Browsing by Subject "Gospel of Matthew"

This work unfolds in three moves to explore the rise in fear and anxiety in young adults and to provide a theological response from a chapel office on a college campus. The first move involves an exegetical reading of the Markan parable (adapted in Matthew) of “Binding the Strong Man”. This parable serves as an overarching metaphor for the nature of both the fearful realities many young adults find themselves in and the nature of the God who seeks to break into that reality and remind us of our innate value and worth in God. The parable asks us to think about whom we follow and call our leader, for whom we follow will form us at the deepest levels individually and collectively.

The second move of this thesis examines frameworks for understanding the anxious lives of young adults today: neurological, psychological, philosophical, and finally theological through an Augustinian lens. Through these frameworks we learn we need a renewed appreciation for the emotional life as the primary place of meaning making. Emotions are intelligent, that is, they have something to tell us about our deepest loves and desires. In particular, it investigates Augustine’s exploration of sophistry and philosophy as guides for constraining fear. Ironically, the deeper he found himself in those fields and frameworks the more disordered his inner life became. His personal experience and the values of ancient Rome serve as a warning for what happens when fear is allowed to run the lives of the ambitious individually and collectively.

The final move of the thesis is to take us into the outpost of grace, a location and people retraining their desires in the direction of Christ. This section highlights one prescriptive piece–that of retraining in belonging—to address the rise of loneliness and its interrelationship with anxiety. The outpost of grace provides new liturgies and habits to replace the cultural norms that disorder our inner lives.

This work unfolds in three moves to explore the rise in fear and anxiety in young adults and to provide a theological response from a chapel office on a college campus. The first move involves an exegetical reading of the Markan parable (adapted in Matthew) of “Binding the Strong Man”. This parable serves as an overarching metaphor for the nature of both the fearful realities many young adults find themselves in and the nature of the God who seeks to break into that reality and remind us of our innate value and worth in God. The parable asks us to think about whom we follow and call our leader, for whom we follow will form us at the deepest levels individually and collectively.

The second move of this thesis examines frameworks for understanding the anxious lives of young adults today: neurological, psychological, philosophical, and finally theological through an Augustinian lens. Through these frameworks we learn we need a renewed appreciation for the emotional life as the primary place of meaning making. Emotions are intelligent, that is, they have something to tell us about our deepest loves and desires. In particular, it investigates Augustine’s exploration of sophistry and philosophy as guides for constraining fear. Ironically, the deeper he found himself in those fields and frameworks the more disordered his inner life became. His personal experience and the values of ancient Rome serve as a warning for what happens when fear is allowed to run the lives of the ambitious individually and collectively.

The final move of the thesis is to take us into the outpost of grace, a location and people retraining their desires in the direction of Christ. This section highlights one prescriptive piece–that of retraining in belonging—to address the rise of loneliness and its interrelationship with anxiety. The outpost of grace provides new liturgies and habits to replace the cultural norms that disorder our inner lives.

The question of Matthew’s missiology in modern scholarship frequently centers the relationship between contradictory commissions in 10:5-6 and 28:19-20. Does Matthew believe that the mission to Israel is the primary focus of the nascent church, or that the gentile mission has replaced it? Or does Matthew believe that the mission that began in Israel has now expanded to include all nations? The goal of this dissertation is to complicate this question by expanding our object of study to other passages in the Gospel that discuss missions. We begin with Matt 10. In Matt 10, missionary work is an ethnically and geographically limited project. Missionaries are sent as envoys of Jesus. They depend on their targets for hospitality. They focus on Jews, though gentiles are present as onlookers. The missionary project forces confrontation with Jewish leadership, particularly Pharisees. Neither Jews nor gentiles are singled out as persecutors. The mission is associated with imminent eschatology, and it is underway when Matthew writes. We compare this missiology with five passages that precede the final commission: the parable of the tenants (21:33-46), the wedding banquet (22:1-14), the woes against scribes and Pharisees (chapter 23), the tribulation (chapter 24), and the parable of the sheep and the goats (25:31-46). What becomes clear is that Matthew’s missiology is unified. He entertains a mission that is no longer restricted, but other tropes from Matt 10 reappear. This continuity reemerges again in the final call to international mission (28:16-20). Matthew’s missiology is not discontinuous, but stable. He introduces a missionary task in 10:5-42, places it in Israel, and expects that this work will continue in the rest of the world. Outreach to Jews and gentiles bleeds into each other from the beginning, given Matthew’s awareness of gentiles in Palestine and of Jews in the Diaspora. The question of whether Matthew intends his message to go to Jews, or gentiles, or both, therefore, is significantly more complicated than it first appears.