Resisting Evil In The Spiritual Realm: Prayer In The Gospel Of Mark

By William B. Bowes

[William B. Bowes is a PhD student in New Testament and Christian Origins at New College, the school of divinity at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland.]

Abstract

Prayer plays a more significant role in the Gospel of Mark than previously assumed. Given that Mark and his readers understood the world in terms of a cosmic conflict between temporal and spiritual realms, I contend that prayer in Mark has a resistance-oriented focus. This article reexamines Markan prayer texts, evaluating them in the context of antiquity and Mark’s understanding of spiritual-temporal conflict.

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Jesus as one who both prayed and taught on prayer is a significant aspect of early Christian portrayals. This is especially true in the Synoptic Gospels. They present Jesus’s prayer practices as distinct in form and effectiveness, whether compared to the religious leaders or his disciples. For the earliest Christians, prayer related to their understanding of their engagement with God, as well as spiritual and physical forces. Such depictions in the Synoptics indicate that they considered the nature and purpose of their prayers to be distinct from the prayers of others.

While many scholars have published works on prayer in the Gospels and the New Testament broadly, few have published research about prayer within the Gospel of Mark. Some, such as O’Brien, suggest that the author “shows little interest in the subject.”[1] Similarly, few publications deal with how the evangelist’s characterization of prayer was shaped by significant, early Christian concern about spiritual evil and the interaction between the spiritual and temporal—a key aspect of the Markan worldview.

In this article I propose that prayer plays a more significant role in Mark’s Gospel than previously assumed. Specifically, I contend that an important aspect of prayer in Mark is its role as a means of resistance, apotropaically functioning against spiritual evil, natural evil, and temporal weakness. For Mark, prayer was central to the early Christians’ concerns about demonic powers and the nature of the relationship between the temporal and spiritual realms. Since Mark’s Gospel is the earliest of the Synoptics, this analysis will provide insight into the nature of early Christian spirituality and especially into the ways in which Mark’s audience would have understood the interaction and conflict between visible and invisible phenomena.

Mark describes Jesus’s prayers as a means of resistance against spiritual forces (9:29); resistance against temptation and physical or mental weakness (14:38); different from that of the religious authorities (12:40); a component of spiritual effectiveness or renewal (1:35; 6:46); and an appeal to God’s supernatural intervention in temporal circumstances (11:23–25; 13:18; 14:32–42). This article will examine how the evangelist used prayer language to inform his audience of what prayer meant for Jesus and his disciples and consequently the Markan community. This analysis will highlight 9:29 and 14:38, showing how these verses inform the other prayer texts in Mark. To set the stage, I will first examine the concept and practice of prayer in antiquity, with a special focus on the Second Temple religious and historical context from which Mark’s Gospel emerged.

Prayer As Ritual In The Ancient World

As in early Christianity, prayer was essential to ancient Jewish and Greco-Roman religion. Prayer has long been at the heart of religious experience, reflecting “the vitality of a person’s central convictions and controlling spirituality.”[2] As Longenecker observes, prayer is so indispensable to ritual systems that “one cannot know the religion of Israel . . . (and) one cannot understand Greco-Roman religions without some knowledge of the place and function of prayer within them.”[3] Even though prayer is a shared element among ancient religions, the form, content, and purpose of prayer varied widely. As Aune explains,

Prayer, like all human institutions and practices, is culture-bound and must be understood in light of the particular systems of religious beliefs and practices of which it is part. . . . There are striking differences between the role that prayer plays in modern monotheistic religious traditions (such as Christianity, Judaism, and Islam) compared with its role in ancient Graeco-Roman polytheistic religious traditions.[4]

This is important to note because the idea of a religion as a system of beliefs, rituals, and behaviors separable from other sociocultural institutions is a relatively recent concept that would have been unknown to ancient Jews, Greeks, and Romans. Unlike people in the modern era, the ancients did not have a “religious identity” separate from their Jewish, Greek, or Roman identity. Thus, prayer must be understood in view of the broader system, culture, and worldview of those engaging in it. However, at the risk of imputing too much complexity to the concept of prayer, and given the influence of monotheistic Judaism on Mark’s Gospel, prayer will here be defined as “the operative medium for contact with God.”[5]

Understanding the unique role of prayer in the ancient world also necessitates an awareness of its importance as a ritual. If rituals are to be understood primarily as actions, then Collins rightly asserts that a prayer being “performed in the prescribed manner is more important than its overt content.”[6] While the content of prayers is of great significance in modern spirituality, a view of prayer as ancient ritual typically places a greater emphasis on factors peripheral to the words themselves, such as intent, situational context, frequency, or method. This is reflected in the fact that Mark’s Gospel, for example, reports little of the content of Jesus’s prayers and more often reports other aspects of his prayer practice. Additionally, such a view is supported implicitly by other sayings of Jesus outside of Mark, such as his caution about praying publicly, verbosely, or repetitively, like the ὑποκριταί and ἐθνικοί in Matthew 6:5–8.

This saying suggests that while Jesus taught the precise words of the Lord’s Prayer in the following verses, other aspects (such as the reverential private aspect) had primacy over precise content, given the nature of ancient rituals.

Recognizing prayer as ritual also takes into account that rituals functioned as a way to create “solidarity and social cohesion through common action, on the basis of implicit assumptions about how things are.”[7] That is, ritualistic prayer practices reveal beliefs and presuppositions about the world, others, and oneself and unite groups in their shared worldview and communal identity.[8] Mark’s Gospel makes this especially evident, sharing notable similarities with the apocalypticism of Second Temple texts like Daniel, 2 Baruch, and 4 Ezra. Prayers in these documents (and in the Dead Sea Scrolls) contain ritual and verbalized elements, demonstrating shared assumptions, like the belief that prayer can influence the spiritual realm and the outcome of future events.[9] As I shall illustrate, Mark highlighted these ritual elements in the life and teaching of Jesus to shape the communal identity of his audience.

Greco-Roman And Jewish Conceptions In The Second Temple Era

In Greek religion, prayer occurred most commonly in the form of invocation and request (or petition), as popularized in texts like the Iliad.[10] Pagans of the early Imperial period would generally pray for health, beauty, relief, protection, safety, rescue, daily needs, and the defeat of enemies.[11] The prevailing worldview at the time made space for the notion that prayer effected contact between the temporal and spiritual realms. But the precise nature of this contact and the context in which such prayer would be offered would have been understood differently by pagan and Jewish or Christian contexts. For example, Greeks and Romans often prayed in sacrificial contexts. Prayer accompanied sacrifice as a gift to a god, in hopes that the supplicant would receive a positive response.[12] Because they were associated with ritual activity, Greco-Roman prayers were typically public, while private prayer was associated with magic, especially when it occurred at night.[13] Prayers for spiritual aid to resist deleterious forces are not readily present in pagan parallels.

For Jews, prayer similarly involved elements of petition but incorporated thanksgiving, praise, and penance more than pagan prayer.[14] The Qumran documents are a rich source for understanding ancient Jewish prayer as they contain many examples of prayers and blessings, as well as petitions for defense and protection.[15] Prayers in these documents are especially relevant for the study of eschatological and apotropaic elements in Mark, since many Qumran texts suggest that the community understood prayer to be an effective method of spiritual resistance against evil. For example, 11Q5 19:12–16 contains petitions such as “May Satan not rule over me.”[16] Several portions of the War Scroll (1Q33 10–12; 13–14; 16.6–16) and related texts (4Q491 8–12 I.s–16 and 4Q285 10) detail eschatological prayers to be utilized during a future time of spiritual conflict between light and darkness.[17] As Bazzana notes, specifically apotropaic or resistance-oriented ritual and linguistic features “were not a marginal matter as far as the community of Qumran was concerned. On the contrary, it seems that prayers designed to repel demonic influences and even possessions were a regular part of the liturgical activities.”[18]

The importance of such Jewish antecedents of the early church’s view of prayer should not be underestimated, as “the earliest Christians prayed at the times and according to the forms established by Temple and synagogue practice.”[19] This is evident in Paul’s writings as he frequently used fixed liturgical prayers, “which he probably took over from the earliest (mostly Jewish) community.”[20] Thus the worldview underlying such practices serves as a background and foundation to analyze similarities and differences in Mark’s depiction of prayer. Bazzana writes regarding the nature and purpose of prayer: “In all likelihood both Mark and the apotropaic texts from Qumran are re-elaborating, independent of each other, widespread Second Temple Jewish traditions.”[21] In other words, Mark’s resistance-oriented view of prayer has some precedent within the broader environment from which his Gospel emerged. Before analyzing Mark’s prayer language in detail to see how it incorporates these apotropaic, resistance-oriented themes, it will be necessary to understand Mark’s presuppositions regarding the relationship between the temporal and the spiritual.

Powers And Spiritual-Temporal Conflict In Mark

Many scholars have argued convincingly that Mark views the world in light of cosmic conflict.[22] According to Shively, Mark’s Gospel reveals 

a world in which cosmic and earthly conflicts intersect, like planes intersecting in a line. . . . Mark imagines a world in which Satan is the strong ruler over a united kingdom of demons that fights against the Spirit. According to Mark, this cosmic battle is carried out in the ministry of Jesus.[23]

Both Jesus and his followers engage in this conflict. If Shively is right to characterize Mark’s Gospel as an apocalyptic narrative, this focus comes into view through Mark’s characterization of Jesus as “the Spirit-filled one who struggles against Satan and his hosts to liberate people in order to form a new community that does God’s will.”[24] Parallels between Mark’s rhetoric and that of other apocalyptic texts bear this out, such as in the language of Jesus interacting with unseen forces in the early chapters, subduing the sea in 4:35–41 (the chaos of such elements being a common apocalyptic feature in texts like 4 Ezra 13), and speaking of his heavenly parousia in 13:62 and 14:62.[25] Such language points to Mark’s assumptions about a conflicted world. The evangelist’s portrayal of Jesus’s teaching and prayer practices indicates that he imagined a significant amount of interaction between the temporal and the spiritual realms. It also shows he understood humans—and preeminently Jesus—to be capable of exerting some form of influence in that conflictual overlap.

This conflict motif aligns Mark with apocalyptic Jewish literature composed roughly during the same era. Both “share a characteristic outlook that includes both a vertical-spatial dimension (cosmic forces involved on the earth) and a temporal dimension (movement towards imminent eschatological salvation).”[26] One could point to pseudepigrapha such as the Testament of Solomon, which assumes that demonic beings are responsible for inciting violence, causing natural evils, and inflicting pain on humans. Similarly, one could again point to the Qumran community and specifically 1QM, which depicts the community’s struggles in conflict with oppressive temporal and spiritual powers.[27] It can also be argued that Mark’s spiritual worldview (as well as that of the Qumran community) was highly influenced by the book of Daniel, which clearly assumes a supernatural dimension affected by and affecting human activity, with invisible powers at work in a struggle between good and evil.[28] If Mark saw a central element of Jesus’s mission as releasing humans from destructive cosmic powers, then prayer can and should be understood as part of this dynamic.[29]

The overall structure of Mark’s Gospel and its differing emphases from the other Gospels attests to the importance of his view of temporal-spiritual interaction in the shaping of his narrative. Structurally, Mark’s Gospel follows several series of conflicts throughout Jesus’s ministry, reflecting again Mark’s conception of a conflicted world for Christians, whether due to temporal resistance, spiritual resistance, or both. Further, his emphasis on Jesus as an exorcist, in contrast to different emphases in other Gospels, points to his and the earliest Christians’ assumptions about reality as well as Jesus’s place in the spiritual order.[30] Mark’s idea of conflict, as evidenced by his exorcism language, applies not only to the spiritual but extends to the temporal. Mark employs the language of exorcism for Jesus’s calming of the storm in 4:39 and uses the same language to describe the actions of Jesus’s opponents and the activity of Satan and demons.[31] Thus, Mark’s idea of spiritual conflict overlaps with and is implicit within instances of temporal conflict. Mark intended to illustrate Jesus facing and resisting opposing powers so that he might offer his community “a strategy of resistance” to their own spiritual and temporal conflict.[32] Again, this forms a framework for conceptualizing prayer’s role in Mark’s Gospel as part of that apotropaic effort.

The gulf between the typical modern interpreter’s worldview and the worldview of early Christian communities makes it important to understand Mark’s assumptions when analyzing his prayer language. Specifically, “the writers of the Gospels do not share the modern division between the natural and the supernatural.”[33] Although applied and conceptualized in light of Jesus, Mark shared this notion of a conflicted universe with Jewish as well as pagan thought, especially as related to the demonic. For example, as Thiessen notes, not only did almost all ancient Jews affirm the existence of demons, they “thought that demons were malevolent and opposed to both God and humanity.”[34] Although the existence of demonic beings was generally affirmed outside Judaism, Greco-Roman thinkers thought of them as positive, negative, or neutral.[35] This widespread belief significantly contributed to “the background of the Gospel writers’ portrayals of Jesus,” since in the Roman world Christianity needed to prove successful in its promise of deliverance from spiritual evil.[36]

In Mark’s complex matrix of powers and resistance, he repeatedly understood the demonic as “a hostile force bent on physically tormenting and afflicting people,” focused on “the destructive and debilitating physical power that demons wield over human beings.”[37] In recognizing the role of such ancient apocalyptic tradition in molding the thought and context of the New Testament, an interpreter can avoid misunderstanding how a writer like Mark intended his readers to understand Jesus’s prayer activity. If Mark understood Jesus as dealing with people suffering from demonic oppression in a world system influenced by an unseen realm of forces, then Jesus’s superior power to these forces—his ability to defeat them and provision for his followers to do the same—would have been central to his message. This, as I will argue, directly relates to Mark’s understanding of prayer.

Prayer In Mark In Light Of Conflicted Realms

The Synoptics portray prayer as affecting both the determination of God’s will “so that he responds by doing what he otherwise would not have done” and as aligning the attitude of the petitioner with God’s will.[38] The latter may be somewhat clearer in Mark, as Dowd notes,

[The author] has a concern not only to emphasize Jesus’s dependence on God’s power, but also to remind his community that it has no power of its own. By connecting miracle working with prayer and by presenting Jesus as a person of prayer, the evangelist makes the point that the power of the community to heal and exorcise depends entirely on believing prayer.[39]

Rather than Mark neglecting prayer or underemphasizing it, Dowd rightly says that his portrayal of Jesus praying “is intended by the evangelist to serve as a model for his community. . . . Mark wants to blame a neglect of prayer for a diminution of spiritual power of his community.”[40] This power related to prayer is important because of the conflict between the spiritual and temporal that Mark saw as part of human experience.

These observations granted, the resistance-oriented or apotropaic element of specific prayer texts in Mark becomes clearer. For Mark, the praying person can resist spiritual and temporal forces through the ritual practice of resistance-oriented prayer—invoking God’s more powerful and authoritative presence over the presence of other forces, whether malevolent spirits or bodily weakness. In a milieu of spiritual assaults by which humans suffer from temporal and spiritual weakness, prayer becomes a weapon that invokes “God’s power to affect events in the world in ways that are impossible for humans and other natural agents.”[41] In the context of exorcism, Mark’s inclusion of Jesus’s prayer at key points illustrates the human component of this resistance, which seeks not to destroy demonic powers but relocate them, realigning the right order of the spiritual and temporal realms and setting free those oppressed or influenced by renegade powers.[42] Jesus’s successful counter-demonic maneuvers, illustrated most clearly in 9:14–29, show him to be the one with superior power (as supported by prayer).

