New Blogs

I have the pleasure of introducing two new blogs to Euangelion readers (Brandon and Jim might want to add them to the biblio-bloggers data base). The blogs are:

Paul and His Companions by Robby Holt.

The sub-title reads: This blog is about hearing and being shaped by Paul's letters to earliest communities of faith. What was Paul's Gospel? This blog will utilize (and synthesize) dramatic metaphors and narrative approaches to Paul's letters without getting tangled in questions of authorship.

Robby raises some good questions about the continuity and discontinuity of the gospel between Jesus and Paul:

1. What is the best way to understand the relationship between Paul's letters and the narratives about Jesus called "Gospels"?
2. What is the best way to think about the nature and content of Paul's gospel?
3. What is the best way to think about the relationship between Paul's Gospel, what he preached when founding or visiting churches, and what he wrote in letters to communites of those who already believed the gospel?
4. In the three synoptic narratives about Jesus called Gospels, Jesus preaches a gospel. His gospel is the good news of the kingdom of God (Matt 4:17, 23-24; 9:35-39; 10:4-8; 24:9-13; Mark 1:1-3, 14-15; Luke 4:18-21, 40-44; 8:1-3; 9:1-6; 16:16-17). Must Paul's gospel be a substantially different gospel? (See Acts 28:23, 31)
5. If Paul's gospel is essentially the same as Jesus' just from a different moment in the drama (after its climax rather than just before / during its climax), do the reflections above about Paul with Mark and Luke and then Paul and his co-laboring, co-suffering companions make much sense? Or would they fit better into a system of salvation orientation?

These are good questions and, as matter of fact, it is on my to-write-a-book-on-list! Anything to do with being cruciformed and articulating Paul’s gospel interests me, so I’ll be watching this blog with interest.

The second blog is Inklings from an Intern by Paul Winter (I think). This contains some good comments on Presbyterian liturgy (which I should have had a immersion course in before coming to Scotland) and some NT related stuff too.