Unity and diversity in the New Testament: an inquiry into the character of earliest Christianity

569 Pages·2006·38.28 MB·English

by  James D. G. Dunn

Unity and Diversity in the New Testament
JAMES D. G. DUNN
Unity and Diversity
in the New Testament
An Inquiry into the Character
of Earliest Christianity
THIRD EDITION
scm press
First published 1977
Second edition 1990
Second impression 1994
Third edition 2006
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 or otherwise, without the prior permission of
the publisher, SCM Press
© James D. G. Dunn 1977, 1990, 2006
British Library Cataloguing in Publication data
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library
ISBN 0-334-02998-8/978-0-334-0x998-4
Published in 2006 by SCM Press
9-17 St Albans Place,
London, NI ONX
www. scm-canter burypress .co.uk
SCM Press is a division of
SCM-Canterbury Press Ltd
Typeset by Rowland Phototypesetting Ltd,
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Printed and bound in Great Britain by
William Clowes Ltd, Beccles, Suffolk
To
CHARLIE MOULE
Christian, scholar, friend
CONTENTS
Preface xi
Foreword to Third Edition xv
Foreword to Second Edition xxxi
Abbreviations liii
I Introduction
§ i Is 'orthodoxy' a meaningful concept within the New
Testament period? i
Part One
UNITY IN DIVERSITY
II Kerygma or Kerygmata?
§2 Introduction n
§3 The kerygma of Jesus 13
§4 The kerygma in Acts 17
§5 The kerygma of Paul 22
§6 The kerygma of John 27
§7 Conclusions 30
III Primitive Confessional Formulae
§8 Introduction 34
§9 Jesus is the Son of Man 3 6
§10 Jesus is Messiah 42
§11 Jesus is Son of God 47
§12 Jesus is Lord 53
§ 13 The life-settings of the earliest confessional
formulae 5 8
§14 Conclusions 60
viii Contents
IV The Role of Tradition
§ 15 Introduction 64
§ 16 'The tradition of the elders' 66
§17 Traditions of the earliest communities 70
§18 Traditions about Jesus 75
§19 Conclusions 82
V The Use of the Old Testament
§20 Introduction 87
§21 Jewish exegesis at the time of Jesus 88
§22 Earliest Christian exegesis of the Old Testament 94
§23 Pesher quotation 99
§24 Principles of interpretation 102
§25 Conclusions 109
VI Concepts of Ministry
§26 Introduction 112
§27 Jesus and his disciples 113
§28 Ministry in the earliest community 115
§29 Ministry in the Pauline churches 119
§30 Towards Ignatius 124
§31 The Johannine alternative 128
§32 Conclusions 131
VII Patterns of Worship
§ 3 3 Introduction 135
§34 Diversity of attitude and form 136
§35 Early Christian hymns 143
§ 3 6 'Pan-liturgism' ? 153
§37 Conclusions 161
VQI Sacraments
§38 Introduction 164
§39 Baptism 166
§40 The Lord's Supper 176
§41 The sacraments in the Fourth Gospel 184
§42 Conclusions 187
Contents ix
IX Spirit and Experience
§43 Introduction 189
§44 Enthusiastic Christianity 191
§45 The religious experience of Jesus 199
§46 The religious experience of Paul 205
§47 Divergent paths 211
§48 Conclusions 215
X Christ and Christology
§49 Introduction 218
§50 The continuity between the historical Jesus and
the kerygmatic Christ 220
§51 'One Jesus, many Christs?' 232
§52 Conclusions 244
Part Two
DIVERSITY IN UNITY?
XI Jewish Christianity
§53 Introduction 253
§54 How 'orthodox' was earliest Palestinian
Christianity? 255
§ 5 5 Jewish Christianity within the New Testament:
(1) Adherence to the law 265
§56 (2) Exaltation of James and denigration of Paul 272
§57 (3) Adoptionist christology 278
§58 Conclusions 282
XII Hellenistic Christianity
§59 Introduction 288
§60 'The first confessional schism in church history' 289
§61 Gnostic tendencies within first-century
Christianity 297
§62 The 'gnosticizing proclivity' of Q? 307
§63 Paul - 'the greatest of all the Gnostics'? 312
§64 Was John 'guilty' of 'naive docetism'? 322
§65 Conclusions 333
x Contents
XTH Apocalyptic Christianity
§66 What is'apocalyptic'? 337
§67 'Apocalyptic - the mother of all Christian
theology'? 345
§68 Apocalyptic literature in the New Testament 355
§69 Conclusions 365
XTV Early Catholicism
§70 What is 'early Catholicism'? 372
§71 Early Catholicism in the New Testament:
(1) The fading of the parousia hope, 'the imminent
expectation' 377
§72 (2) Increasing institutionalization 384
§73 (3) Crystallization of the faith into set forms 392
§74 Conclusions 396
Conclusions
XV The Authority of the New Testament
§75 Summary 403
§76 Has the canon a continuing function? 408
Appendix 434
Bibliography 460
Indexes 489
PREFACE
In 1969 I was privileged to be a member of a study group in Edinburgh
which spent some time discussing the questions raised by Walter
Bauer's Rechtgläubigkeit und Ketzerei im ältesten Christentum
(2i964, ET Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity, 1971). In
the summer of 1970 I participated in another study group at Tyndale
House, Cambridge, which took as its theme 'Diversity and Develop­
ment in NT Theology'. The interest these seminars aroused in me
resulted in a series of ten lectures on the subject of 'Unity and Diversity
in the NT' as the final section of an undergraduate Part I course on
NT Theology at the University of Nottingham in 1971-72. After
three years, syllabus changes made it feasible to transfer the already
too tightly packed series to Part II (third year undergraduate). It is
these lectures which are now written up with the necessary detail and
documentation.
The book has several purposes. First, it seeks to explore the issues
raised by Bauer with reference to the NT. Can we properly speak of
'orthodoxy and heresy in earliest Christianity'? What is 'the unity of
the NT'? How broad is the diversity within the NT? The issues are
clarified and sharpened in the Introduction. There have been many
contributions on this theme, of course, but they have been all either
too brief and too popular, or too narrow and too specialized. What
has become increasingly necessary is a single study which brings
together the different aspects of the investigation in sufficient detail
within the covers of one book. This I have attempted to do in the
following pages. It is my hope that as a result, the issue of the NT's
unity and diversity will come into clearer focus, and its implications
and ramifications will become a subject for further investigation and
debate. I have taken the liberty to include a few remarks at the close
of several chapters relating the conclusions to the present day, and
have outlined some of the corollaries for our understanding of 'the
Authority of the NT' in the final section (§76).
Second, it seeks to bridge the gaps which too often exist between
literary critical study of the NT documents, historical sociological