The divine voice in Paul’s letters : the use of Scripture as Theopoiēsis and Paul’s characterization of God.

This project discusses the theological significance of the many instances in Paul’s letters in which he quotes first-person divine speech from the Scriptures. Although this phenomenon has been observed previously by interpreters of Paul, God’s scriptural speeches have not been systematically analyzed and considered for their rhetorical and theological implications, a gap that this project seeks to fill. In order to interpret Paul’s use of first-person speech quotations within his historical context, the project draws upon the rhetorical practice of “speech-in-character” (prosopopoeia), a concept of poetic persuasion that emphasizes the pathos of such speeches, and the hermeneutical technique of segmentation as developed by scholars of Jewish exegetical practices. In view of these comparisons, this study proposes the term theopoiēsis as a suitable shorthand for Paul’s use of the divine voice through Scripture quotations, defining it as Paul’s creative use of scriptural words in the new context of his letters to characterize God and to invoke God’s presence through speech so that Paul’s audiences would both understand and encounter God as they listened to Paul’s letters. Additionally, this project connects these uses of God’s speeches to the question of Paul’s understanding of God. The study argues that God’s speeches provide an abundance of evidence that Paul has understood God in new ways under the influence of the apocalyptic Christ-event, an event that has given Paul a new theological epistemology. The study proceeds through a detailed analysis of each of the twenty-eight theopoiēsis quotations in six chapters, demonstrating that Paul draws upon traditional Jewish concepts of God and upon the Scriptures while simultaneously transforming them in the epistemological light of the Christ-event. Thus, the implications of the consideration of the divine voice in Paul’s letters touch on the matters of Paul’s understanding of God, on Paul as an apocalyptic interpreter of Scripture, and on Paul’s apocalyptic theological epistemology.