Paul’s Positive Religious Affections

Someone recently asked me for an abstract of my dissertation, Paul’s Positive Religious Affections, and I realized I’d never written one up. Here goes.

Six times in the NT the Spirit of the Lord led Paul to tell his readers to imitate him (2 Thess 3:7; 1 Cor 4:16; 11:1; Phil 3:17; 4:9; 2 Tim 1:13), and two times to praise his readers for doing so (1 Thess 1:6; 2 Tim 3:10; cf. 1 Thess 2:14). His emotional life, insofar as the NT reveals it, is a significant but overlooked portion of his divinely inspired example. Paul’s “religious affections,” revealed through narratives and epistles, are needful for Christian obedience today.

In order to properly understand Paul’s emotional life, readers must understand the Bible’s theological anthropology. This dissertation canvasses major Western views of the will, with special attention to intellectualism and voluntarism, landing on an Augustinian voluntarism—one refracted through the views of John Frame and, especially, Jonathan Edwards.

In order to properly understand Paul’s emotional life, readers must also clear away some especially persistent errors of “theological lexicography,” the freighting of Greek and Hebrew words with a theology that they do not and cannot bear. The ἀγάπη word group in particular is said to indicate “a rational choice to do what is best for someone else regardless of how one feels.” The ἐλπίς word group, likewise, is said to indicate a “confident expectation” and not a feeling. The Greek words for gratitude (εὐχαριστία) and joy (χαρά) often receive a similar treatment, one which strips emotion out of their meaning.

An epilogue offers applications for exegesis, preaching, and counseling.