Johan Christiaan Beker
Forfatter af Paul the Apostle: The Triumph of God in Life and Thought
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Biblical Theology: Problems and Perspectives : In Honor of J. Christiaan Beker (1995) — Honoree — 31 eksemplarer
Understanding the Word: Essays in Honor of Bernhard W. Anderson (1984) — Bidragyder — 15 eksemplarer
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Just to set expectations up front. If you were expecting a real dialogue between J. Christiaan Beker and N.T. Wright in this book, it’s not here. What you have instead is the juxtaposition of essays representative of the thought of Beker and Wright. In fact, Wright’s essay is excerpted from The New Testament and the People of God, from 1982. No real dialogue or responses to each other’s ideas.
That said, the essay by Beker, to my mind is the clearest articulation of the “apocalyptic Paul” that I have read. He offers a clear articulation of the apocalyptic centered around historical dualism (this age and the age to come), universal cosmic expectation, and the imminent end of the world. Contra the Bultmannian denigration of the apocalyptic he traces the renewed appreciation for the apocalyptic in Paul in recent scholarship. He traces the apocalyptic through Paul’s letters. He argues for the distinctive of Christian apocalypticism in Paul is the decisive new thing in Christ through whom the new creation comes. For Beker, nowhere is this more evident than in the resurrection of Christ, pre-saging the resurrection of the dead. Beker then focuses in on 1 Corinthians 15, noting the circular argument of Paul–the resurrection of Christ implies the final resurrection of the dead and if there is no final resurrection, then Christ was not raised, with the conclusion that no resurrection, no gospel. Beker explores why Paul sacrifices dialogue for dogmatism on this point, namely that this apocalyptic hope of the bodily resurrection is crucuially central and not to be compromised by immaterial views of immortality. As others have noted, we cannot have V-Day without D-Day, but likewise the resurrection signalled by the D-Day of Christ’s resurrection must be fulfilled in the V-Day of the resurrection of all believers.
The essay by Wright will be very familiar to readers of Wright. Without defining the apocalyptic, he considers it as a linguistic convention for the ways God would fulfill his covenant for a people emerging from exile. He offers an extended discussion on Daniel’s King who would come and the hope for the renewal of both the nation of Israel and the world and the development of a resurrection hope for the righteous. He then turns to the ideas of salvation and justification that would be held by first century Jews, namely inclusion in the covenant community. What Wright does here is not so much treat Paul’s reading of these ideas as the first century Jewish worldview in which Paul was immersed. Paul is scarcely mentioned beyond the essay title. If Wright’s assignment was to talk about Paul’s treatment of the resurrection as covenant fulfillment of the narrative arc of the covenant, Wright’s essay gestures toward but does not answer the assignment, something he does in his works on Paul.
All this makes me wonder how this book was put together. No explanation is given, just the two essays with notes and bibliography. The presumption is that the publisher saw value in putting this material side by side for readers but could not arrange a real dialogue between the authors. That would have been a fascinating interchange. What we have here are two essays on roughly the same subject matter where the reader is left to supply the dialogue. While that is a worthwhile intellectual exercise, I doubt most of us would do this as well as Wright and Beker.
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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.… (mere)