The privacy, real or illusory, afforded by the personal letter allows each participant the philosophical freedom to explore a range of possible opinions, to experiment with different ideas, to hesitate, and to change his or her mind in ways that published articles and books discourage. The private letter also allows the use of language and style of writing to be altered to suit the particular recipient. This is especially evident in Leibniz's correspondence with Des Bosses. Sometimes, however, the intended recipient (...) is not the addressee, as when Leibniz engaged with Locke through Thomas Burnett of Kemney. This situation was not an isolated occurrence in Leibniz's dealings with Locke. In this chapter, we shall see how Leibniz attempted to engage with Locke through a second correspondence and how he adapted the style and presentation of his views, not for the main correspondent, Lady Masham, but for the other intended recipient. We shall also see that the views Leibniz presents confirm his loyalty during this period to an ontology of embodied, perceiving substances. -/- The correspondence with Damaris Masham began shortly after Lady Masham sent Leibniz a copy of her father's The True Intellectual System of the Universe (TIS) at the end of 1703. Learning that the book was on its way, Leibniz's first letter was intended to thank her in advance. (shrink)

Paul's commanding place in the development of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit is due to the fact and the way that he took the notions of Holy Spirit in his religious heritage and rendered them distinctively Christian.

According to Giorgio Agamben, the messianic thinking of Saint Paul opens a new way of understanding our human existence. Paul’s ho nyn kairos or ‘the time of the now’ is a specific experience of time in which new possibilities of conceiving human lifeare unfolded. Agamben furthermore argues that we should not interpret the Pauline letters as testimonies of the past, but rather as texts that point to a radical contemporary experience. In this article, this radical actualisation of the (...) Pauline heritage is analyzed. It is argued that Agamben infuses Pauline thinking in his own understanding of contemporary political life. By applying a methodology of displacement to both the contemporary experience of human political life and the past messianic experience of Pauline community, a new interpretation of the human form of life is introduced by Agamben. This new form of life testifies of a non-representable human residue beyond every possible political representational act. This human residue is according to Agamben the true ‘subject’ of a new political ethos. In his philosophical thinking, Paul’s ‘time of the now’ thereby becomes a messianic possibility of our own ‘present’ or our own current historical moment. (shrink)

While there is much in Paul's letters that is hard to understand, his approach to ethical decision-making consistently reflects three characteristics It is God-centered, reality-bounded, and love-impelled, and all three are rooted in the trustworthy character and purposes of God.

Paul's letter to the Philippians, a dense and dynamic piece of rhetoric, is too often overlooked in Pauline interpretation. Careful, critical analysis of the argument in the letter as a whole, as well as its famous hymn, attunes the interpreter to the ethical and political dimensions of this important document.

This book argues that the verbal aspect of the Greek Perfect is complex, involving not one but two aspects, where the perfective applies to events and the imperfective applies to states. These two aspects are connected to specific morphemes in the Perfect tense-form. This study analyses Perfect tense-forms in discursive text by focusing on the Pauline Corpus. The method is grounded in grammaticalisation studies and informed by morphology, comparative linguistics, and historical linguistics. The argument is further supported by a (...) corpus-based study showing both the Greek Perfect tense-form use in letters over an 800-year period and adverb collocations of the Perfect tense-form. The adverb collocations establish when a Perfect is used for an event or for a state. This study challenges other verbal aspect studies that find only one verbal aspect to explain the Greek Perfect. This study situates the Pauline Perfect tense-form usage within a spectrum of other letter writers, and finds that within the Pauline Corpus the Perfects within supplemental clauses are more likely to use active lexemes than other letter writers. This study also finds that most of the Perfects used in letters are supplemental to the mainline and are often backgrounded rather than foregrounded. (shrink)

The reception of rhetorical elements in the Letter to Philemon by Patristic exegetes. The aim of this study is to offer an overview of the way in which Patristic exegetes interpreted the rhetorical aspects of Paul’s Letter to Philemon. Although a rhetorical analysis of the letter was not the matter which interested them as such, one can still obtain a fairly good idea of the way in which they perceived such aspects by reading their explanations of this letter. Accordingly, the (...) contributions of all the Patristic exegetes in this regard are studied systematically in this study. The interpretations of the letters by Ambrosiaster, Jerome, John Chrysostom, Pelagius, Theodore of Mopsuestia and Theodoret of Cyrus are investigated from this angle. In each case, the most important comments on Paul’s rhetorical strategy are identified and discussed.Keywords: Pauline Letters; Letter to Philemon; Rhetorical Analaysis; Patristic Exegetes. (shrink)

In The Time That Remains, Agamben seeks to separate the Pauline texts from the history of the Church that canonized them, thus revealing them to be "the fundamental messianic texts of the West.

