Quotes from George Eldon Ladd

Thus more explicitly and more emphatically than the other New Testament writers does St. John declare the divinity of Jesus Christ as eternal Son of God and at the same time the distinction between the Son and the Father."46

Recent scholarship has recognized that such terms as body, soul, and spirit are not different, separable faculties of each individual but different ways of viewing the whole person.

It is not the "disturbance" of the normal course of events; it is the manifestation of something utterly new. Eternal life has appeared in the midst of mortality.13

We cannot therefore speak of a Pauline theology as an abstract, theoretical, speculative system; but we can recognize a Pauline theology as an interpretation of the meaning of the person and work of Christ in its practical relevance for Christian life, both individual and collective.

The Hebrew view of humanity is very different from the Greek view. There is no trace of dualism. The Hebrew word for body (gewiyyâ) occurs only fourteen times in the Old Testament5 and never stands in contrast to the soul (neeš).

It should be remembered that while the Baptist's ministry in the Synoptics has several points of contact with contemporary eschatological and apocalyptic thought, it has even more striking elements of divergence. "The essential mystery of prophetic insight and divine inspiration" cannot be explained by the limitations of a naturalistic methodology.

Soul (neeš) is not a higher part of humanity standing over against the body but designates the vitality or life principle in a person. God breathed into Adam's nostrils the breath of life, and he became a living neeš (Gen. 2:7).

The difference between neeš and rû(a)? in humankind is that neeš designates a person in relation to other people as one living the common life of humans, while rû(a)? is the individual in her or his relation to God.9 However, neither neeš nor rû(a)? is conceived of as a part of a person capable of surviving the death of b???r. They both designate the human being as a whole viewed from different perspectives.

However, psych? and pneuma are not strictly interchangeable but refer to a person's inner life viewed from two points of view. Pneuma is one's inner self viewed in terms of relationship to God and to other people; psych? is the individual as a living being, as a human personality, the vitality of a person viewed from the point of view of her or his body and flesh.

Both justification — acquittal by the righteous judge — and the gift of the Holy Spirit belong to the Age to Come, but they have become matters of present experience to the person in Christ.

It is important to note, however, that basileia can designate both the manifestation or coming of God's kingly rule and the eschatological realm in which God's rule is enjoyed. In this sense, inheriting eternal life and entrance into the Kingdom of God are synonymous with entering into the Age to Come.

The phrase 'in Christ' is the phrase for the salvation-historical (heilsgeschichtlich) situation of those who belong to Christ in virtue of their existential union with the death and resurrection of Christ.

The events of the eschatological consummation are not merely detached events lying in the future about which Paul speculates. They are rather redemptive events that have already begun to unfold within history.

From a purely human perspective, this seems impossible; but at precisely this point is found perhaps the greatest miracle in the biblical faith. God is the living God, and he, the Eternal, the Unchangeable, has communicated knowledge of himself through the ebb and flow of historical experience. This, as Cullmann has pointed out, is the supreme scandal of Christian faith.

Life in the Spirit means eschatological existence — life in the new age. This is established by the fact that the presence of the Holy Spirit in the church is itself an eschatological event.26

Mark's Gospel is not the story of Jesus alone, but of Jesus and his disciples. If Mark's main theological emphasis is on Christology, a vital subplot is the analysis of what it means to follow Jesus. This theme is explored through a portrayal of Jesus' first disciples in their privilege and in their failures, in their experience of being with Jesus, and especially in the teaching he gave them.

An apostle has the primary function of being a delegate of the risen Christ, going as his representative and in his authority. This idea of an authoritative representative derives from the Jewish institution of šelû?îm or authorized messengers representing a person or a group of persons. "A man's representative (š?lî??) is to be considered as the man himself.

Mark therefore shows that the theologia crucis applies to the disciple as well as to the master. There is no room for a privileged triumphalism. "Mark campaigns against balcony-type Christians who are too high for the mission and discipleship that in Mark's terms necessarily involves cross-bearing and self-sacrifice."72

Cullmann interprets the binding of Satan by his quaint idiom that he is bound, but with a long rope.42 Satan is not powerless, but his power has been broken.

we need to accept and welcome the fact that the church has not been given a single "authorized biography" of Jesus but four canonical Gospels, related and yet different, as complementary witnesses to the truth about Jesus. To do justice to such a revelation, it is important that we listen to each witness individually as well as to all together.

Discipleship, therefore, must necessarily be an uncomfortable process of reorientation and of abandonment of the self-centered values of human society in favor of the divine economy, in which "Many who are first will be last, and the last first" (10:31).

Thus Luke has depicted a transfer of the mission from Jesus to the church, by means of the sequence of events linking his two books: resurrection, post-resurrection teaching, ascension (twice mentioned, and clearly important to Luke),84 and so to Pentecost, where the Holy Spirit now present in the church takes up the mission that Jesus "began" (Acts 1:1).

The gospel is, therefore, the proclamation of the historical fact and the redemptive meaning of the cross, which includes both present and future blessings.

In short, the earliest Christianity did not consist of a new doctrine about God nor of a new hope of immortality nor even of new theological insights about the nature of salvation. It consisted of the recital of a great event, of a mighty act of God: the raising of Christ from the dead. Any new theological emphases are the inevitable meanings of this redemptive act of God in raising the crucified Jesus from the dead.