Browsing by Subject "Biblical studies"

In Luke’s two volumes, Luke is not interested only in Gentiles and those with high social status but also in the marginalized and those who are outsiders. This dissertation seeks to read Luke’s concern for outsiders and the theme of the inclusion of outsiders in the new kingdom of God in Luke’s narrative of the Ethiopian eunuch’s conversion in Acts 8:26-40. This paper examines the Ethiopian eunuch’s complex identity from the perspectives of the Greco-Roman world, Old Testament (LXX) allusions to the Elijah-Elisha narratives, and Luke’s interpretation of the Isaianic quotation of the Suffering Servant in Acts 8:32-33 (cf. Isaiah 53:7-8). This study pays close attention to the correlations between the theme of outsiders and three key characters in Acts 8:26-40: the Ethiopian eunuch, Philip, and the Suffering Servant. First, Luke depicts the Ethiopian eunuch as the consummate outsider—geographically, morally, socially, ethnically, and in terms of gender—and indicates that the eunuch represents other marginalized outsiders. The eunuch shows no one can prevent outsiders like him from inclusion in the kingdom of God. Second, Luke portrays Philip as a prophet, specifically a prophet like Elijah and Elisha. Philip emulates Elijah and Elisha by reaching out to the outsider (in this instance, the Ethiopian eunuch). Third, Luke presents the Isaianic Suffering Servant as a religious and social outsider and identifies the character with Jesus and the Ethiopian eunuch. The indescribable descendants of the Suffering Servant signify a universally inclusive messianic community and fulfill the outsiders’ inclusion within the people of God as Isaiah prophesied (Isaiah 56:3-8). This thesis finally suggests ways to read the story of the Ethiopian eunuch today and concludes that it is imperative to include those outsiders among us within the community of Jesus’s followers.

ABSTRACTThis thesis is offers exilic texts as the basis for restoration for communities traumatized by displacement. The scriptural focus for the thesis is Jeremiah 30-33, the Book of Restoration. The purpose of the thesis is to provide tools for inner-city pastors to navigate the opportunities and challenges of displacement caused by gentrification. The thesis is fueled by the contrast between numerous studies that report the benefits of gentrification versus its ills experienced as a pastoral witness of the machinery of displacement in the northwest quadrant of Washington, D.C. In Dr. Ellen Davis’ work on Jeremiah, she shows Jeremiah’s painful growth into his prophetic role. This growth occurs through laments or “protests addressed to God” thus making it possible to “lay claim to realistic hope.” This birth of hope is in the beginning of the book in Jeremiah 1:10, “See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant,” with building and planting as themes for Jeremiah 30-33. Dr. Davis further explicates hope’s placement. Hope finds a concrete place economically through Jeremiah’s land purchase (Chapter 32:6-15) and socially through community building (chapters 30 and 31). Building upon this work, my thesis concludes that Book of Restoration provides a relevant and effective model of restoration for today’s church.

This thesis aims to develop a narrative strategy for the local church parish, drawing on postliberal and narrative theologies. It argues that the narrative nature of the incarnation is not only descriptive of God's movement into the world but also prescriptive for the movement of God's people within the world. To begin to develop this claim, the thesis examines denominational and consultant practitioners' approaches and proposes a practical strategy for carrying out a narrative movement in a contextualized seing.The thesis centers around the biblical feature that Jesus is from Nazareth, with a particular in-depth look at his time spent in the Nazarene synagogue in Luke 4:14-30. Building on Samuel Wells' A Nazareth Manifesto, the thesis argues that contextualized story should be more formative and shaping than the corporatized phenomena of mission statements and core values, following the pattern of the narrative nature found within Scripture. To test the proposed strategy's effectiveness, the thesis includes an on-the-ground experiment within the North Street Community Church of the Nazarene, spanning about two years. The experiment seeks to see if the strategy results in narrative formation of both the individuals within the church and the church itself. Finally, the thesis concludes with a project for congregational use that builds upon the experiment's results. The project proposes a practical application of the narrative strategy, incorporating both what was learned during the experiment and adaptations of strategies found elsewhere.

This dissertation argues that, for Luke, universal witness belongs within a broader claim about the identity of Israel’s Messiah. Framed by Luke 24:46-48 (and Acts 26:22-23), the book of Acts narratively construes the unfolding universality of the Christian movement as the unfolding of the universality of Jesus’ Lordship. The “Lukan Commission,” rooted in a prophetic promise, prefigures the role of Acts in narratively unfolding the identity of Jesus as πάντων κύριος (Acts 10:36).

