Contents:
1. Approach: theology of the New Testament as meaning-formation
- how history is made and written
- History as meaning-formation
- Understanding through narration
2. Structure: History and meaning
- The phenomenon of the beginning
- Theology and the academic study of religion
- Diversity and unity
- New Testament theology as meaning-formation
3. Jesus of Nazareth: the near God
- The quest for Jesus
- Beginning: John the Baptist
- Point of departure: the coming of the One God in His Kingly power
- Center: the proclamation of the Kingdom of God
- Ethics in the horizon of the Kingdom of God
- Jesus as healer
- The imminent judgment
- Jesus and the law
- Jesus' self-understanding: more than a prophet
- Jesus' destiny in Jerusalem
4. The first transformation: The emergence of Christology
- Jesus' pre-Easter claim
- The resurrection appearances
- Experiences of the Spirit
- The Christological reading of scripture
- History of religions context
- Language and shape of early Christology
5. The second transformation: the early Christian mission without the precondition of circumcision
- The Hellenists
- Antioch
- The stance of Paul
6. Paul: missionary and thinker
- theology, Christology, Pneumatology, Soteriology, Anthropology, Ethics, Ecclesiology, Eschatology, Setting in the history of early Christian theology
7. The third transformation: composition of gospels as innovative response to crises
- death of the foundes
- delay of the parousia
- Destruction of Jerusalem and the earliest Christian congregation
- The rise of the Flavians
- the writings of gospels as innovative response to crises
8. The sayings source, the synoptic gospels, and Acts: meaning through narration
- The sayings source as proto-gospel
- Mark: the way of Jesus
- Matthew: the new and better righteousness
- Luke: salvation and history
9. The fourth transformation: the gospel in the world
- Social, religious, and political developments
- Pseudepigraphy/Deuteronymity as a historical, literary, and theological phenomenon
10. The Deutero-Pauline letters: Paul's thought extended
- Colossians : Paul in changing times
- Ephesians : space and time
- Second Thessalonians: date (of the end) as a problem
- The pastoral epistles: God's Philanthropy
11. The Catholic epistles: voices in dangerous times
- First Peter: testing by suffering
- James: Acting and being
- Hebrews: the God who speaks
- Jude and 2 Peter: Identity through tradition and Polemic against heresy
12. Johannine theology: introduction to the Christian faith
- theology
- Christology
- Pneumatology
- Soteriology
- Anthropology
- Ethics
- Ecclesiology
- Eschatology
- Setting in the history of early Christian theology
13. Revelation: seeing and undestanding