The Prayer Of Power In Mark 9:29

Jesus’s posttransfiguration exorcism pericope contains Mark’s principally distinctive power-oriented prayer text and informs other Markan prayer texts. The reader is told that the afflicted boy’s father approached Jesus, described his son’s affliction by attributing it to a spiritual source, and incited Jesus’s exasperation by saying, “I asked your disciples to cast it out, and they were not able” (9:18, ESV). Responding differently than in other exorcism accounts in Mark, Jesus did not immediately act but questioned the father. Jesus appeared to ascertain the significance of the boy’s malady, possibly implying that Jesus assessed the level of influence or power of this spiritual affliction. In apotropaic fashion Jesus commanded the spirit to leave and never return. The details Mark included (such as crying, convulsing, and catatonia) suggest that the process was not immediate, possibly due to the spirit’s power. Later, in response to the disciples’ question about their own lack of ability to resist the spirit, Jesus explained, “This kind cannot come out by anything but prayer” (v. 29, NASB).[43]

Jesus’s statement is remarkable because he clearly associated prayer (προσευχῇ, an instrumental dative) with the ability to resist the spirit and force it to return to its place, which was made possible by a superior source of spiritual power. This does not only refer to one act of prayer right before the instance but rather to a persistent, ritual practice of praying.[44] Mark’s inclusion of Jesus’s practice of solitary retreat and prayer before the transfiguration (as in 6:46) suggests that Jesus’s special practice in such times was intended to illustrate to Mark’s readers that they could have the faith-filled power to resist spiritual evil effectively, in contrast to the disciples’ ineffectiveness.[45]

Also remarkable, the synoptic parallels (Matt 17:14–19; Luke 9:37–42) omit Jesus’s statement in Mark 9:29. Matthew replaced it with a statement about the need for faith, and Luke excluded the final dialogue altogether. While many possible reasons for these differences may exist, it is clear that Mark perceived the role of prayer in this event differently than the other evangelists. The difference is important for establishing that Mark indeed intended to communicate a certain message about the nature and purpose of prayer, rather than neglecting the topic or communicating nothing unique about it.[46] In terms of the author’s message, highlighting the disciples’ failure (and subsequent correction) shows that Jesus was not the only one engaging in these conflicts between the physical and divine spheres; his followers (and by implication Mark’s community) were also engaged. It is as if Mark told his community through this pericope, “This is why prayer is necessary in your struggle against the spiritual and temporal conflict you are facing.”

Nygaard points out that “the power of Jesus is highlighted in this scene.”[47] While Matthew’s Gospel highlights faith as a source of spiritual efficacy in Jesus’s response to the disciples (and thus faithlessness as the explanation of the disciples’ relative impotence), Mark associates faith with prayer here (in his denunciation of the “faithless generation” and his call for the father to be “one who believes”) and in 11:23–24. Even so, in this instance there is an assumption that faith brings about efficacious prayer, which is a major component of effectively resisting other powers. As Nygaard observes, “the integrated worldview of Mark” reveals that “power is administered or even transferred through prayer.”[48] Mark’s portrayal of Jesus’s prayer practices suggests that this powerful prayer (or the faith that inspired it) does not arise precipitously but results from sustained practice.

Werline argues that verses like 9:29 not only show it is necessary to read Mark “within the matrix of demonic powers” but also to understand that Mark clearly and uniquely emphasizes prayer as “a prophylactic against demonic forces.”[49] Werline goes a step further than this, tying Mark’s language in verse 29 to his idea of a conflicted universe. He writes, “More than just simply depicting prayer as a one-to-one remedy for withstanding demonic forces, in Mark the act becomes a means through which the believer participates in and experiences the cosmic struggle between the kingdom of God and Satan.”[50] Likewise, I argue that this conflict motif is woven so thoroughly throughout the tapestry of Mark’s narrative that the mention of prayer as an effective means of resistance in verse 29 is exceptionally significant. For example, just as Jesus’s apotropaic pronouncement and spiritual power drive the spirit from the boy, his pronouncement and power calm the raging sea in 4:39. As the narrative continues after chapter 9, Mark casts both the Roman empire and Jerusalem’s religious leaders in a negative light, associating them with Jesus’s spiritual struggle against evil as he proceeds to Jerusalem (cf. 3:19–30). Thus the disciples learn the importance of prayer in this struggle, whether against an evil from the spiritual realm or against the evil authorities in the temporal realm. Either way, Mark’s rhetoric suggests that he saw both representing forces contrary to God’s kingdom and therefore to be resisted. Whether spiritual or temporal, the resistance of these forces requires spiritual power. Mark 9:29 provides a seminal text, illustrating prayer as a means of resistance.

The Prayer Against Constitutional Weakness In Mark 14:38

Jesus’s teaching on prayer in his distress in Gethsemane is the second-most significant of the Markan prayer texts, which clarifies the remaining prayer texts (and his general view of prayer). Distinct from 9:29, Jesus exhorted the disciples to pray for temporal power in their bodies to resist the weakness of the flesh instead of spiritual power to resist the demonic.[51] This illustrates Mark’s view of prayer in light of overlapping, conflicted realms—prayer in 9:29 assumes the reality of opposition from malevolent spiritual forces, and 14:38 assumes opposition from temporal sources of temptation arising from the weakness of one’s own faculties.

This teaching is also unique in that it is one of only two places in Mark’s Gospel where the evangelist has Jesus using σὰρξ (cf. 10:8). Mark’s use here suggests the idea of “two opposed faculties within humans, the ‘flesh’ and the ‘spirit.’ . . . The flesh is able to be tempted, leading them not to pray. However, the spirit is able to pray and display faith. On this account, prayer is a way of changing the human person.”[52] Just as the spiritual force overcame the boy in the earlier pericope and had to be resisted and driven out by a greater power, so also Mark portrays the spirit in conflict with and overcoming the physical nature through prayer. In these key instances, Mark’s Jesus teaches prayer as part of the essential response to both the cosmic conflict between the spiritual and temporal realms and the personal, constitutional conflict between flesh and spirit. In both contexts “prayer opens for the power of God to work for and in the pray-er.”[53]

Many scholars see a didactic purpose in the prayer texts in the Synoptics. Indeed, in the broader Gethsemane scene (14:32–42) Jesus’s prayers carry an exemplary function for the disciples.[54] While Mark’s portrayal of Jesus’s personal, solitary prayer retreats in 1:35 and 6:46 may have been instructive for his audience, these retreats did not involve the disciples. However, in the Gethsemane scene Jesus involved the disciples (most directly the inner circle), only withdrawing by himself a small distance. Although they failed to support him in his travail due to fatigue, it appears that Jesus intended for these disciples to pray as well. Mark 14:38 makes it clear that the earlier commands to “sit” and “watch” with him (vv. 32, 34) included praying. Werline correctly notes a connection between Jesus’s Gethsemane prayers and spiritual conflict, pointing out that Mark tends to associate the Romans (and the religious leaders) with spiritual evil. In Gethsemane the disciples’ failure to pray shows they “are not able to endure the time of trial, forsaking Jesus to face the empire alone.”[55] Therefore, while the larger scene incorporates different aspects of Mark’s view of prayer (including aspects shared in 1:35; 6:46; and 11:23–25), it more clearly elucidates Mark’s view of resistance-oriented prayer as formed by his understanding of spiritual and temporal conflict.

The Prayers Of Personal Preparation And Renewal In 1:35 And 6:46

Jesus’s evidently regular practice of retreating to solitary places to pray was a significant enough behavior for all the Synoptics to report it.[56] Mark’s inclusion of these instances is notable. First, he reported that the retreats tended to occur strategically—after sustained engagements with crowds, before significant acts of miraculous power, or before conflicts with religious authorities. Further, the events that follow each retreat in Mark’s Gospel were definitive enough to be reported in at least two other Gospels, suggesting a place of eminence in the early tradition.[57] For example, after Jesus’s first retreat in 1:35, he cleansed a leprous man and then healed a paralytic lowered through a roof in Capernaum. Resistance from the scribes followed because of Jesus’s statements on spiritual authority regarding forgiveness and due to his association with society’s lower strata. Likewise, after Jesus’s mountaintop retreat in 6:46, he walked on water and healed many infirmities. Then he found himself in a conflict with the religious authorities over ritual traditions.

The intentional arrangement of material (particularly prayer preceding powerful acts or conflicts) does not imply that Mark’s Jesus had less or no power apart from his ritual practice.[58] It would be incorrect to suggest that Mark saw Jesus’s prayer as the source of his power and authority. Mark’s Christology consistently pictures Jesus as one whose power and authority are inherent to himself, given his identity as confirmed by God, and not purely as a result of his practices.[59] For example, Mark reports powerful actions by Jesus that are not explicitly preceded by prayer, such as the raising of Jairus’s daughter in 5:35–43 and the feeding of the five thousand in 8:1–10. But the fact that these retreats are included at key narrative junctures related to the revelation of Jesus’s authority and power should not be seen as inconsequential. Rather these occurrences are better understood as having a didactic, exemplary function to Mark’s audience.[60] Mark’s rhetoric backs this up. His repeated focus on the prayerlessness of the disciples in 9:29 and 14:38 suggests that he is not arguing that Jesus would be spiritually inefficacious without prayer but rather that his audience would be spiritually inefficacious without it. Jesus, with his inherent spiritual power and his necessary physical limitations, illustrates in his own ritual practice the need for communion with God that produces the supernatural ability to withstand temporal conflict and resist spiritual powers. Jesus can overcome spiritual opposition because of who he is. That is not true for his disciples, whose power and authority are mediated and limited and who fail to understand prayer as an element of their resistance. Also, though secondary, these retreats correspond to the idea of prayer in 14:38, in that this solitary practice relates to Jesus’s need, in his humanity, to overcome physical weakness, fatigue, or overstimulation—all potentially leading to an inability to stand against opposition.

These retreats are also notable because they differentiate the prayer rituals that Jesus practiced from the prayer rituals of the religious authorities, offering a backdrop to his statements about the ways that others pray. In his denunciation of the scribes in 12:38–40, Jesus noted that “for a pretense” they “make long prayers,” advising his disciples against such practices. Jesus opposed at least two things here: disingenuous prayer and prayer done publicly for the sake of being seen by others. Matthew’s parallel (6:5) associates such actions with hypocrisy because they are done with others (not God) in mind.

With the analysis of the prayers in Mark 9:29 and 14:38 in view, the importance of these solitary retreats begins to take a different shape. Assuming Mark understood prayer to have a resistance-oriented role in a world defined by spiritual-temporal conflict, I suggest that these regular times of prayer should be understood as displaying, in a didactic and exemplary fashion, a preparative quality. That is, Mark saw access to God and communion with God as a contributing factor in the ability to bolster faith, display spiritual power, and resist forces that others cannot. Although Mark reported only Jesus’s acts of retreating and not the details of his prayers, their strategic placement within his narrative suggests he intended his audience to see the apotropaic importance of this sort of ritual action in their own context. Just as Jesus turned to prayer before particular instances of opposition from spiritual forces, religious authorities, and the power of the empire, so also must Mark’s audience develop these regular practices of prayer for their spiritual empowerment.

The Prayer Of Faith To Change Circumstances In 11:23–25

While it appears 11:23–25 does not directly relate to conflict or resistance, it is just as much in line with these notions as any of the previous prayer texts, if not more.[61] Mark understood the Jerusalem temple as having come “under imperial and demonic influence . . . because the priestly elite have assisted in administering Roman rule in Judea.”[62] Since Jesus (presumably) referred to the temple mount as “this mountain,” he was actually arguing that “even the agent of imperial power in Judea may be brought down through the practice of prayer.”[63] A reorientation of verses 23–25 around this understanding of the temple would place this pericope in line with the resistance-oriented prayer language found in 9:29. While 11:24 appears to be a general saying or principle about prayer extrapolated from the previous verse, this view of verse 23 provides a way of viewing this passage in the context of powerful, resistance-oriented prayer.[64]

Even if this underlying connection is denied, this passage illustrates important aspects of the relationship Mark saw between the spiritual and temporal, aspects key to Jesus’s view of prayer and spiritual power. Jesus’s teaching here is different than in the previous passages because it seems to be more about the faith that underlies the prayer rather than the prayer itself. But the general similarity lies in the fact that the prayer still moves the spiritual realm to influence temporal circumstances.[65] Jesus’s saying affirms that the power to change circumstances belongs to God, but access to such power involves the person praying. This forms a basic assumption common to Mark’s various prayer texts and illustrates his understanding of the overlap between the physical and spiritual. As Dowd puts it, “the relationships established in the text between the power of God to do the impossible, faith as confidence in God’s power, and prayer as the practice which provides access to God’s power need to be understood if the theology of the evangelist is to be appreciated fully.”[66] This theology assumes that sufficient power does not reside in the temporal realm of the person praying, but that God’s power must be accessed from the spiritual realm by faith-filled prayer. Otherwise, the result will be a faith that is insufficient to bring about changed circumstances.

This idea that prayer accesses God’s power to change circumstances also appears in Jesus’s brief mention of prayer in the Olivet Discourse. In 13:18 Jesus exhorted the disciples to pray that the future tribulation “might not happen in winter,” which suggests that Mark’s Jesus saw future circumstances as not entirely fixed but rather open to alteration based on the intercession of Christ’s followers. This provides another example of the immense power Mark associated with prayer, suggesting that without it, present and future events would be worse than they would have been if no one had prayed. These verses provide more insight into Mark’s world, one in which a significant overlap between the spiritual and the temporal occurs, and in which spiritual power can be accessed or resisted through prayer.

Markan Prayer As Distinct From Matthew And Luke

Mark’s treatment of prayer has suffered neglect at the hands of scholars who prefer to focus on the Matthean and Lukan prayer material.[67] The absence of scholarship on Markan prayer language is due in part to neglect of the fact that the evangelists highlighted different points of view when they mentioned prayer. Scholars have generally grouped most synoptic prayer texts under an eschatological umbrella, presuming the evangelists had largely didactic concerns. That is, it is typically argued that Matthew and Luke were focused on instructing the earliest communities on living prayerfully during the delay of the parousia.[68] Some propose that for Luke prayer can be understood in light of the theme of self-denying discipleship; as for the author, “persistent prayer is proposed as a means for the disciples to live out this demand during the period between the two aspects of the kingdom of God.”[69] In Matthew there is still a sense of significant overlap between the spiritual and temporal, but the focus is more strongly theocentric, with prayer language involving “compliance with God’s will and a continued relation.”[70] While Mark narrated Jesus’s prayers for didactic and exemplary purposes, he did not do so in precisely the same way as the other evangelists.

The Gospel authors had different emphases and intentions in their inclusion of prayer texts. Matthew and Luke put forth the idea of prayer as resistance to opposition but without the same emphases as Mark. For example, Luke’s Jesus prayed for Peter that his “faith may not fail,” a prayer of resistance by intercession.[71] In fact, Jesus specified that his intercessory resistance was in response to the forces of spiritual evil, namely Satan, coming against the disciples.[72] Luke’s Gospel also follows Mark, reporting that “before Jesus faced opposition, he spent time with God” in prayer.[73] Lastly, the final portion of the Lord’s Prayer (Luke 11:4), incorporated by Matthew and Luke, contains a clear element of prayer’s role in resistance—acknowledging that while “the power of sin and iniquity exist and buffet believers,” prayer can affect these forces.[74] Matthew’s version most clearly emphasizes resistance-oriented prayer in the final clause, “deliver us from evil” (6:13, ESV). Both the penultimate petition against temptation and the last petition of deliverance assume, as does Mark, that the early Christians primarily struggled against spiritual and temporal opposition stemming from the flesh and the devil. While the two later evangelists used Markan material and shared aspects of his worldview, their primary emphases and purposes in including prayer texts in their narratives were distinct from Mark’s, which reflects a more apocalyptic and apotropaic focus.

Conclusion

As Cullman observes, “Two facts about prayer in the New Testament are basic: that Jesus prayed and that Jesus taught his disciples to pray.”[75] However, not every evangelist’s understanding or portrayal of the nature and purpose of prayer was the same. This study has argued that spiritual and demonic opposition was of cardinal importance to Mark and his community so that opposition was uniquely emphasized. Mark’s prayer language shows that he and his readers understood the world in light of cosmic conflict, perceived a close connection between the temporal and spiritual realms, and understood resistance against spiritual and temporal forces to be a significant function of prayer. For Mark, Jesus’s actions and teaching on prayer uniquely illustrate how his early Christian community understood prayer’s role as an apotropaic ritual practice that was necessary in a world of spiritual and temporal forces, which required spiritual power to resist.

