[←437 ]
John AT Robinson, Redating the New Testament (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1976).
[←438 ]
Cf., Don K Preston, Who Is This Babylon? (Ardmore, OK: JaDon, 2006).
[←439 ]
Carys Moseley, Nations & Nationalism in the Theology of Karl Barth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 188.
[←440 ]
Denise Kimber Buell, Why This New Race? Ethnic Reasoning in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 2.
[←441 ]
Fr Andrew Phillips, Orthodox Christianity and the English Tradition (Norfolk, UK: English Orthodox Trust, 1995).
[←442 ]
Dunn makes a show of denouncing Martin Luther’s “notorious tract,” On the Jews and their Lies, while suggesting that “no one would wish to defend [it] today”. Dunn is also highly critical of tribal loyalty but never asks himself if the stereotypical view of Jews as more “tribal” than, say English or American Protestants is true or false. Cf., Dunn, New Perspective, 19. In fact there is a growing literature on the ethnic rivalry between Jews and Christians throughout the millennia and in particular during the just past “Jewish Century”. See, e.g. Yuri Slezkine, The Jewish Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004); and the trilogy by Kevin MacDonald, A People that Shall Dwell Alone: Judaism as a Group Evolutionary Strategy (Westport, CN: Praeger, 1994), Separation and its Discontents: Toward an Evolutionary Theory of Anti-Semitism (Westport, CN: Praeger, 1998), and, for the twentieth century, especially, The Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements (Westport, CN: Praeger, 1998).
[←443 ]
On the ambiguous nature of the relationship between Jesus and Nicodemus, see e.g. Jouette M Bassler, “Mixed Signals: Nicodemus in the Fourth Gospel,” (1989) 108(4) Journal of Biblical Literature 635; and, Raimo Hakola, “The Burden of Ambiguity: Nicodemus and the Social Identity of the Johannine Christians,” (2009) 55(4) New Testament Studies 438.
[←444 ]
In the Greek text of John 3:7 and 3:11 “you” is in the plural signifying that “Jesus spoke not only to Nicodemus but to all whom he represented”. The NKJV Study Bible Second Edition (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2007), 1661.
[←445 ]
Rudolf Bultmann, The Gospel of John: A Commentary tr GR Beasley-Murray (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1971), 131. 141. Bultmann is proof against any suggestion that Jesus, the teacher of a reborn, spiritual Israel, is speaking as a Jew to his co-ethnic, Nicodemus, the teacher of old, earthly Israel after the flesh. Indeed, Bultmann characterizes John 4:22, in which Jesus says that “salvation is from the Jews,” as a mere “editorial gloss”. On his reading, “it is hard to see how the Johannine Jesus, who constantly disassociates himself from the Jews…could have made such a statement” (189–190 n6).
[←446 ]
Laurence Cantwell, “The Quest for the Historical Nicodemus,” (1980) 16(4) Religious Studies, 481, at 482–483.
[←447 ]
Indeed, as Mary Coloe shows, “the final chapters of John” also “return to Genesis and situate the Johannine Passion and Resurrection within the iconography of Eden, the garden of the second creation account”. See, Mary L Coloe, “Theological Reflections on Creation in the Gospel of John,” (2011) 24(1) Pacifica 1.
[←448 ]
See the tabular comparison of the language of the Prologue and 3:15–21 in Jerome H Neyrey, “John III: A Debate over Johannine Epistemology and Christology,” (1981) 23(2) Novum Testamentum 115, at 125.
[←449 ]
John H Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2009), 93, 48, 55–56.
[←450 ]
Ben Witherington III, “The Waters of Birth: John 3.5 and 1 John 5.6–8,” (1989) 35(1) New Testament Studies 155.
[←451 ]
Neyrey, “Debate over Johannine Epistemology,” 120.
[←452 ]
Witherington, “Waters of Birth,” 158, 155.
[←453 ]
Sandra M Schneiders, “Born Anew,” (1987) 44(2) Theology Today 189, at 194, 192.
[←454 ]
Ibid., 194–196.
[←455 ]
Ben Witherington III, “Troubling the Waters: The New Study on Baptism,” (1996) 16(1) Quarterly Review 73, at 73–74.
[←456 ]
Bultmann, Gospel of John, 149.
[←457 ]
Cf., Winsome Munro, “The Pharisee and the Samaritan Woman in John,” (1995) 57(4) Catholic Biblical Quarterly 710.
[←458 ]
Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, “The Quest for the Johannine School: The Apocalypse and the Fourth Gospel,” (1977) 23(4) New Testament Studies 402, at 403–404, 406, 426.
[←459 ]
See, in particular, Don K Preston, Who Is This Babylon? (Ardmore, OK: Preterist Research Institute, 2006); and Timothy P Martin and Jeffrey L Vaughn, Beyond Creation Science: New Covenant Creation From Genesis to Revelation (Whitehall, MT: Apocalyptic Visions Press, 2007).
