Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 87:2 (Fall 2025)
Article: Abstracts Of Recent WTS Doctoral Dissertations
Author: Anonymous

WTJ 87:1 (Spring 2025) p. 277

Abstracts Of Recent WTS Doctoral Dissertations

The Grace Of Reward: A Study In Pauline Charitology

Blake A. Franze

This study investigates how Paul converges his convictions about the character of divine grace with his eschatological hopes in the divine rewards promised in Israel’s Scriptures. Paul’s readers have traditionally resolved a felt tension between his “grace” and “reward” concepts by mapping them onto the sequence of the believer’s life. However, this approach is insufficiently historical as a description of how Paul and his Jewish contemporaries configured divine grace and reward. In Paul’s Second Temple context, eschatological reward was understood as a particular expression of divine grace. So, this study approaches reward in Paul’s letters as a feature of his “charitology” rather than a moment in the individual’s experience as a distinct effect of the prior gift of Christ.

Chapter one surveys approaches to the “problem” of grace and reward in Paul and offers a fresh vantage point for approaching the issue. Chapter two uses Philo and Wisdom of Solomon to confirm that reward is a feature of divine grace for at least some Second Temple authors and to illustrate the usefulness of locating each author’s unique perspectives on divine reward within their respective ideologies concerning divine giving. Chapters three, four, and five are exegetical studies on debated texts in Pauline soteriology in which Paul uses Old Testament “reward scripts.” Paul’s interpretation of these concepts has been underappreciated or misunderstood because of an outmoded assumption that reward and grace are definitionally antithetical. For Paul, though, the radical incongruity of the Christ-gift does not diminish the donative character of divine reward, nor is reward gracious because it is a distinct, later effect of grace. Rather, a study of the charitology in Rom 4:4, Rom 2:5–6, and Phil 2:6–11 will show that Israel’s eschatological rewards are gracious, for Paul, because they are features of the Christ-gift.

WTJ 87:1 (Spring 2025) p. 278

Stars In New Testament Narratives: A Study Of The Old Testament’s Influence

Cassandra Leigh Frear

This study proposes answers to three longstanding debates about the astral imagery in Matthew’s story of the magi, Stephen’s speech, and the Olivet Discourse. Further, the study creates a framework for interpreting the use of stars throughout the NT. In pursuit of these goals, the study extends the Beale method for analyzing the NT use of the OT by applying his approach ...