Universal proclamation of salvation in Acts—implicitly by Jesus and explicitly by his witnesses—narratively realizes the universality of Jesus’ Lordship. Luke’s second volume reconfigures the narrative sense of “presence” and “activity” on the basis of Jesus’ exaltation to heaven and Lordship by the Spirit (cf. 2:17-36). Especially as the “word” spreads beyond Jerusalem and the Jewish people, the Lord Jesus’ influence on the unfolding of universal witness becomes pronounced.

Though the apostles receive Jesus’ commission, their outreach is generally restricted to Jews in Jerusalem. Not until the Cornelius incident (Acts 10:1-11:18) does the universal vision of Jesus’ commission (Luke 24:47; Acts 1:8) intersect with apostolic witness, which is why Luke gives the episode almost unparalleled emphasis (cf. 11:5-17; 15:7-11). In this respect, the event proves paradigmatic for Luke’s coordination of christological identity and universal witness, establishing Jesus’ messianic identity as “Lord of all” (10:36). The full scope of Jesus’ identity is what participants in witness must discover in their encounter with the (ethnically) “other” (ἀλλόφυλος).

This theological breakthrough lies behind Paul’s outreach in the Diaspora and finds expression in the makeup of the Syrian Antioch community (11:19-26; 13:1-3), itself the basis for Paul’s outreach to Jews and Gentiles everywhere. In endorsing Antioch’s ministry, Peter, James, and the Jerusalem believers “model” for unbelieving Jews the proper interpretation of the salvation of the Gentiles in relation to Israel’s hopes (Acts 15). Jesus’ identity as universal Lord helps explain Paul’s “turn” to the Gentiles (13:46; 18:6; 28:28) less as a result of Jewish rejection than as a fulfillment of the Messiah’s work as outlined in scripture (1:8; 13:47; 26:23). The receptivity of Gentiles to Paul’s preaching provokes Paul’s Jewish audiences even as it models proper receptivity to the universality of Jesus’ Lordship. The present study confirms that for Luke mission is in part a means for expanding the witnesses’ comprehension of the scope of Jesus’ Lordship in light of God’s work among the Gentiles. Luke’s focus on the response of Jewish believers to this emerging reality in Acts reconfigures notions of χριστός in light of the (narrative) expansion of his identity as πάντων κύριος.

This Doctor of Ministry thesis seeks to address the misapplication of Christian Scripture and its contribution to the climate crisis in which we find ourselves. Ellen Davis calls the Christian duty to delineate a responsible vision of what participation in the renewal of creation might mean the most essential theological task of this generation. This is but one small offering. The solution this thesis proposes is the recovery of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus as the story of everything, a metanarrative which holds together God and all God has made. This ecological (relational) reading of Scripture finds all of Holy Scripture and reality to follow a threefold wisdom pattern of Creation/Uncreation/New Creation. Recovery of this lens allows us to name the time we are living in and imagine what faithful ecological participation in the larger story might look like.

The methodology used in this paper is narrative theology. Such a theology is advocated by Kavin Rowe and can also be seen in Richard Hays’ reading of New Testament texts as echoes of earlier narratives. NT Wright also suggests the metanarrative of the Resurrection of Christ in framing all ethical action and mission of the Church. Agrarian theological readings of Scripture, such as those offered by Ellen Davis, Wendell Berry, and Norman Wirzba, have also formed my understanding and hearing of Holy Scripture. I also have been shaped by the writing of Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann, who explores the liturgy of the Church in worship as the great cosmic story; Christ and the Church are offered “for the life of the world.”

It is this world which is the theme and concern of this thesis, and which much contemporary Christian theology has left behind. It is time to recover the story of a God who so loved the world to bring heaven down to dwell with us.

This dissertation examines those scenes in Acts where members of the church are banished, exiled, or displaced from the city, such as Acts 8:1, 13:50, and 16:35-39. It argues that Luke-Acts presents the church as a community of political exiles who have been exiled or banished from the cities of the Roman Empire. This narrative displacement prompts a response or solution, which in Luke-Acts is found in the community itself. Unlike other early Christian texts, which spoke of the church in exile from heaven or awaiting a city to come, Luke-Acts portrays the church itself as this “new city” that becomes a refuge for the displaced believers. Furthermore, exile or homelessness in Luke-Acts is not a problem requiring an otherworldly solution, but a part of the new way of life engendered by the proclamation of the gospel—it is a core part of following the way of Jesus, who himself is exiled from Nazareth in the gospel of Luke.The primary methodology I employ is literary criticism, by which I mean a careful, contextualized reading of Luke-Acts that attends to the form and content of the entire narrative. My reading of Acts is also a contextualized reading, by which I mean a reading that seeks to understand Acts in its late first-century context. This is especially important when talking about exile, since the study of exile in the New Testament has primarily focused on Israel’s exile without an adequate understanding of the socio-historical and literary reality of exile in the first century. To remedy this, I primarily read Luke-Acts alongside the consolatory literature of Plutarch, Musonius Rufus, and Favorinus. These texts address the problem of exile from different perspectives, but they all address the common themes of the loss of one’s homeland, the loss of possessions, and the loss of free speech or παρρησία. By reading Acts alongside these texts, which provide their own alternative visions of political belonging in the face of exile, I show how Luke-Acts envisions a new form of political belonging in local communities centered around the gospel.

