores the influence of the seventy weeks prophecy of Daniel 9:24-27 in the New Testament. Of particular interest to this study is the string of references that refer to “the fullness of time.” The author enquires about the significance that the people of the New Testament placed upon these statements, how they were impacted by the vision of Daniel 9:24-27, and how widespread was the understanding of the 70 weeks as weeks of years in the early Christian Church. The paper concludes that the understanding of people in the New Testament era was that “the fullness of time” had arrived, based on the “weeks” of Daniel’s prophecy being counted as years rather than days. 

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