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Martin Hengel Quote

"A few months ago my American publisher asked me, 'Why are you so conservative?' At that time I simply replied, 'Why not?' Perhaps I should have added: these distinctions between 'conservative' and 'liberal' or even 'progressive' (and what is progress in theology if not a new and reflective return to the testimony of the apostles and a concern for that to which they witness?) are ultimately meaningless. We are concerned only with the truth, theological and historical. The truth is our sole obligation; we have to seek and present it. and in the end it will prevail against all our conjectures, all our desires to be right, our imaginative constructions and our anxiety." Martin Hengel, Preface (xv) Between Jesus and Paul

I find Professor Hengel's comments in the preface of his book about Jesus and Paul to be both insightful and illuminating regarding the goal of doing theology and history. Martin Hengel is one of the world's foremost authorities on the crucifixion, on Judaism and Hellenism in the first century, and the early beginnings of Christianity, yet, he still makes it very clear that all serious scholarship is rightly concerned with the quest for truth. This truth carefully situations itself within a desire to go back to the original sources (the New Testament) and the apostles to find out about the relationship between Jesus and Paul, and to seek the truth to that which they bore witness. The task of New Testament studies has a historical and theological goal in mind. Hengel reminds us that we fall short of the task of NT studies if we only find the historical situation in which the writers spoke about. The Scriptures are at every point pushing the envelopes of our pre-conceived ideas open to the reality of the gospel. The desire for truth must be wedded to the desire to understand that history does not happen in a vaccum but in a particular place and in a particular setting. Yet, NT history is also a history of revelation. God continually revealed himself to his people through various promises and prophets. He lastly has revealed to his people his son, Jesus Christ. We seek to explain the truth of the Scriptures in their historical setting because the burden of truth rests upon our shoulders. We should not be so concerned with radical reconstructions of the NT texts as to miss the authorial intent of the gosple writers and their witness to the historical events of Jesus (life, death, resurrection, ascension). The desire for truth is both a historical and theological task.

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