[←460 ]
David E Aune, “Stories of Jesus in the Apocalypse of John,” in Richard N Longenecker, ed, Contours of Christology in the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: William B Eerdmans, 2005), 313–316.
[←461 ]
Hal Lindsay, The Late Great Planet Earth (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1970).
[←462 ]
CH Dodd, The Apostolic Preaching and its Developments (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1936), 33, 72.
[←463 ]
Ibid., 41.
[←464 ]
CH Dodd, The Parables of the Kingdom (London: Fontana, 1961), 152.
[←465 ]
Dodd, Apostolic Preaching, 75.
[←466 ]
Ibid., 40–41, 64.
[←467 ]
Ibid., 70, 65–66.
[←468 ]
Ibid., 66, 34.
[←469 ]
Ibid., 66; John AT Robinson, Redating the New Testament (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2000), 276.
[←470 ]
James Stuart Russell, The Parousia: The New Testament Doctrine of Christ’s Second Coming [originally published, 1878] (Bradford, PA: International Preterist Association, 2003), 374–375.
[←471 ]
Cf., DG van der Merwe, “Eschatology in the first epistle of John: koinwnia in the familia Dei,” (2006) 27(3) Verbum et Ecclesia JRG 1045, at 1073.
[←472 ]
David E Aune, “The Apocalypse of John and Palestinian Jewish Apocalyptic,” (2006) 40(1) Neotestamentica 1, at 3; and Aune, “Stories about Jesus,” 294–295.
[←473 ]
Robinson, Redating, 252.
[←474 ]
Kenneth L Gentry, Jr., Before Jerusalem Fell: Dating the Revelation (Fountain Inn, SC: Victorious Hope Publishing, 2010), 44, 230, and passim.
[←475 ]
Preston, Babylon, 42.
[←476 ]
Ibid., 42–43.
[←477 ]
By contrast, Leonard Thompson discusses “the great significance which [Revelation] has for our knowledge of Christian liturgy” (emphasis added). Thompson recognizes that the “narratives describing the coming eschatological drama are placed in the setting of worship”. But, handcuffed by the late date AD 70 hypothesis, he insists that “the seer probably derived his liturgical model from the practices of existing Christian churches after the fall of Jerusalem”. He does not discuss the identity of Babylon. See, Leonard Thompson, “Cult and Eschatology in the Apocalypse of John,” (1969) 49(4) Journal of Religion 330, at 342–343.
[←478 ]
David Chilton, The Days of Vengeance: An Exposition of the Book of Revelation (Tyler, TX: Dominion Press, 1987), 13–15. In developing this argument, Chilton draws on Meredith G Kline, Treaty of the Great King: The Covenant Structure of Deuteronomy (Grand Rapids, MI: William B Eerdmans, 1963). After completing this paper, I discovered an
other book which lends further support to the preterist or covenant eschatology interpretation of Revelation; see, Sebastian R Smolarz, Covenant and the Metaphor of Divine Marriage in Biblical Thought: A Study with Special Reference to the Book of Revelation (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2011).
[←479 ]
Chilton, Days of Vengeance, 13.
[←480 ]
Elaine Pagels, Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation (New York: Viking, 2012), 8, 11, 16.
[←481 ]
Ibid., 35, 47, 54, 61, 65.
[←482 ]
Preston, Babylon, 90, 85.
[←483 ]
John Painter, “Theology, Eschatology and the Prologue of John,” (1993) 46(1) Scottish Journal of Theology 27, at 28, 41–42.
[←484 ]
Dodd, Apostolic Preaching, 66.
[←485 ]
On the issue of creedal orthodoxy, see Samuel Frost, et. al., House Divided: Bridging the Gap in Reformed Eschatology. (Ramona, CA: Vision Publishing, 2009); on the charge of anti-semitism, see, Preston, Babylon, 265–281.
[←486 ]
Indeed, even CH Dodd who pulled no punches when rejecting the allegedly futurist eschatology of Revelation conceded the conventional wisdom of the creeds. He ends his book on the apostolic preaching with this solemn declaration: “The least inadequate myth of the end of history is that which moulds itself on the great divine event of the past, known in its concrete actuality, and depicts its final issue in a form which brings time to an end and places man in eternity — the second Coming of the Lord, the Last Judgment”. Dodd, Apostolic Preaching, 96.
[←487 ]
John R Meyer, “Athanasius’ Use of Paul in His Doctrine of Salvation,” (1998) 52(2) Vigilæ Christianæ 146, at 166.
[←488 ]
Peter J Leithart, Athanasius (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011), 149, 165.
[←489 ]
Saint Athanasius, On the Incarnation tr John Behr (Yonkers, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2011), 167.
