Wednesday, February 01, 2006

The Faithfulness of Jesus Christ

I've always been a bit hesistant about jumping into the whole subject genitive reading of pistis christou - although I do think it makes good grammatical and theological sense in Eph 3.12 and Phil 3.9 at least. Despite my reservations, I have always believed that Jesus' obedience/faithfulness does have a big part in NT Theology/Christology. I thought about writing an article on the function of Jesus' faithfulness/obedience in NT theology, but I do not have to bother after coming across the following article:

Richard N.Longenecker, ‘The Foundational Conviction of New Testament Christology: The Obedience/Faithfulness/Sonship of Christ,’ in Jesus of Nazareth, Lord and Christ, eds. Joel B. Green and Max Turner (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994) 473-88.

6 comments:

J. B. Hood said...

MFB,

Is there room now, however, for someone to step in and interact with the second appendix of Hays in the second edition of Faith of Jesus Christ? Particularly the last few pages. It's a pretty potent answer to Dunn, I think.

(Hays makes use of some of RNL's earlier work along the same lines.)

Sharad Yadav said...

Mike,

Beyond the article you mentioned, is the Longenecker edited volume worth buying?

Michael F. Bird said...

Sharad,
Yes - definitely. There's a good batch of articles in there including the Jesus/Gentiles by Schnabel; Joel Green on the poor; Blomberg on Evangelical Liberation Theology, and others I can't remember off the top of my head.

graham old said...

'Blomberg on Evangelical Liberation Theology...'

Ooh, that sounds interesting.

Sean said...

Yes, Hays decontructs Dunn's response in Pistis and Pauline Christology: What's at Stake?

I would love to see Mike interact with the book that Hays mentions on the faith of Jesus in the early Church Fathers. Apparently, the evidence is more disputed than Mike admits.

Hays' book and article have pretty much settled the issue for me, for this year anyhow!

Chris Tilling said...

I was speaking on th ephone with one of the editors of this book last week (Max), and he said about the pistis christou genitive something like: 'most people don't realise just how complicted the problems involved are'. What I suspect needs to be pursued a little more, and a direction I think you are marching, is to take each book (whether it be Eph, Rom or Gal), and perhaps even each chapter, on its own terms in relation to this question.