While the didactic purposes, apocalyptic concerns, and eschatological focuses of the Gospel of Mark must be recognized, I have contended that scholars have overlooked the particular ways in which Mark understood the nature and purpose of prayer and the nuances of his narrative portrayals. Prayer cannot just be understood as the spiritual practice of a disciple; it also needs to be understood in light of the practical outworking of Mark’s basic understanding of cosmic conflict and the action needed to militate against spiritual and natural evil, and temporal weakness, which all overlap and interconnect.

As it relates to prayer, such an analysis provides significant insight into the earliest Christian spirituality and how that differs from Christian spirituality twenty centuries later. Indeed, Mark’s community inhabited a conflicted and chaotic world. A unified sense of their ability to resist other forces and powers would have been necessary for the evangelist to highlight in his account of Jesus’s spirituality. While Mark portrays Jesus as victorious over the powers the early Christians faced, “victory is not seen as automatic. A choice must be made between faith on the one hand and destruction at the hand of Satan and demons on the other.”[76] Prayer played an essential role in resisting and claiming victory over those opposing forces.

Notes

1. P. T. O’Brien, “Prayer in Luke-Acts,” Tyndale Bulletin 24.1 (1973): 116.
2. Richard N. Longenecker, ed., Into God’s Presence: Prayer in the New Testament, McMaster New Testament Studies (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), xi.
3. Longenecker, xi.
4. David E. Aune, “Prayer,” in The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Ritual, ed. Risto Uro et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 246.
5. Esther G. Chazon and Moshe J. Bernstein, “An Introduction to Prayer at Qumran,” in Prayer from Alexander to Constantine: A Critical Anthology, ed. Mark Kiley et al. (London: Routledge, 1997), 10. This is a definition consistent with a Second Temple Jewish perspective.
6. John J. Collins, “Prayer and the Meaning of Ritual in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Prayer and Poetry in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Literature: Essays in Honor of Eileen Schuller on the Occasion of Her 65th Birthday, ed. Jeremy Penner, Ken M. Penner, and Cecilia Wassen, Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah 98 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 71.
7. Collins, “Prayer and the Meaning of Ritual,” 72.
8. Ritual is practice, and practice determines community identity. For more on how this relates to Mark and his community, see Elizabeth E. Shively, “What Type of Resistance? How Apocalyptic Discourse Functions as Social Discourse in Mark’s Gospel,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 37.4 (2015): 392.
9. For prayers in these texts that are oriented around apocalyptic themes and assume the efficacy of prayer in altering circumstances, cf. Daniel 9; 2 Baruch 48:2–24; and 4 Ezra 8:19–36.
10. An example is the Iliad I.445–57. For examples chronologically closer to Mark, see Cato the Elder, de Agricultura 141; and Valerius Maximus, Facta et Deicta Memorabilia 1.1.1. Many invocations were not dissimilar in form to the “come, Lord Jesus” of Revelation 22. In Greek texts spanning the Republican and early Imperial periods, there was a “narrative” part of prayer justifying the petition, but these are not always included in extant texts. Ritual prayer was significant enough that Pliny the Elder said, “A sacrifice without prayer is thought to be useless and not a proper consultation of the gods” (Naturalis Historia 28.10).
11. Larry J. Alderink and Luther H. Martin, “Prayer in Greco-Roman Religions,” in Kiley, Prayer from Alexander to Constantine, 123–26.
12. Aune, “Prayer,” 260.
13. Alderink and Martin, “Prayer in Greco-Roman Religions,” 125.
14. Asher Finkel, “Prayer in Jewish Life of the First Century as Background to Early Christianity,” in Longenecker, Into God’s Presence, 48. Shamoneh Esrah is an example of a liturgical Jewish prayer with petitions and praise. The examples of Jesus’s pre-meal thanksgiving in Mark’s Gospel (8:6; 14:23) are consistent with Second Temple Jewish practice.
15. Eileen M. Schuller, “Prayer in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Longenecker, Into God’s Presence, 74–75.
16. This text is highlighted by Robert J. Karris, Prayer and the New Testament: Jesus and His Communities at Worship (New York: Crossroad, 2000), 28.
17. Eileen M. Schuller, “Prayer at Qumran,” in Prayer from Tobit to Qumran: Inaugural Conference of the ISDCL at Salzburg, Austria,5–9 July 2003, ed. Renate Egger-Wenzel and Jeremy Corley (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2004), 419.
18. Giovanni B. Bazzana, Having the Spirit of Christ: Spirit Possession and Exorcism in the Early Christ Groups, Synkrisis 9 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020), 65.
19. Bonnie Thurston, “Prayer in the New Testament,” in Kiley, Prayer from Alexander to Constantine, 207.
20. Oscar Cullman, Prayer in the New Testament, Overtures to Biblical Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), 71.
21. Bazzana, Having the Spirit of Christ, 68.
22. For example, see Sharyn Dowd, Reading Mark: A Literary and Theological Commentary on the Second Gospel, Reading the New Testament (Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys, 2000), 1–8; Vernon K. Robbins, “The Intertexture of Apocalyptic Discourse in Mark,” in The Intertexture of Apocalyptic Discourse in the New Testament, ed. Duane F. Watson, Symposium Series 14 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2002), 11–44; Marius Nel, “The Gospel of Mark in Light of Its Apocalyptic Worldview,” Journal of Early Christian History 4.1 (2014): 135–48; and Greg Carey, Apocalyptic Literature in the New Testament, Core Biblical Studies (Nashville: Abingdon, 2016), 73–79.
23. Elizabeth E. Shively, Apocalyptic Imagination in the Gospel of Mark: The Literary and Theological Role of Mark 3:22–30, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der älteren Kirche 189 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2012), 1.
24. Shively, 2.
25. For a recent treatment of these apocalyptic features in Mark, see Grant Macaskill, “Apocalypse and the Gospel of Mark,” in The Jewish Apocalyptic Tradition and the Shaping of New Testament Thought, ed. Benjamin E. Reynolds and Loren T. Stuckenbruck (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2017), 53–77.
26. Shively, Apocalyptic Imagination, 21.
27. 1QM is important because it follows the idea that there is a spiritual war that parallels a temporal conflict, wherein angelic hosts aid the Sons of Light in victory over their oppressors that are paralleled with Belial and the Sons of Darkness. Victory in this conflict leads to God’s temporal blessing of the people and the restoration of their land and status. Related to prayer, 1QM 10:1–11:2 beseeches God to intervene in this conflict. Additionally, Jubilees 10:3 incorporates similar terminology, written in a similar period.
28. This perspective has been argued by Howard C. Kee, Community of the New Age: Studies in Mark’s Gospel (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1983), 65.
29. Herman C. Waetjen takes this perspective in A Reordering of Power: A Socio-Political Reading of Mark’s Gospel (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989), 82–84.
30. Mark’s Gospel, for example, depicts Jesus as an exorcist, while John’s Gospel does not report his exorcistic activity. For an elaboration on the significance in the difference of these portraits, see Graham H. Twelftree, In the Name of Jesus: Exorcism among Early Christians (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), 101–208.
31. For example, Satan “tests” (πειραζόμενος) Jesus in the wilderness in 1:13; the Pharisees “test” (πειράζοντες) Jesus by asking for a sign in 8:11; demons try to “destroy” (ἀπολέσῃ) the boy in 9:22; and the religious leaders try to “destroy” (ἀπολέσωσιν) Jesus in 3:6.
32. Shively, “What Type of Resistance?,” 402.
33. April D. DeConick, “What Is Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism?,” in Paradise Now: Essays on Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism, ed. April D. DeConick, Symposium Series 11 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2006), 6.
34. Matthew Thiessen, Jesus and the Forces of Death: The Gospels’ Portrayal of Ritual Impurity within First-Century Judaism (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2020), 125. Long before Mark, the ancient Akkadian Udug-hul text (8.73–75) attests that even Israel’s neighbors had, in Thiessen’s words, a “robust demonology,” as well as apotropaic practices. There are affirmations of demonic activity in Josephus, Pseudo-Philo, and the Babylonian Talmud as well.
35. Thiessen, Jesus and the Forces of Death, 126.
36. Thiessen, 129.
37. Thiessen, 133. In my view scholars overemphasize the possible allegorical meaning of evil or impure spirits. Various scholars attempt to render activities like exorcism as a sort of proxy for marginalization or oppression in the context of Roman imperialism. However the “otherness” of evil spirits is conceptualized today, it is clear that Mark and his community thought of demons as real, evil spiritual beings to be resisted by believers. Mark likely saw Rome as a spiritual evil, but it is an overreach to suggest that Mark invented stories involving spiritual powers simply for an allegorical purpose, although some may see them allegorically today.
38. I. Howard Marshall, “Jesus—Example and Teacher of Prayer in the Synoptic Gospels,” in Longenecker, Into God’s Presence, 130. The Gethsemane prayer (Mark 14:36), for example, holds both elements in tension.
39. Sharyn Echols Dowd, Prayer, Power, and the Problem of Suffering: Mark 11:22–25 in the Context of Markan Theology, SBL Dissertation Series 105 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986), 117.
40. Dowd, 120.
41. Dowd, 103.
42. Loren T. Stuckenbruck, The Myth of the Rebellious Angels: Studies in Second Temple Judaism and New Testament Texts (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017), 184.
43. A famous text-critical question exists regarding the addition of καὶνηστείᾳ to the passage (τοῦτο τὸ γένος ἐν οὐδενὶ δύναται ἐξελθεῖν εἰ μὴ ἐν προσευχῇ). I concur with scholars who argue that the phrase is unoriginal and likely reflected Byzantine-era scribal attempts to harmonize Mark’s text with ritual practices of a later generation. Additionally, the absence of καὶνηστείᾳ from Clement’s citation of this passage in his eclogue propheticae 15.1 points to prayer alone being original to the saying. For further clarification on this view, see Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed. (New York: American Bible Society, 1994), 85.
44. Some scholars have suggested that this simply refers to the general necessity of prayer and not to a regular practice. For this perspective, see Eckhard J. Schnabel, Mark, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2017), 219. For the view that this is indeed a sustained practice, see R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary on the Greek Text, New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 369–70.
45. Mara Rescio, “Demons and Prayer: Traces of Jesus’ Esoteric Teaching from Mark to Clement of Alexandria,” Annali di Storia dell’Esegesi 31.1 (2014): 70. Rescio rightly points out that Mark in his narrative skill casts Jesus’s actions in an exemplary light for the sake of informing the practices of his own community and the formation of their communal identity.
46. For example, Marshall states of Matthew’s Gospel that “no significant difference in the treatment of prayer, as compared with Mark’s treatment, can be detected” (“Jesus—Example and Teacher,” 114). In my view, in light of Mark 9:29, this opinion of prayer in Mark is incorrect. While similar language on prayer in Matthew or Luke is not absent, nowhere in either Gospel is spiritually apotropaic or resistance-oriented prayer language as clear as it is in Mark.
47. Mathias Nygaard, Prayer in the Gospels: A Theological Exegesis of the Ideal Pray-er, Biblical Interpretation Series 114 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 83.
48. Nygaard, 81.
49. Rodney A. Werline, “The Experience of Prayer and Resistance to Demonic Powers in the Gospel of Mark,” in Experientia, vol. 1, Inquiry into Religious Experience in Early Judaism and Early Christianity, ed. Frances Flannery, Colleen Shantz, and Rodney A. Werline, Symposium Series 40 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2008), 61.
50. Werline, 62.
51. Even though Jesus had just spoken to Peter, the second-person plural pronoun means this was intended for all the disciples.
52. Nygaard, Prayer in the Gospels, 106. I take this view in contrast to scholars who suggest that “spirit” here refers to the divine spirit and thus the passage does not involve inner conflict. For an example of this contrary perspective, see Cornelis Bennema, “Whose Spirit Is Eager? The Referent of Πνεῦμα in Mark 14:38 and the Intended Comparison,” Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 110.1 (2019), 104–14. For an overview of the scholarly debate on the reading of this phrase, see David E. Aune, “ ‘The Spirit Is Willing, but the Flesh Is Weak’ (Mark 14:38b and Matt. 26:41b),” in Reading Religions in the Ancient World: Essays Presented to Robert McQueen Grant on His 90th Birthday, ed. David E. Aune and Robin Darling Young, Novum Testamentum Supplement 125 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 123–39.
53. Nygaard, Prayer in the Gospels, 106.
54. See Larry W. Hurtado, Mark, New International Biblical Commentary (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1989), 242; Adela Yarbro Collins, Mark: A Commentary, Hermenia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), 681; and Mary Healy, The Gospel of Mark, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 458; and Schnabel, Mark, 365–66. The wording in this passage probably gave rise to the widely attested variant καιπροσεύχεσθε in 13:33. Although the parallel passage in Luke 21:36 indicates that Luke understood prayer as the focus, the parallel passage in Matthew 24:42 does not have it. While it has a higher likelihood of authenticity than the variant in 9:29, it is still more likely the phrase was added later with a view to harmonization. Even if original, Mark’s intention would be similar to his intention in 14:38, except with a view to the future rather than the present.
55. Werline, “The Experience of Prayer,” 67.
56. See Matthew 14:23 and Luke 4:42; 5:16; 6:12. In Mark 1:35 the imperfect verb suggests a prolonged period of praying.
57. Matthew 8:2–4 and Luke 5:12–14 record Jesus’s cleansing of the leprous man. Matthew 9:2–8 and Luke 5:18–26 report the healing of the paralytic (and the subsequent controversies). Matthew 14:22–33 and John 6:16–21 recount Jesus walking on water. Only Matthew directly repeats the conflict over traditions (15:1–28), but Luke may have reformed this or a similar instance in 11:37–41, which follows an important time of prayer (v. 1), as well as significant prayer teaching (vv. 2–13).
58. Earlier form-critical approaches argued that Mark’s Gospel “is not a carefully planned literary composition” (Vincent Taylor, The Gospel according to St. Mark:The Greek Text with Introduction, Notes, and Indexes [London: Macmillan, 1966], 6). However, recent approaches such as narrative criticism have given more credit to the author for his strategic placement of pericopes in the organization of his narrative. For example, see David B. Peabody, Mark as Composer, New Gospel Studies (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1987), 116–17; John Paul Heil, “The Narrative Strategy and Pragmatics of the Temple Theme in Mark,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 59.1 (1997): 100; Robert L. Humphrey, Narrative Structure and Message in Mark: A Rhetorical Analysis, Studies in the Bible and Early Chistianity (Lewiston, NY: Mellen, 2003), 242–43; Kelly R. Iverson and Christopher W. Skinner, eds., Mark as Story: Retrospect and Prospect (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011), 115–64; and Helen K. Bond, The First Biography of Jesus: Genre and Meaning in Mark’s Gospel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2020), 90–120.
59. A recent monograph illustrates this relationship between Jesus’s power and identity: Andrew J. Kelley, Thaumaturgic Prowess: Autonomous and Dependent Miracle-Working in Mark’s Gospel and the Second Temple Period, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 2.491 (Tübingen, Mohr Siebeck, 2019).
60. Contra M. Eugene Boring, Mark: A Commentary, The New Testament Library (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2006), 68. Boring argues that this has no exemplary function but rather solely a christological one with Mark simply pointing to the humanity of Jesus. While Boring rightly notes that Jesus’s prayer here is not necessary for his power, that does not mean Mark intended for it to have no exemplary value. Boring asserts instead that Mark’s focus is christological, contrasting Jesus’s humanity with more exalted portrayals elsewhere as the Son of God. The retreats highlight his physical limitations, but the emphasis is not only (or even primarily) christological. For interpreters who see this as having an exemplary role, see Hurtado, Mark, 29; and Timothy J. Geddert, Mark, Believers Church Bible Commentary (Scottsdale, PA: Herald, 2001), 50.
61. Werline, “The Experience of Prayer,” 67. Another scholar who argues for this view is Kirk R. MacGregor, “Understanding ‘If Anyone Says to This Mountain…’ (Mark 11:20–25) in Its Religio-Historical Context,” Journal of the International Society of Christian Apologetics 2.1 (2009): 23–40.
62. Werline, “The Experience of Prayer,” 67.
63. Werline, 67. Karl-Heinrich Ostmeyer notes that much of this section in Mark—Jesus’s actions and teaching on prayer—should be understood as a rejection of temple practices. Kommunikation mit Gott und Christus: Sprache und Theologie des Gebetes im Neuen Testament, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 197 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 222.
64. This view is articulately defended by Heil, “The Narrative Strategy,” 96–100. The possible difficulty in assuming this meaning is that Jesus’s saying about the power of faith-filled prayer to move the mountain in 11:23 is followed by διὰτοῦτο in verse 24, meaning that verse 23 illustrates the broader principle of verse 24. If verse 23 merely illustrates verse 24, Jesus’s anti-establishment logic becomes less opaque. If reversed, the verse order strengthens this argument.
65. On the concept of faith in Mark’s Gospel, see Daniel Howard-Snyder, “Markan Faith,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 81.1–2 (2017): 31–60.
66. Dowd, Prayer,Power, and the Problem of Suffering, 96.
67. Dowd, 2.
68. Kyu Sam Han, “Theology of Prayer in the Gospel of Luke,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 43.4 (2000): 692. Such a view follows Hans Conzelmann, who is credited as originally emphasizing this. Die Mitte der Zeit: Studien zur Theologie des Lukas (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1954).
69. Han, “Theology of Prayer,” 693. Han argues that prayer for Luke is more focused on suffering than resistance, writing that “through prayer, Jesus not only copes with the present conflicts but also prepares himself for his destiny of taking up the cross” (681). For a scholar who incorporates both ideas, see O’Brien, Prayer in Luke-Acts, 112–21.
70. Nygaard, Prayer in the Gospels, 42.
71. Han, “Theology of Prayer,” 684. See Luke 22:31–32. One might also say that Jesus’s prayer for the disciples in John 17:15 fits within this category, suggesting that the issues of conflicted realms or kingdoms and spiritual resistance or protection by prayer also proved a significant issue for the Johannine community as they did for Mark’s community.
72. The second-person pronoun Jesus uses for the object of Satan’s attacks is plural.
73. Han, “Theology of Prayer,” 681. While Mark records two solitary retreats, Luke mentions both of these (5:16 and 6:12) as well as one additional time when Jesus specifically prayed alone (9:18). This does not include other times when he prayed but was not alone (as in 11:1 and 22:41).
74. Karris, Prayer and the New Testament, 28.
75. Cullman, Prayer in the New Testament, 7.
76. Nygaard, Prayer in the Gospels, 106.

