Daniel Kirk’s New Book: Unlocking Romans

This is a re-post, of sorts…

Daniel Kirk’s new book, Unlocking Romans: Resurrection and the Justification of God, is now available.

Many of the contributors of this blog, and certainly some of its readers, know Daniel Kirk. Daniel is a MDiv graduate of Westminster Theological Seminary (2000). He subsequently completed a PhD in New Testament from Duke University’s Department of Religion, studying under Richard Hays, E.P. Sanders, and Joel Marcus, among others. He wrote a fascinating dissertation on Resurrection in Romans, how Paul re-understood and re-told the significance of Israel in the light of Christ. His advisor was none other than Richard Hays, whose writings certainly molded my thought on Paul and the communal significance of Paul for the church more than anyone else’s writings. Daniel started his job as a professor of New Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary this Fall.

During and since his time at Duke Daniel has written a fair amount concerning Paul and the significance of recent scholarship on Paul for the contemporary church. He penned a helpful response to Doug Kelly (Professor of Systematic Theology at RTS-Charlotte) on the New Perspective and Reformed Theology for the PCA’s online news site. He also published a two-part article in the Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology (24 [2006]: 36-64, 133-54) arguing for a passive-obedience-only position both as Scriptural and within the bounds of the Westminster Standards. A shorter version of these articles is available online, as are google-documents versions of the original articles (1 & 2), which require some cleaning-up. Many of you have read, and probably frequent, Daniel’s blog. There, when he has time, he has continued to post refreshing communally and missionally-oriented reflections on Christ, the Bible, hermeneutics, and contemporary scholarship. His reputation as a cutting-edge but church-oriented scholar apparently grew enough that he was asked to present a paper on the New Perspective on Paul at last year’s meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society. Daniel has written and published other reviews, essays, and articles in more academically oriented contexts as well.

 

Was Paul a Misogynist? Some Thoughts from Daniel Kirk

Daniel Kirk, Professor of New Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary, has posted some thoughts on whether or not Paul was a misogynist. I commend his reflections to all, even those who may disagree with him. I especially appreciate him framing his comments by questions of what the Bible is, what we should expect from it, and how we live out its authority. What does everyone think?

 

Enacting Kingdom Mercy: Imitating God for The Epistle to Diognetus & Excelling in “Grace” for Paul in 2 Corinthians 8

Yesterday I posted on The Epistle to Diognetus and the striking passage within it articulating the significance of what God did in/as Christ—especially in terms of the “…sweet exchange…that the sinfulness of many should be hidden in one righteous man, while the righteousness of one should justify many sinners!”

 

 Today I thought I would post part of the following passage from the same writing, one discussing what it means to be an imitator of God.

 

…By loving him you will be an imitator of his goodness. And do not be surprised that a person can become an imitator of God; he can, if God is willing. For happiness is not a matter of lording it over one’s neighbors, or desiring to have more than weaker man, or possessing wealth and using force against one’s inferiors. No one is able to imitate God in these matters; on the contrary, these things are alien to his greatness. But whoever takes upon himself his neighbor’s burden, whoever wishes to benefit another who is worse off in something in which he himself is better off, whoever provides to those in need things that he has received from God, and thus becomes a god to those who receive them, this one is an imitator of God. Then you will see that though your lot is on earth, God lives in heaven, then you will begin to declare the mysteries of God, then you will both love and admire those who are punished because they refuse to deny God, then you will condemn the deceit and the error of the world, when you realize what the true life in heaven is… (Epistle to Diognetus 10.4-7a)

 

What if we find a lost letter of Paul?

This is one of the first questions that came to mind when I first heard a doctrine of canon, and I have revisited it from time to time ever since.

What would we do if we unearthed another letter that (somehow) could be authenticated and verified as being penned by the apostle Paul?

How would we treat/use it?

Would it find its place with the Apocryphal writings?

Would another letter from Paul’s hand be permitted to enhance or adjust our understanding of the letters we already attribute to Paul?

Would its usefulness depend on whether or not the recently discovered epistle coincided with the interpretation of Paul given by the theologians of our tradition?

Some of you, doubtless, have no interest in hypothetical scenarios. Even so, I think this hypothetical is helpful to expose and sharpen our beliefs about the Scriptures.

What do you think?

 

Whose Faith(fulness): What is the “it” in Rom 4.24?

Below I have quoted the ESV of Rom 4.22-25. What is the “it” to which the passage refers? To narrow this down to two possible options, is it, especially the third it, Abraham’s faith(fulness) or “our” faith(fulness)?

 

That is why [his faith] (it) was “counted to him as righteousness.” But the words “it was counted to him” were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.

 

What has Galatians to do with Jubilees?

Studying Paul in his ancient Mediterranean horizon and the reception and handling of Paul in early Christianity are two of my primary areas of historical research. In view of this—and the Conn-verations blog’s focus on issues of hermeneutics and context(s)—every now and then I will try to post on Paul in Christian Origins.

 

During a short reading break I decided to type out something that has been swirling around my head since I recently read through Jubilees (a 2^nd century BCE Jewish writing) again. The following passage stuck out to me in connection with something Paul does in Galatians 3.1-4.7.

 

Just to be clear at the outset, I do not think that Paul is necessarily writing with Jubilees in mind or that what Paul is doing is predicated upon some unique development within Jubilees. Rather, I prefer to view the following passage from Jubilees as a possible window in on certain ways things might have been understood by some(many?) Early Jews—thus, something that might have been “in the air” in Paul’s context.

 

But after this they [Israel] will return to me in all uprightness and with all of their heart and soul. And I shall cut off the foreskin of their heart and the foreskin of the heart of their descendents. And I shall create for them a Holy Spirit, and I shall purify them so that they will not turn away from following me from that day and forever. And their souls will cleave to me and to all my commandments. And they will do my commandments. And I shall be a father to them, and they will be sons to me. And they will all be called “sons of the living God.” And every angel and spirit will know and acknowledge that they are my sons and I am their father in uprightness and righteousness. And I shall love them. (Jubilees 1.22b-25)