A good question from Internetmonk

[ReformedWretch]

Why does the Apostle Paul not refer to the stories, miracles and teaching from the ministry of Jesus in his letters to churches?

Thoughts?

 

[RamistThomist]

Originally posted by houseparent
Why does the Apostle Paul not refer to the stories, miracles and teaching from the ministry of Jesus in his letters to churches?

Thoughts?

I'll try:

Paul establishes the proper continuity by proclaiming the victory of Jesus over the world, thus demonstrating to the principalities and powers of the world a new way of being human. However, Paul did not repeat everything Jesus said and did--that would contradict Jesus' role as Messiah.

Paul doesn't need to rehash all the stories from the gospels. In effect and in some ways, he is--and I am treading very dangerous ground--continuing via proclamation the story of Christ saving the world.

*I am not advocating narrative theology at the expense of propositional theology.

 

[ReformedWretch]

Good answer Jacob! But who's gonna want to follow that?:bigsmile:

 

[Contra_Mundum]

Also note, there is linguistic evidence that Paul was certainly familiar with the apostolic tradition (by which I mean the uniform witness of the apostles regarding their lives spent with Jesus, and the substance of his teaching ministry which had yet to be written/inscripturated). Here is what the great Greek scholar George Milligan had to say in 1908 in his commentary on I & II Thessalonians (possibly the earliest letters of Paul's that we have):

More important still is the relation of the Apostle's language in his Epistles to certain Words of our Lord that have come down to us in the Gospels. For without taking any note of some of the subtler resemblances that have been detected here, there still remain sufficient to show that St. Paul must have been well aquainted with the actual words of Jesus, and in all probability had actually some written collection of them in his possession.

Whereupon he lists the following references:
I.2:7 -- Lk.22:27
I.2:12 -- Mt.22:3
I.2:14ff -- Mt.23:31f, cf. Mt.21:33ff, and parallels
I3:13 -- Mt.16:27
and so on for some 27 instances from the two letters.

It's also worth noting that Paul explicitly quotes Jesus from the gospels in his instructions on the Lord's Supper (1 Cor. 11:24-25). And, except Luke had recorded the words of Paul quoting Jesus in Acts 20:25, "It is more blessed to give than to receive," we had not had them recorded in the gospels anywhere.

 

[RamistThomist]

And no doubt Paul was intimately familiar with the resurrection narrative as well.