Bøger i Emerging Scholars serien

Revision of author's thesis (Ph. D.)--Loyola University, Chicago, 2011 under title The figure of Adam in Rom 5:12-21 and 1 Cor 15:21-22, 45-49: the new creation and its ethical and social reconfigurations.

James C. Scotts discussion of hidden transcripts of defiance or resistance among subordinate groups has been taken up by scholars who claim to detect elements of defiant transcripts in biblical texts. In Rumors of Resistance, Amanda C. Miller uses Scotts theory to explain tensions within the narrative of the Gospel of Luke. Miller concludes that Lukes audience would have been challenged to resist the dominant values of Roman imperial culture even as the narrative framework of Luke partially obscures that transcript.

Seng-Kong Tan argues that human participation in the divinea classical theological axiom most notably associated with the Eastern Orthodox traditionis a central theme in the theology of Jonathan Edwards. This notion, Tan contends, is a defining motif for the entire systematic sweep of Edwardss theology, and it serves to focus and determine the contours of Edwardss thought. Fullness Received and Returned situates Edwardss theology within the folds of the classical theological tradition, while arguing that Edwardss is a unique and creative form of Reformed theology.

Biblical scholars have often contrasted the exegesis of the early church fathers from Syrian Antioch against that of the school of Alexandria. The Antiochenes have often been described as strictly historical-literal exegetes in contrast to the allegorical exegesis of the Alexandrians. Patristic scholars now challenge those stereotypes, some even arguing that few differences existed between the two groups.

Mark A. Jason offers a detailed investigation of the place of repentance in the Dead Sea Scrolls, addressing a significant lacuna in Qumran scholarship. Normally, when the belief system of the community is examined, "repentance" is usually taken for granted or relegated to a peripheral position. By careful attention to key texts, Jason establishes the importance of repentance as a fundamental way of structuring and describing religious experience within the Qumran community. Repentance was important not only for entry into the community and covenant but also for daily governance and cultic activities, and even for authenticating understanding of the end times. Jason shows, then, that repentance was a central and decisive element in shaping that community's identity and undergirded its religous experience from the start. Further, comparison with relevant texts from the Apocrypha and pseudepigrapha shows that the Qumran community represented a distinctive penitential movement in Second Temple Judaism.

Pamela Shellberg shows that Luke's use of the language of "clean" and "unclean" has particular first-century medical connotations that make it especially powerful for expressing his understanding of the universal salvation prophesied by Isaiah and by Jesus. Shellberg traces how the stories of Jesus' cleansing of leprous bodies in the Gospel become the pattern for the divine cleansing of Gentile hearts throughout Acts, and one of Luke's primary expressions of the means of God's salvation and favor through the dissolving of distinctions between Jew and Gentile.

In failing to take the sacramentality of the word of God seriously, the preaching of the church has suffered negative consequences, particularly failing to bring about divine participation with Jesus corporeal humanity in his living word. In order to recover this sacramental reality, this volume argues that one should consider the annunciation to Mary as the paradigm of the corporeal Christ taking up residence in the flesh of his hearer and delivering the fullness of the Godhead.

Throughout the course of his theological career, Jrgen Moltmann has been interested in the ecclesial and societal consequences of systematic theology and what each doctrine means for our life in this world. The Transformative Church explores these concerns in Moltmanns major texts and highlighting themes relevant for a transformative ecclesiology. Patrick Oden constructs a substantive transformative ecclesiology embedded in this world: we are to become in the church who we are to be in this world, whole in Christ so as to be a messianic people in any context.

Revision of the author's PhD thesis at the University of St. Andrews.--Acknowledgements.

Narrators of the Hebrew Bible generally allow their stories to proceed while relying on characters and dialogue to provide necessary information. Paris calls attention to when the story teller breaks frame to provide information or direct reader understanding, preventing undesirable construals or interpretations of the story. After surveying the phenomenon in the Hebrew Bible and other ancient Near Eastern literature, Paris focuses on the Deuteronomistic History. Paris argues that attention to narrative obtrusion offers an entry point into the world of the narrator and redefines aspects of narrative criticism.

This dissertation intervenes in Reformed readings of the doctrine of providence, particularly around Barths critical interpretation of the tradition stemming from Calvin and Schleiermacher. Kim argues that while Barth advances the discussion, his reading of Calvin is significantly hampered by his challenge to Schleiermacher. Kim provides an extensive reading Calvins writings, demonstrating that Calvin is more concerned with the Christological basis and Christian meaning of providence than Barths theology recognizes; as well, Schleiermachers theological construction problematizes aspects of Barths reading.

In Christ the Light, Whidden argues that illumination is a critical systematic motif in Aquinas theology, one that involves the nature of truth, knowledge, and God; at the root, Aquinas theology of light, or illumination, is Christological, grounding human knowledge of God and eschatological beatitude. This volume establishes the theological network formed by the crucial motif of light/illumination in Aquinas, from how theology operates to the systematic, sacramental, and moral coordinates in Aquinas theology.

