[B-Greek] Romans 1:16

waldo slusher waldoslusher at yahoo.com
Fri Oct 10 22:20:03 EDT 2003


Jeffrey B. wrote:

> But is there anything in the grammar and syntax of
> the text to give us
> reason to believe that what Paul is doing is
> responding to a challenge?
> That is to say, is there any grammatical or
> syntactical or stylistic
> (or, if I might ask, contextual)  reason to see that
> what Paul is up to
> here is not answering a question (what is the
> Gospel?, how do **you**
> define it?),  but is defending a claim **about**
> what the (his) Gospel
> is  **that is in dispute**  --  and is in effect
> saying something along
> the lines of  "contrary to what has been said about 
> TO EUAGGELION, it
> is indeed  the power of God for the purpose of
> Salvation?

Grammar and syntax, as I use them, are
surface/formal/structural level issues and you seem to
be asking a question about Paul's motive for what he
has had written here. Your attempt to bring in
"contextual" issues, with some hesitancy I sense, is
perceptive indeed, since there does not seem to be a
clear demarcation between context and theology in this
forum. My reply is only to proffer this clarification:
EUAGGELION is generally used to describe the entirety
of all the apostolic teachings in Pauline writings,
not the "conversion" message that modern western
Christianity generally thinks of (as in a Billy Graham
alter call).  But Paul uses the term to speak of the
entirety of the Christian message (with emphasis on
our day-to-day living), and almost never of its
"inception into" the Christian life. What Paul wanted
to preach was not "believe on the Lord Jesus Christ
and you shall be saved" to the Romans, but all the
apostolic teachings that dealt with life and
godliness.
 


=====
Waldo Slusher
Calgary, AB

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