Bowing before Christ - Nodding to the State?

Bowing before Christ - Nodding to the State? PDF Author: Dorothea H. Bertschmann
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0567192083
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
Does the apostle Paul sponsor political conservatism? A growing number of scholars dispute this perception, arguing that Paul's political imagery and in particular the confession that "Jesus Christ is Lord" directly challenge the proud Roman emperor.This book critically engages these proposals, seeking to point out with greater precision the function of political imagery within the Pauline narrative. Dorothea H. Bertschmann starts by conversing with the works of John Howard Yoder and Oliver O'Donovan, two modern political ethicists and theologians. She argues that both thinkers in all their distinctive emphases wrestle with a similar difficulty: How can Christ the Lord be meaningfully related to earthly lords without betraying the otherness of Christ's Lordship? But how does Paul deal with this problem? In order to answer this question Bertschmann offers a close reading of two key texts, Philippians 2:5-11 and Romans 13:1-7.She argues that despite the many-faceted political imagery of the "Christ hymn", Paul does nothing in his explicit narrative to engage existing rulers positively or negatively with the message of Christ's rule.Paul's focus is entirely on the church, which he seeks to construct as a "community under authority". While there is no emperor in the Christ hymn, there is no Christ in Paul's political admonition of Romans 13.Paul deliberately keeps political rule at the periphery of God's salvific actions in Christ, while not totally dis-connecting it from the overall divine act.This strategy has its limitations, but also the potential to offer fresh impulses in theological deliberations about "church and state".

Bowing before Christ - Nodding to the State?

Bowing before Christ - Nodding to the State? PDF Author: Dorothea H. Bertschmann
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0567192083
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 225

Get Book Here

Book Description
Does the apostle Paul sponsor political conservatism? A growing number of scholars dispute this perception, arguing that Paul's political imagery and in particular the confession that "Jesus Christ is Lord" directly challenge the proud Roman emperor.This book critically engages these proposals, seeking to point out with greater precision the function of political imagery within the Pauline narrative. Dorothea H. Bertschmann starts by conversing with the works of John Howard Yoder and Oliver O'Donovan, two modern political ethicists and theologians. She argues that both thinkers in all their distinctive emphases wrestle with a similar difficulty: How can Christ the Lord be meaningfully related to earthly lords without betraying the otherness of Christ's Lordship? But how does Paul deal with this problem? In order to answer this question Bertschmann offers a close reading of two key texts, Philippians 2:5-11 and Romans 13:1-7.She argues that despite the many-faceted political imagery of the "Christ hymn", Paul does nothing in his explicit narrative to engage existing rulers positively or negatively with the message of Christ's rule.Paul's focus is entirely on the church, which he seeks to construct as a "community under authority". While there is no emperor in the Christ hymn, there is no Christ in Paul's political admonition of Romans 13.Paul deliberately keeps political rule at the periphery of God's salvific actions in Christ, while not totally dis-connecting it from the overall divine act.This strategy has its limitations, but also the potential to offer fresh impulses in theological deliberations about "church and state".

Bowing Before Christ, Nodding to the State?

Bowing Before Christ, Nodding to the State? PDF Author: Dorothea Helene Bertschmann
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
This thesis offers a close reading of two Pauline texts, Philippians 2:5-11 and Romans 13:1-7. Inspired by recent scholarship it asks whether Paul can be read in a politically relevant way. An interaction with the works of political ethicists O'Donovan and Yoder precedes the exegetical part to focus more sharply on relevant issues. In all their distinctive emphases both ethicists hold that the primary result of Christ's Lordship is the church, which is (socio) political in a broad sense and governed by Christ. Christ's Lordship is reflected but not mediated by the church and even less so by the state. Political authority with its use of temporal power is still needed by the church. The Christ-event indirectly affects political authority, re-locating and re-enlisting it. The church is both to grant the state some autonomy and to engage it with its evangelical ethos. Like O'Donovan and Yoder, Paul uses the metaphor of Christ's Lordship with all its variable potential in a resolutely ecclesial way. He portrays the church as a socio-political body constituted and sustained by Christ's Lordship, which nevertheless does not strive to be fully politicized and still needs structures of political authority. Unlike O'Donovan and Yoder, Paul sees political rule to be unaffected by the Christ event. While Paul's narrative arguably shifts the center of hope and loyalty to Christ, this is not used to engage political rulers either positively or negatively. The latter's task is unchanged and given approval as an abiding aspect of the divine work. While it does not match the height of God's deed in Christ as embodied by the church, it shows the Christ believers that their 'good' is perfectly compatible with the demands of political rulers.

The Reign of God

The Reign of God PDF Author: Jonathan Cole
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0567707490
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 169

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Book Description
The Reign of God constitutes the first detailed and systematic critical engagement with Oliver O'Donovan's political theology. It argues that O'Donovan's theological account of political authority is not tenable on the basis of exegetical and methodological problems. The book goes on to demonstrate a way to refine O'Donovan's theology of political authority by incorporating insights from his earlier work in moral theology. This can provide a cogent basis for thinking that the Christ-event redeems the natural political authority embedded in the created order and inaugurates its new historical bene esse in the form of Christian liberalism.

Christian Pacifism for an Environmental Age

Christian Pacifism for an Environmental Age PDF Author: Mark Douglas
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108476481
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 279

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Book Description
Provides a new understanding of the traditions of Christian pacifism in order to address wars in a warming world.