In _The Time That Remains_, Agamben seeks to separate the Pauline texts from the history of the Church that canonized them, thus revealing them to be "the fundamental messianic texts of the West." He argues that Paul's letters are concerned not with the foundation of a new religion but rather with the "messianic" abolition of Jewish law. Situating Paul's texts in the context of early Jewish messianism, this book is part of a growing set of recent critiques devoted (...) to the period when Judaism and Christianity were not yet fully distinct, placing Paul in the context of what has been called "Judaeo-Christianity." Agamben's philosophical exploration of the problem of messianism leads to the other major figure discussed in this book, Walter Benjamin. Advancing a claim without precedent in the vast literature on Benjamin, Agamben argues that Benjamin's philosophy of history constitutes a repetition and appropriation of Paul's concept of "remaining time." Through a close reading and comparison of Benjamin's "Theses on the Philosophy of History" and the Pauline Epistles, Agamben discerns a number of striking and unrecognized parallels between the two works. (shrink)

The incident at Antioch described in Galatians 2:11–14 features in a number of Augustine’s works: Expositio epistulae ad Galatas, his correspondence with Jerome, De mendacio, Sermo 162C, and in De baptismo contra Donatistas. While a few scholars have seen Augustine’s anti-Donatism as a driving force behind all his comments about this encounter between Peter and Paul, this article argues that, while the idea of Peter’s humility is to be found in his commentary, the sermon, one of the letters, and (...) the treatises, Augustine interpreted the scriptural passage in a variety of different ways, depending upon his situation. In the commentary, Augustine wanted to defend the reality of the argument between Peter and Paul because of his belief that scriptural authors would not lie. The same idea occurs in his letters, e.g., Epistula 82, where he adds that his interpretation was supported by Cyprian. Contrary to the aforementioned scholars, it is only in De baptismo that Augustine applies the Galatians passage, which he takes as referring to Peter’s humility, to Cyprian himself as an imitator of Peter. Thus, it is only in this treatise that Augustine seeks to redeem Cyprian from the clutches of the Donatists. A close reading of this variety of interpretation by Augustine contributes to an appreciation of the complexity of his reception of Cyprian, a topic of ever-increasing importance in Augustinian studies. (shrink)

Apparent tensions, even contradictions, within the letters of Paul have led some to abandon the attempt to find coherence in his theology, and others to locate it in his psychological make-up lather than his thought, neither solution represents an adequate response to the apostle's theological reflections.

"Huizenga examines the Greco-Roman moral-philosophical 'curriculum' for women by comparing these two epistolary collections. The analysis is organized around four elements: textual resources, teachers and learners, instructional strategies, and subject matter. Huizenga shows that the author of the Pastorals has adopted nearly all of the 'pagan' aspects of this curriculum, but has supplemented these with theological justifications drawn from Pauline literature and traditions"--Publisher description.

2020 Center for Biblical Studies Book Award (New Testament) Our culture often views shame in a negative light. However, Paul's use of shame, when properly understood and applied, has much to teach the contemporary church. Filling a lacuna in Pauline scholarship, this book shows how Paul uses shame to admonish and to transform the minds of his readers into the mind of Christ. The author examines Paul's use of shame for moral formation within his Jewish and Greco-Roman context, compares (...) and contrasts Paul's use of shame with other cultural voices, and offers a corrective understanding for today's church. Foreword by Luke Timothy Johnson. (shrink)

This article aims to apply the model of change agent to the interpretation of Colossians. Presuming a continuity between Jesus and Paul, the article introduces the concept of ‘by faith alone’ from the Pauline letters. By this expression is meant an undivided fidelity to an inclusive approach to understanding God’s work, with concrete historical roots in Jesus’ crossing of gender, ethnic and cultural boundaries. Living in this manner requires reformation, transformation and change. The study spells out in fuller (...) detail what is understood ‘by faith alone’ by discussing the meaning of ‘faith’ within its semantic domain embedded in the codes of 1st-century Mediterranean culture. Living in faith is both a change of one’s inner convictions and about a life in faith. (shrink)

Scholars in the past have signalled the almost complete absence of Paul - as a cypher for the Pauline letters and tradition(s) - in Africa. The apparent lack of use or deliberate ignoring of Paul in Black, African and Liberation Theologies on the continent in all its pluralist variety and richness is generally taken as testimony to the perceived strangeness of the apostle in Africa. However, even if Paul's strangeness does not equate with his absence, at least not (...) altogether, Paul's profiles in Africa include dimensions such as Paul as a stranger, as an unwelcome guest, as a conquering traveller and as a victim of tradition. I argue that Paul's absence from as well as strangeness in Africa may be more apparent than real, and that hermeneutical patterns and practices more than epistolary content may have played a stronger role in the construal of Paul in Africa. CONTRIBUTION: Evaluating a range of entrenched interpretive profiles of Paul in Africa exposed certain hermeneutical tendencies that offer the potential for reinterpretation and reassessment of the use of Pauline materials on the continent and elsewhere. (shrink)

Le décret du Concile de Trente sur la justification constitue le meilleur exemple pour comprendre la manière dont le concile se réfère à l’enseignement de Paul. En réponse aux Réformateurs, le concile entendait montrer à son tour que le doctrine de la justification par la grâce moyennent la foi est une doctrine tout simplement chrétienne parce que paulinienne ; elle est donc pleinement catholique, à condition que l’on respecte la réponse de la liberté humaine et que l’on n’oublie pas que (...) la grâce de la justification passe par les sacrements. Par héritage paulinien du concile on doit certes entendre les citations et réminiscences de certaines formules des lettres pauliniennes, mais surtout la mise en œuvre d’une problématique authentiquement paulinienne, ce qu’entend montrer ici B. Sesboüé.The decree of the Council of Trent on justification constitutes the best example for understanding the way in which the council refers to Paul’s teaching. In answer to the Reformers, the council wanted to show in its turn that the doctrine of justification by grace through faith is a doctrine that is Christian simply because it is Pauline; it is, then, fully Catholic, on the condition that one respects the answer of human freedom and that one does not forget that the grace of justification passes through the sacraments. By the Pauline legacy of the council, one should certainly hear the citations and reminiscences of certain formulas of the Pauline letters, but especially the bringing into play of an authentically Pauline field of inquiry -- this is what B. Sesboüe hopes to show here. (shrink)