To The Praise Of His Glory: A Doxological-Historical Model For Biblical Theology

By Cory M. Marsh

[Cory M. Marsh is Professor of New Testament, Southern California Seminary, El Cajon, California, and Scholar in Residence, Revolve Bible Church, San Juan Capistrano, California.]

Abstract

This article critically engages the redemptive-historical model favored by a majority of contemporary evangelicals as the center for biblical theology. The article demonstrates inadequacies of this model and proposes an alternative, the doxological-historical model, which focuses on God’s glory as progressing throughout canonical history. This model is the most satisfactory for centering biblical theology because it recognizes a comprehensive proposition throughout the Scriptures, underscoring God’s glory as the end goal and the critical link between creation and redemption.

Introduction

Since the dawn of the twentieth century, scholars have proposed various models that offer a center for biblical theology. These models have advanced themes such as covenant, promise, and kingdom, attempting to provide a cohesive center that unites all of Scripture under a unifying purpose for history.[1]

Among conservative evangelicals, the history of redemption remains one of the most prevalent themes. This theme is offered as a center or interpretative paradigm through which to view all of Scripture, and it’s known by various names including the history of redemption model, the redemptive-historical model, or the salvation-history model. While each of these attempts has admirably contributed to the knowledge of Scripture, they have also failed to identify an integral link between creation and redemption that carries the weight of the entire biblical canon.

This article will demonstrate inadequacies of the redemptive-historical model as a center for biblical theology and will argue for a doxological-historical model, one that emphasizes the theme of God’s glory throughout canonical history, as the most capable heuristic framework. Such a theme will be shown as broad enough to subsume the landscape of Scripture, theology, and ethics yet specific enough to connect creation and redemption. The main thesis will drive the discussion: God is glorious, so he created. He created so he could redeem. He redeemed so he could re-create. He re-created so he is glorified in all creation. Viewing Scripture as primarily doxological rather than redemptive safeguards God’s place as the sovereign who receives glory, providing a vital link connecting creation to redemption to re-creation.

The Redemptive-Historical Model

Viewing the history of redemption as the overarching framework of Scripture remains the most common approach to biblical theology in modern evangelicalism.[2] Goldsworthy defines the method as “the recognition that the books of the Bible, while not being uniformly historical in form, all relate to an overarching history in which God acts to bring salvation to his people.”[3] Underscoring its prominence in evangelicalism, Yarbrough, who readily admits the term “salvation-history” and its cognates do not appear in Scripture, surveyed over a dozen theologians who have advanced the idea that salvation-history is the main Christian paradigm through which to view the Bible.[4] Crossway’s ESV Expository Commentary has framed their series as “robustly biblical-theological,” by which they mean “reading the Bible as diverse yet bearing an overarching unity, narrating a single storyline of redemption culminating in Christ.”[5]

Modern evangelical scholarship virtually assumes this approach to the Bible, viewing humanity’s redemption as the ultimate paradigm through which to understand all other biblical themes. In fact, in Klink and Lockett’s helpful survey of approaches to biblical theology, their analysis of a model labeled “history of redemption” effectively presupposes that any approach to Scripture as a progressive disclosure upon historical lines is the historical-redemptive approach.[6] If one understands the Bible as a diachronic succession of God’s special revelation deposited throughout time—or in more familiar terms, progressive revelation—one is by default a member of the redemptive-historical school. No other themes progressing throughout canonical history rival this approach.

In a similar vein, Yarbrough elevates the importance of the redemptive-historical approach to mountainous heights by claiming that if a “theologian doubts that the redemptive events recounted in Scripture happened, or that they bear the soteriological weight that biblical writers place on them, then the theologian will gravitate to some other emphasis or thematic center.”[7] This implies that only by approaching Scripture through a presupposed redemptive-historical lens one may agree that the redemptive events in the Bible are historically factual. Any other emphasis or center outside of the theme of salvation apparently dismisses Scripture’s testimony of redemption.

Insufficiencies With The Redemptive-Historical Model

No doubt soteriology plays a major role in the Bible. Scholars contending for such an emphasis are to be commended for not reducing or fragmenting Scripture’s storyline into debates on historical-critical matters, calling into question not only dates and authors of canonical books but any theology of salvation in God through Christ. For this reason J. C. K. von Hofmann coined the term “salvation-history” (Heilsgeschichte) as a response to the reconstructionist scholars of Germany who essentially denied anything supernatural vis-à-vis Scripture.[8] Von Hoffman’s emphasis on God’s redeeming activity in the world introduced a refreshing corrective in the increasingly liberal milieu that characterized his day.

Positives of the redemptive-historical model notwithstanding, it is now worth asking, Does such a focus on humanity’s salvation offer an understanding robust enough to encapsulate all of Scripture? Furthermore, does such an approach to Scripture, even if unintentional, elevate humans over God? In light of these questions this article argues that the theme of humanity’s salvation—even though a prominent biblical theme—is nevertheless inadequate as the Bible’s center or overarching theme. In so doing, this article also points out that viewing Scripture as a primary way to trace salvation-history cannot build a bridge that links creation to redemption to re-creation. The only theme able to subsume the entirety of Scripture and, more specifically, a theme that can connect the doctrines of creation and redemption is God’s glory.

Before offering critiques, caveats must be stated. Scholars opting for redemptive-historical readings do not disparage emphasizing God’s glory in Scripture. No one views the biblical themes of redemption and glory as competing or opposing ideas. Moreover, not all who view Scripture as a redemptive narrative restrict the benefits of salvation solely to humanity. Some advocates widen it to cosmic redemption as well, “as far as the curse is found.”[9] Nevertheless, previous models that have attempted to underscore doxology inevitably fall short due to their overt focus on soteriology.[10]

These redemptive-historical advocates seem to find difficulty in remaining consistent with the notion that Scripture mainly tells the history of salvation. For example, Kimble and Spellman suggest that the Bible’s “grand storyline” is the “narration and interpretation of redemptive history.”[11] Yet later they declare that the Bible has one major plot: “The display of God’s glory in creation amongst a people who will reflect that glory and dwell with him forever.”[12] Likewise, Gladd discloses the purpose for his biblical theology: to “skim the redemptive-historical cream off the top.”[13] However, he also contends, “God’s glory is at the center of the created order.”[14] While both glory and redemption are related, even complimentary, concepts, they are distinct categories in Scripture. In simple terms one is bigger than the other. The glory of God, as progressing throughout the canon and manifested throughout history, subsumes humanity’s history of redemption. The Bible, therefore, conveys a history of God revealing himself rather than a history of humanity.

This distinction between redemption and glory should not be surprising. The same applies to distinct, yet related, biblical entities such as Israel and the church, and the church and the kingdom of God. Even the biblical covenants, while united in the promises of God, nevertheless remain distinct, retaining their unique purposes and economies. Indeed, distinctions within unity are customary of divine revelation breathed out by the God whose ontology is eternally distinct within unity. Consequently, a balanced biblical theology will do well not to emphasize one distinction to the exclusion or confusion of another.

Such is the unintended result of well-meaning scholars who fail to maintain consistency when offering a center, metanarrative, or interpretative approach that promotes salvation-history as the Bible’s main focus. While salvation is certainly a major theme in Scripture, it is not the primary theme—God’s glory manifested throughout the progress of canonical history is. When the two frameworks are compared, it becomes clear that the redemptive-historical model cannot bear the weight of the entire biblical canon. It is insufficient vis-à-vis the canon and theology, and it falls short of offering a specific link between creation and redemption.

Canonical Shortcomings

The redemptive-historical model tends to be individualistic and restrictive. While individual salvation is revealed in the biblical covenants, for example, some of them specifically denote national or priestly redemption. For instance, the Phineas covenant promises the perpetuation of the corporate Levitical priesthood (Lev 25:13), and the New Covenant promises a corporate restoration for national Israel (Jer 31:31–34). Moreover, a sizeable section of the biblical corpora, namely the wisdom writings, does not mention an explicit theme of salvation. Song of Solomon, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes remain relatively silent concerning any explicit redemption theme. House includes “salvation-history” as one of the more difficult approaches to maintain in Scripture, one that often reflects the interpreter rather than the Bible itself. He notes, “Perhaps the most evident example of books being neglected [in such models] is the omission of the Writings in some OT theologies and biblical theologies.”[15] He adds, “Many of the Psalms, Job, Proverbs and Esther do not overtly address salvation-history.”[16]

Further, attempting to trace an overarching theme of salvation-history is restricted to a certain canonical order. Scholars have pointed out that the redemptive-historical approach largely ignores the shape of the Hebrew Tanak. “The primary reason,” observes Sailhamer, “is that the Tanak does not always follow the history of salvation.”[17] In the Hebrew Bible, Ruth follows Proverbs (rather than Judges), and Chronicles is either placed with the Psalms or in most cases closes out the Tanak.[18] Thus, if one were to begin with the Hebrew canon, the unity of the Old and New Testaments cannot be tied together by a redemptive-historical approach that seeks to trace the exit from ancient Judaism into Christianity. Its shape does not allow it.

Finally, recognizing earlier noted caveats, the redemptive-historical model cannot account for the latter New Testament canon. That is, the history of humanity’s salvation stops with Jesus Christ and his work of redemption. Yet the canonical witness stretches beyond the salvation Christ brings to the eternal state (Rev 21–22). In other words, humanity’s (or creation’s) redemption no longer remains necessary in the new heavens and the new earth. Thus, salvation history stops short of the last portion of the biblical canon. In the end the redemptive-historical model, though admirable in pointing to and exalting Christ, nevertheless falls short of offering a robust canonical paradigm that reaches past individuals, accounts for the entirety of the Old Testament canon, and extends to the end of the New Testament canon.

Theological Shortcomings

The redemptive-historical model is also limited in its theological offering. By focusing on humanity’s redemption, crucial biblical themes are dismissed, overlooked, or absorbed into a presupposed salvation-history. Both Testaments say a great deal about subjects other than redemption. They testify to the angelic realm (Gen 6:1–2; Job 1:6–12; 2:1–7; 38:7; Pss 103:20–21; 148:1–2; Luke 2:8–15; 1 Cor 6:3; Jude 6; Rev 2–22), the creation and moving of nations and cultures (Gen 10–11; Dan 7; Acts 17:22–26), and the animal kingdom and all of nature (Gen 1; Job 39; Pss 19:1–6; 50:1–2; Prov 12:10–11; 30:4). The prophetic books, for example, do not just prophesy about salvation in Christ but also foretell end-time events (Isa 11; 60–66; Dan 12; Amos 9; Zech 14; Rev 19–22). Noting the Old Testament’s emphasis on “eschatological-prophetic theology,” Wells observes that “the OT is far more than a record of salvation-history that must be reconstructed, interpreted, and reread by the NT authors and today’s biblical theologian.”[19] Ironically, by restricting Scripture’s storyline to humanity’s salvation throughout history, Scripture’s biggest character—God himself—can strangely be overlooked. Such was the impetus behind House’s Old Testament Theology, which structures all of the Old Testament canon around the character of God, not any one theme related to humanity.[20] Whereas the history of redemption is limited, God and his glory bridge the whole Bible, subsuming every topic. This is possible because glory’s source is God. Because God is glorious, he created and redeemed for his glory.

Thematic Shortcomings

This final critique of the redemptive-historical model addresses the integral link between creation and redemption. Viewing all Scripture through this paradigm cannot provide an actual link that connects creation to redemption. In other words, to say, “the history of redemption is the link between creation and redemption” is to offer no link at all. It is tantamount to tautology and is as redundant as it is circular. Something outside the category of humanity’s salvation must connect humanity’s creation to their redemption. Paul’s letter to the Romans provides such a link. After the apostle delivered his ordo salutis in chapter 8, he specifically linked the salvation of man by way of exalting Christ: “But, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us” (v. 37, emphasis added).[21] God in Christ is the emphasis, not humanity. Paul later ended in explicit doxology: “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen” (11:36, emphasis added). Only the theme of God’s glory can advance creation to redemption. The glorious God created so he could redeem and be glorified by his creation.

A Consistent Doxological-Historical Approach

Against the backdrop of the redemptive-historical model, this article argues for an approach that views God’s glory progressing through canonical history as the only theme large enough to subsume all of Scripture. This approach, called “doxological-historical,” views Scripture primarily as the revealed history of God’s glory. God’s glory is the only theme that can be consistently maintained as the main biblical theme, center, or metanarrative. Moreover, by its emphasis on glory, it provides a crucial link connecting creation to redemption (both individual and corporate). Further support for a “doxological-historical” approach over a “redemptive-historical” model includes: (1) the false dichotomization of “actual history” and “redemptive history” (Heilsgeschichte) stemming from the widely influential approaches of previous Old Testament scholars,[22] and (2) the unfortunate tendency to elevate humanity’s redemption in contemporary evangelical scholarship to such a height that the Bible can be mistaken as human-centered rather than God-centered. As Paul made clear, all things were created “for” (εἰς) Christ (Col 1:16)—even humanity’s redemption being “to the praise of His glory” (Eph 1:12, 14). The glory of God is, according to Paul, the goal of salvation. As such, Scripture’s salvation-history theme, as prominent as it is, is itself trumped by the Bible’s doxological focus. God’s glory is the supreme theme carried throughout history via the covenants, the kingdom of God, judgment, promise-fulfillment, and every other theme previously offered as centers to biblical theology. Redemption, certainly a major biblical reality, is itself subsumed under God’s glory. As such, a doxological-historical approach not only provides the crucial link between creation and redemption and discloses the goal for redemption, but it is also the major unifying theme carried throughout all of Scripture.[23]

Morgan points out, “In a way that is consistent but by no means uniform, every major section of Scripture addresses the glory of God”; he lists examples from the Law, Prophets, Writings, Gospels, Acts, Pauline Epistles, General Epistles, and Revelation.[24] Similarly, Kimble and Spellman, who earlier emphasized the history of redemption, nevertheless correctly observe: “The glory of God . . . shapes the whole of the grand narrative of Scripture.”[25] The biblical witness exalts the God of glory, who created so he could redeem and who re-creates so all might glorify him. Consequently, God’s glory progresses historically throughout the canon, providing the only consistent model by which to center biblical theology. In sum, where the theme of humanity’s redemption falls short of unifying Scripture—whether canonically, theologically, or thematically—God’s glory encompasses it all as his glory progresses throughout the Bible’s storyline. Indeed, all things in creation—especially the Christian life—are to be done to the glory of God (1 Cor 10:31). God’s glory frames Scripture, theology, and Christian ethics.

