| Popis: |
There has been little attention to the question as to whom the NT documents speak of as being actively involved in declaring God among the nations, although some scholars recently have paid heed to this theme in the Pauline letters. Also, scholarly work on the question has generally not been carried out in the light of verbal declaration by God's people in the OT, because there is a prevailing idea among scholars that missionary proclamation by God's people simply is not found in the OT. With these in mind, our study first explores whether the OT does or does not deal with verbal declaration by God's people for the sake of leading the nations to him. This leads us to find that some OT passages do indeed concern missionary proclamation by God's people among the nations. Thereafter, our study examines the motif of verbal declaration by the Church in the NT. We focus on the identity of those who are verbal declarers among the nations, considering the relationship between verbal declaration by God's people in the OT and the same by the Church in the NT. Our study argues that, in the identified NT passages, verbal declaration by believers is portrayed in line with the treatment of the same theme, concerning the faithful Israel, in OT documents and that it is believers as a whole who are spoken of as declaring God among the nations for the purpose of bringing them to him. |
