Quotes from George Eldon Ladd

Cullmann contrasts the deaths of Socrates and Jesus, pointing out that Socrates died impassively and heroically, while Jesus cried out in real fear of death.

Zechariah 8:3 is very interesting. When God returns to Zion to dwell in the midst of his people, Jerusalem shall be called polls h? al?thin? ("the true city"). Such a saying would be difficult for a Greek unfamiliar with Semitic idiom, and the Greek hardly conveys the meaning of the Hebrew text, that Jerusalem will be a city where people have responded to God's revelation of himself and loyally walk in his precepts.

Evangelists are preachers who carry on the missionary task of preaching the gospel but without the authority of the apostles. The term denotes a function rather than an office.

Paul also lists one of the gifts of the Spirit as "administration" (1 Cor. 12:28). The word literally means "steersman," "helmsman," and must refer to the gift of leadership in the churches, "a true director of its order and therefore of its life.

Here we find an extension of the theology of discipleship, that it will be the mission of the church to witness to the gospel of the Kingdom in the world. Israel is no longer the witness to God's Kingdom; the church has taken her place. Therefore K. E. Skydsgaard has said that the history of the Kingdom of God has become the history of Christian missions.

We can only conclude that the expression "in the flesh" means to live as an unregenerate person, to be a person who is not indwelt by the Spirit of God.

Here we meet the familiar Pauline tension between the indicative and the imperative.

Walking in the Spirit means to live each moment under the control of the Holy Spirit. Walking involves living a step at a time, moment by moment; and to walk in the Spirit means to take each step of my earthly walk under the direction and control and leadership of the Holy Spirit.

Biblical theology is theology: it is primarily a story about God and his concern for human beings. It exists only because of the divine initiative realizing itself in a series of divine acts whose objective is human redemption. Biblical theology therefore is not exclusively, or even primarily, a system of abstract theological truths. It is basically the description and interpretation of the divine activity within the scene of human history that seeks humanity's redemption.

The "things that are above" represent the realm of God that has already invaded human history in the person and mission of Jesus and brought to human beings43 the new realm of life.

The purpose of the passages is to argue that Paul enjoys the same apostolic authority as those who were apostles before him (Gal. 1:17), because he, like them, received his commission and his gospel directly from the Lord.

While eternal life is eschatological, the central emphasis of the Fourth Gospel is not to show people the way of life in the Age to Come but to bring to them a present experience of this future life.

New Testament theology therefore does not consist merely of the teachings of the several strata of the New Testament. It consists primarily of the recital of what God has done in Jesus of Nazareth.

The whole history of New Testament thought is to be understood as the invasion of God's world into the realm of history to secure humanity's redemption.

He renders this saying, "The good news of the kingdom of God is preached, and every one enters it violently" (eis aut?n biazetai, Lk. 16:16). Here is the same use of biazetai in the middle voice.

However, the day is long past when we may think of the Synoptics as "bare" history. Their authors had become convinced by the resurrection that Jesus was the Messiah and the Son of God (Mk. 1:1) and wrote "good news" in the light of that faith. The Synoptic Gospels are theology as well as history.

Since the days of John6 something new has been happening, creating a new situation, with the result that, "great as John was, the least in the dawning Kingdom was greater; not in personal achievement and worth but by God's gift he, unlike John, was in the Kingdom."7 The contrast is not between John and other people but between the old age of the prophets and the new age of the Kingdom that had begun with Jesus' ministry.8

History has been called "an abyss in which Christianity has been swallowed up quite against its will." How

The church is in fact the true Israel of God.

Dalman recognized that the Kingdom in Jesus' teaching could be "a good which admits of being striven for, of being bestowed, of being possessed, and of being accepted.

These two dimensions of life — present and future — are inseparably associated in Jesus' discourse about his relationship to the Father.

However, the Hebrew word 'ôl?m, which is strictly speaking a temporal word meaning "age," gained new nuances from the contact of Jewish thinkers with the Hellenistic world. The word assumed spatial connotations, and thus 'ôl?m came to mean both age and the world.

Against the background of the meaning of "lost," one can approve of the decision of Arndt, Gingrich, and Danker, following Bauer, to list "lost" in Luke 19:10 under the meaning "perish, die."16 The lost have not only gone astray but are in danger of perishing unless rescued.

The "love of the Spirit" (Rom. 15:30) may well be translated, "love created by the Spirit" (see Col. 1:8).58 This love manifests itself primarily in its relationship to other people; it is patient, kind, good, trustworthy, gentle, and self-disciplined (Gal. 5:22-23).