The relationship between Colossians and Ephesians as a synoptic problem. Research by different scholars concluded that some letters traditionally ascribed to Paul were probably not written by him and drew a distinction between Pauline and Deutero-Pauline letters. The majority of scholars nowadays are of the opinion that the letters to the Colossians and the Ephesians are Deutero-Pauline and that Ephesians, at least, was surely not written by Paul. The results of research on the synoptic (...) problem can be used and applied to the two letters under discussion because a comparison shows that there are striking similarities between the two. The most recent research shows that Ephesians made use of the letter to the Colossians but not without redactional changes to suit the author’s literary purpose. This method is exegetically known as redaction-criticism, linked to the social-science viewpoint that the author of the letter to the Ephesians acted as a change agent on behalf of a change agency. (shrink)

Scholars in the past have signalled the almost complete absence of Paul – as a cypher for the Pauline letters and tradition(s) – in Africa. The apparent lack of use or deliberate ignoring of Paul in Black, African and Liberation Theologies on the continent in all its pluralist variety and richness is generally taken as testimony to the perceived strangeness of the apostle in Africa. However, even if Paul’s strangeness does not equate with his absence, at least not (...) altogether, Paul’s profiles in Africa include dimensions such as Paul as a stranger, as an unwelcome guest, as a conquering traveller and as a victim of tradition. I argue that Paul’s absence from as well as strangeness in Africa may be more apparent than real, and that hermeneutical patterns and practices more than epistolary content may have played a stronger role in the construal of Paul in Africa. Contribution: Evaluating a range of entrenched interpretive profiles of Paul in Africa exposed certain hermeneutical tendencies that offer the potential for reinterpretation and reassessment of the use of Pauline materials on the continent and elsewhere. (shrink)

The article begins by noting that the first mention of the Correspondence between Seneca and Paul appears in De viris illustribus of Jerome. After a summary of the status quaestionis, it examines the context of the De viris, particularly the information on Seneca. Then the article presents an analysis of some aspects of the Correspondence in order to highlight the harmony between the views of the Correspondence and the ideas of Jerome, especially the considerations on the inadequacy of the language (...) of the Pauline letters. After finding other reasons of convergence, we formulate a hypothesis about the origin of the Correspondence. (shrink)

New Perspective scholars challenge Protestant interpretations of Paul. It used to be the case, they state, that Protestants assumed that Paul was to Judaism as Luther was to Medieval Catholicism. Both men supposedly reacted against legalistic religions and championed grace-based faiths. However, in 1977, E.P. Sanders wrote Paul and Palestinian Judaism, arguing that Judaism is not a legalistic but a grace-based faith. Assuming that Sanders is correct, New Perspectivists claim that Paul’s and Luther’s theologies and experiences were thus not parallel. (...) Hence, Luther misunderstood Paul. Additionally, New Perspectivists challenge Protestant understandings of ‘justification’. In New Perspective thought, Paul uses the term ‘justification’ primarily to describe how people, particularly Gentiles, join the church Christians without following Jewish ritual laws. ‘Justification’, then, does not describe how people ‘stay in’ the covenant and receive salvation, as Protestants think. However, this article maintains that while New Perspectivists have some knowledge of Paul and Judaism, they are much less knowledgeable regarding Luther, Medieval Catholicism and Luther’s reaction to it. Greater scrutiny of these latter areas reveals large difficulties with New Perspective arguments. In addition, a review of relevant passages from Paul’s letters demonstrates that Protestants have not misunderstood Paul’s use of the term ‘justification’. Many Pauline passages show that when Paul discusses justification he is also thinking about ‘staying in’, not just ‘getting in’ the covenant. (shrink)

Paul, the peacemaker. On the reception of the Letter to Philemon in the 4th and 5th centuries AD. By means of his letter to Philemon Paul attempted to make peace between Philemon and his slave, Onesimus. The theological aspects of this endeavour have been discussed often in academic circles, but thus far little attention has been given to what the practical implications of this would have been for Philemon’s household. In this article, this issue is addressed from a particular perspective, (...) namely how this aspect was interpreted by Christians in the 4th and 5th centuries CE. The interpretations of the Letter to Philemon by Ambrosiaster, Jerome, John Chrysostom, Pelagius, Theodore of Mopsuestia and Theodoret of Cyrus are then investigated systematically in order to determine what their views were in this regard. It is shown that they all agreed that Philemon would (or would have no choice but to) forgive Onesimus, and that Onesimus would have turned into a better slave. All of these interpreters agreed that there would not be any drastic social changes in Philemon’s household although it does seem as if one of them, Ambrosiaster, realised that what Paul expected of Philemon could have had serious consequences for the relationship between Philemon and Onesimus. (shrink)

The 1994 Letter Ordinatio sacerdotalis of Pope John Paul II focuses mainly on the argument from Scripture. It states that women cannot be ordained priests in the Roman Catholic Church because Jesus consciously and in harmony with God’s will only chose men to be his apostles. In this article we confront the arguments and presuppositions of this way of reason with the results of historical-critical exegesis. We arrive at the conclusion that the letter’s identification of the apostles with the Twelve (...) takes as historical the theology of apostleship found in Luke and neglects Paul’s views on apostleship as well as thee evidence of women’s involvement in ministry in the Pauline churches. In a second part this study pursues the question why, according to Ordinatio sacerdotalis, the Twelve had to be men. While the letter does not take any explicit stand on this issue, we come to the conclusion that it implicitly presupposes a theological difference between men and women. (shrink)

