Paul's Conundrum

Download or read book Paul's Conundrum written by Amy Karen Downey and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 121 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Was Paul an anti-Semite? Was Paul a self-hating Jew? Was Paul misunderstood and wrongly accused? This is the debate that has been raging for almost two millennia. Paul's conundrum seeks to answer these questions through an analysis of his two most controversial passages 1 Thessalonians 2:13-16 and Romans 9:1-5. Amy Downey has sought to reconcile these passages through a conservative evangelical approach that not only considers the Jewish man, Paul, but also Paul the Apostle of Messiah Jesus. Downey considers the historical setting of the two passages, analyzes the exegesis of the passages in question, and seeks to respond to three separate but unique theological controversies that arise out of these letters. She finds defective three modern positions: (1) 1 Thess 2:13-16 as a "post-Pauline interpolation" likely expressive of Paul's anti-semitism; (2) the modern post-Holocaust theory of dual covenants, according to which "Gentiles are saved through Jesus and the Jews through the Law of Moses"; hence, all national Israel will be eschatologically saved; and (3) replacement theology (i.e., "God has rejected the Jews as His chosen people" and replaced them with believing Gentiles), traceable to the Epistle of Barnabas and Ignatius of Antioch and in effect bringing the "spiritual genocide" of the Jewish people and making Rom 9:1-5 inexplicable. Hopefully by the end of this book, the reader will be left with only one question, "Just how far was Paul willing to go to realize the salvation of the Jewish people?" Downey opts instead for "ethnic Israel's place in the covenant" and for salvation solely through the death and resurrection of the Messiah for both Jews and Gentiles, thus laying the foundation for urgently-needed present-day Christian witness to the Jewish people.