Glory Connects Creation To Redemption To Re-Creation

This article has argued that only a theme underscoring God’s glory throughout canonical history is large enough to subsume the landscape of Scripture and also specific enough to provide the crucial link between creation, redemption, and the world’s re-creation. The glory of God is the one consistent theme running through the creation of humanity (Ps 8:5), the redemption of humanity (21:5), and the world’s re-creation (Matt 19:28; Rom 8:20–21). As the heavens declare the glory of God (Ps 19:1), God’s glory encapsulates all the earth (57:11).

As the final capstone to biblical revelation, a newly created or restored (redeemed) existence on earth is presented where “the glory of God gives its light, and its lamp is the Lamb” (Rev 21:23). Thus, all of creation ends its groaning and enjoys its glorified state forever (cf. Rom 8:18, 20). As such, the glorification of God throughout history is not only the crucial link between creation and redemption (both individual and global) but also the primary theme or center of biblical theology. To further demonstrate this, it is helpful to engage Scripture’s own testimony of its glory theme and the connection it makes to salvation.

The biblical use of “glory” has an interesting history of transition.[26] The concept of glory originated with the Hebrew כבד, which carries a semantic range from “heavy” to “honor” to “visible splendor.”[27] The Septuagint writers adopted a term known in secular Greek, δοκέω (“to think”), to translate כבד, giving it the nuance of a “high opinion” (thus, δοξάζω), as in to honor someone, usually God himself (e.g., Exod 14:18). In addition, the Septuagint retained the Hebrew sense of “visible splendor.” For example, in Exodus 33:22 Yahweh allowed Moses to see his δόξα (“glory” or “visible splendor”) as it passed by.[28]

The New Testament, especially John, advances the meaning of “visible splendor” for glory as God’s visible splendor itself serves as a revelation; that is, “glory” reveals God’s character and power in tangible and dramatic expression. Jesus’s prayer to the Father regarding his impending death on a cross clearly demonstrates this as Jesus asks that God “glorify” (or reveal) the Son so that the Son may “glorify” (or reveal) the Father (John 17:1). Even Jesus’s death, which secured salvation for all who believe, upheld the glory of God as its ultimate purpose. These two realities—Jesus and glory—are not to be viewed in competition with one another. Rather, the canonical Gospels present glory as a phenomenon of visible splendor that characterized Jesus’s entire ontology: from his preexistence (John 12:41; 17:5; cf. Isa 6:1), to his incarnation (John 1:14), to his earthly ministry (2:11; 9:3; 11:4), to his death and resurrection (Luke 24:26), to his return to earth (Matt 24:30; 25:31).

Though Scripture’s use of the term “glory” is clearly widespread, God’s glory is not restricted merely to the word “glory.” The majesty and revealing of God’s character and power transcend any single word and connect all of Christian theology. As Morgan contends, “Every major doctrine is significantly related to [God’s glory]” and includes examples about revelation, God, humanity, sin, Christ, salvation, the church, and eschatology.[29] Clearly the glory of God progresses through all of biblical history, manifesting God’s presence from creation (Rom 1:20) through redemption (Exod 15:13) to re-creation (Rev 21:10–11).

While God’s glory is clearly connected to the atonement and redemption, the New Testament does not present them on equal footing. For example, in Romans 3:23–26 Paul conceptualizes a doxological priority over humanity’s salvation by pointing out that Jesus’s atonement occurred to “show” or “indicate” (ἔνδειξις) God’s righteousness. That is, God had not forgotten or overlooked humanity’s sins but put forth Christ as the payment for them, safeguarding his own righteousness. The ultimate purpose of Christ’s death was to glorify or reveal God’s righteousness first, with salvation following second. In addition, Paul’s most explicit declaration of God’s glory subsuming man’s redemption is in Ephesians. There, the priority of God’s glory is evidenced as the very purpose for man’s redemption, as in 1:12, “So that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to/for [εἰς] the praise of his glory,” and 1:14, “[The Holy Spirit] is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to/for [εἰς] the praise of his glory.”[30]

God’s glory, therefore, not only connects the creation to the fall to redemption but subsumes it. It is the goal or telos. Gladd was correct that “[God] redeemed us so that we might faithfully represent him on the earth and bring him glory in all that we say and do.”[31] Or in Paul’s words, “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor 10:31). The progression in Scripture evidences that God is glorious, so he created. He created so he could redeem. He redeemed so he could re-create. He re-created so he is glorified in all creation. In the end, God is glorified in all of it as his glory progresses throughout the biblical canon.

Conclusion

This article has demonstrated that the most commonly assumed framework in biblical theology, the redemptive-historical model, provides an inadequate central theme or paradigm to account for all of Scripture. Rather, only a doxological-historical framework, which emphasizes the theme of God’s glory as it progresses throughout canonical history, is broad enough to subsume the landscape of Scripture, theology, and ethics and to connect creation to redemption to re-creation.

Viewing Scripture as primarily doxological rather than redemptive safeguards God’s place in creation as the ultimate sovereign, who receives glory from all of his creation, chiefly underscored by his creation and redemption of the elect in Christ. Implementing a doxological-historical approach to Scripture reveals a dramatic progression of glory throughout the canon, one sourced in God.

Notes

1. Scholars advocating for “covenant” as a center for biblical theology include Walter Eichrodt, Theology of the Old Testament, trans. J. A. Baker, vol. 1, Old Testament Library (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1961); Eugene H. Merrill, Everlasting Dominion: A Theology of the Old Testament (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2006); and Thomas E. McComiskey, The Covenants of Promise: A Theology of the Old Testament Covenants (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2019). Arguing for a “promise” and “promise-fulfillment” model is Walter C. Kaiser Jr., Toward an Old Testament Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1978) and The Promise-Plan of God: A Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008). Those advancing a “kingdom” theme for Scripture’s overarching metanarrative (with various nuances) include George Eldon Ladd, A Theology of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993); Alva J. McClain, Greatness of the Kingdom: An Inductive Study of the Kingdom of God (Winona Lake, IN: BMH Books, 2001); and Michael J. Vlach, He Will Reign: A Biblical Theology of the Kingdom of God (Silverton, OR: Lampion Press, 2017). Finally, a hybrid approach that views Scripture’s kingdom theme as primarily advanced through its covenant theme while ultimately subsumed by a redemptive-historical paradigm is Stephen J. Wellum and Peter J. Gentry, Kingdom through Covenant: A Biblical-Theological Understanding of the Covenants (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2018).
2. Albert Wolters states the Christian metanarrative is “to refer to the overall story told by the Christian Scriptures . . . which makes possible the ‘redemptive-historical’ level of biblical interpretation.” “Metanarrative,” in Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible, ed. Kevin J. Vanhoozer (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005), 506–7.
3. Graeme Goldsworthy, “Relationship of Old Testament and New Testament,” in New Dictionary of Biblical Theology, ed. T. Desmond Alexander and Brian S. Rosner (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 86.
4. Robert W. Yarbrough, “Salvation History,” in God’s Glory Revealed in Christ: Essays on Biblical Theology in Honor of Thomas R. Schreiner, ed. Denny Burk, James M. Hamilton Jr., and Brian Vickers (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Academic, 2019), 45–57.
5. Iain M. Duguid, James M. Hamilton Jr., and Jay Sklar, eds., “Preface,” in ESV Expository Commentary, 12 vols. planned (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2018). Emphasis added.
6. See Edward W. Klink III and Darian R. Lockett, Understanding Biblical Theology: A Comparison of Theory and Practice (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2012), 59–89. For their exemplar representative of the history of redemption approach, Klink and Lockett chose D. A. Carson. Tellingly, they spend the bulk of their treatment addressing Carson’s distinctions between biblical and systematic theologies, with only a few passing remarks related to the actual history of redemption approach to Scripture. In doing so, they appear to assume that the history of redemption approach subsumes every subject related to Carson without explicit demonstration.
7. Yarbrough, “Salvation History,” 56.
8. A. Josef Greig, “A Critical Note on the Origin of the Term Heilsgeschichte,” Expository Times 87.4 (1976): 118–19.
9. Glenn Kreider, email to the author, January 22, 2021.
10. Notable recent examples that emphasize God’s glory (to a point) include James M. Hamilton Jr., God’s Glory through Salvation in Judgment: A Biblical Theology (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010); and J. Scott Duvall and J. Daniel Hays, God’s Relational Presence: The Cohesive Center of Biblical Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2019).
11. Jeremy M. Kimble and Ched Spellman, Invitation to Biblical Theology: Exploring the Shape, Storyline, and Themes of Scripture, Invitation to Theological Studies (Grand Rapids: Kregel Academic, 2020), 9.
12. Kimble and Spellman, 251.
13. Benjamin L. Gladd, From Adam and Israel to the Church: A Biblical Theology of the People of God (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2019), 2.
14. Gladd, 10.
15. Paul R. House, “Steps toward a Program for the Future,” in Biblical Theology: Retrospect and Prospect, ed. Scott J. Hafemann (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002), 274.
16. House, 274.
17. John H. Sailhamer, “Biblical Theology and the Composition of the Hebrew Bible,” in Biblical Theology: Retrospect and Prospect, 33.
18. “It remakes students’ minds to read Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings as the Former Prophets rather than as the Historical Books. It alters one’s perception of Ruth if one reads Ruth as the successor to Proverbs or Judges. Reading strategies do matter.” House, “Steps,” 269.
19. M. Jay Wells, “Figural Representation and Canonical Unity,” in Biblical Theology: Retrospect and Prospect, 124.
20. Paul R. House, Old Testament Theology (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2018).
21. All Scripture quotations are from the ESV.
22. Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament Theology, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1962). Cf. Graeme Goldsworthy, “Relationship of Old Testament and New Testament,” 87. Darian Lockett notes, “The problem is that the salvation-historical concept argues the Bible’s theological subject matter can be limited to a reconstructed special (salvation) history.” “Limitations of a Purely Salvation-historical Approach to Biblical Theology,” Horizons in Biblical Theology 39.2 (2017): 230.
23. See Cory M. Marsh, “A Dynamic Relationship: Christ, the Covenants, and Israel,” The Master’s Seminary Journal 30.2 (2019): 263–65, where I first proposed this argument vis-à-vis the biblical covenants through a “doxological-redemptive” theme. However, I do call attention to the possibility of Scripture’s “doxological-historical” priority, which I have since developed and argue here.
24. Christopher W. Morgan, “Toward a Theology of the Glory of God,” in The Glory of God, ed. Christopher W. Morgan and Robert A. Peterson, Theology in Community 2 (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010), 154. Emphasis added.
25. Kimble and Spellman, Invitation, 252.
26. See the various essays in Morgan and Peterson, eds., Glory of God. Moreover, Richard Bauckham, Gospel of Glory: Major Themes in Johannine Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2015), 44–46, provides helpful charts and breakdowns of the word’s usage in the Masoretic Text, Septuagint, and Greek New Testament.
27. Ludwig Koehler, Walter Baumgartner, and Johann Jakob Stamm, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, trans. and ed. M. E. J. Richardson (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 2:455.
28. For further discussion on the glory word group, see Moisés Silva, ed., New International Dictionary of Theology and Exegesis, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2014), 1:761–67.
29. Morgan, Glory of God, 154. Morgan charts fifteen separate turning points of God’s glory revealed throughout biblical history.
30. Cf. Cleon L. Rogers Jr. and Cleon L. Rogers III, The New Linguistic and Exegetical Key to the Greek New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998), 435, emphasis added.
31. Gladd, Adam and Israel to the Church, 159.

Jesus And Paul’s Gospel: Perpetuating The Early Church Tradition

By Crhistian D. Cardona

[Crhistian D. Cardona is Research Master in Religion and Theology at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands.]

Abstract

The debate about the Jesus tradition versus Paul’s gospel has passed through different stages: from total discontinuity to a more significant continuity, and then to a measured delimitation of such continuity. The present study is located in this last stage and focuses on Paul’s use of the Jesus tradition. It argues that Paul’s emphasis on the Easter events and his interpretation of them clearly indicates his awareness of the Jesus tradition and his projection of it in his own way.

* * *

The debate about Paul and the Jesus tradition, which is the story of Jesus’s life, ministry, teachings and sayings, passion, death, and resurrection, goes back to the year 1831, when F. C. Baur, a Tübingen scholar, started to challenge the continuity between Jesus and Paul. His main premise was that Paul “developed his doctrine in complete opposition to that of the primitive Christian community.”[1] This trend was followed by Wendt and Wrede, who sustained that Paul went further than Jesus while focusing more on the means of salvation than on Jesus’s teachings about pure piety (Wendt), thus taking Christianity to the next level (Wrede).[2] In the early twentieth century, Rudolf Bultmann continued the trend started by Baur, followed by Walter Schmithals and in the modern era by Francis Wright Beare, Lloyd Gaston, Nikolaus Walter, Frans Neirynck, and others.

Parallel to those arguing for the discontinuity of the Jesus tradition in Paul were those who claimed continuity. In the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, scholars such as Heinrich Paret, Hermann von Soden, Arthur Titius, Harry Kennedy, Arnold Rüegg, Heinrich Julius Holtzmann, Johannes Weiss, William Davies, Hans Windisch, and Archibald M. Hunter proposed the continuity of the Jesus tradition in Paul from different grounds. The majority looked for parallels between the sayings of Jesus contained in the Gospels and the Pauline Letters.[3]

The increasing amount of research on Paul and the Jesus tradition revealed an interesting shift from the initial question. Those arguing for continuity not only asked the question of the continuity of the Jesus tradition in Paul, but they also started to look for parallels in order to find the origin of Paul’s knowledge of that tradition.[4] As a result, many passages in Paul’s letters were recognized as either direct references or allusions to the Jesus tradition. However, this impressive number of references generated doubts not only among the opponents of continuity but also within the circle of scholars who favored it. For instance, scholars such as Victor Paul Furnish, Dale C. Allison Jr., David Wenham, and Michael B. Thompson reduced the number of parallels between the Jesus tradition and Paul, thus generating more agreement among scholars.[5]

In recent years, a different approach to the debate has arisen. This approach has two focuses: first, to describe how Paul uses the Jesus tradition within his writings,[6] and second, to explain why he does not mention the Jesus tradition in his writings as much as the Synoptic Gospels do.[7] This type of approach helps to move the debate from quicksand to solid ground. Furnish rightly affirms that “scholars must concentrate not on what or how much Paul knew about the historical Jesus, but rather on the way he employed and applied the knowledge he did have, and what place the Jesus of history had in relation to the heart and centre of his preaching.”[8]

The present study helps with the two aims proposed by Furnish by focusing on Paul’s perception and understanding of his gospel.[9] The main presupposition in this study is that Paul knew the Jesus tradition, and the main objective is to explain (in part) the role of this tradition in his preaching about Jesus, that is, its impact on the way Paul perceived the gospel. In addition, the present study helps locate Paul’s gospel within the early church tradition about Jesus and its efforts to preserve it.

