Asking a Simple but Good Question

E. P. Sanders is a good questioner. His questions are not complicated nor overly technical, yet they touch the nerve. His work on the development of the synoptic tradition challenged the cherished (but not fully demonstrated) assumption that Jesus tradition becomes complex and longer as time goes by. Sanders' suggestion of "from solution to plight" in Paul's thought is ingenious and insightful. His water-shed work on the early Judaism challenged and changed the tide.

I learned from Sanders that a good question should start from the attitude of taking-nothing-for-granted.

Several (foolish, though, compared to those of Sanders) questions revolve me nowadays. One of them is, "why are Paul and other early Jesus-believers not troubled by the notion of "brutal" God whose plan for humanity is sending his son for a sacrificial death?" Paul doesn't seem to deal with this problem in his letters. Do we need to investigate this question against the wider Greco-Roman world? For example, what was the relationship between father and children, and what was the ethical norm for fathers in antiquity? How did philosophers like Stoics and Epicureans think of the divinity like this?

For Paul, the ground and exemplar of ethics is Jesus, not God the father. Well, God is rather the commander who orders "Be holy for I am holy." God loves us, says Paul. Yet does God love his son?