Frank Thielman on the Center of Paul's Theology

This spring I used Frank Thielman's Theology of the New Testament as a textbook when teaching in Ethiopia, and was impressed with his argument that  the center of Paul's theology is best described as God's grace.

"If one theological theme is more basic than others in Paul's letters, ... it is this notion that God is a gracious God and that he has shown his grace preeminently in his arrangement of history to answer the problem of human sinfulness in the death and resurrection of his Son, Jesus Christ.
     This is "the truth of the gospel" that Paul passionately defended against those who threatened it in Jerusalem and Antioch. When false brothers at the Jerusalem council tried to insist that a right relationship with God was defined not only by faith in Christ but by conformity to the Mosaic law, Paul "did not submit to them even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might remain intact" (Gal 2:5). When Peter, under pressure from Jewish believers from Jerusalem, tried to force Gentile Christians in Antioch to conform to the Mosaic law, Paul told him that he was out of line with "the truth of the gospel" (Gal 2:14).
     The problem in both instances was that by insisting on conformity to the Mosaic law as a means--however partial--of bringing people into a right relationship with God, both the false brothers and Peter had "set aside the grace of God" and implied that "Christ died for nothing" (Gal 2:21). Here, then, Paul answers for us the question of the "center" of his theology. It is an answer given in the passion of the moment, but as the importance of this concept throughout the Pauline corpus demonstrates, it was an answer that arose from Paul's deepest convictions."

Frank Thielman, Theology of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005), 479.

Christ makes every one a debtor to all those for whom Christ died

Paul S. Minear, 1906-2007

It may be said, then, that as Paul sees it, Christ makes every man a debtor to all those for whom Christ died. He thereby creates a fabric of mutual interdependence which defies the usual method of computing obligations in proportion to tangible, direct contributions. This new interdependence is not two-sided but triangular. For example, Paul teaches that Gentiles are indebted to the Jews because Christ became a servant to the circumcised for the sake of the Gentiles (15.7-12). So, too, Paul magnifies his ministry to the Gentiles for the sake of the Jews (11.13f.). This triangular logic also lies back of his injunction to the ‘strong in faith’ (who were predominantly Gentile) that they should honour their obligation to the ‘weak in faith’ (who were predominantly Jewish, 14.1ff.). This obligation was incurred when Christ chose not to please himself but to accept as his own the reproaches which in all justice should fall on others (15.1-3). In Christ, therefore, each man becomes a debtor to every man.

Paul S. Minear, The Obedience of Faith: The Purposes of Paul in the Epistle to the Romans (Studies in Biblical Theology, Second Series 19. London: SCM, 1971), pp. 104-5.

(with apologies for the non-inclusive language)

On Being Purchased through Christ's Cross

"Is sin, man’s refusal to be reconciled with eternal, absolute Goodness, really an organ essential to life? Is it not much more like a spreading cancer? Can we say that God is robbing man of anything by restoring his health? Furthermore, if a man has become locked in a syndrome of refusal, if he refuses to keep faith with God, can he free himself from his own obstinacy? He may think he can, but in reality he becomes a slave of his ‘No’ because there is only true freedom when we are in contact with the Good, in the atmosphere of love -- that is, of God. This is something that has to be shown, from within, to the person who has turned away. What is taken away from sinful man through the surrender of the Son of God is nothing other than his alienation from the Good; what is given to him is nothing other than inner access to the Good, that is, true freedom. He is liberated both toward himself and toward God.

'Bought at a great price.' The first Christians were well aware of this when they put these two little words, 'pro nobis,' at the heart of the Creed. It was 'for us' that the Son came down from heaven, 'for us' that he was crucified, died and was buried. And this means not only 'for our benefit' but also 'in our place,' taking over what was our due. If this is watered down, the fundamental tenet of the New Testament disappears and it looks as if God is always reconciled, sin is always forgiven and overcome, irrespective of Christ's self-surrender; then the Cross becomes merely a particularly eloquent symbol of God's unchanging kindness, only a symbol, indicating something but not effecting anything. ... By sleight of hand the modern world has caused death to vanish from its everyday awareness: let us make sure that we Christians do not, by equal stealth, remove the tremendous drama of the Cross from our Christianity. "

Hans Urs von Balthasar, You Crown the Year with Your Goodness: Radio Sermons, trans. G. Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989), pp. 78-79.

Paul's theology in Romans

" Above all, what is noteworthy about Paul's theology in Romans is the way the pivotal significance of Jesus' death and resurrection emphasizes the character of God. The theology of Romans is theocentric because it is christomorphic. That is, the understanding of God, which Paul inherited from the Pharisaic Judaism he had once advocated assiduously (Gal 1:14), was reshaped in light of his conviction that God had resurrected the crucified Jesus. For the theology of Romans (as for Paul's theology as a whole), what matters is not what Jesus of Nazareth had done and said in his Galilean ministry, but what God had done in resurrecting him, and thus far only him. If God has done that, then what does that disclose about God that was not known before, and how is this new disclosure related to what is known through scripture, which emphasizes God's commitment to Israel? Such are the questions that propel Paul's theological thinking in this letter. "

Leander Keck, Romans (Abingdon, 2005) p. 37

Paul assumes the worldview of the Psalms

We may well find curious the way the psalmists can abstract, out of all the ambiguities of lived experience, this unambiguous portrayal of the glories of the created order. The psalmists knew famine, disease, violence, and death. And yet, in some of the psalms at least, no trace of evil of any kind is part of the picture. ... To dismiss such texts as naive would only show our own naiveté. Rather, they are an affirmation that ultimately, fundamentally, creation is good, and the Creator deserving of universal praise; that the reality of evil is not ultimate, but secondary and parasitic, a disorder brought about by inappropriate responses to the goodness of the fundamental order.

Stephen Westerholm, A Preface to the Study of Paul (Eerdmans, 1997), p. 15