Some modern Christian notions of ‘self-sacrifice’ and ‘cruciformity’ abstract an ethic of self-negation from its larger theological and teleological frame. A distinctively modern and Western trajectory has shaped an ‘exclusive altruism’ where the interests of the self and of the other stand in a competitive relationship. Although Paul's letter to the Philippians has often been cited as a prime example of such an ethic, closer scrutiny reveals a larger narrative frame, for both Christ and believers, that is oriented towards fullness, (...) not kenosis. Within a community of solidarity and reciprocal asymmetry in Christ, each person's work in looking to the concerns of others is balanced and framed by a communal concern to safeguard the interests of each person in the interests of conjoint benefit. Pauline resources thus enable us to replace the modern polarity with an alternative: the proper opposite to being selfish is not to be ‘selfless’ but to be ‘self-with’. (shrink)

L'interprétation de l'eschatologie paulinienne est dominée par la question de son rapport avec l'apocalyptique juive. Les points communs, soulignés par J.C. Beker à la suite de E. Käsemann, ne sont pas contestables, mais ne doivent pas occulter des différences notables, qui tiennent à la prééminence du Christ dans la vision paulinienne des événements de la fin. Ni l'attente ni le retard de la parousie ne semblent avoir eu, quoi qu'on en dise, d'influence décisive sur la pensée de l'Apôtre, mais bien (...) plutôt la réconciliation avec Dieu par la Croix et l'inauguration d'une humanité nouvelle dans la résurrection du Christ.Les lettres deutéropauliniennes ne rnodifient pas fondamentalement cette eschatologie, si ce n'est qu'elles accentuent encore l'emprise de la christologie sur la vision de la fin : à ceux qui attendent les ascensions célestes promises par la littérature apocalyptique, Paul répond qu'ils possèdent déjà leur être ressuscité avec le Christ, qui trône bien au-dessus de tous les être célestes. Ses idées sur le jugement dernier et la rétribution finale sont parfois dépendantes de celles du judaïsme, souvent imprécises et limitées, mais c'est toujours sa connaissance du Ressuscité, second Adam, qui conduit sa réflexion et l'aide à déchiffrer le destin final de l'humanité dans le Christ. The interpretation of pauline eschatology is dominated by the question of its rapport with Jewish apocalypse. The common points, underlined by J.C. Beker following E. Käsemann, cannot be contested, but should not hide the notable differences, which are based on the pre-eminence of Christ in the Pauline vision of the final events. Neither the expectation nor the delay of the Parousia does not seem to have had, despite what is said, a decisive influence on the Apostle’s thinking. He was concerned more about reconciliation with God through the cross and the inauguration of a new humanity by the resurrection of Christ.The deuteropauline letters do not fundamentally modify this eschatology, except in so far as they accentuate the dominance of Christology on the vision of the end. For those who await the celestial ascensions promised by apocalyptic literature, Paul answers that they already possess their resurrected being with Christ, who sits well above are celestial beings. These ideas on the Last Judgement and the final retribution are sometimes dependent on those of Judaism, often imprecise and limited, but it is always Paul's knowledge of the Resurrected, the second Adam, which directs his reflection and helps to decipher the final destiny of humanity in Christ. (shrink)

Horst Dietrich Preuss, Old Testament TheologyRolf P. Knierim, The Task of Old Testament Theology: Essays, Substance, Method and CasesDaniel Patte, Ethics of Biblical Interpretation: A Re‐evaluationBrian D. Ingraffia, Postmodern Theory and Biblical Theology: Vanquishing God's ShadowJohn Barclay and John Sweet, Early Christian Thought in its Jewish ContextStephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall and Gerald O'Collins, The Resurrection: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Resurrection of JesusMaureen A. Tilley, Donatist Martyr Stories: The Church in Conflict in Roman North AfricaMaureen A. Tilley, The Bible (...) in Christian North Africa: The Donatist WorldL. G. Patterson, Methodius of Olympus: Divine Sovereignty, Human Freedom and Life in ChristJ. H. D. Scourfield, Consoling Heliodorus: A Commentary on Jerome, Letter 60C. Moreschini and D. A. Sykes, St Gregory of Nazianzus: Poemata ArcanaPeter O'Dwyer, Towards a History of Irish SpiritualityUinseann Ó Maid'n, The Celtic Monk: Rules and Writings of Early Irish MonksDáibhíÓ Cróinín, Early Medieval Ireland 400–1200Gerhard Ladner, God, Cosmos, Humankind: The World of Early Christian SymbolismKevin Trainor, Relics, Ritual and Representation in Buddhism: Rematerializing the Sri Lankan Theravãda TraditionSteven F. Ostrow, Art and Spirituality in Counter‐Reformation Rome: The Sistine and Pauline Chapels in S. Maria MaggioreDavid Morgan, Visual Piety: A History and Theory of Popular Religious ImagesColleen McDannell, Material Christianity: Religion and Popular Culture in AmericaSarah Coakley, Religion and the BodyPaul F. Bradshaw and Lawrence A. Hoffman, Life Cycles in Jewish and Christian WorshipGordon P. Jeanes, The Day Has Come! Easter and Baptism in Zeno of VeronaJohn Macquarrie, A Guide to the SacramentsMegan McKenna, Rites of Justice: The Sacraments and Liturgy as Ethical ImperativesDouglas J. Davies, Death, Ritual and Belief. (shrink)