This dissertation takes up questions of how theologies and practices of baptism shape visions of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus and a participant in Christian ecclesial communities. In particular, the dissertation investigates how baptism as the paradigmatic initiatory practice of the Church might transform communities to cultivate radical belonging for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

In order to address these questions, the dissertation engages a variety of methods, including historical and thematic analysis of theological texts (particularly in the field of disability theology), theological engagement of New Testament texts and biblical scholarship on the Pauline epistles, as well as an analysis of qualitative research conducted by the dissertation’s author (in-depth, semi-structured interviews) among adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, their families and key support persons, as well as clergy and lay leaders in Christian denominations across the ecumenical spectrum. An integrative analysis of theological texts, biblical texts, and narratives arising from the qualitative research analysis provides a foundation for constructive theological suggestions, in a practical and pastoral register, at the conclusion of the dissertation.

This dissertation concludes that a baptismal hermeneutic provides a critical lens to faithfully reflect on disability, as well as transformative practices to support the flourishing, belonging, and witness of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities in Christian faith communities. Baptismal theologies and practices suggest the centrality of communal, Jesus-centered, and participatory accounts of Christian identity in the Church – the community this dissertation names as the baptized Body. In particular, the dissertation commends practices of baptismal preparation, testimony, and reaffirmation as key avenues for participation of all people in ecclesial spaces (robustly inclusive of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities). These practices constitute transformative pathways to affirm the centrality of baptismal identity and baptismal vocation to discipleship for an ongoing, radical transformation of ecclesial life, empowered and sustained by the Holy Spirit. In addition, the baptismal hermeneutic and baptismal practices explored throughout the dissertation critically expand discourse on intellectual and developmental disabilities in the field of Christian theology.

Local churches suffer from insufficient preparedness for intragroup conflict. Thisproblem may be addressed fruitfully by pastors and their local church leaders when they encounter Old Testament narratives of intragroup conflict with their theological imaginations. With the working metaphor of storm preparation, the author examines how imaginative theological speech gives a constructive shape to the local church’s conflict cycles. Drawing from John Paul Lederach’s work on the role of the imagination in conflict transformation and the work of Brent Strawn on the Old Testament’s theological language, the author developed a Bible study that trains participating local church leaders in four elements of conflict preparedness: imaginative theological fluency, Lederach’s conflict transformation skillset, empathic practical wisdom, and the capacity to rehumanize an enemy. The Old Testament is an essential theological resource for the local church cultivating intragroup conflict preparedness, because the Old Testament itself contains many narratives of intragroup conflict as well as rich intertextual theological conversations that illustrate the productive intragroup tensions abiding within God’s people. A pastor may tap into these narratives and conversations creatively in this Bible study to develop participating leaders’ imaginative theological speech about conflict in their own lives. The quantitative and qualitative outcomes of this Bible study’s first iteration in the local church are analyzed and interpreted theologically in order to reimagine the storm metaphor itself. By intervening with the Old Testament’s theological speech during low-intensity phases of a conflict cycle, the pastor weatherproofs their local church leaders before the next storm.

Did the early Pentecostals regard themselves as servants to the wider church, bearers of the gifts of the Spirit, sent to bring a renewed focus on love, unity, holiness, and justice to all parts of the church? Or did they see themselves as the only true believers in the midst of apostates, heretics, and reprobates? What can be found among the early Pentecostals, as a people whose primary self-identity was as a people of the Spirit, that carried the Spirit's mission forward in unique or significant ways? Can the loss of such practices help explain the decline of the Pentecostal movement? Narrating the Pentecostal movement through the lens of the Spirit's mission to the world is an attempt to give a normative account of Pentecostal liminality, to describe certain communitas commitments as ones that gave rise to the movement and propelled it forward. This study describes in detail how this understanding itself came to be something else, something quite damaging. Still, the general principle was that the Holy Spirit comes in power and blesses work that aligns with the Spirit's own mission. That is the primary presupposition at work here as well, that through understanding the mission of the Holy Spirit, we may find ways to align ourselves with that mission, to co-labor with the Spirit by privileging the liminal moment. Implicit in this claim is the denial that such alignment is automatic, guaranteed, or even self-sustaining. The argument here is that the incompatibility of the Pentecostal ethos represented by these communal commitments with the uncritical acceptance of evangelical-fundamentalist theological accounts on the part of the second and third generation Pentecostals resulted in a loss of what constituted the Pentecostal movement as such. This dissertation begins with an exegesis of John 16.8-11 in an effort to articulate Pentecostal ethics in terms of participation in the Spirit's mission of convincing the world with regard to sin, righteousness, and power. The conclusions of this exegesis are that the entire world is in view throughout this passage; that the Spirit convicts all with regard to sin, defined as not believing in Jesus, righteousness, defined as following Jesus' example in a life of holiness, and power, defined as the Spirit's judgment on all forms of power that are self-aggrandizing as opposed to the cruciform mode of authority that must characterize the Christian life; and that the Spirit accomplishes this convincing work primarily through the life of the communitas the Spirit forms, embodies, and empowers. These results are then carried to the Pentecostal movement in its earliest instantiation and as it exists as a Christian subculture today, asking what Pentecostal liminality might look like, if the rubric of the Spirit's mission to the world is applied as a moment we are to participate in enduringly.

