“Stately and Set Apart”

2021 ◽  
pp. 39-65
Author(s):  
Melanie C. Ross

In Chapter 2, the members of Park Street Church in Boston (founded 1809) wrestle with the question of how to maintain their church’s historic identity without becoming a museum. The solution is an organic interpretation of progress. Park Street leaders believe that, just as a seed contains all the genetic information necessary to become a mature plant, healthy change unfold slowly and logically, according to a predictable trajectory, from a single point of origin. This chapter analyzes how the congregation’s understanding of progress is reflected in its preaching and musical repertoire. Just as God’s covenant with Abraham unites Israel and the New Testament church into a single people of God, so too does a musical “covenant” penned in 1810 by the church’s first musicians unite nineteenth- and twenty-first century congregations into a single Park Street Church.

1995 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-178
Author(s):  
C.E.T. Kourie

AbstractNew Testament scholarship today must needs be seen in the context of methodological plurality. Whether this fact is viewed with suspicion or with delight, there is no turning back - on the threshold of the twenty-first century we are faced with a plethora of hermeneutical methods offering insight into scripture. Our task is to see which new paradigms will best enable us to interpret the New Testament in a world vastly different from that of early Christianity. This article suggests that an 'interreligious' approach to understanding and teaching scripture be seriously considered.


1959 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. P. Owen

The Second Coming (otherwise called the Parousia)1 of Christ constituted a serious problem for the apostolic Church. One of the earliest of Paul's Epistles (1 Thessalonians) shows how quickly his converts became discouraged when some of their number died before the Lord's appearing. In reply Paul repeats his promise that the Lord will soon return, although in his second epistle he has to give a reminder that Antichrist must first make a final bid for power (1 Thess. 4.15–18, 2 Thess. 2). Similarly the author of Hebrews, writing to a disillusioned and apathetic group of Christians some decades later in the first century, recalls the words of Habakkuk that ‘the Lord will come and not be slow’ (10.37). Finally 2 Peter, the latest book of the New Testament (written, perhaps, as late as the middle of the second century), continues to offer the hope of an imminent Parousia to be accompanied by the world's destruction and renewal (ch. 3). If Christians are tempted to despair they must remember that the word of prophets and Apostles is sure (v. 2) and that with God ‘a thousand years are as one day’ (v. 8).


1994 ◽  
Vol 113 (3) ◽  
pp. 536
Author(s):  
Luke T. Johnson ◽  
Nicholas Thomas Wright

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 5-20
Author(s):  
Sayangi Laia ◽  
Harman Ziduhu Laia ◽  
Daniel Ari Wibowo

The practice of anointing with oil has been done in the church since the first century to the present. On the other hand, there are also churches which have refused to do this. The practice of anointing with oil has essentially lifted from James 5:14. This text has become one of one text in the New Testament which is quite difficult to understand and bring a variety of views. Not a few denominations of the church understand James 5:14 is wrong, even the Catholic church including in it. The increasingly incorrect practice of anointing in the church today, that can be believed can heal disease physically and a variety of other functions push back the author to check the text of James 5:14 in the exegesis. Studies the exegesis of the deep, which focuses on the contextual, grammatical-structural,


Author(s):  
Lawrence H. Schiffman

This study examines a number of specific examples of halakhic (Jewish legal) matters discussed in the New Testament that are also dealt with in the Dead Sea Scrolls. This paper compares and contrasts the rulings of these two traditions, as well as the Pharisaic views, showing that the Jewish legal views of the Gospels are for the most part lenient views to the left of those of the Pharisees, whereas those of the Dead Sea Scrolls represent a stricter view, to the right of the Pharisaic views. Ultimately, in the halakhic debate of the first century ce, the self-understanding of the earliest Christians was very different from that of the sect of the Dead Sea Scrolls.


2019 ◽  
Vol 131 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-19
Author(s):  
Clark Bates

Matthew 11:30 could easily be considered one of the most recognizable passages of the New Testament. Many find comfort and fortitude in the words of Jesus, and warm to the idea that his ‘yoke’; is ‘easy’ and ‘burden’, ‘light’. However recognized and familiar this passage may be, it has not gone unnoticed throughout scholarship as a persistent word study in need of incessant explanation. While copious amounts of ink have been spilt discussing the nature of the ‘yoke’ in Matthew 11:30, it is the position of this article that the author of Matthew, had no intention of creating such a mystery. Rather, that the emphasis is to be found in the nature of the yoke itself and the attributive use of χρηστός in Greco-Roman literature, including that of the Greek Old Testament, and the writings of the first-century Christians. This article seeks to demonstrate that the use of χρηστός in the Matthean Gospel does not mean ‘easy’ by English standards, nor was this what the audience of this Gospel would have taken it to mean, given the common use of the term. This is accomplished through an engagement of the text and message of Matthew, followed by an examination of the word’s use in Classical Greek compositions and the Apostolic Fathers, as well as its use in the LXX and the New Testament.


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