The Significance of the Distribution of Self-designations in Acts

2012 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-49
Author(s):  
Paul Trebilco

Abstract An analysis of the distribution of self-designations in Acts reveals that Luke’s use of these self-designations is not random. Rather significant insight into Luke’s theology and into early Christian history can be gained by looking at the way these self-designations are distributed throughout Acts, when they are actually used, and whether they are used by Luke’s narrator or by actors in his story. The self-designations discussed here are ἀδελφοί, µαθηταί, ἐκκλησία, “the believers” and “the saints” or “the sanctified ones.”

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 137-165
Author(s):  
Rafał S. Niziński

The philosophy of Xavier Zubiri is recognized as one of the most diffi cult to understand because there is something unclear in it. Therefore one may guess that there is a hidden presumption done by Zubiri. Zubiri in the self-presentation of his philosophical backgrounds acknowledges that his philosophy owes most to the phenomenology of Husserl and metaphysics of Heidegger. He also admits of being infl uenced by Aristotle to a certain degree. Zubiri starts his analyses from perception of things, with which he fulfi lls phenomenological requirement of beginning philosophy with the description of reality. As the fi nal step he ads metaphysics, which explains the description of reality. Following this code of interpretation of Zubiri’s philosophy it is difficult to grasp its core meaning. What is this hidden supposition? In The Supernatural Being: God and Deifi cation in Saint Paul’s Theology, which he wrote in the 30s’ and 40s’ of the 20th century, Zubiri presents early Christian Neoplatonic theology. In the same work Zubiri also states that it is possible to discover the same ideas following the way up, i.e. departing from the creatures and ascending to God. And this will be the hidden supposition of his philosophy. This paper tries to show the philosophy of Zubiri can be understood as a kind of proof that the Neoplatonic vision of the reality presented in The Supernatural Being: God and Deifi cation in Saint Paul’s Theology is true and can be discovered by reason alone, i.e. departing only from description of facts.


Author(s):  
Matthew D. Lundberg

What is the place—if any—for violence in the Christian life? This book explores this question by analyzing a paradox of mainstream Christian history, theology, and ethics: at the heart of the Christian story, the suffering of violence stands as the price of faithfulness. From Jesus himself to martyrs who have died while following him, at the core of Christian faith is an experience of being victimized by the world’s violence. At the same time, the majority opinion for most of Christian history has held that there are situations when the follower of Jesus may be justified in inflicting violence on others, especially in the context of war. Do these two facets of Christian ethics and experience—martyrdom and the just war—represent a contradiction, the self-defeating irony of those who follow a Lord who refused to defend himself taking up deadly weapons? In arguing that they do not, the book contends that any meaningful coherence between a theology of martyrdom and commitment to a just war ethic requires shifts away from a common heroic conception of Christian martyrdom and a common secularized realpolitik conception of necessary violence. Instead, it requires a view of martyrdom that acknowledges even the martyrs as subject to the ambiguities of the human condition, even as they present a compelling witness to Jesus and the way of the cross. And it requires an approach to justified violence that reflects the self-sacrificial ethos of Jesus displayed in the lives of true Christian martyrs.


2018 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Farrugia

This article explores the practices through which young people cultivate themselves as subjects of value to the post-Fordist labour force. In this, the article goes beyond an existing emphasis on young people’s ‘transitions’ through employment, to a focus on the practices through which young people are formed as labouring subjects, and therefore on the relationship between youth subjectivities and post-Fordist labour force formation. Theoretically, the article builds upon increasingly influential suggestions in studies of post-Fordism that the formation of post-Fordist workers now takes place through the conversion of the whole of a subject’s life into the capacity for labour, including affective styles, modes of relationality, and characteristics usually not considered as productive dimensions of the self. In this context, the article shows that whilst young people form themselves as workers through practices that are not specific to institutionalised definitions of education and labour, these practices – and the modes of selfhood they aim to cultivate – vary in ways that contribute to classed divisions within post-Fordist societies. In this, the study of the formation of young workers offers a critical insight into the way that the formation of subjectivities intertwines with the disciplinary requirements of post-Fordist labour in their classed manifestations.


Author(s):  
Jonathan Hill

This chapter puts forward the idea of a distinctively early Christian understanding of divine power in terms of a logic driven primarily by concerns about apostolic mission and preaching. It maintains that first-century Christian authors, notably Paul and Luke in Acts, offer a reimagining of the nature of divine power in six different ways: the Christological, communicative, pneumatological, kerygmatic, pre-eminence, and weakness aspects to the concept. Further, the essay seeks to trace the way in which these features of the divine dunamis are reinterpreted, and, sometimes, extended quite radically, by three early Christian authors of very different kinds: Ignatius of Antioch, who wrote epistles to some degree after Paul; Hermas, who wrote about visions and parables in a deeply allegorical style; and Justin Martyr, an apologist who used the language and concepts of contemporary Platonism.