Troubling Topics, Sacred Texts

Troubling Topics, Sacred Texts PDF Author: Roberta Sterman Sabbath
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110651009
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 712

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Book Description
Abrahamic scriptures serve as cultural pharmakon, prescribing what can act as both poison and remedy. This collection shows that their sometimes veiled but eternally powerful polemics can both destroy and build, exclude and include, and serve as the ultimate justification for cruelty or compassion. Here, scholars not only excavate these works for their formative and continuing cultural impact on communities, identities, and belief systems, they select some of the most troubling topics that global communities continue to navigate. Their analysis of both texts and their reception help explain how these texts promote norms and build collective identities. Rejecting the notion of the sacred realm as separate from the mundane realm and beyond critical challenge, this collection argues—both implicitly and sometimes transparently—for the presence of the sacred within everyday life and open to challenge. The very rituals, prayers, and traditions that are deemed sacred interweave into our cultural systems in infinite ways. Together, these authors explore the dynamic nature of everyday life and the often-brutal power of these texts over everyday meaning.

Logics of War

Logics of War PDF Author: Therese Feiler
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0567678296
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
The modern ethics of war is a field of disparate, competing voices based on often unexplored theological and metaphysical assumptions. Therese Feiler approaches them from the borderline area between systematics, philosophical theology and religious studies. With reference to G. W. F. Hegel's and like-minded thinkers' 'theo–logic' that negotiates Christ's mediation and immanent dialectics, Feiler identifies the logic and problem of mediation as the core concern of political ethics. Feiler unites five representative authors from now disparate strands of contemporary just war ethics, testing whether they offer a meaningful possibility of mediation and subsequent reconciliation: a sovereign realist and a cosmopolitan idealist; a rationalist individualist, an idealist Christian ethicist, and finally, an evangelical theologian. Opening the just war debate for comparative critical engagement, Feiler creates a fascinating study that locates a “dynamic point” at which faithful, free political action can be wrestled from irony, tragedy, and melancholic inertia in the face of totalitarian suffocation.

The Therapy of the Christian Body

The Therapy of the Christian Body PDF Author: Brian Brock
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 149823352X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
The troubles and ills of the church today can only be understood and healed when Christians begin to face up to their hidden alliances with the Corinthians of the first century and embrace both the Apostle’s diagnosis and therapy offered in the epistle. This is the challenge of The Malady and Therapy of the Christian Body, a two-volume commentary by two leading theologians that presents the fruits of a reading strategy that deliberately reflects ecclesial commitment by “reading the Apostle over against ourselves.” Sharing their discoveries about the way Paul deals with questions of factionalism, sexuality, legal conflict, idolatry, dress codes, and eating habits, Brock and Wannenwetsch demonstrate how neither the malady nor the therapy that Paul describes conforms to dominant analyses of the malaise of the contemporary church, which tend to be as “organ centered” as modern medicine. The authors describe the way the Apostle engages in “feeling-into” the organic whole of the body in order to detect blockages to the healthy flow of powers by redirecting their vision to how God is working among them toward the “building up” of the Christian body. The book breaks new ground in crossing the traditional disciplinary boundaries between biblical studies, systematic theology, and theological ethics.

The Press of the Text

The Press of the Text PDF Author: Andrew H. Bartelt
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1498235913
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
The breadth and depth of these essays are a fitting testimony to the personal and professional interests of James W. Voelz. They span a spectrum from Greek language and lexicography to hermeneutics and translation theory to interpretation and theology of both biblical testaments to contemporary issues in church and world. Leading scholars with a diversity of interests and in diverse contexts offer a buffet of both general and focused issues from detailed translation theory and method to the World Series as a template for theological reflection, from creeds and confessions to cultural and social hermeneutics. Readers will find much that will strengthen and challenge their study of theology and the biblical text.

Theologies from the Pacific

Theologies from the Pacific PDF Author: Jione Havea
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030743659
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
This book offers engagements with topics in mainline theology that concern the lifelines in and of the Pacific (Pasifika). The essays are grouped into three clusters. The first, Roots, explores the many roots from which theologies in and of Pasifika grow – sea and (is)land, Christian teachings and scriptures, native traditions and island ways. The second, Reads, presents theologies informed and inspired by readings of written and oral texts, missionary traps and propaganda, and teachings and practices of local churches. The final cluster, Routes, places Pasifika theologies upon the waters so that they may navigate and voyage. The ‘amanaki (hope) of this work is in keeping talanoa (dialogue) going, in pushing back tendencies to wedge the theologies in and of Pasifika, and in putting native wisdom upon the waters. As these Christian and native theologies voyage, they chart Pasifika’s sea of theologies.

The Call to Happiness

The Call to Happiness PDF Author: Nathaniel A. Warne
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1978700253
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
In The Call to Happiness, Nathaniel A. Warne examines how sixteenth-and seventeenth-century Puritans adopted a eudaimonistic conception of ethics in their writings. He shows how classical eudaimonism within the Puritan context is related to other areas of theology, ethics, and politics, and that the idea of divine calling or vocation fits within Puritan eudaimonism. Warne further shows how work can also be understood as an aspect of human flourishing when illuminated from within this tradition of Christian eudaimonism alongside the doctrine of calling.