It is often assumed, occasionally argued, that when Matthew writes, in his ten “fulfillment citations” (FCs), that Scripture was “fulfilled,” he means that the occurrence of certain events “verify” scriptural “predictions.” This study argues that the FCs have another primary function—namely, to show how Jesus (or, in two cases, Israel’s leaders) brings the scriptural word to an unsurpassable, “full” limit. The key verb πληροῦν, that is, has a basic meaning of “fill up.”

The starting point is an examination of three rhetorically significant texts in Matthew’s gospel that are not FCs. In Matt 3:13-17, 5:17-20, and 23:32-36, Matthew consistently uses πληροῦν to mean “fill up” some ethical/ moral quantum. A survey of the way in which “limit-adjectives/ adverbs” (adjectives/ adverbs, that convey a limit being reached, e.g., “all”) cluster around the FCs points in the same direction—towards the hypothesis that πληροῦν means “fill up” in the FCs as well.

A potential linguistic objection is then addressed: is it possible to use πληροῦν in this way in Matthew’s Umwelt? Considering the instances of “πληροῦν + a word” formulations in koinē Greek, the study concludes that such language would have no default idiomatic meaning in the ears of Matthew’s speakers and could be used in the manner proposed.

After establishing the methodological principle that Matthew controlled the size of his FCs—and, thus, quoted precisely what he needed—exegesis of the specific FCs attempts to confirm the study’s central thesis. Consideration of relevant textual features of the narrative context in which the FCs are embedded (e.g., repetition of limit-adverbs/ adjectives, narrative-enacted “fullness”) would show that many, but not all, of the FCs point towards such a meaning for πληροῦν. Those FCs lacking such textual features can and probably should be read within the framework derived from Matthew’s normal usage of πληροῦν.

Finally, the study considers several hermeneutical implications of this exegesis. Ultimately, it would situate Matthew’s hermeneutic within scholarly discussion of “the Old in the New” and offer a contribution to Matthean christology. With the FCs, Matthew sets forth a vision of myriad images from Israel’s past (Emmanuel; Son; nazirite; light; healing Servant; nonviolent king; prophet; meek king) converging on the Jesus who fully embodies them to save Israel from the fullness of her exile.



This thesis explores some key reasons why it is often very difficult for Christians to love “racially” different Christians. Examining over eighty years of neuroscience and psychological research reveals key understandings about how the brain works when experiencing people who are racially different. Four psychological processes are major contributors to implicit biases that form mental barriers, feed stereotypes, cause discrimination, and lead to individual and institutional racism. These implicit biases are key obstacles to our call to cultivate a beloved community. Research suggests that once biases are identified, actions that counter biases are effective when the stimulus is ongoing. Building off these findings, I design a Bible Study referencing group psychology and theological reflection to be used with an intentionally diverse group of church leaders. By focusing on brain processes that impede racial reconciliation in conversation with Scripture, I develop a tool that begins healing to some of the forces that undermine unity and violate the integrity of the body of Christ.

Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, modern historical-critical study of the book of Isaiah succeeded in showing that the text emerged in stages over perhaps three hundred years, rather than as the fully formed product of a preexilic prophet. This mode of inquiry resulted in the widespread assumption that Isaiah is best approached as at least three distinct texts that express little if any intrinsic relationship with each other. The rise of literary criticism in the late 1970s and early 1980s, however, reminded readers that the Bible deserves to be studied as a body of theological literature regardless of the multiplicity of authorial contexts from which it derives. Overcoming Isaiah’s well-established diachronic fragmentation, however, has proven no straightforward task; readers have often and understandably resorted to thematic generalizations in their effort to describe the whole. The differences characteristic of these two approaches to Isaiah reflect the methodological splintering of biblical studies at large, where analysis of a text’s literary shape and theological message is frequently pitted against its rich history of composition.