This paper examines the essential yet ambivalent role of the law, i.e. of limits and prohibitions, within the subjective experience of desire. In order to investigate the dialectics between limit and desire, it firstly focuses on the perspective of George Bataille and his analysis of eroticism. Moreover, the contribution takes into account the perspective of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, who focus on the relationship of desire to capitalist society, in order to affirm a different revolutionary economy of desire, celebrating (...) immediate libidinal transgressions against any limitations. On the contrary, the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan shows the absolute need of the law for the experience of desire and the process of subjectivation, since only through the Symbolic order the subject can join a sociolinguistic community. The final part of the contribution aims at enlightening possible correspondences among these perspectives, focusing on the Letters of the Apostle Paul and his profound understanding of the dialectics between law and desire. The Pauline Epistles offer a significant paradigm to understand the necessary but not sufficient role of the law in the experience of the Christian believer as well as of the subject as such. (shrink)

The question of what subjects Paul addresses in his letters has been a matter of debate in New Testament scholarship. This debate shows the evolution of Pauline studies, whereby early scholars argued that Paul addressed topics ranging from questions of human existence, to relations between Jews and Gentiles, and even topics connecting Paul with the Roman Empire. Most of these scholars view Paul mainly from a religious perspective, particularly in terms of the relationship between Judaism and Christianity. However, (...) viewing Paul from a Jewish versus a Christian religious perspective only fails to present the multivalent function of the Pauline corpus. This article employs social identity theory to read Galatians 3:1–10 in order to defend the argument that Paul employs his letters to construct a superordinate identity for his community which embraces not only political perspectives but also has religious and economic trajectories.Contribution: The application of identification, contest and comparison, concepts derived from sociology, to analyze Galatians 3:1-10 in reference to 1st century economic, religious and political contexts to explain the multivalent nature of early Christian identity, contributes to multidisciplinary research aspects of Biblical studies which is in tandem with the scope of HTS Theological Journal. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The article aims to examine the behavior of contemporary speech genre theory in the analysis of Pauline epistles. The genre of letters is conceived within its original communicative purpose, limited to sender and receivers, whereas the epistle refers to the letter read outside of its original context, considered as literature. The research corpus is composed of the Corinthian epistles of the New Testament, which are accepted as authored by the Apostle Paul. They are selected due to their (...) shared audience, enabling a comparison of production context aspects in the apostle’s writings over time. Research findings include: letters that acquire new meanings, when transformed into epistles with a broader readership; the epistle genre, despite undergoing significant modifications, remains recognizable to present-day readers due to its macrostructure; the social role and communicative intent of the sender that result in alternating usage of formal and informal language, as well as variations in discourse person. (shrink)

The aim of the following research is to investigate the epistolary of Cyprian of Carthage, in order to analyze whether and to what extent the military lexicon used by the African prelate had an «aggregating» value in a delicate period for the Church (252-254), marked by the persecution of Trebonius Gallus and the spread of the plague. We hypothesize a subtle but substantial difference in the regular use of miles Christi between the letters of 250-251 and those after 252 (...) as if leader Cyprian, initially heir to the scriptural tradition (especially Pauline), from Epistle 57 onwards reworks the concept of Christian militancy with a more social purpose, trying to counter, through an unconcealed call to (spiritual) arms, social disintegration with a communicative style typical of a legion commander. (shrink)

A partir do célebre e provocativo curso de Jacob Taubes sobre a teologia política de Paulo, Giorgio Agamben assume a tarefa de desdobrar as principais intuições do filósofo alemão, além de trazer muitos elementos originais e extremamente significativos para debate em torno da teologia paulina na filosofia contemporânea. Nosso artigo pretende, ao acompanhar a cuidadosa leitura do filósofo italiano realizada no livro Il tempo che resta: un commento alla Lettera ai Romani, destacar a dinâmica e a importância do messianismo do (...) qual as cartas do apóstolo estão carregadas e identificar o seu lugar e papel no projeto filosófico do autor. Palavras-Chave: Paulo de Tarso; Jacob Taubes; Giorgio Agamben; Tempo Messiânico; Lei. The place of Pauline theology in the thought of Giorgio Agamben Abstract: From the famous and provocative course by Jacob Taubes on the political theology of Paul, Giorgio Agamben takes on the task of unfolding the main insights of the German philosopher, in addition to bringing many original and extremely significant elements to the debate around Pauline theology in contemporary philosophy. Our article intends, by following the careful reading of the Italian philosopher carried out in the book Il tempo che resta: un commento alla Lettera ai Romani, to highlight the dynamics and importance of the messianism of which the apostle's letters are loaded and to identify its place and role in the author's philosophical project. Keywords: Paul of Tarsus; Jacob Taubes; Giorgio Agamben; Messianic Time; Law. El lugar de la teología paulina en el pensamiento de Giorgio Agamben Resumen: A partir del famoso y provocador curso de Jacob Taubes sobre la teología política de Pablo, Giorgio Agamben asume la tarea de desplegar las principales intuiciones del filósofo alemán, además de aportar muchos elementos originales y sumamente significativos al debate en torno a la teología paulina en la filosofía contemporánea. Nuestro artículo pretende, siguiendo la atenta lectura del filósofo italiano realizada en el libro Il tempo che resta: un commento alla Lettera ai Romani, destacar la dinámica y la importancia del mesianismo del que están cargadas las cartas del apóstol e identificar sus lugar y papel en el proyecto filosófico del autor. Palabras-clave: Pablo de Tarso; Jacob Taubes; Giorgio Agamben; Tiempo Mesiánico; Ley. Data de registro: 24/02/2022 Data de aceite: 15/06/2022. (shrink)

