becoming

Feb 12 2006 課堂錄音:

[audio:1Corinthians/1Corinthians_8_1-9_27.mp3]

Anson asked in his comments about my view of Luther’s theology. My reply keeps growing and so I put it here as post instead. 

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Not sure the background of the website you linked. But traditionally, people don’t usually link Rom 5:1-2 to Luther’s theology (although that’s an important text in Reconciliation theology). Rom 1:16-17 is what Luther said that changed his theology from the medieval focus on good deeds to the emphasis on God’s grace.

Before his lectures on Romans, one can already find traces of the protestant thoughts in Luther’s first lecture series on Psalm (1513-1515).

When studying Luther’s theology, we must put things back in context. First he lived in the medieval times. We can not assume that he is our contemporaries. Secondly, we are talking about a period in church history where people had strong guilt about their lives, and many were living their daily lives in fear that they will lost their salvation with a tiny mistake in their lives. I think we are, in a sense, living in the other side of the pendulum right now.

Recently research also argues if Luther read Paul correctly. One can argue that he misread Paul by equating medieval church focuses on works with Jewish focuses on the Law, and hence reading his issues into the text (see J Dunn, NT Wright), but we can also view that as Luther trying to make sense out of the gospel in his context and times.

All in all, I think Luther’s theology is something we must always turn back to again and again. I find it especially true when Evangelicals at times look really like the Pharisees and the Teachers of the Law in NT. Don’t take for granted what others say about Luther. Read it yourself. Knowing that we comes from the protestant tradition (although Anglicanism started off with a heavy dose of Calvin than anybody else), what we know for sure right now about our faith is only because of great Christians like Luther, Calvin and Zwingli.

To begin with, you can read:

1. An Open Letter to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation Concerning the Reform of the Christian Estate
2. Prelude On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church
3. On the Freedom of a Christian (you might want to start with this first)

Hope this helps.

Oh, for chinese literature on Luther’s theology, you can read:

1. 林鴻信，覺醒中的自由–路德神學精要
2. 楊慶球，馬丁路德神學研究

What Is This Word? by Bishop Tom Wright of Durham 

…The genuine Christmas story is far more subversive, far more powerful, far more dangerous, than all the coded or decoded ramblings of scrolls and paintings and secret gospels. The church rightly rejected all those as it took the message of God-inside-out into Caesar’s world, the world where what counted was not how clever you were with your spiritual interiority but how loyal you were to King Jesus when faced with lions in the amphitheatre or being burned at the stake. As Matthew saw, the true Christmas story was what made Herod shiver in his shoes; as Luke saw, it was the birth of Jesus that upended the world of Caesar Augustus. This truth is far more dangerous, not least because it was dangerous for God, the God who turned himself inside out to become one of us. That’s why the conspiracy theories are so popular: they give you the thrill of apparently knowing secrets without any corresponding cost or challenge. They debunk the truth and leave Caesar secure on his throne. The real secret, the secret we celebrate here this morning, the secret of God-inside-out, demands my soul, my life, my total loyalty. O come, let us adore him.

–Bishop Tom Wright, God Inside Out.

In the beginning, God created someone that can write a book faster than you can read. Then He created a list of bloggers that can post summaries and reflections faster than you even aware that the book is actually out!

This is crazy.

Scot McKnight recent review on N.T. Wright new book The Last Word: Beyond the Bible Wars to a New Understanding of the Authority of Scripture

From the look of it, it seems to be very much in line with what Wright already laid out in NTPG and his earlier article How can the Bible be Authoritative? This book is targeted for lay person. 

Here is another review from Last Homely House. 

Thank you Vincent for getting me the books from UT:

Richard A. Horsley, Jesus and Empire: The Kingdom of God and the New World Disorder

Richard A. Horsley (Editor), Paul and Empire: Religion and Power in Roman Imperial Society

What Wright said about Paul and Empire: Religion and Power in Roman Imperial Society.

The evidence now available, including that from epigraphy and archaeology, shows that the cult of Caesar was not simply one new religion among many in the Roman world. Already by Paul’s time it had become the dominant cult in a large part of the Empire, certainly in the parts where Paul was active, and was the means whereby the Romans managed to control and govern such huge areas as came under their sway. Who needs armies when they have worship?

The book thus invites us to approach what has been called Paul’s theology, and to find in it, not simply a few social or political "implications", to be left safely to the final chapters of a lengthy theological tome, but a major challenge to precisely that imperial cult and ideology which was part of the air Paul and his converts breathed. His missionary work, it appears (I am here summing up in my own way what I take to be the book’s central thrust), must be conceived not simply in terms of a traveling evangelist offering people a new religious experience, but of an ambassador for a king-in-waiting, establishing cells of people loyal to this new king, and ordering their lives according to his story, his symbols, and his praxis, and their minds according to his truth. This could only be construed as deeply counter-imperial, as subversive to the whole edifice of the Roman Empire; and there is in fact plenty of evidence that Paul intended it to be so construed, and that when he ended up in prison as a result of his work he took it as a sign that he had been doing his job properly.

Sounds like it will be a very interesting read. 

Vincent told me from his NT course that Resurrection as understood in Second Temple Judaism was not so much on the what happens to God’s people or anybody after death, but on the restoration (and vindication) of God’s people. I found the same observation from Wright’s earlier article (1998) entitled Christian Origins and the Resurrection of Jesus: The Resurrection of Jesus as a Historical Problem.

As a result, it is understandable as to why the Sadducees did not believe in it and why the Pharisees did. Since it is not taught in the Torah, the Sadducees were opposed to it and afraid such revolutionary doctrine will challenge their present status quo as it will defintely encourage martyrdom. As the same time, the Pharisees favored it precisely because they belonged to the revolutionary wing of Judaism, longing for the restoration of Israel.

Either way, it was very different from our modern (mis)understanding of resurrection as a process which the body regains consciousness.