[←490 ]
Leithart, Athanasius, 150, 171, 164, 159.
[←491 ]
Cf. Denise Kimber Buell, Why This New Race: Ethnic Reasoning in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005).
[←492 ]
Thomas G Weinandy, Athanasius: A Theological Introduction (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2007), 121.
[←493 ]
Athanasius, Incarnation, 57, 53.
[←494 ]
Ibid., 75.
[←495 ]
Ibid., 59.
[←496 ]
Ibid., 75, 77.
[←497 ]
Ibid., 77, 79.
[←498 ]
Ibid., 75, 83.
[←499 ]
Ibid., 83, 85.
[←500 ]
Athanasius, quoted in Weinandy, Theological Introduction, 82.
[←501 ]
Athanasius, Incarnation, 95, 93.
[←502 ]
Weinandy, Theological Introduction, 97.
[←503 ]
Meyer, “Athanasius’ Use of Paul,” 166.
[←504 ]
Ibid., 166.
[←505 ]
Weinandy, Theological Introduction, 95, 39–40, 100.
[←506 ]
Athanasius, Incarnation, 113.
[←507 ]
Leithart, Athanasius, 171–172.
[←508 ]
Athanasius, Incarnation, 115.
[←509 ]
Weinandy contends that Athanasius fails to grasp the “unique divine identity” of the Holy Spirit by treating him as “the Son’s ‘image’”. The “singular identity” of the Spirit “demands a unique existential relationship that differs from the Father’s and the Son’s existential relationship”. In other words, one cannot understand the Holy Spirit “by way of a chain of ‘images’ — the Son being the image of the Father and the Spirit being the image of the Son” — that transforms the Spirit into the sole authorized agent of the triune God. Weinandy, Theological Introduction, 111–112.
[←510 ]
Georges Duby, The Three Orders: Feudal Society Imagined tr Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980).
[←511 ]
Cf., Benjamin Myers, Christ the Stranger: The Theology of Rowan Williams (London: T&T Clark, 2012), 35; and Donald Meyer, The Positive Thinkers: A Study of the American Quest for Health, Wealth, and Personal Power from Mary Baker Eddy to Norman Vincent Peale (New York: Doubleday, 1965).
[←512 ]
James Dunn, quoted in Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Christology: A Global Introduction (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003), 22.
[←513 ]
Ibid., 20.
[←514 ]
Ibid., 17–18.
[←515 ]
Ibid., 18.
[←516 ]
See, especially, Rudolf Bultmann, New Testament & Mythology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1984); and also, CH Dodd, The Apostolic Preaching and its Development (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1936). The most ambitious attempt to reconcile the search for a coherent account of Jesus Christ with the de-mythologized methodology of historical criticism can be found in the work of NT Wright. For an introduction see, Carey C Newman, Jesus & the Restoration of Israel: A Critical Assessment of NT Wright’s Jesus and the Victory of God (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1999).
[←517 ]
New Testament scholarship sometimes introduces the concept of the Master Story or Grand Narrative into the analysis of some part of the New Testament such as Revelation. David E Aune adopts that strategy in a way that serves mainly to suggest that Revelation does not really belong with the rest of the New Testament. See, David E Aune, “Stories of Jesus in the Apocalypse of John,” in Richard N Longenecker, ed, Contours of Christology in the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: William B Eerdmans, 2005), 294–295.
[←518 ]
Reinhold Niebuhr, quoted in Christopher Lasch, The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics (New York: WW Norton, 1991), 372.
[←519 ]
Denise Kimber Buell, Why This New Race: Ethnic Reasoning in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005).
[←520 ]
Anthony D Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), 14.
[←521 ]
Origen, On First Principles (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2012), 109.
[←522 ]
Smith, Ethnic Origins, 15.
[←523 ]
Saint Irenaeus of Lyons, Against the Heresies Book 3 (New York: Newman Press, 2012), 56.
[←524 ]
Irenaeus, in Robert M Grant, ed, Irenaeus of Lyons (London: Routledge, 1996), 71.
[←525 ]
Irenaeus, Against the Heresies, 87–88, 102, 104.
[←526 ]
Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, On God and Christ: The Five Theological Orations and Two Letters to Cledonius (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2002), 86, 93, 87.
[←527 ]
Ibid., 86.
[←528 ]
Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, One with God: Salvation as Deification and Justification (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2004), 25–26.
[←529 ]
There is no shortage, however, of one-sided, uncritical efforts to deify various alleged victims of white male oppression such as Aborigines, Negroes, Jews, and women. For a sampling of victim Christology, see Kärkkänen, Christology, 196–286. Perhaps the most prominent work in this genre, is James H Cone, God of the Oppressed (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1997).
[←530 ]
Saint Athanasius, On the Incarnation tr John Behr (Yonkers, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2011), 167.
[←531 ]
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