Re: [TruthTalk] Movie List!

[Knpraise]

This notion that Paul writes in a narrative style as opposed to a theological systems view, could not be any other way.   At least as I think of it.   I mean, just imagine how a letter to Corinth or Ephesus may have come about  --  just from a practical view.  You can see Paul perhaps pacing back and forth, while a friend pens Pauls thoughts onto a piece of parchment.   We would expect to see Paul move off course, once in a while, begin a list without finishing, use a plural when he meant to use a singular, all those things that typify a casual writing.    The fact that there is often much left unsaid lends fuel to the idea that much of Paul's writings are narratives   --  perhaps part of a dialogue between him and the addressee(s)

And the importance of this idea  -- that Paul writes in narrative form as opposed to making an attempt in each and every case at developing a systematic theology to be handed down for the ages, is this:   it increases the need for the student to understand the historical and cultural context, and to seek out even the opinions of those (i.e. Early Church Fathers) who  lived in a time when Paul was being dicussed by many who both knew and remembered him.   There could have been hundreds of such individuals living well into the 2nd century  --  with their immediate family (esp. sons and daughters) taking the disucssion up to on into the 3rd century.  

At least this line of logic (pure as it might be) offers the Smithmeister a reason, for the first time, to delve into the works of these "Fathers>"  


John