NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY MANY WITNESSES, ONE GOSPEL I. HOWARD MARSHALL InterVarsity Press, USA P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515-1426, USA World Wide Web: www.ivpress.com E-mail: [email protected] APOLLOS (an imprint of Inter-Varsity Press, England) 38 De Montfort Street, Leicester LE1 7GP, England Website: www.ivpbooks.com E-mail: [email protected] ©2004 by I. Howard Marshall All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of InterVarsity Press. ® ® InterVarsity Press , U.S.A., is the book-publishing division of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA , a student movement active on campus at hundreds of universities, colleges and schools of nursing in the United States of America, and a member movement of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. For information about local and regional activities, write Public Relations Dept., InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA, 6400 Schroeder Rd., P.O. Box 7895, Madison, WI 53707-7895, or visit the IVCF website at <www.intervarsity.org>. Biblical citations are taken from the NIV (Inclusive Language Edition) for the Old Testament and the TNIV for the New Testament unless otherwise indicated. Cover Design: Cindy Kiple Cover Images: Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY USA ISBN 0-8308-2795-1 UK ISBN 1-84474-047-1 Printed in the United States of America ∞ Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Marshall, I. Howard. New Testament theology: many witnesses, one Gospel/I. Howard Marshall. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8308-2795-1 (hardcover: alk. paper) 1. Bible. N.T.—Theology. I. Title. BS2397.M37 2004 230’.0415—dc22 2004017266 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. P 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 Y 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 To Dai, Doug, Alan and Nathalie, my sons- and daughter-in-law CONTENTS Preface General Bibliography Abbreviations PART 1: INTRODUCTION 1 How Do We Do New Testament Theology? PART 2: JESUS, THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS AND ACTS 2 The Gospels and New Testament Theology 3 The Gospel of Mark 4 The Gospel of Matthew 5 Luke-Acts: The Former Treatise 6 Luke-Acts: The Sequel 7 The Theology of the Synoptic Gospels and Acts PART 3: THE PAULINE LETTERS 8 The Letter to the Galatians 9 The Letters to the Thessalonians 10 The First Letter to the Corinthians 11 The Second Letter to the Corinthians 12 The Letter to the Romans 13 The Letter to the Philippians 14 The Letter to Philemon. 15 The Letter to the Colossians 16 The Letter to the Ephesians 17 The Pastoral Epistles 18 The Theology of the Pauline Letters 19 Paul, the Synoptic Gospels and Acts PART 4: THE JOHANNINE LITERATURE 20 The Gospel of John 21 The Letters of John 22 The Revelation of John 23 The Gospel, Letters and Revelation of John 24 John, the Synoptic Gospels and Acts, and Paul PART 5: HEBREWS, JAMES, 1–2 PETER, AND JUDE 25 The Letter to the Hebrews 26 The Letter of James 27 The First Letter of Peter 28 The Letter of Jude 29 The Second Letter of Peter 30 Hebrews, James, 1–2 Peter and Jude in the New Testament PART 6: CONCLUSION 31 Diversity and Unity in the New Testament. Author Index Subject Index Scripture Index PREFACE T he aim of this book is to provide a guide to the theology of the New Testament that will be at a level and of a length suitable for use by students but will also be of use to all who are interested in the subject. In an era of increasingly lengthy books on every aspect of New Testament study, I have tried to be reasonably succinct and to produce a work of manageable scope. Works on New Testament theology may be organized more in terms of theological themes as they are treated throughout the New Testament or more in terms of the theological teaching of the individual New Testament books. The approach taken here is to let each of the individual books of the New Testament speak for themselves and then to attempt some kind of synthesis of their teaching. Any approach has its drawbacks, and the weakness of this approach is that the reader will find discussion of, say, the church spread over various chapters and will need to make good use of the index. However, the great strength of this approach is that it lets the structure and the content of the discussion be shaped by what the individual writers were trying to say in the actual documents. In order to avoid repetition, some topics, which might be discussed equally well in other contexts, will generally be taken up in one place (e.g., the concept of the church as the body of Christ is discussed in the chapter on Ephesians, although it could also have been taken up in connection with Colossians). In accordance with this aim of producing a book that will be helpful to students, the bibliographies have been deliberately confined to works in English that should for the most part be not too difficult to access. However, the two or three commentaries that I have listed for each book of the New Testament tend to be among the more solid ones available, and some of them may need at least a modest knowledge of Greek to get the most out of them. I see no point in providing exhaustive lists of literature (which I haven’t read in any case) and offering no guidance as to which books should be priorities for the student. I have not listed books in other languages with one exception: I have given references to the main German theologies of the New Testament where appropriate (and very occasionally to other works that have influenced me). Biblical citations are taken from the NIV (Inclusive Language Edition) for the Old Testament and from the TNIV for the New Testament unless otherwise indicated. I am grateful to InterVarsity Press for their patience in waiting for the long-delayed completion of this book and for their efficient production. I. Howard Marshall