VI - POST-PAULINE DEVELOPMENTS
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2010
Summary
The Pastoral Epistles are of marginal importance for this study, having no sections that deal with the problem. They tend to be inward looking, concerned mainly with matters of Church life, practice and doctrine, with little or no concern for those outside except as they are either breakaways from the Church or perverters within it. These opponents are gnosticizing Jews or Jewish Christians who are subverting the Church by means of a subtle introduction of, on the one hand, an illegitimate theory of ‘knowledge’, and, on the other, an incorrect approach to the OT. This movement is severely criticized, but the criticism does not spill over and affect the author's attitude to Judaism itself. The Church neglects the Jews in the Pastorals: it is a separately structured entity focused upon itself and its Lord. It is called oikos theou, ekklesia theou (i Timothy 3: 15), and has taken over the title laos periousios (Titus 2: 14), though there is lacking that high theoretical ecclesiology of Colossians and Ephesians. The assumption lying behind 2 Timothy 3: 14 ff. is that the scriptures now belong to Christians, but this must not be pressed in view of I Timothy I: 8 ff.
In Acts there is something of the same atmosphere. We need not describe Luke's presentation of the early Christians’ adherence to Jewish institutions, of the growth of tension between Jews and Christians, nor of the development of a Christian universalism.
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- Israel in the Apostolic Church , pp. 159 - 194Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1969
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