Tuesday, October 7, 2008

My essay

I did some thinking about it tonight and also did some research and I think the subject of my first essay is going to be "Paul's take on Love and Marriage in the New Testament". I was surprised how much Paul wrote about Love and Marriage since Paul was never married himself. On one hand Paul spoke about it being better to be single like himself in order to serve the Lord more completely (almost frowning on marriage) and then commented that marriage was there for those that "burned with passion" and at the same time wrote very elegant and romantic language about love in Corinthians. Pretty interesting dichotomy. I am already thinking about the subject matter and tomorrow I will start doing my formal research on it and gathering data to support my theory on the subject.

My initial hypothisis is that I think Paul really depended on his superior knowledge of the Torah and Old Testament and what is written there about marriage to carry over to the gentile community that was mainly his focus in the New Testament, yet his understanding of Jesus added some definite love components to the doctine not found in the Old Testament. He took alittle of the old and new and mixed them together to form some of the directions he wrote in the New Testament concerning marriage. I think it is interesting because chances are Paul's way of thinking about marriage was probably new to the gentile community as many of them followed Roman cults that had very different views on marriage. The combination of the Old Testament, love of Christ and the gentile community's adaptation and adherence to this new thought process could make for an interesting essay.

Thoughts/feedback? What do you think of that subject matter for a research/essay?

1 comment:

SteveM said...

We got cut off when I was asking about your subject otp today. I'm glad I checked back in. Fascinating topic. I look forward to hearing more.