2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 188-224
Author(s):  
Erik Gunderson

This is a survey of some of the problems surrounding imperial panegyric. It includes discussions of both the theory and practice of imperial praise. The evidence is derived from readings of Cicero, Quintilian, Pliny, the Panegyrici Latini, Menander Rhetor, and Julian the Apostate. Of particular interest is insincere speech that would be appreciated as insincere. What sort of hermeneutic process is best suited to texts that are politically consequential and yet relatively disconnected from any obligation to offer a faithful representation of concrete reality? We first look at epideictic as a genre. The next topic is imperial praise and its situation “beyond belief” as well as the self-positioning of a political subject who delivers such praise. This leads to a meditation on the exculpatory fictions that these speakers might tell themselves about their act. A cynical philosophy of Caesarism, its arbitrariness, and its constructedness abets these fictions. Julian the Apostate receives the most attention: he wrote about Caesars, he delivered extant panegyrics, and he is also the man addressed by still another panegyric. And in the end we find ourselves to be in a position to appreciate the way that power feeds off of insincerity and grows stronger in its presence.


2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 297-332
Author(s):  
Kate Zebiri

This article aims to explore the Shaykh-mur?d (disciple) or teacher-pupil relationship as portrayed in Western Sufi life writing in recent decades, observing elements of continuity and discontinuity with classical Sufism. Additionally, it traces the influence on the texts of certain developments in religiosity in contemporary Western societies, especially New Age understandings of religious authority. Studying these works will provide an insight into the diversity of expressions of contemporary Sufism, while shedding light on a phenomenon which seems to fly in the face of contemporary social and religious trends which deemphasize external authority and promote the authority of the self or individual autonomy.


2009 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-119
Author(s):  
Matthias Bickenbach

Eine der zentralen Fragen moderner Poetik ist, wie der Werkentstehungsprozeß von kreativer Materialfülle zur ästhetischen Bestimmtheit des Erzählten als autonomem Kunstwerk übergeht. Sten Nadolnys Poetikvorlesung gibt überraschende Einsichten in die Selbstorganisation von Steuerungsbewegungen, die noch unterhalb der Ebene des Schreibens liegen und die als Theorie der Eigenwerte in der Literatur herauszustellen ist. One of the central questions in modern poetics is, how literary writing proceeds from the creative richness of its material to an aesthetic determination as autonomous art. Sten Nadolnys lectures on his poetics enable an astonishing insight into the self-organisation of operations beyond writing, which can be considered as a theory of self-values in literature.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph John Pyne Simons ◽  
Ilya Farber

Not all transit users have the same preferences when making route decisions. Understanding the factors driving this heterogeneity enables better tailoring of policies, interventions, and messaging. However, existing methods for assessing these factors require extensive data collection. Here we present an alternative approach - an easily-administered single item measure of overall preference for speed versus comfort. Scores on the self-report item predict decisions in a choice task and account for a proportion of the differences in model parameters between people (n=298). This single item can easily be included on existing travel surveys, and provides an efficient method to both anticipate the choices of users and gain more general insight into their preferences.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-26
Author(s):  
S.V. Tsymbal ◽  

The digital revolution has transformed the way people access information, communicate and learn. It is teachers' responsibility to set up environments and opportunities for deep learning experiences that can uncover and boost learners’ capacities. Twentyfirst century competences can be seen as necessary to navigate contemporary and future life, shaped by technology that changes workplaces and lifestyles. This study explores the concept of digital competence and provide insight into the European Framework for the Digital Competence of Educators.


Author(s):  
Manju Dhariwal ◽  

Written almost half a century apart, Rajmohan’s Wife (1864) and The Home and the World (1916) can be read as women centric texts written in colonial India. The plot of both the texts is set in Bengal, the cultural and political centre of colonial India. Rajmohan’s Wife, arguably the first Indian English novel, is one of the first novels to realistically represent ‘Woman’ in the nineteenth century. Set in a newly emerging society of India, it provides an insight into the status of women, their susceptibility and dependence on men. The Home and the World, written at the height of Swadeshi movement in Bengal, presents its woman protagonist in a much progressive space. The paper closely examines these two texts and argues that women enact their agency in relational spaces which leads to the process of their ‘becoming’. The paper analyses this journey of the progress of the self, which starts with Matangini and culminates in Bimala. The paper concludes that women’s journey to emancipation is symbolic of the journey of the nation to independence.


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