“Don’t Let God Step In Human Waste”: Interpretation Of Deuteronomy 23:14–15 In The Context Of Cholera In Zambia

2021 ◽  
pp. 001452462110198
Author(s):  
Jonathan Kangwa
Keyword(s):  
Hiv And Aids ◽  
Theological Reflection ◽  
Religious Leaders ◽  
Theological Interpretation ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Human Waste ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Bible Interpretation ◽  
Climate Change And Health

Climate change and health challenges such as the HIV and AIDS have motivated religious leaders to rethink their beliefs and practices, considering how to apply these to health crises. Christian theologians and biblical scholars have risen to the occasion and developed new ways of interpreting the bible that offer a response to current situations. The new ways of interpreting the bible include approaching the text with a degree of wariness and traditional readings of the bible are often transgressed. The experience of the marginalised or the dismembered is used as a starting point for bible interpretation and theological reflection. This paper contributes to the shifts in bible interpretation and theological reflection by offering an eco-theological interpretation of Deuteronomy 23:14–15 in the context of cholera. The paper shows that, in the context of cholera in Zambia, an eco-theological interpretation of the biblical text can foster hygiene and proper management of human waste which would be an important contribution to the prevention of cholera outbreaks.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Christian Humanism

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens Zimmermann
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Nazi Regime ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Theological Interpretation ◽  
Christian Humanism ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Theological Politics

Based on a comprehensive reading of his entire work, in this book Jens Zimmermann presents Bonhoeffer’s theological ethos as a Christian humanism, that is, as an understanding of the gospel rooted in apostolic and patristic writers who believed God to have renewed humanity in the incarnation. The heartbeat of Bonhoeffer’s Christianity that unifies and motivates his theological writing, his preaching, and his political convictions, including his opposition to the Nazi regime, is the conviction that Christianity as participation in the new humanity established by Christ is about becoming fully human by becoming Christlike. In eight chapters, the author details Bonhoeffer’s humanistic theology following from this incarnational starting point: a Christ-centered anthropology that shows a deep kinship with patristic Christology, a hermeneutically structured theology, an ethic focused on Christ-formation, a biblical hermeneutic centered on God’s transforming presence, and a theological politics aimed at human flourishing. In offering a comprehensive reading of his theology as Christian humanism, Zimmermann not only places Bonhoeffer in the context of the patristic and greater Christian tradition but also makes apparent the relevance of Bonhoeffer’s thought for a number of contemporary concerns: hermeneutic theory, the theological interpretation of the Bible, the relation of reason to faith, the importance of natural law, and the significance of religion for secular societies. Bonhoeffer turns out to be a Christian humanist and a modern theologian who models the deeply orthodox and yet ecumenical, expansive Christianity demanded by our time.

Philo of Alexandria and the Construction of Jewishness in Early Christian Writings

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Otto
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Philo Of Alexandria ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Clement Of Alexandria ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Ways Of Life ◽  
Frequent Reference

Philo of Alexandria and the Construction of Jewishness in Early Christian Writings investigates portrayals of one particular Jew, the first-century philosopher and allegorical interpreter of the Bible, Philo of Alexandria, in the works of three prominent early Christian thinkers, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Eusebius. It argues that early Christian invocations of Philo are best understood not as attempts to claim an illustrious Jew for the Christian fold, but as examples of ongoing efforts to define the continuities and distinctive features of Christian beliefs and practices in relation to those of the Jews. This study takes as its starting point the curious fact that none of the first three Christians to mention Philo refer to him unambiguously as a Jew. Clement refers to him twice as a Pythagorean. Origen, who mentions Philo by name only three times, makes far more frequent reference to him in the guise of an anonymous “someone who came before us.” Eusebius, who invokes Philo on many more occasions, most often refers to Philo as a Hebrew. These epithets construct Philo as a “near-other” to both Jews and Christians, through whom ideas and practices may be imported from the former to the latter, all the while establishing boundaries between the “Christian” and “Jewish” ways of life. The portraits of Philo offered by each author reveal ongoing processes of difference-making and difference-effacing that constituted not only the construction of the Jewish “other,” but also the Christian “self.”

‘Limping, Yet Made to Climb a Mountain!’ Re-Reading the Vashti Character in the Hiv And Aids South African Context

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Madipoane Masenya (Ngwan’A Mphahlele)
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
External Factor ◽  
Hiv And Aids ◽  
African Women ◽  
South African Context ◽  
Land Grabbing ◽  
The Bible ◽  
History Of ◽  
African Context

The history of the Christian Bible’s reception in South Africa was part of a package that included among others, the importation of European patriarchy, land grabbing and its impoverishment of Africans and challenged masculinities of African men. The preceding factors, together with the history of the marginalization of African women in bible and theology, and how the Bible was and continues to be used in our HIV and AIDS contexts, have only made the proverbial limping animal to climb a mountain. Wa re o e bona a e hlotša, wa e nametša thaba (while limping, you still let it climb a mountain) simply means that a certain situation is being aggravated (by an external factor). In this chapter the preceding Northern Sotho proverb is used as a hermeneutical lens to present an HIV and AIDS gender sensitive re-reading of the Vashti character in the Hebrew Bible within the South African context.

