Matthew's Theology of Fulfillment, its Universality and its Ethnicity: God's New Israel as the Pioneer of God's New Humanity

2017 | Philosophy, Psychology & Social Sciences

Waetjen's examines the Jewish context and intertestamental literature behind the gospel of Matthew to present a construction of Matthew's gospel which aims to let the reader 'experience' the gospel on its own terms. Waetjen presents Matthew as a 'book of Genesis' that introduces the New Testament, by letting it tell itself as a story of a Jewish male who is generated by God's Spirit and brought to birth by a virgin who simultaneously is the mother of a new humanity and a new Israel. Her offspring, Jesus, bears the dual identities of a new human being (viz. The Son of Man) and the Jewish Messiah, and he discloses them concretely in their universality and their ethnicity through his deeds and his words. Waetjen shows that the gospel is composed as a charter narrative, a foundation myth, that poses the fulfillment of Israel's scriptures as the consummation of Israel's history. It constitutes a discipleship that follows Jesus as the New Human Being and the Jewish Messiah into a partnership in 'the Reign of God' to form an empowered community to terminate empires, abolish wars and establish societies of justice, reconciliation and wholeness.

Herman C. Waetjen (Author)