Origin And Nature Of Paul’s Gospel

Undoubtedly, any attempt to explain the origin of Paul’s gospel should take Galatians 1 into consideration. In verses 11–12, Paul categorically argues that his gospel “is not according to man”[10] because he received it “through a revelation of Jesus Christ.” The genitive in the last phrase (᾽Ιησοῦ Χριστοῦ) can imply that the gospel he received was of Jesus Christ (means: subjective genitive) or about Jesus Christ (content: objective genitive). The majority of scholars favor the second option on the basis of verses 15–16, where Paul says that God is the revealer and Christ is the one being revealed. Hence, the content of the revelation on the Damascus road is Jesus Christ.[11] Others prefer to take this phrase as a subjective genitive based on Paul’s use of the phrase δι᾽ ἀποκαλύψεως that parallels the phrase διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ in verse 1, where Christ is said to be the agent of Paul’s apostleship. Thus, the revelation in verse 12 implies that Christ is the source (means) of Paul’s revelation.[12] However, the context may suggest both interpretations.[13]

First, Paul offers clear hints that Christ is directly connected to his gospel; in fact, he could say that “Jesus Christ is the gospel.” For him, there is no other gospel but “the gospel of Christ” (v. 7), and the person who was revealed to him was “the son of God” (v. 16). The whole Epistle to the Galatians revolves around the premise that justification is possible only “through faith in Jesus Christ” (2:16). This is the gospel that Paul initially preached to the Galatians and the one to which he was holding in the present (1:8–9). Paul elsewhere connects the revelation of a mystery with the gospel of Christ (Rom 16:25; cf. Eph 3:1–5; Col 1:26–27),[14] which suggests that the revelation in 1:12 is indeed a revelation of the content of his gospel, the mystery about Jesus Christ.

Second, it is hard to deny that one of Paul’s major points in Galatians 1–2 is that his gospel has a divine origin (source). He categorically affirms that his gospel “is not according to man” (1:11) nor “received from man” (v. 12a). Here, Paul is talking about source and not content. His gospel is not from a human source. This interpretation allows a reference to the source in the phrase “through a revelation of Jesus Christ” (v. 12c). If his gospel does not have a human origin then the most natural question is, What is the source of Paul’s gospel? to which his answer is, Jesus Christ.[15] Moreover, the fact that he does not bestow any credit on the apostles, as far as the origin of his gospel is concerned (1:17–24; 2:1–9), indicates not so much that his gospel is contrary to what they preached[16] but that he did not receive it from them. It has a divine origin.[17]

Origin Of Paul’s Gospel

At first sight, the previous interpretation makes the connection between Paul’s gospel and the early church’s Jesus tradition difficult. If the gospel Paul preaches has a divine origin, and none of those within the circle of apostles is connected to this origin, then it follows that Paul does not know the Jesus tradition handed down by the apostolic church and portrayed in documents such as the Synoptic Gospels. However, this way of thinking overlooks essential aspects in Paul’s argument. At no time did Paul suggest a sharp contrast or discontinuity between the content of his gospel and the gospel of the apostles. What is implied is a contrast in the source. This is not in the sense that the apostles’ gospel is not divine but in the sense that his gospel is not taught through human agency (Gal 1:17).

After affirming that he did not receive his gospel from the apostles (v. 17), Paul mentioned that he met Peter and James three years after his experience in Damascus (vv. 18–19) and that fourteen years later he went again to visit the church and the leaders at Jerusalem (2:1). Dunn concludes that the verb ἱστορῆσαι (“to visit,” 1:18) carries the idea of visiting Peter “for the purpose of inquiry.”[18] It is obvious on the basis of 1:11–12 that such an inquiry was not about the content of his gospel, since Paul knew that “the revelation of Christ for the proclamation of Christ to the Gentiles was complete.”[19] It is likely though that he wanted to be acquainted with that part of the Jesus tradition unknown to him.[20]

Similarly, Paul did not submit his gospel to the leaders of the church in Jerusalem (2:1–2) to receive their approval,[21] for that would equate to doubting the source of his gospel. He let them know about his newly received gospel in order to find common points and avoid possible discrepancies that could appear along the way because their evangelistic targets were different (1:7, 9). This point is confirmed by the outcome of the meeting: “recognizing the grace that had been given to me . . . [they] gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship” (v. 9).[22]

Some might take Ephesians 2:20 to suggest that Paul’s gospel was dependent not only on Christ but also on the apostolic tradition. Here the metaphor of a building reveals to the community that their foundation as the church of Christ rests on solid ground: the apostles, prophets, and Christ the cornerstone. Muddiman indicates that the apostolic tradition plays a significant role in the edification of the community, since they were the ones who interpreted the Christ event:

So the Church began to realize that the Jesus tradition could be dangerously opaque and open to distortions, unless it was officially interpreted in the light of the teaching of apostles, like Paul, James the Lord’s brother, Peter and John. Adherence to the tradition of the apostles and their legitimate successors, along with an upright moral life, became the litmus tests of right belief.[23]

As already mentioned, Paul was acquainted with the apostolic tradition about Jesus; however, this does not mean that his gospel found its origin there. In the words of Muddiman, the reference to “apostles and prophets” in Ephesians 2:20 is to be understood as “the gifts of the exalted Christ to the Church”[24] and not narrowly to the circle of the twelve. Thus, Paul and other leaders of the early church were administrators of the Jesus tradition, not only the twelve. They were not to take the place of Christ but to work alongside him. In a way, they are the first stones of the new building[25] and Christ its binding element.

The Nature Of Paul’s Gospel And The Jesus Tradition

To say that the content of Paul’s message originated in a divine revelation is not to say that there is a discrepancy between his gospel, the gospel proclaimed by the rest of the apostles, and the Jesus tradition. Once the nature of Paul’s gospel is correctly understood, then the apparent differences are blurred and the similarities become more evident.

What gospel did Paul receive on the Damascus road? The term εὐαγγέλιον is generally used by Paul to refer to “the content of his apostolic message.”[26] When εὐαγγέλιον is combined with the noun Χριστός, the phrase clearly refers to the content of his message: “the gospel of Christ” (Rom 15:19; 1 Cor 9:12; 2 Cor 2:12; 9:13; 10:14; Gal 1:7; Phil 1:27; 1 Thess 3:2).[27] This is the best label for his preaching.[28] When Paul defends “the gospel of Christ” in Galatians 1, this is an apology for the nature of his proclamation. There is no gospel without Jesus Christ, and regardless of the form of a particular proclamation, if Christ is not the center, then that is another gospel (vv. 6–7) and another Jesus (2 Cor 11:3–4). For this reason, the gospel of Christ is usually associated with power (Rom 1:6; 15:19; 1 Cor 1:18, 23–24; 1 Thess 1:5; 2 Tim 1:8). Therefore, destruction and disintegration of the gospel are to be expected when the figure of Jesus Christ is absent.

This Christ-centered gospel is not unique to Paul. For instance, in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul talks about the eschatological resurrection and places Christ at the center of the discussion while affirming that the apostles share in the Christocentric proclamation of the gospel: “Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed” (v. 11).[29] What seems to be peculiar to Paul’s gospel is his evangelistic target. While the apostles focus their mission on “the circumcised” (Jews), his evangelistic efforts are directed towards “the uncircumcised” (Gal 2:7–8). Notice that in his major letters, Paul always introduces his Christ-centered gospel together with his target, “the Gentiles” (τοῖς ἔθνεσιν; Rom 1:5, 13; 15:16; 1 Cor 1:23; Gal 1:6; 2:2; cf. Eph 3:8; Col 1:27; 2 Tim 4:17). He even labels himself as “the apostle to the Gentiles” (Rom 11:13; cf. 1 Tim 2:7).[30] From here, the significance of Paul’s gospel is seen in terms of both content and apostleship (Acts 9:15; 22:17–21; 26:16–23; Gal 1:16).[31]

Another significant aspect of Paul’s gospel is his emphasis on the events surrounding Easter. Although the majority of the debate on Paul and the Jesus tradition has focused more on Jesus’s sayings, events such as the Last Supper, the death of Christ, and his resurrection should be considered part of that tradition as well.[32] Walter approaches the debate with a “minimal hypothesis,” or from a middle ground, and claims that “Paul may have known more sayings of Jesus than are directly attested in his letters.”[33] However, not only sayings, which are a minimum part of what Paul could have known about Jesus,[34] but also historical facts like the Easter events[35] shaped his thought (theology) and behavior (praxis).

As mentioned before, Paul’s visit to Peter in particular (and also James; Gal 1:18–19) was not a social call but was informative. Peter probably informed Paul about the Jesus tradition unknown to him. Perhaps, without losing sight of the divine origin of his gospel, this is the part of the tradition that he recalls in 1 Corinthians 15:1–11. In verse 3, he says, “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received.” The verb παραλαμβάνω is used by Paul in the sense of “receiving” or “taking from” (1 Cor 11:23; 15:1, 3; Gal 1:9, 12; Phil 4:9; Col 2:6; 4:17; 1 Thess 2:13; 4:1; 2 Thess 3:6).[36] With three exceptions (Col 2:6; 4:17; 1 Thess 4:1), the usage of παραλαμβάνω might be restricted to the Jesus tradition.[37] Though the phrase “I received from the Lord” (1 Cor 11:23) might seem to downplay any human intervention, the language of tradition (παραλαμβάνω and παραδίδωμι) suggests that indeed Paul considers some of the early Christians as human instruments in this process of transmission of the tradition, but of course, he establishes the Lord as the ultimate source of the tradition.[38]

Paul saw himself as part of the transmission of the Jesus tradition. This was made evident through his implementation of the verb παραδίδωμι, “hand over” or “deliver.”[39] He exhorted the Corinthians to maintain the traditions, παραδόσεις, as “I delivered them to you” (παρέδωκα, 11:2)—what he received as part of the Jesus tradition that he also “delivered” (παρέδωκα, v. 23; 15:3).[40] Thus, Paul’s gospel and the Jesus tradition handed over by him were in harmony with the early church’s teaching and proclamation of the Jesus tradition. This was a continuation of their legacy.

Notice that focus on the Easter events is not unique to Paul. The Synoptic Gospels are evidence that there was a vast awareness of the pre-Easter and post-Easter events (Matt 26–28; Mark 14–16; Luke 22–24). Furnish claims that “at first, certain of those traditions would have been known even beyond the circle of Jesus’ own followers.”[41] Hollander also believes that, besides Paul, there were other Christians “who were telling and writing down stories about the things Jesus said and did while on earth.”[42] The existence of the so-called noncanonical gospels (e.g., Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Peter, Gospel of Judas, Gospel of Hebrews)[43] and other texts from the first and second centuries reflect the intent of some communities in writing about the historical Jesus.[44] This then points to the following question, In which way is Paul’s gospel and portrayal of the tradition of Jesus unique?

This uniqueness could be seen in two ways: first, the emphasis that Paul puts on the Jesus tradition and to which he limits himself in his letters, and second, his interpretation of the Easter events in light of the revelation at the Damascus road. These two points show that the Jesus tradition reaches new levels in Paul.

Emphasis On The Easter Events

The Pauline Letters reflect Paul’s preference for the events surrounding Easter over other materials. However, this reference is not noticed in part because the Paul-Jesus debate is usually assessed based on how much information from the Synoptic Gospels, the Gospel of Thomas, or the so-called Q is found in Paul’s Letters. This way of proceeding reveals that an important point has been missed, which is that the Pauline Epistles, chronologically speaking, precede this material.[45] If the Gospel of Mark (the first written among the Synoptics) appeared sometime between 65 and 70 AD, then it is appropriate to conclude that “most of the Pauline corpus was already in existence.”[46] That means the Jesus tradition found in Paul’s writings is one of the earliest.

Unlike the Synoptics, Paul does not write much about the sayings or teaching of Jesus.[47] In fact, Paul’s direct mention of Jesus’s sayings is traditionally limited to three passages (cf. 1 Cor 7:10–11; 9:14; and 11:23–25).[48] He instead discusses the Easter events. This is seen in the major Pauline Letters. For instance, Paul mentions the Lord’s Supper in 1 Corinthians 11:23–25 (cf. 10:16). The significance of this passage is not seen in terms of how many times he uses this part of the tradition but in its theological value. For him, the betrayal of Jesus, the breaking of the bread, and the drinking of the cup become a symbol and reminder of Jesus’s sacrifice, which he interweaves with his covenantal theology (11:25; cf. Rom 9:4; 11:27; 1 Cor 3; Gal 3:15, 17; 4:24; Eph 2:12). The Last Supper with all its symbols and meanings is the institution par excellence that points to the cross and perfectly fits with Paul’s theology of salvation (soteriology). From here Paul confidently says, “For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed” (1 Cor 5:7).

From the Easter events, the one that receives the most attention by Paul is the death of Jesus at the cross. To this event, he devotes his meditation and proclamation—“but we preach Christ crucified” (1:23) and “for I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified” (2:2). He draws the Galatians’ attention to the cross (Gal 3:1), which is the only thing he can boast of (6:14). The reason for this emphasis is that the cross is a synonym of power for salvation (Rom 1:16; 1 Cor 1:18, 24). The part of the tradition that says, “Christ died for our sins according to the Scripture” (1 Cor 15:3), is the gospel of Paul in a nutshell, and this is elaborated and explained throughout his writings.[49] He commonly refers to the event of the cross with death language: “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8). Paul is not hesitant to use verbs like ἀποθνῄσκω (“to die,” e.g., 5:6; 5:8; 1 Cor 8:11; 2 Cor 5:14; 1 Thess 4:14) and nouns like θάνατος (“death,” e.g., Rom 5:10; 1 Cor 11:26; Phil 2:8) and αἷμα (“blood,” Rom 3:25; 5:9; 1 Cor 10:16; 11:25; Eph 1:7; Col 1:20)[50] to point to the sacrifice of Christ.[51]

Besides Jesus’s passion and death on the cross, for Paul, the resurrection of Christ marks the completion of his soteriological task. Although this might be the event with which the Synoptics (and John) conclude their narratives of the Jesus tradition, the resurrection is at the beginning of Paul’s theology, and it offers meaning for the rest of his theological system. Without the resurrection, the cross would be void. Jesus not only died, “he was buried” and “was raised on the third day” (1 Cor 15:4). In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul presents his longest exposition on the eschatological resurrection, which serves as the basis for the Easter events.[52] From all the thirty-eight occurrences of ἐγείρω (“raise up”) in the Pauline Epistles that are connected to the resurrection,[53] nineteen are found in 1 Corinthians 15. This shows that Easter is central in Paul’s theology of the resurrection in 1 Corinthians. In fact, he can categorically affirm that “if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, your faith also is vain” (v. 14). At the beginning of two of his major letters, Paul highlights the significance of the resurrection. In Romans 1:4 the resurrection attests to the sonship of Christ (cf. 2 Tim 2:8), and in Galatians 1:1 the Father’s role in raising Jesus from the dead is brought forth in support of Paul’s apostleship. The resurrection is the clearest evidence of the victory over death (Rom 6:9), and salvation can be reached by confessing Jesus’s lordship and resurrection (10:9). Moreover, the exaltation of Christ has its basis in the resurrection (Eph 1:20; cf. Rom 8:34). Like the cross, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is “at the center of Paul’s theology as well as at the center of his experience.”[54]

Therefore, the cross of Christ cannot be separated from the resurrection; both complement each other. For Paul, the sacrifice of Jesus at the cross is the essence of his gospel, but it is a gospel without hope if there is no resurrection. Schreiner rightly states that “the gospel that Paul proclaims centers on the crucified and risen Lord.”[55] Such a connection is articulated in several passages such as the following:

• Romans 6:5: “For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection” (emphasis supplied).
• Romans 8:34: “Who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us” (emphasis supplied).
• 2 Corinthians 5:15: “And He died for all, that they who live should no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf” (emphasis supplied).
• Philippians 3:10: “That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death” (emphasis supplied).

Thus, the Easter events are that part of the Jesus tradition to which Paul renders more attention, even more than to Jesus’s sayings.[56] Of course, this emphasis depends on the circumstantial character of his Epistles. Though Paul knows some of the sayings and teachings of Jesus,[57] the Epistles are simply not the place for such transmission.[58] Paul limits the implementation of the sayings tradition to sections where he deals with ethics,[59] while he draws from the passion narrative when dealing with theological matters.[60] In Luke’s report in Acts 26:22–23, Paul proclaims what is prophesied in the Old Testament—that Christ would suffer and resurrect—and it is this story that is the key to his salvation theology and the focus of the proclamation of the early Christian churches.[61] This part of the Jesus tradition known and proclaimed also by the early church is Paul’s reason for meditation. And such a reflection would eventually give rise to the interpretation of the Easter events.

