Author: Troels Engberg-Pedersen
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN: 0199558566
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 304
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Book Description
This text presents an innovative challenge to the traditional reading of Paul. Troels Engberg-Pedersen argues that the usual mainly cognitive and metaphorical ways of understanding central Pauline concepts must be supplemented by a literal understanding that directly reflects Paul's materialist cosmology.
Author: Troels Engberg-Pedersen
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 019161579X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 304
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Book Description
Cosmology and Self in the Apostle Paul challenges the traditional reading of Paul. Troels Engberg-Pedersen argues that the usual, mainly cognitive and metaphorical, ways of understanding central Pauline concepts, such as 'being in Christ', 'having God's pneuma (spirit), Christ's pneuma, and Christ himself in one', must be supplemented by a literal understanding that directly reflects Paul's cosmology. Engberg-Pedersen shows that Paul's cosmology, not least his understanding of the pneuma, was a materialist, bodily one: the pneuma was a physical element that would at the resurrection act directly on the ordinary human bodies of believers and transform them into 'pneumatic bodies'. This literal understanding of the future events is then traced back to the Pauline present as Engberg-Pedersen considers how Paul conceived in bodily terms of a range of central themes like his own conversion, his mission, the believers' reception of the pneuma in baptism, and the way the apostle took the pneuma to inform his own and their ways of life from the beginning to the projected end. In developing this picture of Paul's world view, an explicitly philosophically oriented form of interpretation ('philosophical exegesis') is employed, in which the interpreter applies categories of interpretation that make sense philosophically, whether in an ancient or a modern context. For this enterprise Engberg-Pedersen draws in particular on ancient Stoic materialist and monistic physics and cosmology - as opposed to the Platonic, immaterialist and dualistic categories that underlie traditional readings of Paul - and on modern ideas on 'religious experience', 'self', 'body' and 'practice' derived from Foucault and Bourdieu. In this way Paul is shown to have spelled out philosophically his Jewish, 'apocalyptic' world view, which remains a central feature of his thought. The book states the cosmological case for the author's earlier 'ethical' reading of Paul in his prize-winning book, Paul and the Stoics (2000).
Author: Matthew Croasmun
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019027798X
Category : Bibles
Languages : en
Pages : 297
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Book Description
Commentators have long argued about whether to read Paul's personification of Sin in Romans literally or figuratively. Matthew Croasmun suggests both that the cosmic power Sin is nothing more than an emergent feature of a vast network of human transgression and that this power is nevertheless a real person.
Author: Beverly Roberts Gaventa
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781602589704
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 207
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Book Description
Romans 5-8 revolve around God's dramatic cosmic activity and its implications for humanity and all of creation. Apocalyptic Paul measures the power of Paul's rhetoric about the relationship of cosmic power to the Law, interpretations of righteousness and the self, and the link between grace and obedience. A revealing study of Paul's understanding of humanity in light of God's apocalyptic action through Jesus Christ, Apocalyptic Paul illuminates Romans 5-8 and shows how critical this neglected part of Romans was to Paul's literary project.
Author: Troels Engberg-Pedersen
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
ISBN: 9780664222345
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 452
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Book Description
"Dr. Engberg-Pedersen shows how a range of problems encountered in twentieth-century interpretation of three major Pauline letters (Philippians, Galatians, Romans) may be overcome by reading the epistles in the light of ancient Stoic ethics. He discusses literary, conceptual and theological issues: for example, the unity and purpose of the letters; the relationship in the letters between theology and ethics; the logical character and shape of Pauline exhortation; the relationship in Paul between cognition and participation; the meaning of righteousness from faith; Paul's handling of the Jewish law. The author illuminates the central core of Paul's thought by applying the Stoic perspective and argues that scholars must move beyond the traditional Judaism/Hellenism divide to reach a comprehensive and accurate reading of Paul's letters"--P. [4] of cover.
