Paul's Message and Ministry in Covenant Perspective: Selected Essays

The essays presented here represent over twenty-five years of thinking about the theology and life of the Apostle Paul who, as a "slave of Jesus Christ" (Rom 1:1), was a "servant of the new covenant" with a "ministry of the Spirit" (2 Cor 3:6, 8). Taking the questions raised by the history of scholarship since F. C. Baur as their starting point, Hafemann's exegetical studies focus on how Paul's self-understanding shaped his message, the motivations of his ministry, and his consequent call to suffer for the sake of his churches. Hafemann's work reveals that Paul's views of redemption, of his own redemptive mission, and of the life of the redeemed derived from his eschatological conviction that the purpose of the new covenant realities inaugurated by the Christ is to prepare for their promised consummation when Christ returns to judge the world.