Charles Harold Dodd, C.H. Dodd, was a twentieth century New Testament scholar and theologian infamous for promoting, and creating the term, “realized eschatology.” This was an incredibly important contribution to the field of biblical studies because it was a completely new way to view eschatology. He also changed the way in which kerygma was studied and apostolic messages were thought of. Dodd, born in 1884 and died in 1973, “has been described as ‘the greatest and most influential British New Testament scholar of twentieth century’ and as one in whom ‘the international world of scholarship recognized…one of its most creative and influential minds’.” (Coggins and Houlden 1990, 179).
Dodd began studying theology at Mansfield College, Oxford around 1907 and was ordained to the Congregationalist ministry in 1912. In 1930 he became the Rylands Professor of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis at the University of Manchester. Dodd never received an official theological degree. He was the first Congregationalist minister to be a professor in Cambridge. While teaching at his different locations, Dodd researched and wrote several works that were never published. His first published works were on the subject of archaeology and numismatics. He wrote many infamous books, after his retirement at sixty-five, including The Meaning of Paul for Today, The Apostolic Preaching and Its Developments, and The Founder of Christianity.
Well-known for changing the way eschatology was viewed, Dodd introduced the term “realized eschatology” to the study of the New Testament. Eschatology focuses on the end of man and the events surrounding it. It is “the study of the four last things: death, judgement, heaven, and hell.” (Coggins and Houlden 1990, 200). Rea...
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The first two parts of the book discuss the kind of theological-historical perspective and ecclesial situation that determines the form-content configuration of Revelation. The first section attempts to assess the theological commonality to and differences from Jewish apocalypticism. Fiorenza focuses of the problem that although Revelation claims to be a genuinely Christian book and has found its way into the Christian canon, it is often judged to be more Jewish than Christian and not to have achieved the “heights” of genuinely early Christian theology. In the second part of the book, Fiorenza seeks to assess whether and how much Revelation shares in the theological structure of the Fourth Gospel. Fiorenza proposes that a careful analysis of Revelation would suggest that Pauline, Johannine, and Christian apocalyptic-prophetic traditions and circles interacted with each other at the end of the first century C.E in Asia Minor. She charts in the book the structural-theological similarities and differences between the response of Paul and that of Revelation to the “realized eschatology”. She argues that the author of Revelation attempts to correct the “realized eschatology” implications of the early Christian tradition with an emphasis on a futuristic apocalyptic understanding of salvation. Fiorenza draws the conclusion that Revelation and its author belong neither to the Johannine nor to the Pauline school, but point to prophetic-apocalyptic traditions in Asia Minor.
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