The apostle Paul deals extensively with gender, embodiment, and desire in his authentic letters, yet many of the contemporary philosophers interested in his work downplay these aspects of his thought. _Christ Without Adam_ is the first book to examine the role of gender and sexuality in the turn to the apostle Paul in recent Continental philosophy. It builds a constructive proposal for embodied Christian theological anthropology in conversation with--and in contrast to--the "Paulinisms" of Stanislas Breton, Alain Badiou, and Slavoj (...) Žižek. Paul's letters bequeathed a crucial anthropological aporia to the history of Christian thought, insofar as the apostle sought to situate embodied human beings typologically with reference to Adam and Christ, but failed to work out the place of sexual difference within this classification. As a result, the space between Adam and Christ has functioned historically as a conceptual and temporal interval in which Christian anthropology poses and re-poses theological dilemmas of embodied difference. This study follows the ways in which the appropriations of Paul by Breton, Badiou, and Žižek have either sidestepped or collapsed this interval, a crucial component in their articulations of a universal Pauline subject. As a result, sexual difference fails to materialize in their readings as a problem with any explicit force. Against these readings, Dunning asserts the importance of the Pauline Adam-Christ typology, not as a straightforward resource but as a witness to a certain necessary failure--the failure of the Christian tradition to resolve embodied difference without remainder. This failure, he argues, is constructive in that it reveals the instability of sexual difference, both masculine and feminine, within an anthropological paradigm that claims to be universal yet is still predicated on male bodies. (shrink)

This volume probes the social context of Paul's letter to Galatians in order to determine the character and purpose of the moral instruction Paul gives to its recipients. Here the new perspectives on Paul and the Law are fully integrated with a detailed exegesis of Galatians, shedding light on the crisis Paul addressed and on the whole character of Pauline ethics.

Nada nos exime a los hombres y mujeres de hoy de aquella advertencia paulina recaída sobre «la letra que puede matar». Juan Luis Segundo S.J, teólogo latinoamericano de la liberación, es quien con sensibilidad y lucidez ha podido detectar en el acceso de sus contemporáneos a los evangelios y, por ellos, a la figura de Jesús de Nazaret este inminente peligro. En vista de tal problemática y con el fin de actualizar un Evangelio liberador se resuelve a elaborar, en su (...) principal obra cristológica El Hombre de hoy ante Jesús de Nazaret, un extenso preámbulo hermenéutico. A él nos abocamos, como objeto de análisis del presente artículo, con el fin de sistematizar las complejas tareas hermenéuticas que propone y de establecer la originalidad de su labor teológica entendida como «anti-cristología. Contemporary men and women are not exempt form that Pauline warning about «letter that gives death». Latin American liberation theologian, Juan Luis Segundo S. J., has sensibly and brilliantly detected this imminent danger in his contemporaries access to gospel and, through it, to Jesús of Nazareth’s figure. In view of such problems and in order to update a liberating Gospel, he decides to elaborate, in his principal christological work «El Hombre de hoy ante Jesús de Nazaret», an extensive hermeneutic preamble. Such preamble is this article’s object of analysis, to which we dedicate with the purpose of systematizing the complex hermeneutic task that he proposes and to establish the originaliy of his theological work, understood as anti-christology. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Renaissance Thought on the Celestial Hierarchy:The Decline of a Tradition?Feisal G. MohamedThe Dionysian arrangement of the angels was dismantled on the one hand because its author was increasingly regarded as a "counterfait," and on the other hand because Protestants upheld the Bible's supremacy over all the "vain babblings of idle men." In consequence, those who like Spenser celebrated the "trinall triplicities," look back upon a great past that had (...) provided a vision hallowed by time and graced by an impressive array of intellects.—C. A. Patrides1It has been some forty years now since C. A. Patrides first argued in these pages that English Renaissance views on the celestial hierarchy constitute "the decline of a tradition," an argument made so convincing by his encyclopedic articles on the subject that scholars have been content to accept it. Indeed there is a good deal of evidence suggesting that the tradition of the ninefold hierarchy of angels associated with the Pseudo-Dionysius suffered serious injury at the hands of the Renaissance and Reformation. Subjected to the scrutiny of Renaissance scholarship and in light of the rediscovery of several Neoplatonists, particularly Proclus, it became quite clear that the Corpus Dionysiacum had been written centuries later than its author pretended. In the mid-fifteenth century Lorenzo Valla argued that because the Areopagus was a legal rather than a philosophical assembly, because none of the Greek or Latin fathers make mention of Dionysius, and because the claim in the letter to Polycarp to have witnessed [End Page 559] in Heliopolis the solar eclipse at the moment of Christ's death is a clear fabrication, placement of the Corpus in the first century should be doubted.2 These suggestions went largely unnoticed until Desiderius Erasmus, returning from England (where William Grocyn had begun murmurs regarding the Areopagitic origin of the Corpus), discovered in Louvain a manuscript of Valla's commentary on the book of Acts and incorporated its conclusions in his influential annotations on the New Testament.3 The discovery of Dionysius's pseudonymity and Erasmus's suggestion that Dionysian ceremonies could no longer be connected to the apostolic church would damage permanently the now Pseudo-Areopagite's influence. In a classic case of complicity between Renaissance humanism and Reformation theology—both Protestant and Catholic, it must be stressed—the sixteenth century turned away from Dionysian thought in general and from The Celestial Hierarchy in particular. The interrogation of apostolic origin begun by prominent Catholic thinkers like Erasmus and Cardinal Cajetan was most convenient to reformers like Martin Luther and John Calvin, both of whom described the author of the Corpus as "Dionysius, whoever he was."4Such an open-and-shut presentation of sixteenth-century Dionysiana, however, ignores several factors. One of them is that Renaissance scholars were not the first to question the dating of the Corpus: Peter Abelard fueled general perception of his heretical tendencies by suggesting that Dionysius may not have been the Pauline convert mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles.5 Much more important, however, is the number of Renaissance scholars for whom Dionysius was a formative influence. Despite his stance on the authenticity of the Corpus, Lorenzo Valla describes Dionysius in the peroration to his Encomium Sancti Thomae Aquinatis as playing the flute in a celestial symphony before the throne of God.6 For Nicholas Cusanus, as F. Edward Cranz describes [End Page 560] it, "Dionysius is the most important Christian theologian with no runner-up who is even close."7 Giovanni Pico della Mirandola saw Dionysius's writings as following directly from the teachings of Paul.8 Marsilio Ficino employed Dionysius in his comments on angels in the Theologia Platonica, translated and commented on The Divine Names and The Mystical Theology, and consistently endorsed first-century dating of the Corpus Dionysiacum.9 Ambrogio Traversari, who described Dionysius as "Apostoli disciplus," would also produce a fresh translation acceptable to humanist tastes in 1437, which would receive wide dissemination in the 1499 edition produced by Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples.10 Lefèvre saw the Corpus as apostolic in origin and authority and went so far as to endorse the traditional conflation of Dionysius with Saint... (shrink)