Interpretation Of The Easter Events

So far, it is clear that Paul’s proclamation of the passion narrative and the resurrection of Jesus Christ is in agreement with the tradition received from the apostolic leaders (1 Cor 15:1–11) and also with God’s revelation at the Damascus road (Gal 1). However, the continuation of the Jesus tradition and its significance for Paul are seen not only in the fact that he centers his gospel on the Easter events but more importantly on his interpretation of these events.[62] For Schnelle, this is evidence that Paul writes history: the fact that he narrates and interprets the Christ event.[63]

For Paul, the revelation of Jesus Christ (Gal 1:14) is crucial for his theology. Segal rightly states that “the most obvious mark of Paul’s conversion is his revaluation of his previous life on the basis of his experience of Christ.”[64] Thus, Christ constitutes the hermeneutical principle for scriptural interpretation (theology)[65] and the factor that determines believers’ behavior (ethics). From here, several scholars agree that Paul offers christological and soteriological interpretations of the Damascus event.[66] In the words of Kim, “In Paul Christology and Soteriology are not two separated doctrines but one, the former being the ground of the latter and the latter the anthropological and cosmological application of the former.”[67]

The Pauline Epistles are full of interpretations of the Easter events that should be analyzed diachronically, since Paul in all of them offers a retrospective look on the Damascus revelation, and this should be the basis for the synchronic interpretation of such revelation.[68] Themes such as justification, redemption, reconciliation, election, resurrection, and others, reveal a reflection upon the passion narrative and Easter.

Justification

The act of Jesus Christ at the cross is an act of justification. Paul’s meditation on this event in the context of his Damascus experience[69] allows him to conclude that, through his death, Jesus declares believers not guilty and makes them stand rightly before God and experience a new relationship in Christ.[70] He expresses these ideas through the verb δικαιόω (“justify,” 24x) and the noun δικαιοσύνη (“righteousness,” 52x).[71] Jesus has freed believers from God’s wrath (Rom 5:9), and for this reason they are at peace with him (v. 1). Only through Christ, justification is possible and this is free (3:24). Perhaps one of the common nuances of Paul’s interpretation of Jesus’s sacrifice is that since humans cannot be righteous on the basis of their actions, they simply ought to have faith because “a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law” (3:28; cf. v. 30; 5:1) and “the righteous man shall live by faith” (Gal 3:11; cf. v. 24). This is the great premise that Paul develops in his exposition against the Judaizers in Galatians (2:16–17). Such reflection leads him to give up dogmas and experiences that were formerly shaped by his understanding of the law (Phil 3:4–6) and are now reevaluated and redirected in Christ (vv. 7, 9).[72]

Redemption

Paul also ponders Jesus’s death and its redemptive character. Of the ten occurrences of the noun ἀπολύτρωσις (“redemption”) in the New Testament, seven take place in the Pauline Epistles. From these, four specifically refer to Jesus’s sacrifice (Rom 3:24; 1 Cor 1:30; Eph 1:7; Col 1:14).[73] This word carries the idea of “setting free for a ransom”[74] and should be viewed in light of legal and financial metaphors and the Jewish understanding of sin.[75] For Paul, redemption is possible only in Christ (Rom 3:24), whom God constituted as ἀπολύτρωσις (1 Cor 1:30). Believers are redeemed specifically from sin, and therefore they are forgiven through Christ’s blood (Eph 1:7; Col 1:14). From here, the metaphor of a slave being bought with a price implied in verbs such as ἀγοράζω (“to buy”) and ἐξαγοράζω (“to redeem”)[76] could be explicative of Paul’s concept of redemption:[77] “You were bought with a price” (1 Cor 7:23). Unlike the eschatological redemption visualized in Romans 8:23 and Ephesians 1:14 and 4:30, freedom from sin through Christ is a present reality, and this is suggested by Paul’s use of ἔχομεν (“we have”) in Ephesians 1:7 and Colossians 1:14. Redemption is of course something received freely, and it constitutes the basis for justification (Rom 3:24).[78]

Reconciliation

Paul’s view on the sacrifice of Jesus as effectuating reconciliation is unique in the New Testament.[79] The verb καταλλάσσω (“to reconcile”) and the noun καταλλαγῇ (“reconciliation”) occur only in Paul’s writings.[80] Schnelle argues that the concept of reconciliation is “the second major interpretation of his apostolic ministry.”[81] Although early Christian literature deals with the passion narrative, Paul should be singled out as the only one who interprets Jesus’s work in these terms. Reconciliation is “the exchange of hostility for a friendly relationship”[82] between two parties. In the marital union, both wife and husband can be reconciled after a disagreement (1 Cor 7:11). However, the utmost manifestation of reconciliation is the one effectuated by God. Humans were alienated from God and were therefore his enemies, but this enmity did not hinder him from bringing reconciliation (Rom 5:10). Notice that for Paul, God is the subject who reconciles. In 2 Corinthians 5:18–21, where Paul displays his theology of reconciliation with clarity, two main actions are attributed to God:[83] (1) “Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ” (v. 18a) and (2) “gave us the ministry of reconciliation” (v. 18b).[84] However, Christ is not left out of the picture; he is the agent through whom reconciliation is possible. The whole passage of 2 Corinthians 5:14–21 is both theocentric and Christocentric. Phrases such as διὰ Χριστοῦ (“through Christ,” v. 18) and ἐν Χριστῷ (“in Christ,” v. 19) offer different nuances of Christ’s function in this plan of salvation set in motion by God. Perhaps Paul’s clearest interpretation of Jesus’s death is expressed in verse 21: “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” Although the passion of Jesus is not explicitly mentioned, the language in this verse points to cultic and sacrificial aspects of his death prefigured in the Old Testament where the concepts of death and sin are articulated together (sin offering in Lev 4, Day of Atonement in Lev 16, and the substitutive character of the suffering servant in Isa 53; cf. Rom 8:3; Gal 3:13).[85]

Election

One of the greatest changes in Paul’s theology is his understanding of the doctrine of election. For Paul, Israel, the people of God, were demarcated by God’s election (Deut 7:3; 14:2). Within Judaism, election was “defined by means of the exclusive relationship with their God in which all non-Jews, including Christians, have no part.”[86] This concept is now reshaped and interpreted from a Christian perspective[87] as a result of Paul’s encounter with the resurrected Jesus on the Damascus road (Gal 1:12). There, he received his apostolic commission to the gentiles (vv. 15–16; 2:2, 7–8), which was contrary to his former attitude as a zealous Jew who persecuted and tried to destroy God’s church (vv. 13–14; cf. Acts 9:1–2). Now, in light of this revelation and his understanding of both Jesus’s passion and resurrection, Paul could categorically say that “there is neither Jew nor Greek . . . for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28). In the blood of Christ both gentiles and Jews are brought together (Eph 2:11–22): “For He [Christ] Himself is our peace, who made both groups into one, and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall” (v. 14). This doctrine is elaborated on in Romans 9–11, where Paul presented this inclusive theology of election.[88] Israel are not only those who are descendants of Abraham and Jacob (9:6–7) but also those who acknowledge Jesus as Savior. From here, “there is no distinction between Jew and Greek” (10:12) because “if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” (v. 9); this includes both Israel according to the flesh and the gentiles who have already believed and those yet to come (11:25–26). Thus Christ became the leading hermeneutical principle in Paul’s theology of election.

Resurrection

Whenever Jesus’s death is discussed, his resurrection from the dead should be mentioned also. For Paul, resurrection is a “necessary extension of Christ’s death.”[89] Clearly, Paul’s theology of the resurrection goes back to his former Pharisaic life. As a good Pharisee, he believed in the eschatological resurrection (Acts 23:8); nevertheless, Christ did not play any significant role in Paul’s theology until his Damascus encounter with the risen Jesus. However, in his recapitulation of the concept of resurrection after his conversion, Paul showed both continuity and discontinuity with Pharisaic dogma.[90] Like the Pharisees, he continued believing that the dead would rise; unlike them, he claimed that Jesus Christ—the crucified Messiah—materialized the resurrection of believers through his own resurrection. This could oddly be called “Christological resurrection,” a phrase that points to a conceptualization and experiential understanding of Paul’s resurrection theology centered on Christ.[91] The importance of Paul’s interpretation of this event is seen in the fact that if Christ’s resurrection is denied, neither Paul’s proclamation of the gospel nor his eschatological hope would make sense (1 Cor 15:12–19). Nevertheless, there is no room for doubt: “But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who are asleep” (v. 20). For him, Jesus’s resurrection constitutes the down payment of the resurrection of believers at the end and also guarantees their transformation (vv. 20–22, 42–44). Moreover, the resurrection unveils and confirms Jesus’s status as the Son of God (Rom 1:3–4) and signals his enthronement at the right side of the Father (Eph 1:20). Resurrection is also linked to the justification of believers (Rom 4:24–25). It is connected with Jesus’s death and his reconciliatory work (5:10). When combined with the figure of baptism, it illustrates the concept of a new life (6:3–11). Thus, for Paul, the resurrection event shapes both his theology and the Christian experience.

These five theological concepts show that Paul interpreted the Easter events in ways that were perhaps new within early Christian circles. When many were reading the Jesus tradition as a biography and when others were attracted to the sayings tradition, Paul showed interest in discussing the passion and resurrection narratives and bestowed a central role on these in his theology and Christian experience.

Conclusion

Although the scarcity of direct references to the sayings of Jesus and historical facts of Jesus’s life in Paul can generate doubts about how much of the Jesus tradition he knew, his emphasis on the Easter events reflects a substantial continuity with the Jesus tradition of the early church. The fact that he constantly highlights the cross and the resurrection of Jesus, determining these two as a significant part of his gospel, suggests that Paul prefers this part of the tradition. The revelation at the Damascus road plays a significant role in the delimitation of his gospel, not only in terms of his evangelistic target but also in terms of the content of his proclamation, which is Christ-centered. Moreover, Paul takes a step further in the continuation of the Jesus tradition. He offers christological and soteriological interpretations of the Easter events, where Christ becomes the hermeneutical principle. This interpretation of the Easter events shows that what happened at the cross and the resurrection is vital for a correct articulation of his theological system. Themes like justification, redemption, reconciliation, election, and resurrection indicate that the story of Jesus is not merely a collection of facts and sayings but a theological and experiential understanding of them. Finally, Paul’s emphasis and interpretation of the passion and resurrection narratives is in itself a perpetuation of the Jesus tradition, confirming that Paul is acquainted with this tradition but decides to project it differently.

