NEW STUDIES IN BIBLICAL THEOLOGY 13
Series editor: D. A. Carson
Thanksgiving
AN INVESTIGATION OF A PAULINE THEME
David W. Pao
Apollos
InterVarsity Press
downers grove, illinois 60515
APOLLOS (an imprint of Inter-Varsity Press),
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Email: ivp@uccf.org.uk
INTERVARSITY PRESS
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© David W. Pao 2002
David W. Pao has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.
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 the publisher or the Copyright Licensing Agency.
Unless otherwise stated, Scripture quotations in this publication are from the Holy Bible, New International Version. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Hodder & Stoughton, a division of Hodder Headline Ltd. All rights reserved. ‘niv’ is a registered trademark of International Bible Society. UK trademark number 1448790.
First published 2002
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
UK ISBN 0-85111-272-2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
These data have been requested.
US ISBN 0-8308-2613-0
1 Thanksgiving as God-centredness
Thanksgiving as God-centredness
2 Thanksgiving within the covenantal traditions
The past in covenantal traditions
The present in covenantal traditions
The future in covenantal traditions
Paul and the covenantal traditions
Thanksgiving and the covenantal traditions
3 Thanksgiving and covenantal history
Remembrance as a covenantal act
Confessing the mighty acts of God
‘Do this in remembrance of me’
Divine acts through human agency
Redefinition of the structure of authority
Bridging the past and the future
Future as grounds for thanksgiving
Rejection of the mighty acts of God
Forgetting their Lord and worshipping idols
‘Do not grumble, as some of them did’
‘They neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him’
Appendix: Pauline thanksgiving and the Greco-Roman benefaction system
The Greco-Roman patron-client network
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About Thanksgiving: An Investigation of a Pauline Theme“Be thankful” (Colossians 3:15). This is a recurring exhortation in the letters of the apostle Paul. No other New Testament writer gives such a sustained emphasis on thanksgiving—and yet, major modern studies of Paul fail to wrestle with it. David Pao aims to rehabilitate this theme by showing how, for Paul, thanksgiving is grounded in the covenantal traditions of salvation history. He states that to offer thanks to God is to live a life of worship and to anticipate the future acts of God, all in submission to the lordship of Christ. He makes a claim that ingratitude to God is idolatry. He shows a link between theology, including eschatology, and ethics. Here he provides clear insights into the passion of an apostle who never fails to insist on the significance of both the gospel message and the response this message demands. |
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