The article addresses the ‘messianic turn’ in contemporary continental philosophy, focusing on the concept of the katechon as the restraining force that delays the advent of the Antichrist in the Second Letter to the Thessalonians. While Carl Schmitt held the passage on the katechon to ground the Christian doctrine of state power, Giorgio Agamben’s reading of Pauline messianism rather posits the ‘removal’ of the katechon as the pathway for messianic redemption. In our argument, the significance of this text goes (...) beyond the persistence of a vestige of the theological in modern politics. On the contrary, the logic of the katechon only comes into its own under modern nihilism as the resolution of the problem of social order in the absence of the eschatological dimension. The article focuses on the lethal paradox of the logic of the katechon, whereby the function of protection and restraint is converted into violence and anomie, and global political order becomes indistinguishable from global civil war. We conclude by outlining the conditions for suspending the katechonic function in a critical engagement with Agamben’s messianic politics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Paul in the Summa Theologiae by Matthew LeveringAaron CantyPaul in the Summa Theologiae. By Matthew Levering. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2014. Pp. 336. $61.00 (cloth). ISBN: 978-0-8132-2597-5.It is not apparent to all readers of Thomas Aquinas that the Bible plays an indispensable role in his theology. That seems to be an unstated thesis of Matthew Levering in his book, Paul in the Summa Theologiae. (...) After decades of relative neglect in the first half of the twentieth century and into the second half, Aquinas’s scriptural commentaries began to receive scholarly attention. Less attention, however, has been paid to the role of Scripture in Aquinas’s synthetic works, including the Summa theologiae. Using as a reference point Wilhelmus G. B. M. Valkenberg’s magisterial study Words of the Living God: Place and Function of Holy Scripture in the Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, which evaluates scriptural citations in the Summa theologiae, Levering proposes a more circumscribed study, namely, to discover the particular contribution of Pauline texts to the Summa theologiae. Taking the Pauline corpus for what Aquinas understood it to be, namely, the fourteen letters of the New Testament from Romans to Hebrews, Levering undertakes a detailed study of Paul’s influence on Aquinas.Levering’s book is divided into three sections. The first section examines how Aquinas applies Pauline texts in his exposition of three theological topics: the Trinity, Christ’s passion, and baptism. In his treatment of each of these three topics, Levering follows the order of the Summa theologiae, locating each Pauline text and commenting on where and how Aquinas uses it, whether in an objection, the sed contra, the respondeo, or the reply to an objection. With respect to the Trinity, Aquinas uses Paul especially in the questions of the Prima pars on human knowledge of God (q. 12), God’s knowledge (q. 14), God’s will (q. 19), predestination (q. 23), God the Father (q. 33), and the missions of the Son and Holy Spirit (q. 43). Levering finds that Paul’s emphasis on human salvation is what links these theological topics. God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, wills to save humanity through Christ’s atoning death and resurrection, and the sending forth of the Holy Spirit allows humanity to respond in faith and love to the Father’s revelation in Christ.Regarding Christ’s passion, which Aquinas treats in questions 46 to 49 of the Tertia pars, Levering draws three main conclusions about Aquinas’s engagement with Paul. First, Aquinas emphasizes the importance of Christ’s love and obedience while enduring his suffering and death. Paul testifies to Christ’s love in Ephesians 5:2 and Galatians 2:20, and he underscores the role of Christ’s obedience to the Father in Philippians 2:8 and Romans 5:29. Second, Aquinas draws from the Pauline writings various soteriological elements of Christ’s death. These elements include the meriting of exaltation for himself and for those who believe in him (Phil 2:9), the sacrificial and redemptive dimensions of his death (Eph 5:2; Gal 3:13), and the exemplary [End Page 152] and revelatory functions by which God manifests his power and glory through human weakness (1 Cor 1:18 and 1:25; 2 Cor 12:4). Third, Aquinas describes how Christ’s passion changes the lives of believers. God elicits through Christ a free response in faith and love (Rom 3:25 and 5:8), reconciles humanity to himself (Rom 5:10), and liberates humanity from the power of the devil (2 Thess 2:9).Aquinas discusses the sacrament of baptism a little later in the Tertia pars (qq. 66-69). Levering finds that Pauline texts in the first three questions, which pertain to the nature of baptism, the minister, and the recipients respectively, play a smaller role than they do in question 69, which contains 26 of the 89 Pauline quotations Aquinas appropriates in the questions on baptism. Most of these quotations derive from Romans, in which Paul discusses baptism at some length. Romans 6:11 claims that Christians have been baptized into Christ... (shrink)