Notes

1. Albert Schweitzer, Paul and His Interpreters: A Critical History, trans. W. Montgomery (London: Black, 1912), 12.
2. See Hans Hinrich Wendt, “Die Lehre des Paulus verglichen mit der Lehre Jesu,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 4.1 (1894): 1–78; William Wrede, Paul, trans. Edward Lummis (London: Green, 1907; repr., Lexington KY: American Theological Library, 1962). For a full discussion and bibliography on the Jesus-Paul debate, see Victor P. Furnish, “The Jesus-Paul Debate: From Baur to Bultmann,” in Paul and Jesus: Collected Essays, ed. A. J. M. Wedderburn (London: T&T Clark, 2004), 17–50.
3. For further historical review, see Heinz Arnold Hiestermann, “Paul’s Use of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition” (PhD diss., University of Pretoria, 2016), 23–90.
4. Hiestermann, 45.
5. After analyzing the history of the debate on Paul and the Jesus tradition by stages, Hiestermann offers detailed tables that contain the number of parallels suggested by scholars, thus making it easier for the reader to perceive general disagreement and agreement in the parallels between Paul and the Synoptic Gospels. Hiestermann, 23–90.
6. Luigi Walt says one of the most debated issues is “the presence of explicit or implicit quotations from Jesus in Paul’s writings.” “A Non-Canonical Jesus in Paul?: 1 Corinthians 1–4 as a Test Case,” Annali di Storia dell’Esegesi 25.2 (2008): 56.
7. This second question seems to be the focus of recent research, including the present study. A. J. M. Wedderburn rightly says that “apart from trying to trace continuity we must also try to understand the discontinuity between Jesus’ message and Paul’s.” “Paul and Jesus: The Problem of Continuity,” Scottish Journal of Theology 38.2 (1985): 201.
8. Furnish, “The Jesus-Paul Debate,” 50.
9. Paul used the noun εὐαγγέλιον sixty times in his epistles.
10. All Scripture is taken from the New American Standard Version (1995).
11. See J. Louis Martyn, Galatians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, Anchor Bible 33A (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), 144; Hans Dieter Betz, Galatians: A Commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Churches in Galatia, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979), 63; F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Galatians, New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982), 89; and James D. G. Dunn, The Epistle to the Galatians, Black’s New Testament Commentaries (London: Continuum, 1993), 53.
12. Richard N. Longenecker, Galatians, Word Biblical Commentary 41 (Dallas: Word, 1990), 23–24.
13. Timothy George argues that the reading does not harm the text and that the ambiguity is probably intended by Paul. Galatians, New American Commentary 30 (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1994), 111. Similarly, R. Alan Cole’s advice is “to leave the meaning as ambiguous in the English as it is in the Greek.” The Letter of Paul to the Galatians: An Introduction and Commentary, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries 9 (Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1989), 85. Rightly, G. Walter Hansen says Paul’s “autobiographical account is constructed to support his claim for the revelatory origin and nature of the gospel” (emphasis supplied). Galatians, IVP New Testament Commentary 9 (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1994), 41.
14. Interestingly, some take the phrase “the preaching of Jesus Christ” in Romans 16:25 as referring to both the content and the source of Paul’s kerygma, thus implying both subjective and objective genitives. See Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Romans, Anchor Bible 33 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 754.
15. This interpretation is not in opposition to 1:15–16, where God is presented as the revealer. In fact, it gives another nuance to Paul’s understanding of the origin of his gospel. In the same way that Jesus Christ and God are the agents who constituted him as an apostle (v. 1), they could be the revealers of his gospel. Similarly, Longenecker sees the idea of source in verse 12, though a bit differently. Based on verse 1, he takes Jesus as the agent and God as the source of his apostleship. Then he applies the same formula to Paul’s view of his gospel in verses 11–16. Galatians, 23–24.
16. Paul’s affirmation in 2:7 does not suggest a difference in the content of his gospel versus Peter’s but rather a difference in the target. See Ronald Y. K. Fung, The Epistle to the Galatians, New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988), 98–99.
17. Hansen states, “Just as he vigorously denied any human origin of his apostleship, so now he denies any human origin for the gospel he preached.” Galatians, 40–41.
18. James D. G. Dunn, “The Relationship between Paul and Jerusalem according to Galatians 1 and 2, ” New Testament Studies 28.4 (1982): 465. This interpretation is followed in Frederick W. Danker et al., eds., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 483.
19. Dunn, “Relationship between Paul and Jerusalem,” 465.
20. This point has received wide support. See Fung, The Epistle to the Galatians, 73–75; Bruce, The Epistle to the Galatians, 98; Longenecker, Galatians, 37–38; Cole, Galatians, 95; Douglas Moo, Galatians, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013), 109.
21. According to Dunn, Paul downplays any role of the church leaders at Jerusalem as an authoritative source as far as the origin of his gospel is concerned. First, he went to Jerusalem seventeen years after receiving the revelation that “determined and defined” his gospel (2:1), and second, he went there only because he had received instruction to do so through a revelation (v. 2), otherwise, it is assumed he would not have done it. “Relationship between Paul and Jerusalem,” 467.
22. For Paul, being on good terms with the leaders of the church at Jerusalem was something that would contribute positively to his evangelistic efforts in regions outside Judea. See Bruce, The Epistle to the Galatians, 109; followed by Longenecker, Galatians, 49.
23. John Muddiman, The Epistle to the Ephesians, Black’s New Testament Commentaries (London: Continuum, 2001), 141.
24. Muddiman, 141.
25. F. F. Bruce, The Epistles to the Colossians, to Philemon, and to the Ephesians, New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984), 304.
26. Joseph A. Fitzmyer, “The Gospel in the Theology of Paul,” Interpretation 33.4 (1979): 341; Gerhard Friedrich, “εὐαγγέλιον,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965), 2:730.
27. Sometimes Paul interchanges the phrase τὸ εὐαγγέλιον τοῦ χριστοῦ, “the gospel of Christ” with others such as τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ τοῦ κυρίου, “the gospel of the Lord” (2 Thess 1:8; cf. Rom 1:1), τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ τοῦ υἱοῦ αὐτοῦ, “the gospel of his Son” (Rom 1:9), or τὸ εὐαγγέλιον τοῦ θεοῦ, “the gospel of God” (1 Thess 2:8, 9; cf. 2 Cor 11:7). All are references to the message he preaches.
28. James D. G. Dunn, discussing the noun εὐαγγέλιον, affirms that “it is quite probable that it was Paul himself who coined the usage as a new technical term for his own proclamation.” The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 168.
29. This is also suggested by Fitzmyer, who posits that Paul’s gospel is not “peculiar to himself ” or different from the apostles’ gospel. “Gospel in the Theology of Paul,” 342.
30. Paul’s awareness of his commission to the gentiles is widely discussed by interpreters. See Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, Paul: A Critical Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 80; E. P. Sanders, Paul: The Apostle’s Life, Letters, and Thought (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015), 102–11; and Stanley E. Porter, The Apostle Paul: His Life, Thought, and Letters (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016), 32.
31. Seyoon Kim writes that “for Paul the Christophany on the Damascus road constituted both his gospel and his apostolic commission to the gentile mission.” The Origin of Paul’s Gospel, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 2/4 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1984), 57. See a similar point in Martin Hengel and Anna Maria Schwemer, Paul between Damascus and Antioch: The Unknown Years (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1997), 47–48. The connection between content and apostleship is also reflected in 1 Timothy 2:7: “I was appointed a preacher and an apostle . . . to the Gentiles” (emphasis supplied). Here, “preacher” and “apostle” stand for the content and target of Paul’s gospel.
32. Dale C. Allison, talking about echoes of the synoptic tradition in Pauline writings, states that “it is extremely unlikely that these texts mark the limit of Paul’s familiarity with the Jesus tradition.” “The Pauline Epistles and the Synoptic Gospels: The Pattern of the Parallels,” New Testament Studies 28.1 (1982): 10.
33. Nikolaus Walter, “Paul and the Early Christian Jesus-Tradition,” in Paul and Jesus: Collected Essays, ed. A. J. M. Wedderburn (London: T&T Clark, 1989), 53. See the original article in German in Nikolaus Walter, “Paulus und die urchristliche Jesustradition,” New Testament Studies 31.4 (1985): 498–522.
34. Allison, “Pauline Epistles and Synoptic Gospels,” 10.
35. From now on, the phrase “Easter events” is used to refer to the events surrounding Easter: the Last Supper, Jesus’s passion and death, and the resurrection.
36. Danker et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, 768.
37. Gerhard Delling summarizes this Christian tradition in a fixed form based on 1 Corinthians 11:23 and 15:1, 3: “The account of the institution of the Lord’s Supper and of the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus.” “παραλαμβάνω,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967), 4:13.
38. This last phrase does not leave out the possibility that Paul received the Jesus tradition from the early church. Gordon D. Fee argues that the language for the transmission of “tradition” in 1 Corinthians 11:23 is different from the language of the “revelation” in Galatians 1:11–12, 17. According to him, in the former passage, Paul refers to the words of the institution that were part of “the church’s ongoing tradition,” while the revelation in the latter passage focuses more on “Christ’s death and resurrection, offered freely by God to those who believe.” The First Epistle to the Corinthians, New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), 548. Thus, he understands this verse “in the sense that Jesus himself is the ultimate source of the tradition.” Fee, 548–49. Similarly, Hans Conzelmann comments that “he [Paul] was of course acquainted with it [tradition] through the mediation of men.” 1 Corinthians: A Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians, trans. James W. Leitch, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975), 196. For a contradiction of this interpretation, see Leon Morris, 1 Corinthians: An Introduction and Commentary, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries 7 (Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1985), 157.
39. For the range of meaning of παραδίδωμι, see Danker et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, 761–63; R. F. Büchsel, “παραδίδωμι,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, 2:169–72.
40. This same command to hold fast to the tradition is found in 2 Thessalonians 2:15 and 3:6. Paul also contrasts the Jesus tradition with “the tradition of men” (Gal 1:14; Col 2:8).
41. Victor Paul Furnish, Jesus according to Paul, Understanding Jesus Today (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 20.
42. Harm W. Hollander, “The Words of Jesus: From Oral Traditions to Written Record in Paul and Q,” Novum Testamentum 42.4 (2000): 341.
43. See a more complete list of the noncanonical gospels in Michael F. Bird, The Gospel of the Lord: How the Early Church Wrote the Story of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014), 283–86.
44. From these, the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Philip focus on the teachings and sayings of Jesus.
45. See the reminder of Furnish: “In posing these questions [on the Jesus tradition in Paul] we must remember that even the earliest of the four Gospels was not written until after Paul’s death.” Jesus according to Paul, 20.
46. Fitzmyer, “Gospel in the Theology of Paul,” 340. Hollander dates the first written account about Jesus’s sayings from 60–70 AD (Q) and the first biography of Jesus from 70 AD (Mark). “Words of Jesus,” 343. Contrarily, David P. Scaer affirms that the axiom of the “epistles before gospels” should be reevaluated. “Epistles before Gospels: An Axiom of New Testament Studies,” Concordia Theological Quarterly 77.1–2 (2013): 5–21.
47. Most of the early Christian tradition “concentrated upon [the] sayings of Jesus,” according to Hollander, “Words of Jesus,” 350.
48. First Corinthians 7:10–11 references Mark 10:9 (cf. Matt 19:6), Matthew 10:11–12 (cf. Matt 19:9), Luke 16:18 (cf. Matt 5:32). First Corinthians 9:14 references Luke 10:7 and Matthew 10:10. First Corinthians 11:23–25 references Matthew 26:26–28, Mark 14:22–24, and Luke 22:19–20. Some of Jesus’s sayings to which Paul may allude (echoes) and that are submitted to debate are the following: Romans 12:14 (cf. Luke 6:27–28; Matt 5:43–44); 12:17 (cf. Luke 6:27–28; Matt 5:39, 43–44); 13:7 (cf. Mark 12:17); 13:8–10 (cf. Mark 12:29–31; Matt 22:37–39; Luke 10:27); 14:13 (cf. Matt 18:7; Mark 9:42; Luke 17:1–2); 14:14 (cf. Mark 7:15); 1 Corinthians 4:12–13 (cf. Luke 6:27–28; Matt 5:43–44); Galatians 5:14 (cf. Mark 12:29–31; Matt 22:37–39; Luke 10:27); 1 Thessalonians 5:2 (cf. Matt 24:43; Luke 12:3); 5:13 (cf. Mark 9:5); and 5:15 (cf. Matt 5:38–48).
49. Allison emphasizes the transcendence of this tradition for the early church: “The passion of Jesus was of central importance for those who transmitted the Jesus tradition, and the formation of a protracted passion narrative probably goes back to the very beginnings of the Christian church.” “Pauline Epistles and Synoptic Gospels,” 16.
50. For the concept of blood in the New Testament, see Leon Morris, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965), 121–26.
51. George Eldon Ladd highlights the centrality of Christ’s death within Pauline theology and discusses the work of Christ (atonement) as expressed in a variety of phrases: Christ’s death, blood, cross, and crucifixion. A Theology of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), 464–77.
52. See also 1 Thessalonians 4:14, where Jesus’s resurrection guarantees the resurrection of those who fall asleep.
53. The occurrences of ἐγείρω in Romans 13:11; Ephesians 5:14; and Philippians 1:17 are not included.
54. Donald Guthrie, New Testament Theology (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1981), 386.
55. Thomas R. Schreiner, New Testament Theology: Magnifying God in Christ (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 378.
56. “For Paul, the death and resurrection of Jesus, precisely what the sayings tradition can easily do without, are the key to the counter-cultural radicalism that he encourages in his communities.” Stephen J. Patterson, “Paul and the Jesus Tradition: It Is Time for Another Look,” Harvard Theological Review 84.1 (1991): 39.
57. Hollander grants this point. “Words of Jesus,” 349. See also footnotes 44–47 above.
58. Allison, “Pauline Epistles and Synoptic Gospels,” 22.
59. Walter writes, “The main stock of demonstrable material from the Jesus-tradi-tion in the Pauline letters occurs in connection with ethical paraenesis” (emphasis in original). “Paul and the Early Christian Jesus-Tradition,” 68. Similarly, Hollander highlights that the three undisputable references to Jesus’s sayings in Paul (1 Cor 7:10–11; 9:14; 11:23–25) are from ethical contexts. “Words of Jesus,” 349.
60. Walter argues, “It is precisely in his decisive theological statements that Paul adduces no Jesus-tradition.” “Paul and the Early Christian Jesus-Tradition,” 63.
61. On Jesus’s suffering and resurrection as key to Paul’s salvation theology, see John B. Polhill, Acts, New American Commentary 26 (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2001), 505–6. On the focus of the early church on the proclamation of the passion and resurrection narratives, see Dunn, who says that “what Paul received and preached, and echoed in his letters, was indeed the common Christian conviction that ‘Christ died (for us) and was raised (from the dead).’ That remained the shared confession and bond which held together the first Christian churches, despite all their diversity, in one gospel.” Theology of Paul the Apostle, 177.
62. For Fitzmyer, Paul’s uniqueness resides in the fact that he focuses not only on telling stories about Jesus but reading and interpreting his salvific work: “Paul never told his ‘story of the cross’ in the form of stories about what Jesus did and said. Yet even before those stories took final shape he had presented his ‘gospel,’ his interpretation of the Christ-event.” Fitzmyer, “Gospel in the Theology of Paul,” 342.
63. Udo Schnelle, Apostle Paul: His Life and Theology, trans. M. Eugene Boring (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 32.
64. Alan F. Segal, Paul the Convert: The Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee (New Heaven: Yale University Press, 1990), 79.
65. Dunn acknowledges this when he says that for Paul, Christ is the “hermeneutical clue to read and understand the scriptures.” Theology of Paul the Apostle, 173.
66. Kim, Origin of Paul’s Gospel, 100, 271; Peter Stuhlmacher, Das paulinische Evangelium, Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments 95 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1968), 71; and Schnelle, Apostle Paul, 90.
67. Kim, Origin of Paul’s Gospel, 100.
68. Schnelle, Apostle Paul, 46.
69. On Paul’s conversion as a crucial factor for his interpretation of Jesus’s death, see Jacques Dupont, “The Conversion of Paul, and Its Influence on His Understanding of Salvation by Faith,” in Apostolic History and the Gospel:Biblical and Historical Essays Presented to F. F. Bruce, ed. W. Ward Gasque and Ralph P. Martin (Exeter: Paternoster, 1970), 176–94; J. G. Gager, “Some Notes on Paul’s Conversion,” New Testament Studies 27.5 (1981): 697–704; J. D. G. Dunn, “ ‘A Light to the Gentiles,’ or ‘The End of the Law’?: The Significance of the Damascus Road Christophany for Paul,” in Jesus, Paul, and the Law: Studies in Mark and Galatians (Louisville: John Knox, 1990), 89–104; and Kim, Origin of Paul’s Gospel.
70. On this concept of justification, see Schreiner, New Testament Theology, 351–62; and Ladd, Theology of the New Testament, 478–90. For other related works, see Mark A. Seifrid, Justification by Faith: The Origin and Development of a Central Pauline Theme, Supplements to Novum Testamentum 68 (Leiden: Brill, 1992); Mark A. Seifrid, Christ, Our Righteousness: Paul’s Theology of Justification (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000); Brian C. Wintle, “Justification in Pauline Thought,” in Right with God: Justification in the Bible and the World, ed. D. A. Carson (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2002), 51–68; and P. T. O’Brien, “Justification in Paul and Some Crucial Issues of the Last Two Decades,” in Right with God, 69–81.
71. For an overview of δικαιόω and its cognates, see Gottlob Schrenlk, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, 2:178–225.
72. This rethinking of the law is recurring in Paul (e.g., Rom 3:20–21, 28; 5:13, 20; 6:14–15; 7:4; 8:3–4; 10:4; Gal 2:16–21; 3:10–13, 24). For the rethinking of the law at Paul’s conversion, see Ulrich Wilckens, “Die Bekehrung des Paulus als religionsgeschichtliches Problem,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 56.3 (1959): 273–93.
73. The other three references (Rom 8:23; Eph 1:14; 4:30) envision the eschatological redemption.
74. Rostock F. Büchsel, “ἀπολύτρωσις,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, 4:351–52.
75. George Wesley Buchanan, “The Day of Atonement and Paul’s Doctrine of Redemption,” Novum Testamentum 32.3 (1990): 236. For a complete treatment of ἀπολυτρώσεως, see Henry Beach Carré, Paul’s Doctrine of Redemption (New York: Macmillan, 1914); and Morris, Apostolic Preaching of the Cross, 1–52.
76. ἀγοράζω in 1 Corinthians 6:20; 7:23, 30 and ἐξαγοράζω in Galatians 3:13; 4:5.
77. See Danker et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, 117.
78. The phrase διὰ τῆς ἀπολυτρώσεως indicates that redemption is the means of justification. See James D. G. Dunn, Romans 1–8, Word Biblical Commentary 38A (Dallas: Word, 1988), 179.
79. For the concept in Paul’s thought, see Herman Ridderbos, Paul: An Outline of His Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), 182–204; and Ralph P. Martin, Reconciliation: A Study of Paul’s Theology (Atlanta: John Knox, 1981). For the concept in the NT, see Peter Stuhlmacher, Reconciliation, Law, and Righteousness: Essays in Biblical Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986); Ladd, Theology of the New Testament, 492–98; and Morris, Apostolic Preaching of the Cross, 214–50.
80. καταλλάσσω (6x: Rom 5:10 [2x]; 1 Cor 7:11; 2 Cor 5:18, 19, 20) and καταλλαγῇ (4x; Rom 5:11; 11:15; 2 Cor 5:18, 19).
81. Schnelle, Apostle Paul, 255.
82. Danker et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, 521. See also Rostock F. Büchsel, “καταλλάσσω, καταλλαγῇ,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964), 1:255–58.
83. Paul Barnett notes that 2 Corinthians 5:14–17 is Christocentric, while 2 Corinthians 5:18–19 is theocentric. The Second Epistle to the Corinthians, New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 301.
84. Verses 19a and 19c are a synonymous parallelism or rhetorical repetition of verses 18a and 18b. It should be acknowledged that the added phrase in verse 19b “not counting their trespasses against them” could support seeing the entire verse 19 as a symmetrical parallelism of verse 18.
85. See the complete explanation in Murray J. Harris, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians, New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 452.
86. Michael Wolter, Paul: An Outline of His Theology, trans. Robert L. Brawley (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2015), 401.
87. Schnelle, Apostle Paul, 71.
88. For a wider discussion of election and Israel in Romans 9–11, see N. T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2013), 1156–258; Wolter, Paul, 413–22; Dunn, Theology of Paul the Apostle, 499–532; Ridderbos, Paul, 327–61; John Piper, The Justification of God: An Exegetical and Theological Study of Romans 9:1–23 (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1983); Mary Ann Getty, “Paul and the Salvation of Israel: A Perspective on Romans 9–11, ” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 50.3 (1988): 456–69; and R. Schmitt, Gottesgerechtigkeit—Heilsgeschichte—Israel in der Theologie des Paulus (Frankfurt: Lang, 1984).
89. Porter, Apostle Paul, 131.
90. Schnelle, Apostle Paul, 72.
91. For the Pauline theology of the resurrection, see Richard B. Gaffin Jr., The Centrality of the Resurrection: A Study in Paul’s Soteriology (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1978); N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, Christian Origins and the Question of God 3 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 207–398; and Frederick S. Tappenden, Resurrection in Paul: Cognition, Metaphor, and Transformation, Early Christianity and Its Literature 19 (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2016).