[PDF] Identity Ethics And Ethos In The New Testament eBook
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Author : Jan G. van der Watt Publisher : Walter de Gruyter Page : 661 pages File Size : 37,2 MB Release : 2012-02-13 Category : Religion ISBN : 3110893932
The book deals with the relation between identity, ethics, and ethos in the New Testament. The focus falls on the way in which the commandments or guidelines presented in the New Testament writings inform the behaviour of the intended recipients. The habitual behaviour (ethos) of the different Christian communities in the New Testament are plotted and linked to their identity. Apart from analytical categories like ethos, ethics, and identity that are clearly defined in the book, efforts are also made to broaden the specific analytical categories related to ethical material. The way in which, for instance, narratives, proverbial expressions, imagery, etc. inform the reader about the ethical demands or ethos is also explored.
This book is rooted in the quest for Christian identity in the Southern African context where Christianity is faced with many stark challenges, internal tensions and experiences of rapid social change. The book explores six aspects of the highly complex notion of Christian identity, namely Christian institutions, a Christian ethos, Christian rituals, Christian experiences (with specific reference to the notion of “faith”), Christian narratives (with specific reference to the category of “revelation” and the place of the Bible in the Christian tradition) and Christian doctrine.
The collection of essays focuses on the twin areas of research undertaken by Prof. Michael W. Holmes. These are the sub-disciplines of textual criticism and the study of the Apostolic Fathers. The first part of the volume on textual criticism focuses on issues of method, the praxis of editing and collating texts, and discussions pertaining to individual variants. The second part of the volume assembles essays on the Apostolic Fathers. There is a particular focus on the person and writings of Polycarp, since this is the area of research where Prof. Holmes has worked most intensively.
This convenient text utilizes material from the well-received Dictionary of Scripture and Ethics to introduce students to the use of the New Testament for moral formation. This handy and affordable book-by-book survey of the New Testament contains key articles written by leading scholars and targeted to the needs of the classroom. It will serve as an excellent supplementary text in New Testament courses. The stellar list of contributors includes Robert Brawley, Bruce Chilton, Charles Cosgrove, David deSilva, Victor Paul Furnish, and Glen Harold Stassen.
In times of conflict and radical change, group identity is often threatened and boundaries need to be renegotiated. The first century was a time of radical change, especially for the Jews. It was in the first century C.E. that the core symbol of Jewish identity, the temple, was destroyed. Social scientists point out that in such turbulent times, groups will often create stronger boundaries around themselves. In such contexts boundaries between insiders and outsiders are created and in ancient texts, expressed in linguistic forms that illustrate such boundaries. Christianity as a movement developed within the already established, but volatile Jewish movement/religion. As a movement Christianity expressed a profound sense of inclusivism and illustrated that value in the transcendence of social boundaries. However, Christianity was also a moral movement, as Wayne Meeks once remarked, and therefore also created boundaries. This is expressed in linguistic expressions, such as to say that the in-group are the pistoi (believers) to be distinguished from the apistoi (the unbelievers). In this book the dynamic reality of creating and transcending boundaries and the relationship between insiders and outsiders are explored by way of reflecting on mission and ethos. Mission is understood as the expansion of early Christianity which was experienced as a (missionary) call or responsibility to share a particular view on God and life. Ethos is understood as the language and behaviour that flowed forth from a missionary understanding of identity. Prof. Jacobus (Kobus) Kok is Associate Professor of New Testament Studies at the University of Pretoria and Doctoral Researcher in Religious Studies at the Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands.
For centuries Christians have referred to the New Testament for guidance on moral conduct. But did the writers of the New Testament themselves agree on such questions as divorce, political obedience, wealth and the toleration of other religions? And have their often inconsistent views any relevance today? In Ethics and the New Testament, the author applies strict critical standards to the Gospels, epistles and other writings, which he examines in historical perspective. His explanation of contemporary attitudes-including gnosticism-helps to clarify the striking moral differences between Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, James and Paul. He attempts to discern the ethical standards and teachings of Jesus which are sometimes hidden in the present Biblical texts. And finally, he relates the moral injunctions of Christianity's central text to the modern age.
In the first volume of his two-volume comprehensive overview of the theological and ethical thought world of the New Testament, Ben Witherington III focuses on expositional samplings of the theology and ethics of New Testament writers in context and closely examines the interrelations between New Testament theology and ethics.
In this capacious and accessible introduction to Christian ethics, Hak Joon Lee advances a renewed vision of Christian life that is liberative, grace-centered, and justice- and peace-oriented in nature. Responding to key ethical questions of today, Lee applies the moral meaning and implications of the New Covenant in Jesus Christ to twenty-first-century life, characterized by fluidity, fragmentation, division, and violence. Christian Ethics begins by introducing covenant as the central drama and storyline of Scripture that culminates in the New Covenant of Jesus. It presents shalom (the wholeness and flourishing of creation) as God’s ultimate purpose and God’s covenant as “God’s organizing mechanism of community” that mediates God’s work of liberation and restoration. Lee proposes a creative model of Christian ethics based on the New Covenant of Jesus and its organizing patterns, reconstructing the key categories of ethics (agency, norms, authority of Scripture, ethical discernment, etc.) and drawing out four practices—communicative engagement, just peacemaking, grassroots organizing, and nonviolence. The result is a new model of Christian ethics that is inclusive, egalitarian, ecological, and justice- and peace-oriented, which overcomes the limitations of traditional covenantal ethics. In the second part of the book, Lee systematically applies New Covenant ethics to the most urgent and controversial social issues of our time: democratic politics, economic ethics, creation care, criminal justice, race, sex and marriage, medicine, and war and peace. Through his deep, pastoral, and irenic inquiries into these difficult topics, Lee demonstrates a pattern of covenantal moral reasoning that undercuts the dominant neoliberal ethos of individualism and transactional relationship that more and more influences Christian moral decisions. His conclusion is that as covenant has been at the heart of modern democracy, human rights, civil society, and civic formation, a renewed understanding of covenant centered in Jesus can help to heal our broken society and imperiled planet, and to reorganize the fragmented human life in the era of globalization and digitization.