which area of the New Testament would you prefer to study at a PhD level?

[© tweed]

my answer up until a few months ago would have been the synoptics, though I've devoted a lot of time to Paul over the past few months.  I know almost nothing about John and find all of it to be a strange puzzle - though no less fascinating.

[© tweed]

It seems much more logical to me to do a dissertation by picking a single topic and tracing that one topic through the bible from beginning to end, explaining the role the topic plays in the overall context of the bible and why it is applicable to Christian instruction.

what you're describing is known as a "systematic theology", which is the sort of thing one writes after being awarded a PhD.

[© tweed]

I know who you are, so it's prudent not to engage in a drawn-out debate about your believe in the Bible (or one of the many bibles, at least) as innerant, God-breathed and thus univocal.  you've proven the solidity of your belief that the 4th Century Christians got it totally right by picking the Canon that they did.

however, a few things:

Since the NT is written to believers in the church age

"believers" is not a single category, and was not in the first Century.  the fact that parts of the Pauline epistles are written in polemical style -- take Paul's beef with Peter over food laws in Galatians 2, for example.  there were diverse beliefs among the early Christians that caused significant arguments and even church 'splits' - or else Paul would not have spoken of the need for unity.. disagreements over the food laws, whether the Mosaic Law had to be kept, whether Gentile converts would be circumcised (or evangelized at all...)

we can take the Epistle of James as an argument against Pauline theology, for example.  James (who may have been brother of Jesus James) is believed to have stayed in Jerusalem while Paul, self-apointed "apostle set apart by God for preaching to the Gentiles" went all around the Mediterranean.  James is written much like old-school, Solomonesque wisdom literature, and James may have kept the Mosaic law and Torah.

when the hidden symbolisms of the OT have been revealed in Christ…expounding upon a narrow part of the NT without bouncing it off the rest of scripture is tantamount to taking it out of context and placing it in a vacuum.

Christological exegesis is what this is, and unless you presuppose the Canon was God-ordained from the start (we know that you do), it is profoundly out of context to read the Pentateuch exclusively using Christ as the key hidden message behind all of it.


I find the inerrancy/God-breathed/necessarily univocal hermenutic to be destructive to an attempt to read the Bible for what it is -- which is, a collection of texts written over the span of maybe 1500 years, by dozens of authors, all, in their unique ways, bearing witness to the God that they felt and knew.

[© tweed]

Not to be argumentative, but didn’t the writers of the NT expect their audience to be able to understand what you’re calling a "systematic theology"?
 Isn’t all NT writing written in what you describe as systematic theology form?  

example:  When the NT names a topic and then quotes repeatedly from the OT for reference regarding that topic, isn’t the writer penning his letter in systematic theology form?

in the light of Christ's death and resurrection, the early Christians that would give rise to the NTwere certain that something earth-shattering had happened, but were not sure exactly what.  the story of early Christianity (and, for that much ever since) is to attempt to understand what was revealed on the cross as best we can.

so, no, they did not have a post-Resurrection Christological theology, they were struggling to develop it.  the best example we have in the NT of an explicit systematic theology is of course Romans.  he does cite and echo Hebrew Scripture in expression of his belief that the one YHWH of Israel had to be understood afresh in light of the cross.  if this was so obvious to the people he was writing to he wouldn't have wasted time fleshing it out.

[© tweed]

we should note that we're using massive anachronisms in this discussion.  'theology' didn't exist as an independent discipline we'd recognize until Christianity became Romanized.  the distinction between public and private life was much less clear.  the line between 'religion' and 'politics' did not exist (Caesar was the Son of God too).  and so on.