This file contains the full digital transcript and color images to accompany The Challenge of Paul Theme 3: Paul & Justice video. This is an excellent resource for group leaders to make notes and customize class materials for the interests of your congregation.
Session 3.1 “Baptism as New Creation”
Session 3.2 “War & Slavery”
Session 3.3 “War & Patriarchy”
Session 3.4 “Saint Thecla”
Excerpt from “Baptism as New Creation”:
I begin by reading you something from Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, and ask you to pay very close attention to the tenses of the verbs used in it.
“Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. (Romans 6:3-4)
What does that mean? Is it simply more of that language for which Paul is so disliked by so many people? What on earth does it mean to be baptized into somebody’s death? And, especially, to tell living people that it has already happened to them?