Inspiration and Textual Preservation: A Catholic Essay on the Bible

Pro Ecclesia ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 106385122199391
Author(s):  
James B. Prothro
Keyword(s):  
Textual Criticism ◽  
Multiple Forms ◽  
Theological Interpretation ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Single Text ◽  
Biblical Texts ◽  
The Church

The doctrine of inspiration grounds Christian use and interpretation of Scripture, making this doctrine at once theoretical and practical. Many theoretical accounts, however, restrict the “inspired” status of biblical texts to a single text-form, which introduces problems for the practical use of Scripture in view of the texts’ historical multiformity. This article argues that such restrictions of inspiration are theologically problematic and unnecessary. Contextualizing inspiration within the divine revelatory economy, this article argues that the Spirit’s same goals and varied activities in the texts’ composition obtain also in their preservation, so that we can consider multiple forms of a text to be inspired while acknowledging that not all forms are inspired to equal ends in the history and life of the church. The article concludes with hermeneutical reflections affirming that we, today, can read the “word of the Lord” while also affirming the place of textual criticism in theological interpretation.

The Question of God’s Perfection

2021 ◽  
pp. 014610792110306
Author(s):  
Cornell Collin
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Biblical Theology ◽  
The State ◽  
Rabbinic Literature ◽  
Central Question ◽  
Theological Interpretation ◽  
World Religions ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Present Essay

Is God perfect? The recent volume entitled The Question of God’s Perfection stages a conversation on that topic between mostly Jewish philosophers, theologians, and scholars of rabbinic literature. Although it is neither a work of biblical theology nor a contribution to the theological interpretation of scripture, The Question of God’s Perfection yields stimulating results for these other, intersecting projects. After briefly describing the volume’s central question and contents, the present essay situates the volume’s offerings within the state of the biblical-theological and theological-interpretive fields. In its next section, it considers—and compares— The Question of God’s Perfection with one twentieth-century theological antecedent, the Dutch theologian K.H. Miskotte. In closing, it poses questions for ongoing discussion. The Question of God’s Perfection: Jewish and Christian Essays on the God of the Bible and Talmud, edited by Yoram Hazony & Dru Johnson. Philosophy of Religion – World Religions 8. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2019. ISBN 9789004387959

The first century of English protestantism and the growth of national identity

1982 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 309-317 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Fletcher
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
First Century ◽  
English Reformation ◽  
John Foxe ◽  
Religious Attitudes ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Religious Zeal

Their sense of national identity is not something that men have been in the habit of directly recording. Its strength or weakness, in relation to commitment to international causes or to localist sentiment, can often only be inferred by examining political and religious attitudes and personal behaviour. So far as the early modern period is concerned, the subject is hazardous because groups and individuals must have varied enormously in the extent to which national identity meant something to them or influenced their lives. The temptation to generalise must be resisted. It is all too easy to suppose that national identity became well established in England in the Tudor century, when a national culture, based on widespread literacy among gentry, yeomen and townsmen, flowered as it had never done before, when the bible was first generally available in English, when John Foxe produced his celebrated Acts and Monuments, better known as the Book of Martyrs. Recent work reassessing the significance of Foxe’s account of the English reformation and other Elizabethan polemical writings provdes a convenient starting point for this brief investigation of some of the connections between religious zeal and national consciousness between 1558 and 1642.

Global Thefts of Biblical Narrative

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald West
Keyword(s):  
Third World ◽  
Biblical Narrative ◽  
Biblical Story ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Narratives ◽  
African Experience ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Family Resemblances ◽  
African Perspective ◽  
The Subject

This chapter takes its starting point from the African experience, across a range of African contexts, of Africa as both the subject and object of biblical narrative. When the Bible came to Africa, it came with well-established colonial metanarratives, constructed in part from biblical narratives. These colonial metanarratives were in turn partly reconstructed by the engagement with African others, from both a European and an African perspective along two diverging trajectories, with biblical narrative making a contribution to both. This chapter focuses on the capacity of biblical narrative, biblical story, to be both incorporated into “local” metanarratives and to shape these metanarratives. The contexts that are the focus of this chapter are largely “third world” contexts, across which there are significant family resemblances and important contextual differences.

Biblical theology and/or theological interpretation of scripture?

2008 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel J. Treier
Keyword(s):  
Internal Structure ◽  
Biblical Theology ◽  
Theological Method ◽  
Theological Interpretation ◽  
Theological Hermeneutics ◽  
Disciplinary Boundaries ◽  
Organic Unity ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Biblical Teaching

Abstract‘Biblical theology’ has long influenced modern theological method, especially Protestant, as both boon and bane. Its role has been seen as either pivotal or problematic in the attempt to construe the Christian Bible as scripture with unified teaching for the contemporary church. The attempt to unfold biblical teaching as having organic unity, related to an internal structure of theological concepts, is frequently perceived as a failure, a has-been that leaves us only with fragmentation – between parts of the Bible, between academy and church, church and world, clergy and laity, and between various theological disciplines. Today a new movement is afoot, often labelled ‘theological interpretation of scripture’. Some of its adherents define this practice as distinct from, even opposed to, biblical theology. Others treat the two practices as virtually coterminous, while perhaps contesting what ‘biblical theology’ is typically taken to be in favour of new theological hermeneutics. Much of the difficulty in defining the relationship, then, stems from lingering debates about what biblical theology can or should be. The rest of the difficulty is perhaps rooted in the dilemma of any interdisciplinary efforts: how to breach unhelpful sections of disciplinary boundaries without redefining territory so nebulously that no one knows where they are.

Scripture

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dale B. Martin
Keyword(s):  
Human Behavior ◽  
Theological Interpretation ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Church

Many Christians in the modern period have worked with inadequate notions about what “scripture” is. They have often thought of the Bible as a rule book, a manual for human behavior, a source for scientific or historical facts, a constitution for modern structures, including the church, or even a sex manual. In order to proceed with an adequate theological interpretation of the Bible, Christians need to develop an adequate notion of what theological scripture “is.” Chapter 2 offers different and various ways of imagining the nature of scripture, as cathedral or space we occupy rather than a foundationalist source for ready-to-hand knowledge.

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