Recent research has begun to ask a more profitable, interdisciplinary set of questions: What is the relationship between Isaiah’s diachronic development and its final form, and what might synchronic analysis of its final form teach us about its history of composition? Indeed, as several scholars have pointed out, a synchronic examination of Isaiah’s language and argument is a necessary first step in making accurate judgments regarding its diachronic development. Fresh inquiry into the book’s synchronic shape that does not ignore the history and culture from which it arose therefore represents a leading edge in Isaiah studies today.

History and Hope: The Agrarian Wisdom of Isaiah 28–35 examines the rhetorical function of Isa 28–35, a relatively overlooked series of six woe-oracles, in relation to the reader’s encounter with the book of Isaiah as a whole. At a diachronic level, the project seeks to improve the historical model that typically informs scholars’ perceptions of Isaiah’s construction. Through comparisons to the thought and practice of several contemporary agrarian thinkers, it draws attention to the holistic, agrarian worldview of the people who wrote and transmitted the Bible. This comparison suggests that an “agrarian hermeneutic” provides a historically- and phenomenologically-appropriate lens by which to examine the eight chapters in question. At a synchronic level, the project uses modern literary theory to describe the written text’s “epistemological layering,” thereby accounting for important differences between characters and readers. When combined with an agrarian hermeneutic, this move opens scholarly understanding of Isaiah’s written rhetoric to the associative logic by which it is constructed, and which is everywhere evident in the “intratextual” web of Leitwörter, motifs, and recurring ideas that run throughout the book. Through careful, exegetical analysis of Isa 28–35 in its sequential unfolding relative to the book as a whole, the project argues that these eight chapters use the language of agrarian wisdom to issue a call to obedience that transports the reader from prior reflections on historical destruction into a vision of ultimate hope.

This dissertation focuses on three metaphors in Galatians 3:19-4:31 that cast the Law as enslaved: the Law is an enslaved παιδαγωγός (3:19-25), an enslaved ἐπίτροπος and οἰκονόμος (4:1-11), and Hagar the enslaved παιδίσκη (4:21-31). This particular cluster of metaphors has gone largely unnoticed by interpreters of Galatians, who have instead focused on Paul’s depiction of humanity’s enslavement to the Law. This dissertation examines Paul’s depictions of the Law as an enslaved enslaver, situating these metaphors in the context of first-century Roman slavery and drawing out their implications for Paul’s theology of the Law in Galatians. The study argues that Paul flexibly uses a variety of slavery metaphors to make a series of claims about the enslaved Law’s agency in relation to other agents. Before the coming of Faith, the Law worked effectively with God in a preparatory role (3:19-25). But when the Galatians themselves attempt to come under the Law’s authority after already receiving the Spirit, they end up frustrating both their own intentions and those of the Law (4:1-11, 21-31).

Many first-century Jewish leaders considered the marginalized outside the reach of God’s mercy. But Jesus seemed to challenge this social and religious value. This study explores the paths to restoration for society’s outcasts in the Gospel of Luke, whether their outside status was the result of sinful “conduct” (prostitution, tax-collection, etc.) or a culturally-defined “condition” (blindness, leprosy, nationality, gender, etc.). I attempt to show that Jesus drew a distinction between the “conduct marginalized” and the “condition marginalized” and sought to meet their needs differently based on their proper classification. Jesus addressed the specific needs of these outsiders which avoided over-condemning on the one hand and premature restoration on the other hand. He did not regard the condition marginalized beyond the pale of redemption; he did not regard the conduct marginalized beyond the possibility of repentance. Both were worthy to hear the message of the gospel.

The Gospel of Luke provides unparalleled resources for my investigation. This Gospel emphasizes society’s outcasts more than the other Gospels, especially Gentiles, lepers, the poor, and women. According to Simeon, the Christ child will be responsible for the rise and fall of many in Israel (Luke 2:34) reversing the status imposed by culture on the powerful and the weak alike. Jesus’ warning that those who exalt themselves will be humbled while those who humble themselves will be exalted is repeated twice only in Luke’s Gospel (14:11; 18:14). Jesus inaugurates his public ministry by citing Isaiah’s liberating promises to the poor, the captives, the blind, and the oppressed (Luke 4:18). The dinner table in Luke 14 is occupied by the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame, while the entitled powerful “will not taste of my banquet,” Jesus says (Luke 14:16-24). Jesus tends unconditionally to invite these outcasts to gather to him on the “outside” (away from Jerusalem, away from Jewish leaders, etc.). Instead of perpetuating the condemnation of the condition marginalized, Jesus seems to invite their restoration by confronting the myth that some sin lies at the root of their condition.

