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vii preface This volume presents original work by New Testament scholars elucidating the theological claims of New Testament texts. In so doing, this volume strives to provide resources for New Testament theology by engaging in one of the fundamental tasks of any New Testament theology—the descriptive task of identifying the distinctive theological claims of the texts in the New Testament. The essays in this volume are organized around the topics of specific theological claims: claims about God, the human condition, creation and human destiny, the Christian community, and empire. This volume also celebrates the life and work of a foremost New Testament scholar on his eightieth birthday, Charles H. Talbert. It is fitting, then, that the topic and initial framework of this project was shaped by a writing assignment Charles gave to participants in his graduate seminar on New Testament theology. Charles introduced the assignment with the following statement: “N.T. Wright, The NT and the People of God (SPCK, 1992), 405, says about Paul: ‘Within all his letters, . . . we discover a larger implicit narrative [than Paul’s explicit discourse articulates]. . . . Paul presupposes this story even when he does not expound it directly, and it is arguable that we can only understand the more limited narrative worlds of the different letters if we locate them at their appropriate points within this overall story world.’ What viii preface Wright claims for Paul is arguably true for other NT writings.” Charles proposed that the larger narrative implicit in the New Testament is one that spans from creation to new creation in which God acts to deliver his people through Jesus Christ from sin and corruption for life in the present and hope for the future. All of the topics in this volume align themselves with relation to Charles’ suggested narrative framework for organizing a potential New Testament theology.1 Charles himself made the theological claims of the New Testament a central concern of his own scholarship, as demonstrated in a biographical essay that heads this collection of essays and in the contribution his scholarship makes to each of the essays in this volume . It is with deep gratitude that we dedicate this volume to him with the hope of aiding and extending his own scholarly contributions in the study of the New Testament. Finally, this volume was made possible by the support and hard work of several people to whom we express our gratitude: Carey Newman and his staff at Baylor University Press who gave their enthusiastic support of the project from its inception; the contributors who submitted excellent work that truly honors the scholarship of Charles; and especially Peter Rice who meticulously copyedited all the submissions and constructed the bibliography. ...

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