The topic of grace came up in my 12-14 year old Sunday school class last week, and I asked the kids if they knew what grace was. Not really, it turns out. It’s little things like this that make me rather sympathetic toward Christians who don’t consider us Christian.

The particular scripture I want to take up comes from Ephesians. The problem is that the scholarly view seems to lean toward rejecting Paul as the author of the letter to Ephesians (here is a link to the New Testament Footnotes online book, edited by Kevin Barney, which has a nice little, concise intro to Ephesians which includes a discussion about authorship). So first, I’ll make a brief case for considering Ephesians “Pauline.” Then I’ll look at a particular verse in Ephesians which states emphatically that we are saved by grace, not works. Read the rest of this entry »

Lesson 30: Acts 10-14; 15:1-35 Read the rest of this entry »

I confess that I am overwhelmed by this lesson. Specifically, I am overwhelmed by the magnitude of the lesson and the short time which we have to teach it: 45 minutes. I’m going to post the notes I have so far. If anyone wants to give me feedback, I’d appreciate it, because I still have time to change this before Sunday.

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If you’re sick of the Gospels and ready to move on to Paul (I’m being facetious of course, in light of Matthew’s post), here’s an update on what I’ve been learning about Paul and Pauline studies. Galatians 3:10 says:

For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.

The traditional view is that “works of the law” here should be interpreted rather broadly, roughly equivalent to “good works. ” The New Perspective on Paul tends to view this more narrowly, referring only to the Law of Moses. In general, New Perspective advocates tend to view Paul as reinterpreting Judaic law whereas traditionalists tend to view Paul as more condemnatory of Judaic law, establishing Christianity as something less continuous with Judaism. So traditionalists often use this passage in Galatians to criticize the New Perspective because Paul sounds so critical of the law here. Below I will try to briefly, though hopefully not too inaccurately, sketch differing views on this matter by two prominent scholars, James Dunn as an advocate of the New Perspective and Stephen Westerholm as a defender of the traditional view.

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Help. Read the rest of this entry »

Lesson 29: Acts 6-9 Read the rest of this entry »

This is the first of two lessons on the atonement.

For this lesson I followed the outline in the manual pretty closely. Of all the manual lessons so far this year, I found this one the best.

Here is the link to my lesson (I changed this somewhat from my first posting):

Lesson 25: The Atonement, Part 1

Lesson 28: Acts 1-5 Read the rest of this entry »

Of course this is a larger and more controversial topic than I can do justice … to (ellipses for my lame pun attempt…). And I’m surely not qualified to do anything more than plagiarize some summaries of the main currents in Pauline scholarship. Nevertheless: David Horrell describes two main schools of thought in current Pauline thought. The traditional view, which still has many adherents, albeit with new defenses and slightly different views than historical adherents, is that Paul has primarily a sacrificial understanding of Christ’s atonement. The New Perspective on Paul (NPP), on the other hand, is that Paul has primarily a participationist understanding of Christ’s atonement.

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One thing that strikes me is the idea that we should be engaged in “much prayer and fasting” like the Sons of Mosiah (Alma 17:3)–especially if we want to be able to teach “with power and authority of God”. So here’s my question–how much prayer and fasting is enough? Read the rest of this entry »