At the same time that Luke elevates these condition marginalized, he also places a greater stress on “repentance” for the conduct marginalized than we find in the other Gospels. It is Luke’s Jesus, after all, who famously adds “to repentance” in 5:32 to the expression, “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners” in Matthew 9:13 and Mark 2:17. It seems that some outcasts are victims of societal injustice while others are suffering the consequence of marginalization as a result of their own choices. To further complicate matters, we find Jesus dining with “tax collectors and sinners” throughout the Gospel of Luke. This table fellowship is noted and condemned by some Jewish leaders who find Jesus too welcoming. But Jesus rejects the insult that he is a “friend of tax collectors and sinners,” along with being labelled a glutton and a drunkard. Instead of unconditionally accepting the conduct marginalized, Jesus invites their repentance for community restoration.

Many additional questions are raised in the process of this research: Does the Gospel of Luke allow us to classify the marginalized as “conduct” or “condition” and, if so, who might fit into those categories (alternative category labels might be “active” and “passive” marginalized—as in those who actively contributed to their marginalization through their behavior and those who were passively marginalized through no fault of their own)? Do these categories still exist today? How much cultural luggage is involved in the station of the first century’s outcasts? Was Jesus more accepting of people than his followers are today? Did Jesus consider himself a friend of tax collectors and sinners, unconditionally welcoming them? Did he use table fellowship as a means to drawing sinners into a relationship with himself? Is it culturally objectionable to refuse anyone inclusion today, as it seemed culturally objectionable to welcome everyone in Jesus’ day?

The path to restoration for society’s outcasts in the Gospel of Luke ran through Jesus. How they were restored by Jesus, however, seemed to take on different forms depending on why that person was marginalized in the first place. This study concludes that those who were marginalize through no fault of their own (condition outcasts) were unconditionally redignified by Jesus, whereas those who were marginalized due to sin (conduct outcasts) were offered forgiveness in exchange for repentance. Jesus did not hesitate to classify people as sinners. Those who thus repented were celebrated with large meals fitting those found who were formally lost. Furthermore, Jesus directly confronted self-righteousness and those who were guilty of oppression. If we seek to model ourselves after Jesus, we may require a measure of correction that aligns us with this portrait of Jesus presented in Luke’s Gospel.

One of the focuses of John Howard Yoder's theology is Christian nonviolence. From the teaching and example of Jesus, who dealt with the evil in the world and defeated it through obedience to the will of God to the point of dying on the cross, Yoder derives the normative Christian stance of nonviolence. It is expressed in the life of the disciples in their suffering with Christ the hostility of the world as bearers of the kingdom cause and in their living out the suffering servanthood in place of dominion. For Yoder, subordination is how Christ's model of servanthood is carried out into the concreteness of family life, and it is most extensively explored in his essay, "Revolutionary Subordination," in The Politics of Jesus.

This dissertation is an attempt to read household codes in the New Testament, especially Col. 3:18-4:1, together with Yoder, with a special emphasis on the husband/wife relation. Due to an exceptionally controversial character of Yoder's essay, it seeks to understand his main points, while identifying the elements that have caused strong opposition. The fact that these Haustafel texts have been historically abused to legitimate oppression and exploitation of persons poses a warning in one's endeavor to interpret them. Particularly telling is Americans' experience around slavery during and after the Civil War. The conflicting interpretations of the Bible between the proslavery camp and the abolitionists leave us in a hard place in addressing the issue of women's status in the household and in society.

Through examining key debates on the Haustafeln in the biblical scholarship focused on James Crouch and David Balch; two alternative views on the subject in theological ethics - Yoder and Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza - and further discussions of their views aided by theologians such as Gordon Kaufman, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Jeffrey Stout, this study addresses issues found in Yoder and Schüssler Fiorenza. It concludes that Yoder's undue reliance on David Schroeder and his refutation of Martin Dibelius have led him to overlook the preexisting schema that was adopted and Christianized by the early church, and that he fails to name patriarchy a sin. Schüssler Fiorenza's problems are found in the areas of the biblical canon, tradition and democracy. The relevance of the slavery debates to this study is revisited through discussions of Mark Knoll and Dale Martin, and Yoder's nonviolent kingdom ethic is compared to Paul Ramsey's just war theory and backed up by Rowan Williams, Bernd Wannenwetsch, and Sarah Coakley.

In this dissertation, I offer a pedagogical proposal for learning the Christian Scriptures guided by respect for the nature of the reader and the integrity of the biblical text. Christian educators have profitably developed recent theoretical interest in the body’s role in human meaning with regard to worship and praxis methodologies, but the implications of this research for communal study of the biblical text merit further development. I make the case for adopting scriptural imagination as the goal of pedagogically constructed encounters with the Christian Scriptures. The argument proceeds through a series of questions addressing both sides of the text/reader encounter.

