According to the Scriptures

I recently reread C. H. Dodd's According to the Scriptures: The Substructure of New Testament Theology. The book, a 1952 version of lectures that Dodd delivered at the Princeton Theological Seminary, is Dodd's classic examination of the idea of "fulfillment" in early Christian thought. Specifically, Dodd sought to understand the use that Christians made of the Old Testament scriptures in asserting that--as the Lucan/Pauline writings state--a) the Messiah had to suffer, b) would rise on the third day, and c) that in His name repentance leading to forgiveness of sins would be preached to all nations (Luke 24: 46-47).

Without attempting to summarize the entire range of Dodd's insights, I will simply state that Dodd's analysis leads him to conclude that the early kerygma (preaching) of the Church can be traced back to its earliest days. In point of fact, there is no good reason to doubt that it is rooted in the teaching of Jesus to his disciples. Dodd offers four main conclusions to his study, which delimit the substructure of New Testament theology: