Date

5-23-2025

Department

Rawlings School of Divinity

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy in Bible Exposition (PhD)

Chair

Josh Waltman

Keywords

Reconciliation

Disciplines

Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion

Abstract

Many have taken it upon themselves to discover the meaning of the biblical teaching of reconciliation and deduced various theories. The topic has reached an impasse for many years. This dissertation will show that God is always the subject, and that man is the object of reconciliation. Through Jesus Christ’s work, God intends to reconcile all things to himself. This assertion claims that Christ’s redemptive work extends to all categories of intelligent beings but does not propose a universal salvation for all. Instead, God has supplied the provision whereby all categories of creatures are offered the work of redemption procured by Jesus Christ through faith. The method of validating this thesis is a comparative theological and linguistic analysis of non-canonical literature and biblical texts. An analysis of three positions among scholars concerning the biblical teaching on reconciliation is afforded to bring the lines of demarcation into relief, determining which is congruent with the biblical teaching. The exposition analyzes the occasion and purpose of various New Testament epistles to show the correlation between the content of the epistles and the extenuating circumstances that called for their composition. The exposition entails a grammatical and syntactical undertaking displaying the unilateral trajectory of reconciliation. Man’s alienation from God is a result of man’s sin, and resolution requires a change in man’s disposition toward God. Through the work and merits of Christ, God has provided a sufficient remedy for all his intelligent creatures to return to him if they only would receive it. Lastly, the inevitable consequence of reconciliation for man is the organic unity of the church. This dissertation concludes with the practical ends for God’s purpose, namely the unification of his creatures to the subjection and conformity of his Son to the praise of the glory of his grace.

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