Chapter one considers the question “what is the nature of the reader and, subsequently, the shape of the reader’s ways of knowing?” This investigation into recent literature on the body’s involvement in human knowing includes related epistemological shifts with Christian education. On the basis of this survey, imagination emerges as a compelling designator of an incorporative, constructive creaturely capacity that gives rise to a way of being in the world. Teachers of Scripture who intend to participate in Christian formation should account for the imagination’s centrality for all knowing. After briefly situating this proposal within a theological account of creatureliness, I make the initial case for Scriptural imagination as a pedagogical aim.

Imagination as creaturely capacity addresses the first guiding value, but does this proposal also respect the integrity and nature of the biblical text, and specifically of biblical narratives? In response, in chapter two I take up the Acts of the Apostles as a potential test case and exemplar for the dynamics pertinent to the formation of imagination. Drawing on secondary literature on the genre and literary features of Acts, I conclude that Acts coheres with this project’s explicit interest in imagination as a central component of the process of Christian formation in relationship to the Scriptures.

Chapters three and four each take up a pericope from Acts to assess whether the theoretical perspectives developed in prior chapters generate any interpretive payoff. In each of these chapters, a particular story within Acts functions as a test case for readings of biblical narratives guided by a concern for scriptural imagination. Each of these chapters begins with further theoretical development of some element of imaginal formation. Chapter three provides a theoretical account of practices as they relate to imagination, bringing that theory into conversation with Peter’s engagement in hospitality practices with Cornelius in Acts 10:1-11:18. Chapter four discusses the formative power of narratives, with implications for the analysis of Paul’s shipwreck in Acts 27:1-28:16.

In the final chapter, I offer a two-part constructive pedagogical proposal for reading scriptural narratives in Christian communities. First, I suggest adopting resonance above relevance as the goal of pedagogically constructed encounters with the Scriptures. Second, I offer three ways of reading with the body, including the physical, ecclesial, and social bodies that shape all learning. I conclude by identifying the importance of scriptural imagination for Christian formation and witness in the twenty-first century.

In an era of ecological upheaval that has led some scientists to declare that human activity has inaugurated a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, the apocalyptic theology of the Apostle Paul speaks a timely word of ethical and practical import. In his letter to the Roman Christians, Paul calls for a conversion of behavior that resonates with and lends theological substantiation to the urgent calls of ecologists, climatologists, and others concerned for the wellbeing of the entire ecosphere. With a fundamental belief in the God who creates, sustains, and resurrects life, Paul's message in Romans 8:19-22 urges Christians to align their lives with the liberation that God intends for creation and that Jesus Christ has inaugurated through his life, death, and resurrection.

This dissertation examines Rom 8:19-22 in its literary, theological, imperial, and ecological contexts in order to illuminate the implications of Paul's thought for contemporary Christian living. Laying a biblical and theological foundation, the first chapter delineates the ways in which Old Testament texts assume a "relational pyramid" in which Israel, the nations, and nonhuman creation relate with one another and with God in ways that affect the wellbeing of all. In this vision, the conditions and destinies of human and nonhuman members of creation interdepend. Presupposing such a view of the world, Paul indicates throughout Romans, and especially in Rom 8:19-22, that creation's slavery to destruction results from human sin and that its liberation depends upon God's liberation and glorification of humanity, an argument developed in my second chapter. While this interpretation parallels common understandings of Rom 8:19-22, the frequently muted voice of creation is magnified when we recognize that the nonhuman creation too acts as subject, aligning itself with God's purposes, expectantly awaiting the resurrection of humanity, and collectively groaning and laboring towards that resurrection, the apocalypse of the "sons of God." Chapter three turns to relevant features of ancient Rome's religious, political, and agricultural traditions. Like Paul, the Roman imperial mythos maintained that human activity affected the health of creation. Yet, in contrast to Paul, it declared that Augustus, the divinely favored son of god, had established an age of peace and had brought fertility and abundance to the natural world. This "Golden Age" depended upon military power and the exploitation of conquered people and land, as an investigation of the Roman grain trade reveals. By placing Roman rhetoric and practice in conversation with Paul, chapter four demonstrates how Paul's vision of liberation subverts the Roman imperial mythos. The Epistle to the Romans insists that the empire's practices are among those that enslave creation to destruction and that the fulfillment of God's liberation will be established by Jesus Christ, the true Son of God, who will share his inheritance with his siblings, the children of God from all nations. In accord with their allegiance to Christ, his followers should live in ways that honor their relationships with human neighbors and also alleviate the destruction of creation, promote the flourishing of life and biodiversity, contribute to the wellbeing of creation's vulnerable members, and render thanksgiving to God. Exhibiting Paul's practical theology of creation and its powerful political bite, the fifth chapter examines and criticizes American industrial agriculture, particularly the growing of wheat in the Great Plains. In ways that parallel the Roman imperial myth, modern agriculture presents itself as liberating the world from famine through industrial power even as it masks the ways in which it binds creation to destruction. Inspired by the message of Romans, however, Christians find themselves called to unveil the powers of oppression and nurture sustainable communities of liberty, peace, and flourishing in harmony with creation. They may begin to do this by supporting local, organic, and perennial forms of agriculture with the hope that farmers may rely less on fossil fuels, toxic chemicals, and expensive seeds. In so doing, humans presage the liberty and flourishing of the New Creation as they mitigate the epoch-shifting and life-destroying events of climate change and species extinction.

