Paul's view of time

According to standard interpretations by Barclay, Gaventa, N.T. Wright, Fredriksen, and others, Paul changed the sequential two-age temporality of the Jewish apocalypse that he had received. I tried finding new sources but none are cited in the scholars I have read. Paul said that the centuries are not sequential but rather overlap, which resolved the paradox of Christ's resurrection taking place without the resurrection of the righteous people. Believers exist in a temporally-unlocked now. Paul, I believe, conceptualized time in terms of either life in this age or life in Christ. Believers live in the temporality of Christ, whereas non-believers live in this age. Christ's temporality is the period of time during which change happens, at least between God and creation and Christ. They have tense temporality, but they do not have sequential tenses. They live in both the past and the future. How did Paul understand time is my research area. I am trying to find out how to do a search on every instance Paul talks, refers to and write about time or space or any form of the words. How can i do this kind of search? I tried these searches. Time WITHIN (Speaker Person Paul) and Space WITHIN (Speaker Person Paul). I have tried finding this source The Apocalyptic Paul by Jamie Davies. I cannot access it and it was one that was given by some authors.

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DMB

We probably don't agree on 'Paul' in Logos tagging.

But did you read https://www.logos.com/grow/interview-jamie-davies-on-paul-the-apocalypses-and-what-the-church-stands-to-gain-from-both/

Justin Gatlin

That is not a good way to search for that because it will only include spoken dialogue, not Paul's epistles.

Let me try and walk you through a process for solving these kinds of things yourself.

Start with a passage that addresses what you want. Here is one:

"and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus." (Ephesians 2:6–7).

That fits what you are thinking about because it includes the already-not yet tension, and talks about the coming ages. Let's right click "ages" in the ESV. We want to study that term and related terms. We have two options for this: the Bible Sense Lexicon or the Louw-Nida numbers. I'll do the Bible sense lexicon and make some comments about LN at the end. Click the sense "era" and then open the Bible sense lexicon.

The Bible sense lexicon will give you a hierarchy. You can go through this list and select specific ones and search for them, or you can just use search for the top sense, time (indefinite) and sort the passages yourself. I usually find that better, so I don't have to guess about the nuances of each sense tag. But your mileage may vary.

For Paul, it makes the most sense to do two searches. A generic search in the Pauline epistles comes first (click here)

Save the results as a passage list. Name it "Time in Paul" or something.

Then, do a similar search in Acts, but this time it is sense:"time (indefinite)" IN speaker:Paul. Save these results as a passage list too. Then click "Merge," select your first list, and select "union."

Now you will have both in one list. Name it as you want, and study through this list. Just delete the ones that are irrelevant to your study. Once you have this list, you can start studying specific passages, checking preaching themes or other tagging to try and find promising leads. You should also use the cross reference guide section on key passages to find parallels.

Your other option is to select the LN number and select Louw-Nida under lookup.

In this case, it is 67.143. I can see in that lexicon that all LN numbers that start with 67 are about time, and indefinite units of time are 67.142-67.162. So for Acts you could search louwNida:67.142-162 IN speaker:Paul and for the Epistles just louwNida:67.142-162.In this case, the LN search is much narrower and seems to be a good list, but there was not really any way to know except to do it. You could even merge all 4 searches.

Another idea is looking at "The Already and the Not Yet" and "Age" in the Factbook. But I think that you would get a lot more clarity with firsthand time in the Scripture.

MJ. Smith

In addition look at kairos vs. chronos - a basic distinction in churches that celebrate the divine liturgy.

Justin Gatlin

In addition look at kairos vs. chronos - a basic distinction in churches that celebrate the divine liturgy.

Christian, if you have the New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology and Exegesis, the entries on those terms are helpful, as is the one on αἰών,

Alan saunders

Thankyou for this thread. It’s got me thinking about my practices!

Alan saunders

Thankyou for this thread. It’s got me thinking about my practices!

Lynden O. Williams

Well done Justlin. Need to pay more attention to searches.

Christian Alexander

This has helped me a lot. I am still doing a lot of studies on this topic. I do not have the New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology and Exegesis. Does anyone have a way to send the first few paragraphs of the two articles? Thanks in advance for all the help.