The identity of the historical Jesus has been object of a constant study and investigation. Throughout history new discoveries and statements have been made, some to cooperate and assist with the Christian faith, which profess Jesus as Lord and Savior; others, however, in order to extricate the Christ of faith presented by the Gospels, from the historical Jesus. This issue is so old that takes theologians and scholars to deeply dig in search for information, having as one of the references, (...) the Apostle Paul, author of many letters compiled to the New Testament. The apostle is notorious, being recognized, among other things, through his writings, as one of the most outstanding works on the interpretation of Jesus' life; but they are scarce about mentioning the Historical Jesus. This fact is explained by some theologians by the foreknowledge that Pauline recipients had about Jesus. So Paul is not interested in explore this question, since there were already other works making references on the subject, as the gospels, and their goals are different, although some elements are highlighted in Paul, as the passion, crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. This article briefly discusses the problem of the Historical Jesus and highlights the elements that make reference to this matter, through the Apostle Paul, highlighting the second letter to the Corinthians. (shrink)

In The Monstrosity of Christ, Slavoj Žižek cites the twins Claus and Lucas, from Agota Kristof’s The Notebook, as exemplars of the simultaneously naive and reflexive stance, which he considers to be crucial to a materialist ethics. This article argues, however, that the twins’ stance suffers from a ‘blindness’ as to the ethicality of their acts, shared by Žižek’s own ethics. It proposes that, by situating their actions within the trilogy to which The Notebook belongs, a richer three-fold ethics of (...) reflexive subjectivization emerges, in which reflexivity becomes the paradoxical condition of naivety, enabling Žižek to address this problem. Naive acts are granted consistency and significance by the construction of a new point de capiton, and a related interpretative framework, . However, insofar as this construction fails, acts are opened to the judgment of what is ‘other’ , constituting what in Žižek’s Beckettian terms may be called an ethics of ‘failing again, failing better’. The deeper significance of this proposal is demonstrated by uncovering a similar, but more problematically-realized three-fold reflexive-subjective relation to act within St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, with an appeal to authority taking the place of Kristof’s appeal to concrete historical judgment. It is further argued that insofar as Žižek largely does not attend to these dynamics, he tends to repeat this problematic Pauline solution in his own work. The article concludes that Kristof’s ethics of failure enables Žižek to avoid these problems, without compromising his distinctive ethical stance. (shrink)

Recent scholarship on the Pastoral Epistles shows that they are addressing several controversies. The author, on one hand, claims to be the legitimate heir to a long-standing Pauline tradition and, on the other, he seeks to advance a doctrine that provides important information about gender roles at the beginning of Christianity. The present article, drawing on Mary Douglas´ theory on the relationship between the social and the physical body, compares the gender ideals contained in the Pastoral Letters with (...) those in the Apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla. (shrink)

During the last two decades, a sharp re-reading of St. Paul’s letters allowed several thinkers to embed a messianic element in their political philosophy. In these readings, the messianic refusal of the world and its laws is understood through the suspensive act of ‘subtraction’ – a movement of withdrawal which nonetheless proved too often ineffective when translated in political practice. -/- After having analysed Agamben’s declension of Subtraction in terms of ‘inoperativity’, this article focuses on the notion of Parousia (...) as a key element to understand his anti-utopian account of messianic time. In contrast with Agamben’s reading, Bloch’s interpretation of the Pauline Parousia envisages the messianic event as infra-historical, but at the same time opened to ultimate (meta-historical) purposes. Bloch’s messianic call – I argue – takes the form of mediation, a correction of subtraction towards the direction of a more committed political engagement. I conclude suggesting that the concrete implementations of this mediation perform their emancipatory function in so far as they assume the character of practical ethics, with the attention directed to the underprivileged and marginalised. (shrink)

This paper argues that Locke offers qualified support for male-male intimacy. While one can find denunciations of sodomy and ‘debauchery’ in his work, these claims are embedded in a natural and divine law framework that did not formally specify how to define much less morally characterize these actions. At the very least, Locke makes it difficult to strictly condemn sodomy or other homosexual acts as inherently immoral. This paper will explore three areas of interest: 1) Locke’s Paraphrases of the (...) class='Hi'>Pauline epistles in which he argues that Paul’s interest in sexuality concerns temple idolatry rather than a trans-generational sexual ethic; 2) the empirical terms in which he appears to reject the viability of sodomy and his interest in native sexual practices show that he tolerated alternative conjugal frameworks; and 3) the curious case of his own sexuality, the passionate letters he shared with close male friends suggest that sexual obligations to society were not permanent and that as one ages alternative forms of love may be permitted. (shrink)