Viewing Paul as a theologian, in the way we have, prompts a couple of observations on the much-mooted mater of the relationship between biblical and systematic theology. First, in exploring Paul’s theology, as an aspect of doing biblical theology, we should be aware that we are involved in doing systematic theology, or better, that our biblical-theological explorations will inevitably have systematic-theological repercussions. This is so because systematic theology ought to be radically non-speculative in the sense that its very existence depends upon sound biblical interpretation. Exegesis is its lifeblood, so that the method of systematic theology is fundamentally exegetical (15)

Society is a hell as long as man or woman is alone. And the human soul dies from consumption in the hell of social catastrophe unless it makes common cause with others. In the community that common sense rebuilds, after the earthquake, upon the ashes of the slope of Vesuvius, the red wine of life tastes better than anywhere else. And a man writes a book, even as he stretches out his hand, so that he may find that he is not alone in the survival of humankind (19).

This whole discussion in Romans 7 clearly is a Christian insight into the human condition, not one that comes generally to fallen humanity, and it is doubtful that Paul here is reflecting on his own conversion experience. Rather, as with the rest of the chapter, the discussion is generally referring first to the condition of Adam, then to the condition of those in Adam, and perhaps particularly to the one at the point of becoming in Christ.

The problem with the most common Protestant reading of this passage is that it involves reading the passage in light of the wrong story. Instead of reading it in light of Luther’s own anguished pilgrimage, which led to see himself in Rom. 7:14-25, we should have been reading it in light of the story Paul alludes to here – the story of Adam (vv. 7-13) and his fallen descendants outside of Christ (vv. 14-25; 28).

Human beings are created as social beings, for they are created after the image of God. There is a wealth of knowledge in that single statement: “Let us make man in our image” (Gen. 1:26). God is not solitary; he is a triune personality. He is three as well as one, and the holy communion that is enjoyed in the three persons of the Trinity is the pattern for all earthly communion. We are so constituted by God as to live in the society of others. It is a nonnegotiable and undeniable attribute of humanity (12).

Now the snake was the most sagacious of all the wild animals that were upon the earth, which the Lord God had made.

The basic tasks of the ordained bishop and presbytery are teaching (including evangelism) and pastoral care. The bishop is not primarily an administrator, and the presbyter is not primarily a celebrant of the sacraments (vital though the celebration of the sacraments is), but they are both primarily pastors and teachers. Being derived from the Jewish teaching presbyter and from the New Testament presbyter-bishop, it is natural that this should be so. Today we need to call bishops and presbyters back from too great a concentration on other things, to give their main energies to their main responsibilities, in their respective spheres (81).

Consumerism is not so much about having more as it is about having something else; that’s why is is not simply buying but shopping that is the heart of consumerism (35).

Christ’s presence is not to the believing individual directly, but rather to the entire congregation, and only through the later to the individual. This is why no one can come to faith alone and live in faith alone (14).

For Christians, future judgment according to works does not operate according to a different principle than their already having been justified by faith. The difference is that the final judgment will be the open manifestation of that present justification, their being “openly acquitted” as we have seen. And in that future judgment their obedience, their works, are not the ground or basis. Nor are they (co-)instrumental, a coordinate instrument for appropriating divine approbation as they supplement faith. Rather, they are the essential and manifest criterion of that faith, the integral “fruits and evidences of a true a lively faith,” appropriating the language of the Westminster Confession of Faith 16:2 (98).

The doctrine of the Immaculata, like the whole of later Mariology, is first anticipated as ecclesiology. The image of the Church, virgin and mother, is secondarily transferred to Mary, not vice versa. So if the dogma of the Immaculate Conception transferred to the concrete figure of Mary those assertions which primarily belong to the antithesis new-old Israel, and are in this sense a typologically developed ecclesiology, this means that Mary is presented as the beginning and the personal concreteness of the Church. It entails the conviction that the rebirth of the old Israel, of which the Epistle to the Ephesians spoke, achieves in Mary its concrete accomplishment. It proclaims that this new Israel (which is simultaneously the true old Israel, the holy remnant preserved by the grace of God) is not only an idea, but a person. God does not act with abstractions or concepts; the type, of which the ecclesiology of the New Testament and the Father speaks, exists as a person (67-68).