A Ricoeurian Analysis Of Identity Formation In Philippians

Scott Ying Lam Yip presents the first specialized narrative study devoted to the identity formation processes in Philippians, based on Paul Ricoeur's narrative theory. Yip demonstrates that the “Christian identity” of the Philippian community is shaped amidst competing narratives with divergent comprehensions, and suggests that it is within an intra-Jewish contestation of testimonies that Paul updates his understanding of God and contends with a group of Jewish Christian leaders regarding the meaning of his suffering. Yip argues that Paul faces a double contestation of narrative in which both the political authorities and a group of Jewish Christian leaders see his imprisonment as futile and unnecessary; alerting him to an emerging crisis in which the Philippian community's conviction in suffering with him has begun to decline. It is thus essential for Paul to synthesise and install a new paradigmatic story of Christ so that his suffering can be discerned as the defining mark of God's renewed manifestation in an era of Christ's eschatological Lordship. Yip explores the means by which Paul - in a contestation of authority for the re-appropriation of God's past work - contrasts the future-oriented temporality of his testimony with the past-oriented one of the Jewish Christian leaders. He concludes that Paul affirms the value of his present suffering in truthfulness and installs his testimony to be the exemplary story for the Philippian community.

Winner of the Outstanding Theological Research Book Award 2024 Scott Ying Lam Yip presents the first specialized narrative study devoted to the identity formation processes in Philippians, based on Paul Ricoeur's narrative theory. Yip demonstrates that the “Christian identity” of the Philippian community is shaped amidst competing narratives with divergent comprehensions, and suggests that it is within an intra-Jewish contestation of testimonies that Paul updates his understanding of God and contends with a group of Jewish Christian leaders regarding the meaning of his suffering. Yip argues that Paul faces a double contestation of narrative in which both the political authorities and a group of Jewish Christian leaders see his imprisonment as futile and unnecessary; alerting him to an emerging crisis in which the Philippian community's conviction in suffering with him has begun to decline. It is thus essential for Paul to synthesise and install a new paradigmatic story of Christ so that his suffering can be discerned as the defining mark of God's renewed manifestation in an era of Christ's eschatological Lordship. Yip explores the means by which Paul - in a contestation of authority for the re-appropriation of God's past work - contrasts the future-oriented temporality of his testimony with the past-oriented one of the Jewish Christian leaders. He concludes that Paul affirms the value of his present suffering in truthfulness and installs his testimony to be the exemplary story for the Philippian community.

"Scott Yip Ying Lam explores the process through which Paul shapes the identity of the Philippian community against other opponents, via Ricoeur's concept of narrative identity"--

This volume presents, in published form, the detailed commentary work of E. Earle Ellis on Paul's first letter to the Corinthians. At the time of his death Ellis had been working for many years on a volume for the International Critical Commentary on the epistle. Because Ellis was unable to complete the volume before his passing and had left instructions that it should not be completed, Terry Wilder instead presents Ellis' profound exegetical insights in the form of his completed commentary sections on 1 Corinthians, with minimal editorial intervention. In addition to collating Ellis' detailed critical commentary on 1 Corinthians chapters 1-13, with edited notes on chapter 14, Wilder has also completed an original editorial essay that provides a synthesis of Ellis' notes and thinking on chapters 15 and 16. Closely assessing the letter's address, salutation and thanksgiving and Paul's words on true and false wisdom, sexual relationships, liberty's boundaries and the regulation of church services, Ellis' final work is a crucial resource for a core New Testament text.

The Conversion of the Imagination contains some of the best work on Paul by first-rate New Testament scholar Richard B. Hays. These essays probe Paul's approach to scriptural interpretation, showing how Paul's reading of the Hebrew Scriptures reshaped the theological vision of his churches. Hays's analysis of intertextual echoes in Paul's letters has touched off exciting debate among Pauline scholars and made more recognizable the contours of Paul's thought. These studies contain some of the early work leading up to Hays's seminal Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul and also show how Hays has responded to critics and further developed his thought in the years since. Among the many subjects covered here are Paul's christological application of Psalms, Paul's revisionary interpretation of the Law, and the influence of the Old Testament on Paul's ethical teachings and ecclesiology.

Foreword - James Charlesworth -- Preface -- Introduction -- Chapter 1. The ecology of the fourth gospel: Bachelard's hermeneutics of home and Martyn's "Two-level drama." -- Chapter 2. Space matters for scripture and ecology matters for space: critical observations from John 4. -- Chapter 3. The undisputed Pauline Corpus and Gentile believers as the dwelling of God. -- Chapter 4. Identification with a marginal home: waters of judgment as the oppressed in the Parables of Enoch -- Chapter 5. Pit and prison, doors and dwelling: phenomenologies of the familiar in the Book of Revelation -- Chapter 6. "Real" visions of the ideal home: from ascetic dwellings to the Isle of the Blessed Ones in the history of the Rechabites -- Chapter 7. Augustine's Christological emphasis in De Trinitate : anaAffirmation of the human ecology. -- Chapter 8. Conclusion: the core function of "ecology" in scriptural production and interpretation.

Tackling the key theological questions at the heart of the Christian faith, O'Collins draws on developments in recent scholarship to fully update this accessible guide to systematic Christology.