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The following study seeks to investigate the impeccability of Christ from a historical/theological position. Two camps emerge on either side of the debate: Those who hold to the posse non peccare view which is to say, ability not to sin, otherwise known as the peccability view and those who hold to the non posse peccare view which is to say inability to sin, otherwise known as the impeccability view. While both camps affirm the sinless perfection of Christ they oppose each other in whether as fully human He could have sinned if He wanted to. It boils down to a case of ‘could have but did not’ or ‘did not because He could not have’. It is the view of this thesis that the non posse peccare view squares with both historical and biblical theology. We argue in chapter two by surveying Church councils up to the present time pertinent to this theme to prove that the history of this issue matters in that it establishes the relationship between Christology and history and by inference a major impact upon many outcomes in Church history. Our aim was to prove that this historical error goes a long way in distorting the gospel message. In chapter three we survey and evaluate the position from a peccability viewpoint while, at the same time, entering and notarising our points of departure. We have there highlighted the arguments peccability theologians utilise to defend their view and have criticised such from our Dispensational theology. In chapter four we then assess and acknowledge the argument for impeccability by proving the necessity of it for the exoneration of His Person and gospel. In the summit of chapter five we have surveyed the field of Scripture to have the final say on this issue and concluded in favour of impeccability. / MA (Dogmatics), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

The following study seeks to investigate the impeccability of Christ from a historical/theological position. Two camps emerge on either side of the debate: Those who hold to the posse non peccare view which is to say, ability not to sin, otherwise known as the peccability view and those who hold to the non posse peccare view which is to say inability to sin, otherwise known as the impeccability view. While both camps affirm the sinless perfection of Christ they oppose each other in whether as fully human He could have sinned if He wanted to. It boils down to a case of ‘could have but did not’ or ‘did not because He could not have’. It is the view of this thesis that the non posse peccare view squares with both historical and biblical theology. We argue in chapter two by surveying Church councils up to the present time pertinent to this theme to prove that the history of this issue matters in that it establishes the relationship between Christology and history and by inference a major impact upon many outcomes in Church history. Our aim was to prove that this historical error goes a long way in distorting the gospel message. In chapter three we survey and evaluate the position from a peccability viewpoint while, at the same time, entering and notarising our points of departure. We have there highlighted the arguments peccability theologians utilise to defend their view and have criticised such from our Dispensational theology. In chapter four we then assess and acknowledge the argument for impeccability by proving the necessity of it for the exoneration of His Person and gospel. In the summit of chapter five we have surveyed the field of Scripture to have the final say on this issue and concluded in favour of impeccability. / MA (Dogmatics), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

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The purpose of this thesis is to explore the significance of conflict stories in the Gospel of Matthew from a literary critical perspective. The key research question the thesis has attempted to answer is, how do conflict stories function in Matthew’s narrative? Because their interest is often limited to the Sitz im Leben behind the Matthean text, previous studies attempting the similar pursuit view conflict stories as transparent accounts of Matthew’s polemical program against the Jews or Judaism. Thus they have neglected a vital purpose of the author, that is, besides his interest to record or preserve what happened in history, the Gospel author is also interested to arouse or affirm the readers’ faith in Jesus through his preservation and redaction of his sources, which is an inseparable part of the author’s theological program. How exactly then has his literary work achieved this purpose? Assuming the literary unity of the Matthean text, this study has treated the Matthean text as a mirror and explored literary nuances reflected by the textual ‘surface.’ Under such a premise, the narrative analysis of this thesis has highlighted three foci: 1. The connection which each conflict makes with its narrative context; 2. How the Hebrew Scripture interacts with the author’s composition or redaction of the stories; and 3. The literary impact these stories have on the implied reader. This study selects a total of seventeen conflict stories in Matthew based on three criteria, Matt 9.1-8, 9-13, 14-17; 12.1-8, 9-14, 22-37, 38-45; 13.53-58; 15.1-9; 16.1-4; 19.1-9; 21.14-17, 23-27; 22.15-22, 23-33, 34-40, 41-46: 1. The presence of an attitude of hostility or challenge in the setting of the narrative (either explicit or implied); 2. The presence of a question of an accusation or a challenge; and 3. The question or the accusation is usually followed by a reply of Jesus. In conclusion, the literary analysis of this study suggests two most important functions of Matthean conflict stories: 1. Conflict stories function, either individually or in clusters, as kernels of the Matthean plot to advance the narrative forward in order to reach its climax in the passion narrative. 2. The Christological focus in conflict stories is consistently concerned not only with the superiority of Jesus over the opponents, but more importantly with the nexus between the divine status of Jesus and him being the messianic figure.

This thesis examines the relationship between Jesus and God in the Gospel of Mark. Against the predominant view since the early 1970’s, it argues that the Markan Jesus is considerably more than a merely human Messiah; he is a divine figure. But he is not placed in a general, Hellenistic category of superhuman or divine beings, nor ascribed only a general transcendent status. Instead, Mark links Jesus directly and closely to YHWH, the one God of Israel. In contrast to many earlier studies of the christology of Mark, which focus on christological titles, this study is primarily concerned with Mark’s narrative and the author’s portrayal of Jesus. Assuming that Mark’s audience were familiar to varying degrees with different traditions of the Hellenistic world, the text is interpreted in its wider Old Testament/Jewish, Greco- Roman, and early Christian context, all the while remaining sensitive to intra-textual links. It appears that the Markan Jesus assumes divine attributes and acts in exclusively divine roles, that he fulfils Old Testament promises about God’s own intervention and coming, and that his relationship to people is analogous to God’s relationship to Israel. It is of particular significance that Jesus in several cases takes on roles which were used to demonstrate someone’s deity or, YHWH’s sovereignty above all other gods. The result is a surprising overlap between Mark’s portrait of Jesus and the presentation of Israel’s God in the biblical and early Jewish traditions and, in some cases, the divine beings of the Greco-Roman world. While early Jewish literature occasionally can ascribe divine roles to a few exalted figures, the Markan description of Jesus is unique in two respects: the majority of the divine prerogatives ascribed to Jesus are without parallel in any of the aforementioned texts, and the number of these is unrivalled. Such a portrait of Jesus may call into question both the true humanity of Jesus (Jesus is not fully human) and the monotheistic faith of Israel (Jesus is a second divine being alongside God), but it is clear that Mark maintains both. The christology of Mark represents a paradox in which Jesus is fully human and, at the same time, in a mysterious way placed on the divine side of the God-creation divide.

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No description available.

No description available.