Author: Robert J. Russell
Publisher:
ISBN: 0800662733
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 344
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Book Description
* The most important and influential writings of a leader in the field * Rethinks divine action in light of cosmology, quantum theory, and biology
Author: J.J. Johnson Leese
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0567678083
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 246
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Book Description
J. J. Johnson Leese discusses how the apostle Paul's writing on Christ's relationship to creation, read alongside the interpretations of Irenaeus of Lyon, provide a meaningful contribution to contemporary debates on the interrelationship between religion and nature. Leese draws upon the integration of three related scholarly trends – the increased importance placed on biblical creation themes, the emergence of ecotheology, and the history of reception – while focusing on the Pauline corpus and readings of Paul by Irenaeus, thus uncovering a robust creation and ecotheological theology. Irenaeus' approach provides the possibility for Paul to contribute to ecotheology, by way of a theological vision where the whole of reality in relationship to Christ and creation and by extension, to soteriology and ecclesiology, are central components of Paul's theology.
Author: John P. Keenan
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1666708526
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 421
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Book Description
This is volume 2 of a wide-ranging interfaith reading of the Letter to the Ephesians—a New Testament text whose words have inspired and enhanced Christian spiritual life and liturgy over the centuries. Unfortunately, at the same time, Ephesians has provided apparent scriptural support to those who would defend slavery, patriarchy, misogyny, and the physical power of Christ over the cosmos. How on earth are today’s Christians to receive and understand such a text as this? Earthing the Cosmic Christ of Ephesians: The Universe, Trinity, and Zhiyi’s Threefold Truth draws upon a broad array of scientific, theological, and philosophical thinkers who enable us both to marvel at today’s ever-expanding knowledge of our vast cosmos and to appreciate the importance of the Ephesian letter in the canon of our Christian scriptures, even while we acknowledge the archaic geocentric cosmology that underlies its claims about the cosmic Christ and reject its accommodation to the patriarchal, misogynistic, and slaveholding norms of its first-century culture. Throughout this reading of Ephesians, we look to Chinese Buddhist master Zhiyi and his “threefold truth” to enhance our understanding of trinity and the nascent trinitarian themes within this letter. As a whole, this work constitutes a new appreciation for Ephesians as well as a twenty-first century apologetic for doctrinal humility and for theologizing within a global theological commons.
Author: Grant Buchanan
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0567709264
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 233
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Book Description
Considering the importance of pneumatological themes for interpreting Paul's argument of Galatians, Grant Buchanan explores how Paul draws from Jewish traditions of creation and the Spirit and presents a fresh cosmogony to the Galatian church. He suggests that Galatians outlines an epistemological shift in how Paul sees past, present, and future reality in light of Christ and the presence of the Spirit in the lives of the believers. The most crucial aspect of this new cosmogony is the centrality of the Spirit in Paul's argument in Galatians 3:16:17, with Buchanan's exegesis revealing that the Spirit, the Galatians' identity as children of God and the new creation motif are not merely elements of Paul's argument but intrinsic to it. Buchanan demonstrates that Paul renders Jewish and Gentile identities no longer valid, instead revealing that God's favour and election is already with them by stating that those who have the promised Spirit are all children of God. He examines Jewish biblical and Second Temple extra-biblical texts that explicitly connect the Spirit to creation themes, including Genesis, Ezekiel, the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Wisdom of Solomon. Taking Galatians 6:1117 as the body-closing of the letter, the new creation motif directly implies the activity of the Spirit in the creation of Christian identity. Analysing 6:15 from this pneumatological perspective, Buchanan argues that the new creation motif represents a key aspect of Paul's generative cosmogony and pneumatology, indicating a far broader socio-cosmic transformation than previously assumed, and it becomes a key to understanding Paul's argument.
Author: Victoria S. Balabanski
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0567674401
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 219
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Book Description
Vicky Balabanski analyses Colossians as a co-authored letter, written during Paul's Roman imprisonment by Timothy with the input of Epaphras, and sent with Paul's introductory and concluding greetings. Balabanski sees remarkable resonances between the cosmology of this letter and that of Stoic thought, the most widely held philosophy in first century Asia Minor. Drawing upon the way Stoic thinkers saw the divine Spirit permeating reality and sought to attune their lives to the Logos, divine reason, she argues that the Logos of Christ – the Gospel – was welcomed by small groups of people shaped by Stoic thought, and they experienced Christ as the visible expression of the One God who permeates reality. The Letter to the Colossians has the highest view of Christ of any of the New Testament writings, and its theology of divine permeation invites us to notice the ecological potential of this letter. This Eco-Stoic reading brings contemporary ecological questions into dialogue with the distinctive Christology and cosmology of the letter.