This dissertation studies the role and function of lament in the New Testament. It addresses the problem that lament does not seem to be a pervasive feature of the New Testament, particularly when viewed in relation to the Old Testament. In some cases the voice of lament appears subdued or muted altogether in favor of resurrection hope and endurance in suffering. I argue that a careful investigation of the New Testament reveals that it thoroughly incorporates the pattern of Old Testament lament into its proclamation of the gospel, especially in the person of Jesus Christ as he both prays and embodies lament. Jesus represents God's answer to Israel's long-prayed cries of lament, but he also takes up the prayer of lament as a human being; as the Messiah-King, high priest, and prophet of Israel; and as the divine Son of God. Because of this, lament has a dual function in the New Testament: it points to Jesus as the beginning of the fulfillment of lament's cries, and it points forward to the consummation of God's kingdom as guaranteed in Jesus' resurrection. My working definition of lament in the New Testament derives from the Old Testament pattern: lament is a persistent cry for salvation to the God who promises to save, in a situation of suffering or sin, in the confident hope that this God hears and responds to cries, and acts now and in the future to make whole. Lament calls upon God to be true to God's own character and to keep God's own promises, with respect to humanity, Israel, and the church. Although lament texts occur throughout the New Testament--in the Gospels, the epistles, and Revelation--they cluster predominantly in the Gospels, especially in the passion narrative. Therefore, I focus first on the significance of Jesus' laments in the Gospel passion narratives. I discuss the role of lament in all four passion narratives, and then I read these same texts through the lenses of Jesus' humanity, Jesus' messianic identity, and Jesus' divinity. Finally, in the light of this investigation, I consider lament as a prayer of eschatological longing for the kingdom inaugurated by Jesus' death and resurrection.

This dissertation explores the nature of early Christian identity in relation to non-Christian Jewish alterity as these are portrayed in the Gospel of Luke. Recent study of the relationships among Jews and Christians in the first centuries of the Common Era has been marked by an increasing awareness of the substantial overlap that existed between what would emerge only later as clearly delineated “Jewish” and “Christian” identities. The study of the so-called “parting of the ways” between Jews and Christians has thus opened up new avenues for inquiry into questions that were once thought, at least by New Testament scholars, to be settled by paradigms that are now roundly judged to be unsatisfactory. However, these developments in the study of early Jewish/Christian relations have not yet prompted an adequate reinvestigation of the place of the Lukan writings within the conflicts and convergences of early Jewish and early Christian life. This dissertation therefore examines Luke’s Gospel as both a theological text and an historical artifact in the light of the question of how early Christian identity was conceived in relation to early Christian conceptualizations of Jewish identity. It seeks to explain the theology of Israel exhibited in the Lukan narrative and to situate this theological narrative within its historical setting in a manner that sheds light on both the author’s mode of explicating religious identity and alterity and the otherwise shadowy history of earliest Jewish/Christian relations.

Methodologically, this study utilizes standard tools of biblical criticism, including historical and literary approaches. Source-critical and redaction-critical analyses are combined with historical-critical reflection on early Christianity, early Jewish/Christian relations, and the gospel tradition in order to evaluate the socio-rhetorical nature of Luke’s presentation of Christian and non-Christian Jewish identities. Through this exegetical analysis, I argue that the orientation toward non-Christian Jewish others in Gospel of Luke (along with the Acts of the Apostles, which is treated in connection with Luke’s gospel throughout) is not adequately described by standard theories of identity construction in early Christianity, in which Christian identity is said to have taken shape historically as the church distanced itself socially from non-Christian Jews and formulated its self-understanding in contradistinction to its constructed image of a denigrated non-Christian Jewish alterity. Against this model, I argue that Luke’s theological presentation of Christian and non-Christian Jewish identities exhibits a consistent parallelism in Luke’s call to the church and to those outside its community to repent and gather with Jesus in the face of coming judgment. I argue further that this rhetorical characteristic of Luke’s gospel is best accounted for by positing a social context in which the evangelist lived in close proximity to both the Christian church, which he called to greater faithfulness, and to non-Christian Jews, whom he called to repent and sought to persuade to accept his vision of the fulfillment of hopes of Israel in Jesus of Nazareth.