There has been a distinct tendency in modern scholarship to underestimate Luthers teaching on love by overemphasizing his teaching on justification. Calling this tendency into question, Sun-young Kim advances the thesis that Luthers teaching on faith and love operates as the overriding thematic pair in the dynamics of Christ and the lawstructurally and conceptually undergirding the 1535 Galatians commentary. The research situates itself in the landscape of Luther scholarship via a special attention to Finnish Luther scholars and scholarship. Luther on Faith and Love argues that in the discussion of proper righteousness and holiness, Luthers redefined love emerges in harmony with faith. His views on Christian freedom, the Christ-given law of love, the twofold way of fulfilling the law, and his Christological premises demonstrate the logical rationale for reintroducing love. This love, designated as a fruit of faith, is incarnated in three major relations: love toward God, toward others, and toward self.

The identification of God with beauty is one of the most aesthetically rich notions within Christian thought. However, this claim is often at risk of becoming untethered from core Christian theological confessions. To avoid a theological account of beauty becoming a mere projection of our wildest desires, it must be reined in by dogmatics. To make this case, this book employs the thought of Robert W. Jenson to construct a dogmatic aesthetics. Jensons whole theological program is directed by exploring the systematic potential of the core doctrines of the faith that finally opens out into a vast vision of the beauty of God and creatures:God is a great fugue . . . the rest is music. Taking Jensons cue, the account of beauty presented in this book is propelled by a core conviction of Jensons theology: the sole analogue between God and creatures is not being or any other metaphysical concept, but Jesus Christ.

Sameer Yadavs central claim in this work is that there is a radical mistake in many contemporary accounts that require grounding a theological story of Gods availability to us in experience in a prior general philosophical theory of perception. Instead, it is argued that the philosophical problem of perception is a pseudoproblem.The study concludes with a new reading of Gregory of Nyssa and his theology of the spiritual senses, which is free from the bewitchment of the problem of perception.

Vital to an agrarian communitys survival, threshing floors are also depicted in the Hebrew Bible as sites for mourning rites, divination rituals, cultic processions, and sacrifices. Jaime L. Waters examines these sacred functions and the various personnel active in the use and operation of the sites and shows that they were sacred spaces connected to Yahweh, under his control and subject to his power to bless, curse, and save, providing Israel a special ritual access to Yahw

Revision of author's thesis (Ph. D.)--Princeton Theological Seminary, 2011.

Although Basil of Caesarea was the first to write a discourse on the Holy Spirit, many scholars have since questioned if he fully believed in the Spirits divinity. Timothy McConnell argues that Basil did regard the Spirit as fully divine and an equal Person of the Trinity. However, Basil refused to use philosophical terminology to make the point, preferring to use what the Spirit himself revealed through divine act and Scripture. Thus, illumination becomes the primary paradigm for Basil setting the stage for this studys high relevance for contemporary thought.

In Silence and Praise, Ryan Leif Hansen begins with the premise that cosmology is a central focus in Johns Apocalypse. However, Johns intention in reflecting theologically on the nature, existence, and destiny of the created world is not in order to explicate a stable system. Rather, Johns cosmological thought is employed for persuasive purposes as an ethical and political critique of Roman imperial cultic discourse. Hansen seeks to read the contours of Johns rhetorical cosmology and to understand the theological and political implications of its strategy.

Demetrios Toniass Abraham in the Works of John Chrysostom is the first comprehensive examination of John Chrysostoms view of the patriarch Abraham. By analyzing the full range of references to Abraham in Chrysostoms work, Tonias reveals the ways in which Chrysostom used Abraham as a model of philosophical and Christian virtue, familial devotion, philanthropy, and obedient faith.

The twentieth century witnessed renewed interest in a Roman Catholic theology of the word. The contributions of Karl Rahner and sacramental theologian Louis-Marie Chauvet demonstrate the Roman Catholic conviction that the word is fundamentally sacramental: it has the capacity to bear Gods presence to humanity..Rhodora Beaton examines the work of Rahner and Chauvet to articulate the relationship between word and sacrament within the context of language, culture, and an already graced world as the place of divine self-expression, and analyzes the implications for Trinitarian theology, sacramentality, liturgy, and action.

Conley calls into question the outdated historical methodologies in use in Christian social ethics and outlines the consequences stemming from them. By adopting the postmodern post-structuralist position of historian Elizabeth Clark, Conley calls ethicists to learn to read for the gaps, silences, and aporias existent in historical texts as well as in the histories represented by them.The book calls ethicists to a critical self-reflexive historiography. This self-criticism allows the ability to construct new histories and formulate new ethical norms for the world in which we now live.