Which “Body” Is a Temple (1 Corinthians 6:19)? Paul beyond the Individual/Communal Divide

Pauline scholarship has always been interested in the “theology” of the Apostle, and questions of his understanding of God, Christ, salvation, the church, and ethics are as passionately pursued now as in any prior generation. An important methodological point that has been widely accepted among scholars, though, is that such attempts at extracting theological bits from Paul must take sufficient account of the ancient context of his writing and the “contingency” of his literary engagements, that is, “the specificity of the occasion to which it was addressed.” One major manifestation of this concern for understanding Paul in his original setting has been the concern over the Augustinian/Lutheran/Bultmannian approach to soteriology that was centered on personal justification. This theological orientation, as Calvin J. Roetzel puts it, “sees salvation for the individual as the governing theme of Paul’s theology.” Thus, a new era in the interpretation of Paul commenced with Krister Stendahl’s famous “The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West” (1963), which tried to direct the attention of Paul’s justification language away from the issue of personal guilt and sin toward the matter of the relationship between Jews and gentiles in the early church. The implications for viewing justification (among other key doctrines) as communal are evident in many who followed Stendahl. Consider this statement by N. T. Wright: The gospel creates, not a bunch of individual Christians, but a community. If you take the old route of putting justification, in its traditional meaning, at the centre of your theology, you will always be in danger of sustaining some sort of individualism

The Role of the Bible in the Formation of Philosophical Thought in Kievan Rus’ (as Exemplified by Ilarion of Kiev, Kliment Smolatič, and Kirill of Turov)

The article is an attempt to critically evaluate the manifestations of the philosophical culture sprouting in Rus’. With the baptism in the Byzantine Rite, Rus’ in the 10th century joined the family of Christian nations and defined the future direction of her own cultural development. The Middle Ages in Rus’ were eminently theocentric. Literature (which was mostly translated from the Greek in Bulgarian monasteries) had a religious character. Sacral content, assimilated in Rus’ mainly through the Old Church Slavonic (due to the scarce knowledge of Greek) had a decisive influence on formation of the philosophical worldview of Rus’ intellectual elite. The Bible thus became the main reference framework for the first Rus’ thinkers-philosophers: Ilarion of Kiev († 1055), Kirill of Turov († 1183) and Kliment Smolatič († 1164). Ilarion of Kiev, the first metropolitan of the Kievan Rus’ in his rhetoric work (which postulated the superiority of the New Testament to the Old) expressed a philosophical thesis of the equality of all Christian nations before God. Kliment Smolatič, the second metropolitan of Rus’, in his Letter to Presbyter Foma, defended the allegorical method of interpretating the Bible. Kirill of Turov, in his turn, in his Parable of the human soul and body allegorically tried to answer the question about the relationship of the body and the soul. For the Rus’ thinkers the content of the Bible served as a pretext for philosophical reflection, e.g. on the role of man in the universe, on the nature of reality, on the relation between matter and spirit. In their works we find the beginnings of the theory of knowledge, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics

Putting off and putting on: an examination of character information in Colossians 3.1-17 and the spiritualities created in the process

The majority of academic study on the epistle to the Colossians focuses primarily on issues related to Christology, the identification of the heresy that threatened the church, or the ongoing debate surrounding authorship of the epistle. Current research leaves several lacunae in the broader understanding of the writer’s intent with the Colossian epistle. There is very little attention given to the existence of a process by which the Colossian believers can mature in Christ and face any theologically aberrant teachings with a growing faith and solid doctrine. There is also a gap in the research within the field of Christian spirituality regarding the application of specific principles of spirituality to sacred canonical texts and early Christian writings. This thesis seeks to fill these research gaps through the use of socio-rhetorical strategies and principles of Christian spirituality. The primary text for this research is the pericope of Colossians 3.1-17. The research on the epistle examines the pericope for an embedded process of character transformation by which the Colossian believers grow towards Christlikeness. As the Colossians grow in maturity, their lived experience of God changes. There are spiritualities embedded within the text that begin to impact the growth of the believers through the embodiment of the text. The identification of these spiritualities as well as the process of character transformation allows for the filling of research gaps and a richer understanding of the epistle writer’s intent.Philosophy, Practical and Systematic TheologyD. Phil. (Theology

