The Making of the New TestamentBacon, Benjamin Wisner
Religion
The Making of the New Testament
Bacon, Benjamin Wisner
Bible. New Testament -- Introductions
against flesh and blood, but against "world-rulers of this (lower region
of) darkness," against "archangels," "elements," "principalities,"
"powers." The one thing which takes away all harmful influence from this
credulity (if we must apply an unfairly modern judgment to an ancient
writer) is his doctrine of the Son ship and Lordship of Jesus, with whom
the redeemed are "joint-heirs" of the entire creation and thus superior
to angels. In this respect Paul has imbibed the mind of Christ. Jesus'
remedy for superstition is not scientific but religious. It does not
deny the popularly assumed relation to "spirits" good or evil, but
affirms a direct relation to the Infinite Spirit, which reduces all
angels and demons to insignificance save as "ministers." Paul's
world-view starts with the creation of man to be lord and heir of the
world (Gal. iv. 1; 1st Cor. iii. 22; _cf._ Gen. i. 28). The "purpose of
God, which he purposed in Christ Jesus, before the creation, unto a
dispensation of the fulness of the ages" is "to our glory." It would be
frustrated if the "Second Adam" did not become the Heir, in whom the
redeemed creation would find the goal of its long expectancy. Paul has a
cosmology as well as "Enoch." He could not be a worthy follower of
Jesus--he could not even be a loyal "son of the Law" without holding to
the accepted doctrine of the Inheritance intended for Messiah and his
obedient people. It did not make him less firm in this conviction when
as a Christian he thought of Jesus as the Messiah, and of Jew and
Gentile united in his kingdom; only the starting-point is not the
subjection of the sons of Abraham under Gentiles, but the subjection of
the sons of Adam under "world-rulers of this darkness." When he combines
Ps. viii. and Ps. cx. in his depiction of the reign of Christ in 1st
Cor. xv. 24-27, it is a sure indication of its scope as Paul understood
it. He included in the lordship over creation, and the subjection of all
"enemies" which the exalted Christ is awaiting "at the right hand of
God," the subjection of "angels, and principalities, and powers and
every name that is named, whether of beings in heaven, or on earth, or
under the earth." Paul pursues, then, the method of the apocalyptic
writers in making his doctrine of Redemption and the Kingdom
transcendental. By making it cosmic he undermines its Jewish
particularism. He avoids the superstition by holding firmly to Jesus'
doctrine of Son ship by _moral_ affinity with God.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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