From "Linguistic Turn” and Hebrews Scholarship to Anadiplosis Iterata: The Enigma of a Structure

In 1963, when the "linguistic turn” had evidently taken hold of New Testament studies, Albert Vanhoye, a linguistically trained Catholic priest, published a monograph entitled La structure littéraire de l'épître aux Hébreux. The manifold reactions to his refined literary-rhetorical approach and conclusions in favor of a concentric structure oscillated between euphoric approval and offensive disapproval. Along with its translation into German (1979/1980) and a decade later into English (1989), Vanhoye's study influenced and stimulated Hebrews scholarship like none other in the twentieth centur

Dēnkard III language variation and the defence of socio-religious identity in the context of Early-Islamic Iran

The aim of the present paper is to illustrate as a case study, the linguistic and stylistic peculiarities characterizing the third book of the Dēnkard, one of the most authoritative texts in Zoroastrian Pahlavi literature (9th-10th CE). The analysis will consider these features as part of a coherent system, styled to serve the dialectic strategies pursued by the Zoroastrian high priests in response to the pressures their own community was facing in the early Islamic period. In order to provide a more comprehensive overview on DkIII language distinctiveness, the research will underline the outward/inward dynamics, addressing both the relation of this theological dialectic with the surrounding socio-cultural environment and the leadingrole claims of a group within a politically subordinated community

World, metaphor, text: contributions to the interpretation of 2 Corinthians 3

This dissertation is an attempt to contribute new insight to the understanding of 2 Corinthians 3, In Chapter One, the general problem of interpreting written texts, especially ancient ones, is discussed, with special attention given to the differences between speaking and writing. Then the particular problems of interpreting 2 Corinthians 3 are presented, and the interpretation theory of Paul Ricoeur is proposed as a method to be utilised for the present investigation.In Chapter Two, the notion of the 'world of the text', the central category of Ricoeur's hermeneutics, is displayed as a starting point for a contemporary interpretation of the text. Then the 'world' of the text and some its 'characters' - God, Paul, the Corinthians - are described. Certain aspects of Norman Petersen's concept of 'narrative world' are implemented in order to help define the roles, relations, and actions of the characters of 2 Corinthians 3, as they appear in the text.In Chapter Three, Ricoeur's contribution to the theory of metaphor is presented. Then his theory is applied to the interpretation of several metaphors which occur in the text. The metaphors of 'letters', 'glory', and 'life and death' are analysed in terms of Ricoeur's tension theory of metaphor. This theory has its classical foundations in certain passages from Aristotle, and it receives its modern elaboration from the impetus of I. A. Richards. Ricoeur expands the contribution of Richards, in one way, by proposing the concepts of 'split sense' and 'split reference' as attributes of the living metaphor. The employment of Ricoeur's theory is intended to spell out more of the surplus of meaning which lies dormant in potentially powerful biblical metaphors.The results of these investigations are summarised and correlated in Chapter Four. The text of 2 Corinthians 3 does project a world. It is a world in which the living God has created all things. This biblical passage reveals how the creator is made known to men through personal relationships with them

Irony, historiography, and political criticism : The Porcaria coniuratio

This article examines Leon Battista Alberti’s 'Porcaria coniuratio', the historical epistle on Stefano Porcari’s conspiracy against Nicholas V, which was discovered by the pope before the conspirators could carry out the plot, in January 1453. This text is the only proper historiographical work written by Alberti and it allows us to explore (for the first time) his idea of history and historical writing, in a period when the humanist debate on the ars historica was becoming extremely lively. The investigation of the text, which is carried out from different perspectives, shows that Alberti’s lucid representation of the events is combined with sharp political criticism. This critical standpoint is often conveyed, on the one hand, through the adoption of a sarcastic and ironic tone, on the other, through the complex stylistic and rhetorical construction of the whole text. The analysis of these elements reveals more clearly some important overtones of Alberti’s uneasy political thought. The targets of the humanist’s bitter political reflection are mainly the conspirators, but also, more implicitly, the Curia. This critical perspective is framed through the sophisticated employment of specific classical references, some of them significantly drawn from satirical sources and combined with the predominant model of Sallust, which is always re-elaborated by the author in a personal way